Category: Design for Business

I worked as a designer on retainer for 14 years. I got a monthly check and worked unsupervised at home – except for a once-a-week, face-to-face, hour-long meeting. Meeting the goals and deadlines was the measurement, not the number of hours worked. This probably means I worked pretty hard for them! Every year we’d plan…

I‘ve been theming for a long time (orchestrating color combinations, type selection, symbols, etc) but I learned something new about “proportioned palettes”. A new perspective on color. The author of Handout (PDF) demonstrates his method for developing a consistent and large color palette for branding. Great stuff. I can also vouch his basis of predicting…

Theming with type and color are several of the things I really enjoy about design. Here I share my method for historical and vintage projects. Logo sample from someone else – not mine. The font above is a knockoff of type foundry P22Eaglefeather – available in several weights and a dingbat font. It is based…

Sorry. No sugar-coating. This business name is flawed. When you must instruct someone how to pronounce your 4-syllable word, it’s crippled from the get-go. Namers are people who love words and linguistics – like me. I invented a name for my design business once very similar to the one above. Mine was BENEXUS. Meaning blessed…

The world of type is huge. From my studies, most professional designers have their favorites. And it is not necessarily a large library. I’m a font collector and have far more than I need. Eventually, you find classics that you love. This takes time and also studying the work of others. So there isn’t necessarily…

A few links that have good content on the topic of Design by Committee: http://blog.algonquinstudios.com/2011/12/14/design-by-committee-how-to-make-it-work/ http://boagworld.com/business-strategy/design-by-committee/ http://sourcemaking.com/antipatterns/design-by-committee I’ve always thought there should be a forum called “Remote Creative.” Sort of a group-therapy-coping place for creative people lost in rural places. I relate to feeling isolated. I’ve been living in the vacuum of the Idaho panhandle…

I heard about a design firm that chooses one and only one pro bono project per year from candidates. They then do their best for them and try and make a difference. I like this idea of setting limitations. All the criteria come into play in the choosing – but they don’t do work for…

The few significant ways you’ll get new design work is: 1) word of mouth (out-of-the-blue referrals.) 2) from your portfolio website – but usually people will go there because you’ve invited them. There’s not really much traffic from search engines. So invite qualified leads! If you are advertising generic design then be “geographic specific” in…

Most starving designers (like me) would be better served to promote themselves for new work with the money they might have spent on joining an organization. When I’m tempted by these offers, I wait a week or month – and then see if it still sounds good. Usually, it doesn’t. Everyone is different. It’s a…