Seems like an easy question to answer, doesn’t it? If you’re a designer, you want to sell your design services: perhaps logo design, print design, web design, interface design and so forth.
The reality? Yeah, you should be selling that. But there’s much more that you should be selling. You should be selling comfort, reliability, and likeability along with, or even above, your design competence.
Interlink may have changed my life.
For those who don’t know, Interlink is a boutiquey sort of web design conference: small, focused, and a lot of fun. It’s held in Vancouver, and it hosts amazing panels of speakers every year. This year’s conference was tied to the idea of “craft”, and a collection of hugely talented and popular design industry leaders shared their thoughts, beliefs, and processes on their craft. Post-conference and workshops, many a conversation was had between myself and some friends, dissecting these talks by the likes of Jessica Hische, Cameron Moll, Paul Boag and the like – conversations which made me realize that these industry leaders in the web design world share some common characteristics.
Doesn’t seem like too much of a revelation at first. I mean, people in the same industry having similar characteristics and appreciations? Stop the Obvious Train, conductor. But I’m not talking about our mutual love for craft beer, proper kerning, cool t-shirts and all that stuff. There is one main characteristic that I kept coming back to that all these leaders share – one thing that they all do – that has played a role in their success and notoriety. That thing they all do? Read the whole article >
Us web designers… we like to jump right into the creative ball pit sometimes, and get right to the fun stuff in Photoshop & CSS. I know I’m guilty of it sometimes, and I bet you have been too in the past. It’s not the end of the world, but it really isn’t best practice for design – and if you’re a professional, you should be paying attention and adhering to best practices. That’s why there are a few steps you should take before designing a website.
This is a guest post by Ashley Janssen of AgileStyle. Thanks Ashley!
The success or failure of a project, no matter what industry you are in, often hinges on how effective the communication is between all involved parties. When speaking specifically about web design/development, this doesn’t just refer to communication between you and your client, but also between you and your team.
As freelancers, and even small firms, you are often not only the designer or developer but also the project manager. The following are a few things to keep in mind to keep the communication channels as clear as possible and help keep your projects moving smoothly.
Those of you who are regular Paper Leaf blog readers will have noticed that we have been posting less frequently these days. The main underlying reason is a good one – we’re very busy – but the end result is undesirable. The past week I took some time off, and during that time off I was thinking more and more about the old adage “the shoemaker’s son always goes barefoot“, and how this applies to us a business (as well as many other designers and developers out there). Why does this happen? Why do projects relating to our business fall by the wayside, like the shoemaker’s shoeless son? The answer: we don’t treat our design business like a client.
If we treated our own business (and business related projects) like we treated client projects, we would practice proper time management, hit deadlines, have a consistently fresh portfolio, and budget for the time needed per week to make these things (and more) happen. But we don’t – and maybe you don’t either. It’s tough sometimes – client projects pay the bills, whereas business-related projects have a more indirect benefit. Clients often give us some much-needed motivation, through phone calls or emails (hopefully motivation of the non-threatening kind), whereas we’re the boss of our business. Thus, we’re often putting client projects in front of our own, time and time again. If this stays consistent, however, our portfolio, print materials, blog and more will be an outdated reflection of our business. That’s bad news. Read the whole article >
