Click to download the January Calendar Wallpaper in 1920X1200, 1680X1050, 1440X900 and 1280X800. Pass it along!

With going full-time, Andy & I decided that working from home would be best. No office rent overhead meant it would be easier on us, and lower overhead means a cost savings for our clients too! But working from home, despite what my friends might tell you, isn’t all Call of Duty, pajamas and getting up at noon. Nope – in fact, it takes a lot of discipline both to work from home efficiently and to not let your work consume your life. Thus, I bring to you 6 Tips for Working from Home – hit the jump for some great practical info!

Used under Creative Commons- link to shooter's flickr.

SET A SCHEDULE

You’ve heard it a million times, and that’s because it’s the single most important part. Make a schedule and stick to it. This differentiates “work time” from weekends or off-time, and helps you keep track of how much work you’re actually doing in a day. For example, our basic schedule is as follows:

7AM – rise & shine!

8AM – at the computer and at work.

Noon – lunch.

1PM – back to work.

5PM – shut it down.

We have your pretty basic work day, but it really helps to set that schedule out. Of course, if something needs to get done during the day that doesn’t involve work, we’ll go do it. If a client absolutely needs us to work past 5pm, we will do it. But more or less, we stick to the above schedule.

DRESS THE PART

There is a big psychological part to working effectively at home, for me anyways. I need to feel like I’m at work – like I’m supposed to be doing work. If I feel that way, then I will work effectively. Part of that is “dressing the part”. Now, I don’t mean rocking a suit while you sit and design a logo or website – that’d be silly. What I mean is don’t just wear pajamas and not shower. Odd to say, I know, but I hear the question “So do you just wear pajamas?” ALL the time.

Admittedly, if I have a cold that normally would have put me out of commission, but some extraneous circumstance is making me work, perhaps I’ll wear sweatpants or something. But that instance aside, I get up, shower, and put on decent clothes that I a) feel comfortable in, and b) that I could go to a short-notice client meeting in (usually that involves a nice pair of jeans, and some sort of shirt/cardigan or plaid shirt). It’s practical and dressing the part reminds me that I’m here to work, not sit in my pajamas and look at LOLcats all day.

GET A BUSINESS PHONE LINE

A big part of working from home, and enjoying working from home, is being able to “quit” work at the end of the day. When you work at an office, it’s easy to go home and forget about work. But when your work is beside your kitchen, like in my case, it’s a little more difficult. Thus, it helps a lot to be able to have ways to “quit” work so you don’t find yourself on the phone or emailing at 9pm.

One great way to do this is to get a business phone line. Now I know nobody likes additional costs, but you don’t need to have a guy come in and install an actual, physical phone line. Chances are your landline provider offers something like a SmartRing service. Ours does, and essentially what this means is that we can have two separate phone numbers with different ring tones on the same line. So we give out one line for business (which has a double-ring, pause sound) and we have another number – same line – for personal (your standard ring).

A few reasons why this is great:

a) it’s cheap.

b) it looks more professional than having your home number as your listed business number

c) you know immediately, thanks to the ring tone, if it’s a business or personal call, and because of that,

d) you can stop answering business calls after a set time.

Andy and I made a decision to stop answering the business phone after 6pm, unless there is an explicit reason why a client might be calling. This helps us separate work & home, which is important to us.

GET A BUSINESS EMAIL ADDRESS

Yes, this is important because you don’t want an email address like hotguy@wickedabs.com on your business cards – but it’s another way to separate your work & personal life. If you use the same address for everything, there’s no separation. You’ll be checking your email on weekends and see a request for a quote – chances are that’ll be on your mind or you’ll be working on it that weekend.

Part of working from home effectively is not burning out, and not having time away from work will burn you out. So get a business email. Another tip – have it forward to a different account. Nobody likes the web host’s webmail interface – it’s always terrible – so we have ours forwarding to an easier client (be it Yahoo, Gmail, Outlook or Mac mail). But if you have it forwarding to your personal email, you’re back in the same boat I mentioned above.

The way I combat this is to use Yahoo for my personal mail, and have my business mail forward to my Mac mail program. This is great for two reasons: it separates personal & business, and I can quit Mac mail as a program at the end of the day/week, leaving me free to do my personal work on the computer without seeing work-related emails popping up until I want to see them.

LEAVE YOUR HOUSE

Yes, an important part of working from home is actually leaving your house sometimes. I have to be very conscious of this, myself, because I can be somewhat of a homebody. But leaving your house provides you with a number of benefits, including:

a) the opportunity to find local business clients

b) fresh air!

c) thwarting of cabin fever

d) inspiration

If you become a serious homebody, your home-based business will suffer. We all poke fun at the standard office setting, but the truth is that having other people around provides opportunities for brainstorming, inspiration and the like. So make an effort to get outside & meet clients for lunch; meet friends for a post-work drink; or just go for a walk. It’ll help.

MAKE YOUR IDEAL WORKSPACE

This is the most fun part of working from home – you can make it the space you’ve always wanted to work in. Love to work with an epic Hans Zimmer score playing in the background at 100dB? Do it up! Always felt the need to have a Ricky Martin Miley Cyrus Scarface poster for inspiration? Hang it up. The point here is, working from home IS fun. Sure, you have to be aware of certain issues and it’s important to find ways to work effectively, like I’ve mentioned above. But you got out of that office and cubicle for a reason, so enjoy it.

Me, I enjoy working with some instrumental music in the background (be it mellow like the Album Leaf or more aggressive like Pelican) in a nice, well-lit working space with my two cats running around like idiots.

So there you have it – 6 Tips for Working from Home. Hopefully the practical ones are ones you can put to use, and the others will get you thinking. Hope you enjoyed!

But for those designers just starting out, or for those designers who are considering getting into design, the amount of information can be a little overwhelming. Couple this with Paper Leaf’s desire to give back to the design community, and this is what you get: the All-in-One Graphic Design Starter’s Kit. The idea behind this kit is for it to be a one-stop shop for those getting into design – and for it to be completely free. It includes free software (for both Mac & Windows – photo/raster editing, vector editing, and HTML/CSS WYSIWYG editing), eBooks, textures, vectors, brushes, and awesome fonts. If you were to have no idea where to start, you could come here, download everything, read the eBooks and corresponding software guides, and have a great starting point.

This “kit” was originally intended to be a zipped file containing all of the links below; however, it clocked in at about half a gigabyte, which I thought most people wouldn’t want to sit and download (plus it would put a strain on our hosting). Thus, I’ve broken down the kit into the elements that made it up, and linked to them all below – and making this All-in-One Graphic Design Starter’s Kit a series of links and downloadable sections, which allows people to pick and choose what elements they want.

All of these items are free, open-source and legal for both me to share & you to download – however, please don’t claim any of them as your own. All of the items in this design kit required a lot of time & effort from their respective creators, so give ‘em some love! Hit the jump for all the amazing links and downloadables that make up the Free All-in-One Graphic Design Starter Kit!

Software

Not everyone can afford the industry-standard design software – that being Adobe’s Creative Suite – so here are three open-source alternatives that will allows you to do virtually the same kind of work.

GIMP (Snow Leopard) (Leopard) (Windows)

GIMP is a free, open-source raster-editing program – like Photoshop.

Inkscape (OSX) (Windows)

Inkscape is a free, open-source vector-editing program – like Illustrator.

Kompozer (OSX) (Windows)

Kompozer is a free, open-source HTML/CSS WYSIWYG editor – like Dreamweaver.

EBooks

You can’t learn everything about design from a few eBooks, but they can sure give you a good launching point! Below is a zipped file with 3 awesome, free design eBooks from Scribd.

Compilation of three great design eBooks!

Textures

(via Bittbox)

Much love to Bittbox, a site that has been around a while and consistently shares great design elements – like these textures, below.

High-res wood textures

High-res grunge textures

High-res paper textures

More textures!

Fonts

There are a ton of free fonts and free font sites out there, but most are garbage. FontSquirrel is the best, in my opinion, and here are some of their top free fonts.

Top Free Serif Fonts

Top Free Sans-Serif Fonts

Top Free Display Fonts

Top Free Hand-drawn Fonts

Top Free Script Fonts

Vectors

No sense reinventing the wheel if you just need some design elements to complement your design. Below is a zip file containing a bunch of free vectors. Most of these come from Vecteezy.

Compilation pack of free vectors!

Brushes

Same as above – a zip file containing a bunch of free raster brushes. Some from Bittbox, some from Brusheezy.

Compilation pack of free brushes!

Keep in mind that no single “kit” or post will ever make you a complete and well-rounded designer. Use this kit as a starting point, but keep learning! Become involved in the design community – both your local one and the web’s – and you’ll grow faster than you ever imagined. Happy designing, and if you liked the post, please share and subscribe to the RSS feed!

Anyway, this week’s is Georgia (regular). The challenge here was to take a font seen all over the place – a font that’s sort of bland – and make it interesting as the sole item in the design. I think it worked! Enjoy, share and subscribe to the RSS feed!

Click to download the Georgia Wallpaper in 1920X1200, 1680X1050, 1440X900 or 1280X800. Pass it along!

The fundamental principles of good project management remain the same, whether your client is local or international – trust & communication. If you can gain one another’s trust, and if you communicate effectively with one another, then a project will run smoothly. But how can we do that if we’re working long-distance, giving up face-to-face meetings and focusing on internet and phone-based communication?

Well, let’s approach a long-distance project the same way we’d approach a local project, and I’ll point out ways to combat the small roadblocks that come up. Hit the jump to read the rest of the post!

WEB PORTFOLIO

First of all, you need to have a good web portfolio if you’re even going to get long-distance clients. So, if you haven’t done that already, get on it! Here are some great resources for online design portfolios:

Design a Simple & Sleek Web Portfolio

10 Cool Photo Portfolio and Gallery WordPress Themes

Design a Textured Portfolio Site Layout with Photoshop

MEETINGS

Just because your client is in [warm, sunny] Australia and you’re stuck in [freezing, grey] Edmonton doesn’t mean you can’t still have meetings. Of course, you’re not going to have traditional meetings – that’s just inefficient (not to mention ridiculous). Luckily, there are tons of great programs out there that allow face-to-face meetings over the web. The most obvious is Skype – free & web-based, so everyone with an internet connection can set up an account and use it with no cost.

This is a great way to build trust – body language, tone, and facial expressions don’t come across in email (and tone can often be misinterpreted), but using a service like Skype alleviates these issues and allows for both trust-building and increased clarity of communication.

So when you need to brainstorm with your client, or talk about a draft and/or revisions, try using a service like Skype.

CONTRACTS

So you’ve “met” your client over Skype and have come to an agreeement regarding the scope and cost of the project. Now it’s contract time. It’s not like you can go door-knocking if a client is late with a payment when they live overseas, so a contract is an absolute must. It still needs to be signed – there are online services like Fax.com to help out with this, or you can use traditional fax, or you can scan and email. Any of these methods is suitable and recommended when working long-distance with a client – and a good contract should be a trust-building device on both ends.

PAYMENT

Payment is payment – just like any local project, I’d recommend take a down-payment and/or have a stage-based payment system written into the contract. The client can pay a variety of ways – certified cheque (slow, but it works), PayPal, email money transfer, or other. Just because they aren’t next door doesn’t mean it’s difficult to receive payment.

REVISIONS

As with any project, there are always revisions to think about. The key here is finding an efficient way to communicate design decisions and revisions online. There are collaborative editing tools, like Google Docs, for text-based edits that need to made by one or more parties. There’s also the traditional email method – just be sure to accompany your designs with clear language and to fully understand your client’s feedback as well.

I’d recommend Skype here again, as you and your client can both open up  your document on your individual machines and have a conversation about what needs to be changed etc – as opposed to writing back and forth, which can be inefficient and difficult to comprehend.

Finally, if you’re working on a huge project with many people involved, I’d recommend some online project management software. Here is a great list of available online PM services from www.tomuse.com. Most of these services have a free component, but they are limited. If you have lots of big, long-distance projects on the go, I’d recommend paying for the full service of one of the providers.

DELIVERABLES

So you’ve gone through your whole project, your [insanely happy long-distance] client has signed off on the final design… now you have to deliver it. Sometimes that’s as simple as uploading the files to the web server, if you’re building a small website. Some files are also small enough to send via email. However, what about those huge projects that can’t be sent via email?

There are plenty of online services, like YouSendIt, which will upload and send links to your large files to your clients. You can also upload the files to your own server and allow your client to download them, if you’re comfortable with that. If it’s a print job, I would recommend sending the files directly to a printer who is local to your client, and giving the client instructions on when & where to pick it up. Before you do that, though, make sure your print piece is print-ready – here’s a handy list of pre-press tips from Smashing Magazine.

There you go! We just went through the basic elements of any design project and demolished all the [small] roadblocks that come along with working long-distance. So don’t be afraid – get out there and let your global design takeover begin! In a nice manner of speaking, of course.

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