Why Do You Do What You Do?

By • January 4, 2012 • advice, family • Leave a comment

the family freelancer“Bye, bye daddy,” followed by blowing a kiss.

Painting toes on 6 year old ballerinas.

Listening to bad jokes and reading comics by a 9 year old professional detective.

Fistfuls of Sour Patch kids and political discussions while playing Gears of War 3 with the most brilliant teen I’ve met.

Hot coffee with a hotter redhead – every morning.

I am a family man. 4 kids, married for almost 20 years. That’s what I work for – my family. I can go into my desire to do excellent design, but the bottom line is that I work the way I do to provide a good life for my children, my wife and our family. Granted, what I do isn’t physically demanding (other than having a flat spot on my ass) and I LOVE what I do. I’m incredibly blessed to be able to say that – but I would do whatever it takes to give the ones I love the best life I can. I don’t make a boatload of money, and I probably never will. I’m a bit too much of a daydreamer – but I put my nose to the grindstone when it’s time to provide.

I work hard, and I work a lot of hours doing stuff that I don’t necessarily want to do, but when I’m on my way out the door and my youngest notices and says “bye bye, daddy” and blows me a kiss, it reminds me what a beautiful, brilliant life I have – and makes me all the more resolute to do what I do to the best of my abilities.

What do you work for? Is it the money? That’s o.k. Do you work for the prestige? Great. Do you work to stay out of trouble? Do you work because you want to deliver excellence in your field? Define why you work..

If you define why you work, it makes it a lot easier on those days when nothing seems to go right. Those days when it’s 1 step forward and 2 steps back. You’re always going to have those days, but if you can keep in mind why you’re doing what you’re doing, it makes it all that much easier to digest the bad stuff and get through your day. When a client calls and hates the 3rd group of 40 logo roughs and wants something different but very much the same as what she saw on the back of a corn flakes packet, all I have to do is remember my baby’s words and my heart swells and I can trooper on.

Defining why you do what you do is sometimes more important than defining what you do. Define what you’re working for and keep a reminder with you – keep it on your desk, on your Facebook profile, on your desktop, in your pocket, on your dashboard – somewhere where you run across it frequently. When you see it, think about why you’re in the gig you’re in. It’ll make the dark days a little brighter. It’s an inspiration. It’s your muse.

We can all use a gentle nudge now and then – even if it comes from the mouths of babes. Find your muse.

(End proud daddy rant. Back to my normal cynicism and vitriol tomorrow.)

Hide Your Email from the Spamming Bastards…

By • January 2, 2012 • advice, blogging, free stuff, resources • Leave a comment

too much spam email? encode!If you’re like me, you get about 8 quadrillion spam emails a day. Unfortunately, when you design and develop websites for a living, you have to put your email address out there for those scraping, thieving robots that are out there, looking for your email address to add to databases that are sold to companies that help you enlarge stuff, see stuff you shouldn’t see or find cheap car insurance.

You want to make your email address accessible to the general public so that it’s easy to contact you (and send work and money,) but the minute you do that, you’re opening your box to a lot of spam – and I don’t mean the most awesome lunch product in the world.

One of the ways to avoid this is to encrypt your email address so that normal, real people can use your email, but the bastard will leave you alone. But – how?

Here’s how – Enkoder by Hivelogic. Just fill out the form, hit submit and you’ll get a code snippet that you can easily copy and paste into your HTML, Blog, what have you.

Now, your email address is protected and you can sleep a little easier. Real people with real browsers can contact you – but the robots can shove it.

You’re welcome.

Click Here to Get It (non-affilate link, no spam. really.)

Facebook Page Design & The Freelance Designer – Worth It?

By • December 27, 2011 • design, facebook, finding work, freelance, promotion, resources, social media • 2 Comments

facebook business page design asheville

Such a Cute Doggy. He Loves Facebook Pages!

I’ve been a freelancer for 14 years (or thereabouts) and there have been a lot of changes in that time. One of the biggest (obviously) is the whole social media thing. It’s been a game changer in a lot of ways. It’s a great way to connect with other freelancers, it’s good for promotion, it’s good for branding – and it’s good for wasting time.

But, at the same time, it can be another great revenue stream. It’s something that’s pretty easy to design around, and with some easy-to-use tools, you can do some really cool stuff.

While there are tons of social media platforms, one of the most configurable and usable is Facebook. It’s nice that it’s also become one of the most ubiquitous – and it’s opened up a good, viable new stream of work.

I started a new company (I love doing that) in AVLFB.com. It’s focused on my local area, Asheville, North Carolina – but if you wanted to go nationwide (and I have with this, to an extent) it’s a rich field, and really seems to be growing.

Now – this really isn’t a promo piece for my businesses. It’s just demonstrating that diversifying is a good thing, and that branching out into Facebook Page Design is an easy way to add a new stream of revenue.

The design is pretty straightforward (Photoshop, anyone?) and the build-out is pretty easy, too. I use a couple of tools – Lujure and North Social to do the actual uploading and build-out. Lujure is my tool of choice, as it’s simple and has a great feature set. You can add like buttons, contact forms, images, fans-only images and areas, etc. Just about anything you see the big boys do on Facebook can be done using Lujure. I use the big (read: expensive) package – but you can do it all for the $30 a month package. You pay more for non-branded pages with some other bells and whistles – but, plan and price accordingly.

I’ve built TONS of pages with (admittedly) very little marketing – and I’d bet you can hop on the bandwagon now, too. It’s a growing field, and with some good marketing – or upselling – it can be a real boon to the old pocketbook.

Check out AVLFB.com for some examples. You can also see some examples on my main site, or the Facebook pages for either: DesignAVL on Facebook and AVLFB on Facebook.

New All About Freelance Site Coming

By • July 15, 2011 • site announcements • 1 Comment

Yeah – I’ve been slack. But – cut me some slack. I’ve been trying to restructure my freelance business, become more profitable, and build a better base for my life and my family. Mission accomplished, mostly…

But – I’ve been remiss in getting this site back to where it should be. I’ll start posting a lot more – and not just the same kind of stuff. I’m going to take it to a more personal place. A little less of the same old same old, more weird stuff, more fun stuff, more STUFF. A new design, too. Better functions, easier navigation, yadda yadda yadda.

Maybe some recipes. Money saving ideas for all us cheap, broke freelancers. Who knows. You might dig it – you might not.

My name is James. I’m a father of four, a husband to one, and a freelance freak. Pleased to meet you – I hope you’ll enjoy a little slice o’ my life…

Bye bye, Elance…

By • August 30, 2010 • advice, finding work, freelance, resources • 1 Comment

Well – I’ve finally cut ties with Elance. I got kind of tired of paying monthly for something that was an afterthought and really not bringing in any sincere income. It’s not that it isn’t a good service, and there is certainly a place for it – but at this point in my career, I feel like my energies are best spent elsewhere.

Elance is a good place to find work, if you’re willing to work über-cheap. Being an American with 4 children and a wife to support, I can’t afford to give away logo design for $25 a pop. I’m a huge believer in ‘you get what you pay for’, and I think that Elance kind of bore that out. I would bid, get rejected, and have to move on to the next thing. And usually, the folks would go with the guy that has 45,000 “gigs” landed, and he’s made just slightly over $30,000 for those finished gigs. His stuff would be clipart, bad fonts, and strange effects.

That’s just not what I’m about, and I would wager that’s really just not what most freelance designers are about. Or, at least, not what they WANT to do.

So – I’m going to take that $20 a month, buy extra coffee, and work on polishing my illustration skills late into the night. I’m going to take that few hours a week I’d spend perusing the “want ads” on Elance and use it to further my business, cultivate leads and take care of the paying clients I already have.

I think it’s a better investment.

Now – for you, intrepid reader: Are you spending money and time trying to land semi-paying gigs? Would that time and money be better spent doing something – anything – better? Examine your workflow and billables and compare those to what your dream freelance business is.

Does it match? Are you just spinning wheels, wasting time? Are you generating a legitimate return on investment from Elance, iFreelance, Guru, Odesk, etc? Or – are you just wasting time – hoping that you’ll land a great gig?

Sure, those great gigs might be out there, hidden in the weeds, on job bid sites, but from my (and other designers’) experience, 95%+ of the gigs that are out there on those sites are there for one reason: PEOPLE WANT CHEAP. They don’t necessarily want great design, and they sure as hell don’t want to pay for a real professional. They just want cheap.

I don’t want to work cheap. I want to work, mind you – and if you NEED one of these job sites to keep afloat, I certainly understand. But – unless used judiciously, such sites and projects accomplish only cheapening your work, making your time less than valuable, and makes your work and your career less than it should be.

Ask yourself if the return is worth the investment, and if that return is really a “return.” It might not be.

The other issue is that you can become associated with the cheap guy. They clipart guy. Is that what you want to be known for? Cheap work? I’d doubt it. Maybe I’m wrong, but I’d say that most freelance designers, illustrators and creative types didn’t step out of the 40-hour-a-week world to pursue sub-par, cheap stuff.

I wanted to produce better design for EVERYONE. I didn’t want cheap. I don’t want cheap – and my clients don’t either.

So – examine where you’re at, whether these job sites are worth it – and possibly most importantly – is it the type of work you want?

I want bigger and better. I’d wager you do too.

So long, Elance, it’s been real…

Sort of.

lemonade…

By • February 3, 2010 • inspiration • Leave a comment

sent to me by a good friend.

please watch it. if you’re a freelancer, you’ve been given a blank page.

make it a masterpiece…

i am sorry…

By • February 3, 2010 • site announcements • Leave a comment

i’ve been remiss in writing. i’m sorry. i’ll do better.

really.

Great Graphic Photostream…

By • August 31, 2009 • inspiration • 1 Comment


Wim Crouwel

Originally uploaded by Alki1

Stumbled upon this gal’s photostream. From what I can gather, she’s a retired graphics and photography teacher somewhere in the Northwest US. Very cool stuff to see – a lot of “antique” design stuff. Amazing how good design stands up over time.

Check it out!