Meeting Clients

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In a world where 99% of business communication is done by phone, email or video/text messaging – there is no substitute for meeting clients face-to-face. A personal meeting will create a better bond and this can be useful with challenging projects. Do I really need to meet this client? Not all clients are created equal. [...]

Survey Results: How Graphic Designers Get Paid

designer and money

This is the second part of my survey of independent graphic designers working from all corners of the globe and it throws up some interesting results about how they charge. The first survey results concentrated on what designers do and how they make money. Questions about charging are the most common I get in my [...]

Freelance graphic design advice

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Whether you’re a rock star creative in a top-ten agency or a freelancer running a business from home on a shoestring, graphic design is an absorbing, all-encompassing practice. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder and therefore disagreements occur and criticism can be hard to take. But it’s a great job because you spend [...]

Designers, how to avoid client disasters!

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There is a game in this industry: the trade off between graphic designer and client. I have heard this expression in large design agencies many times: “this would be a great job if it wasn’t for clients!” I disagree, I think it’s a great job period. If you don’t like your clients, get out of [...]

Teach yourself graphic design

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This article comes with a warning: easily offended graphic designers please do not read on! Graphic design is not rocket science, nor does it depend on artistic talent – it just takes a lot of practice. Some designers love to say that graphic design is a God-given talent that only a select few special people [...]

Design websites that the client can edit

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I got a call from a potential client the other day and he asked me a very simple question. “Once you’ve created the website for me will you charge me every time I want to edit one of the pages?” And, although this is not the first time I have heard this question, it still [...]

How to market yourself #4: What to write in your blog or website

writing great content on a laptop

So you’ve got your WordPress blog set up and you are just starting to write – what you do? Words are, in my opinion, the most important thing on a website. This is because the search engine robots that crawl the web every day can pretty much “read” what you’ve written, but they can’t look [...]

Using vector illustrations in designs to deliver your message

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Do you ever wish you didn’t use stock photography so much? Recently I’ve found myself trawling through pages of stock images from sites such as Shutterstock, iStock and Fotolia, usually looking for a well-presented young professional smiling to camera. These sites contain some good photography but I’m always worried that the stock approach lacks creativity [...]

Ways to beat a design and marketing slump

recession, credit crunch, slump, downturn, slowdown

Personally, I have noticed other recessions far sooner than this one. It seems like months and months of dreary economic forecasts had passed before I got an inkling that it was going on. Anyway, here’s some ways to defeat the dreaded downturn. Diversify Do something you’re not doing at the moment. Web designers should diversify [...]

Turn your client’s photos into beautiful images

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The problem Err, sorry, the challenge. How many times does this happen? You have an otherwise beautiful design and your client insists on including pictures of people who’s images weren’t taken by one of the world’s best photographers. This is a reoccurring hitch; we have to include pictures of the CEO, the MD, the whoever, [...]

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Everything you will need to know about self-marketing on the web, including:

  • Creating websites
  • Setting up WordPress
  • Writing blog posts
  • Getting links
  • Driving traffic to your site
  • Using social media
  • Offering RSS feeds and subscriptions
  • Getting found on Google
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