commentary

It always hap­pens when a designer approaches me to ask how do they make the leap to inde­pen­dent con­trac­tor the first ques­tion is, ”how much do I charge per hour?” I guess the answer to this depends on how far down the rab­bit hole you are pre­pared to go. The short of it is you should be quot­ing your rate on a project basis but track­ing, and think­ing of it, as hourly.   First rule of pric­ing; don’t low­ball yourself…

Another good read on the cur­rent deval­u­a­tion of cre­ative services—this time from the per­spec­tive of a Copy­writer. If you’re Web or Graphic Designer who has had the priv­i­lege of work­ing with a good copy­writer than you know they are more than a glo­ri­fied spell check, and how much eas­ier they can make your job. I’ve about had my fill of the cheap copy debate. In truth, there isn’t one. If you’ve got a com­plaint about copy­writ­ers charg­ing too much, you’ve…

Is the bad client a fact of busi­ness or a crutch when things go awry? If you have direct con­tact with clients at some point your going to get your­self into a work­ing rela­tion­ship, which doesn’t. It’s one of those unavoid­able things in life—like death and taxes. Few sub­jects for free­lancers gen­er­ate more dis­cus­sions than how to work with less-​​​​than-​​​​ideal clients. It’s sim­ply a fact of doing busi­ness not every rela­tion­ship is going to gel.

Why do Design­ers and Devel­op­ers have a seem­ingly adver­sar­ial rela­tion­ship? If you’re a Designer you can design the most beau­ti­ful, use­able, rev­o­lu­tion­ary web site but with­out a Devel­oper to assem­ble the nuts and bolts no one will ever get to see it. As a Devel­oper you can have the clean­est, strictest code con­nect­ing the most amaz­ing ser­vices and doing the most amaz­ing things. But with­out a Designer pre­sent­ing it with an equally great UI no one will ever want to use it.…

Never start a project with­out a con­tract. It doesn’t mat­ter if you are best friends with client, have done projects in the past, or even if it is pro-bono—create a con­tract. Period.