Two main factors that determine my decision to incorporate any technology is “will it make my life easier by saving me time” and “will I be able to better assist my clients by offering a more varied toolset giving them more options?”

All Choices Are Client Driven

Both considerations are aimed at the customer, the less time it takes me to complete a project the less expensive it will be and if I can foresee problems before they arise the cheaper it will be to the client in the end.

To successfully complete a graphic or web design project you first have to lay the foundation by accurately establishing the client’s objectives, predicting barriers and then choose what technologies to use, it is all about time versus money and how long it takes to build solutions to obstacles, the more flexible the technology you choose the better.

Working For the Man

I have come a long way since 1998 when I first started immersing myself in the latest and greatest. At one time I was the go to guy in the electronics department at a big box store where I got to play with all the new high-tech gadgets quenching my thirst for knowledge and proving to be an invaluable experience which has helped me get to where I am today.

So you would think that when it came to me purchasing electronics for myself I would be very knowledgeable (which I think I am) and avoid any gimmicky thingamajigs that are on the market but I to have made a couple of bad decisions at one time or another and I thought that I would share one with you.

I am not your average user when it comes to computers and related equipment for the simple fact alone that I tend to spend at least ten hours a day in front of a screen, I’m a power user so my equipment gets used and abused much quicker than most so I tend to purchase better quality products.

Over the years one of the best companies I have found has been Logitech, I have never had a problem with any of their mice or keyboards in the past ten years and they produce solid, quality products and I have always trusted them.

A few years ago I purchased a wireless keyboard mouse combo which looking back I have to admit that I only bought them because they looked really cool and that they were wireless. I put my trust into Logitech and they didn’t disappoint, their products worked flawlessly.

The Mouse from Hell

So a couple of years later when they brought out there fully loaded wireless MX Revolution laser mouse that was touted as being the most sophisticated mouse released to date, I had to have it. It worked great out of the box but soon I started having issues with it and as I surfed the net to find out how to correct the bugs I was shocked to find out that many people were having the same trouble, it was a $140 piece of crap riddled with various problems depending on your system configuration or how close it was to another wireless connection, it should of never even hit the market.

My first mistake was trust; you should always research a product before you purchase it no matter who the company is unless you have had experience with that particular product. The second thing I did wrong was falling in love with the heavy marketing campaign that went along with the product, Logitech had never done anything on that scale before and I ate it up.

The most important thing that I forgot right from the beginning was the fact that it was just a mouse, all I needed was a simple little $10 device but I wanted the Ferrari and I got burnt.

Back To Basics

Feeling a little bit humble from the experience I have now gone back to a corded keyboard and mouse setup. I stuck with good old dependable Logitech but ironically I didn’t really have to do much research on either product because there weren’t many corded options to choose from (sign of the times I guess) and I can say that they are both top notch and best of all no more changing or recharging batteries.

Sometimes we just get caught up in the details and get lost, we are inundated with so much technology and information out there today that we tend to forget what we were initially looking for all the while being hit by a constant drove of advertisements selling similar products and services.

Below is a breakdown of the three mistakes I made that got me into my little predicament. Although it wasn’t a very costly lesson, more of an inconvenience I feel it is these little experiences both good and bad that allow me to grow by being able to look at myself from different angles be it the designer, client or the consumer.

Marketing

• Advertising and promotion can sell anything, it is a proven fact. Just look at all those really bad infomercials that use to be on TV late at night, they were on at that time because airtime was less expensive for those hours but now they are on at all hours of the day. If this kind of marketing didn’t sell product then you would never see them on and the funny part is that the advertisements are so obviously low budget and the ads still work. Don’t believe the hype.

Device or Deception?

• What are you really after a tool or a toy? You rarely get both in the same product and these days everything is packed with so many different options that you don’t need but you are paying for and the whole idea of convenience has run amuck taking over simplicity and usability. When your scanner, printer fax machine goes on the fritz you have potentially lost all three, try finding a mobile phone without an MP3 player or camera and it goes on and on just be aware and don’t get caught up in all the so called enhancements.

Research

• Product reviews are a great way of finding out how well something works in the real world but you have to be careful because they can also be a savvy marketing campaign by the manufacturer to exploit the public’s naivety. Trustworthy reviews should come from third parties and watch out for advertisements of the same brand or company from the same source as the review.

The truth of the matter is that without a web site potential clients question your professionalism, commitment to customer service, and long-term stability of your company.

The Internet is the Search Tool Consumers Use

The popularity of the web means that when potential clients find out you don’t have a website, the reaction is similar to how they would feel if you didn’t have a place of business. They either wonder why and you lose credibility or you can attract a very undesirable type of customer.

A professional website says that you are on top of your game, you have a sound business plan for the future, and that you want to make the customer’s experience with your company as positive as possible.

My Business Doesn’t Need a Website

I have spoken to business owners in many different industries and have discovered that in some markets there is a feeling that a website is just not useful for “their type of products or services”, and that no one could possibly buy their “product x” or “service y” online, so why even bother with a website?

Well a website is about more than just selling products and services. It is a tool that can give your latest news and contact information. It announces expansions and new products or services. It can boast about your good reputation, a long standing presence in the industry, or positive client testimonials.

It can also find you employees buy accepting resumes or be an information resource for customers, a way for potential clients to take a look at your facilities or equipment.

At the very least a website should be there to assist your prospective clients and existing customers with your location, mailing address, hours of operations and what holidays your company is closed.

When phoning around, many consumers will look elsewhere the instant they call and get a busy signal, voicemail, or are put on hold for too long. But your website is always on, and always there working for you.

Tightening the purse strings is the classic stance companies take during a financial slump and although the repercussions are felt throughout all industries how are we as freelancers supposed to prepare and weather the storm? How long will all this last? These are both great questions I have asked myself over the years and I will let you know what has worked.

Managing your way through tough times by putting a little percentage of your earnings away each pay cheque and cutting back on expenses can only get you so far in these economic times of uncertainty, so besides the use of tried tested and true “saving for a rainy day” methods you also need to change your marketing strategy and cater to your clients both current and prospective by showing them that you can save them some money by hiring you.

Prove Your Worth

Because I worked in the pizza industry for many years I will use it as an example of how you can approach your current and existing clients. Say for instance you are hired by a pizzeria that mail out flyers four times a year with every season autumn, winter, spring and summer. This is the only marketing and advertising that they do and it has worked for them for over ten years.

Their print material is a standard double sided two fold full colour brochure and the total cost to print and send it out every quarter (every 3 months) comes just under the $40 000 budget they set aside annually. How are you to seamlessly save them money and provide the same benefits of their marketing and advertising campaigns?

Here Are the Numbers

Now we are going to do a little math, I have used round numbers to make it easier to understand. The $40 000 yearly budget is for 4 ad campaigns which works out to $10 000 quarterly. It cost $1000 to design, $6000 to print and $3000 to deliver the flyers to every mailbox in town.

This is what you should do

Create a website that provides all the pizzeria’s basic information like the history of the business, contact info (blah blah blah) but most importantly the details of their menu. Of course you can get fancier but the menu is the most important part of the formula, essentially you are going to remove it from their print advertisements making their flyer smaller which costs less.

So let’s say that you have built the website and you cut the flyer in half by removing all the menu items only keeping the seasonal specials letting the readers know that the full menu is on the website of course. The flyer will now be significantly less to produce, we’ll say a third (it will be cheaper than that) so the $6000 it use to cost to print will now only be $4020 that is a savings $1980 which will translate to $7920 over the course of the year or 20%.

Now you also have to factor in that the website hasn’t been planed or paid for so you will need to take another $2000 away which would make the final total of savings come out to $5920.

Like I said the numbers I used are rounded and I know for a fact that the price to print would be cut closer in half rather than in a third but I wanted to show that it doesn’t take much to trim the fat. You can also play with two colours instead of four and try different kinds of paper to get your print costs even lower.

This is just a basic explanation. I never went into how much work is actually involved into making up a marketing plan like this; it is not easy and will only get better the more you use it. It can also be adapted to many other industries and businesses that have marketing budgets and do print advertisements annually.

Pick an industry and do your research, find out how much it would cost to put together a marketing package like this. Hit all the businesses in that industry with your numbers, clients understand numbers and it is your confidence and ability to save them money that will get you work in an economic downturn.

It is ethical practices like these that will dictate the longevity of your freelance career, by having principals alone (either right or wrong) creates a structured consistency that is needed in order to do business professionally no matter the industry.

World Wild Web

As the internet matures and more developers adopt web standards I don’t ever think that there will be away to police the World Wide Web, it is like the Wild West out here and almost anything goes so it is up to us web designers to govern ourselves and our clients.

Unfortunately because of the privacy that business is usually conducted in we never get a chance to really see any of the inner workings of how others ethics play a role in how they do business so it was very interesting for me to come across a little incident on the Photoshop tutorial website PSDTUTS.

I am not only a big fan of the site but also the company behind it Envato. They publish many other fantastic websites all carefully constructed with the same high standards they have set for themselves which is repeated throughout their body of work.

The PSDTUTS concept is simple, authors submit Photoshop tutorials and if chosen they are paid a fee. The tutorials have to be formatted to their specification, original and can’t be published anywhere else. From these guidelines they have produced better quality and more sought after tutorials than most of the other similar type sites out there.

Today PSDTUTS revealed that it was brought to their attention that the latest tutorial they had posted was more than likely plagiarized (it was not an original) so it was taken down and they withheld payment from its author immediately.

Class Dignity and Style

I say “good for you guys” for sticking to your guns. Because of the type of work Envato do they not only have an obligation to protect their author’s content but also the works of all creative’s no matter the medium.  They are an outlet for information and they have a commitment to us readers that the material they publish was acquired lawfully and the author was compensated properly per there agreement. It is just good business.

I must admit that the way they handled the situation was admirable and should serve as a lesson to us all who publish content online. They immediately acknowledged the situation and dealt with it according to the rules they set on the requirements needed to submit a tutorial “Your tutorial must be your original work and not published elsewhere” plain and simple no excuses.

I was utterly shocked when I started reading some of the angry messages they were receiving in their comments section from people talking about everything from plagiarism, intellectual property and even Envato being afraid of their own shadow. There is no debate about the situation; the author broke the rules so the tutorial is out.

For Your Protection

Envato moderate all of the comments posted to their websites before it can be read by the public, this is yet again another commitment by them to protect us the readers from such things as that X-rated spam we so frequently run into. At the same time they also posted that abusive garbage that was sent to them that they could have just as easily delete showing that they truly value their transparency and have nothing to hide.

Which brings me back again to my last blog entry about graphic and web designers who just don’t get it. These are the very people who write the kinds of negative comments that are on the PSDTUTS page, they are also usually the ones who have no sense of structure when it comes to being a freelance creative and through inconsistencies and unethical practices make it very difficult at times for clients to trust us.

We all make mistakes but it is how you learn from blunders either yours or others that dictates how successful you can be in all your endeavors. Be upfront, honest and when you find you have made a mistake deal with it swiftly and making the necessary changes so it does not happen again.

You can read about the whole situation and watch as it unfolds here.

These problems range in size from minor to major and the usual suspects are web standards and compliance which pretty much means that websites function well in one browser but differently or maybe not even at all in others. Another huge issue is usability, if you don’t understand how the website works how are you ever going to navigate to the information you are looking for?

So let’s say a website passes all these hurdles, it adheres to web standards and functions properly in Firefox, Safari, Opera, the new Google Chrome, Internet Explorer 7 and even the dreaded IE6. It is so simple to use even your granny or your mouth breathing nephew can use it, but does it look good?

Not only do you have to work within a strict set of rules to impact the largest amount of users you have to present it graphically in away the is very pleasing to the eye and simultaneously compliments the content that is being examined.

Unfortunately Most Websites Just Plain Suck

You would expect when any of these vulnerabilities are overlooked it is either very small companies, nonprofits or just an amateur’s personal space but unfortunately that is not the case because these practices are rampant. When I’m surfing the web I come across the very same problems in all industry websites almost on a daily basis.

Now I know that my perception of the web is skewed because of my trained eye and it may sound like I am complaining about the state of the web but really I am not. I am fully aware that from a business stand point it is much better for me that most websites are subpar which finally brings me to the very point of this blog entry, bad graphic and web designers.

Specifically the graphic and web designers in the Regional Municipality of Durham where I live, my competition who rate from very poor to really good as in most places. Fortunately there is only a hand full of us good designers in the Durham Region (notice I said us? …lol) so you would think that most business owners and groups commissioning websites would stay away from all the riffraff but they haven’t.

Many Clients Distrust Designers Because of Past Experiences

What I have found is that clients have almost always had a bad experience from their first website and usually that is why they are looking to get a second one done. This is the proverbial double edged sword, on one hand you are talking shop and networking with potential clients and on the other hand they come with baggage and distrust from the bad experience they had with the last design studio or freelancer they worked with.

A couple of tell tale signs of bad design habits to look out for when you are in need of graphic or web design work are no website or portfolio,  website doesn’t function properly or a date on the site is a year or two old. Of course there are many others but that is for a later blog entry you get the idea.

An indicator of a good designer or Design Company is how thorough they are and if they have some sort of process that they use to get the job done. Using a design process is key no matter what size or type of project is being commissioned and you will quickly find that there will most likely be issues in a project that were otherwise unforeseen by the client but by having a design process in place these issues are recognized and addressed before they become a problem.

Good Work Ethic

As much as I would like to out some of the major local culprits in the Ajax, Pickering, Whitby and Oshawa graphic and web design industry I feel that it would do more damage than good as I have set some strict business and moral standards for myself and Digital Deceptions and reframe from bad mouthing anyone specifically and let the work both theirs an mine speak for itself.

So if you are a business owner, have a unique product or idea and are in need of hiring a local graphic or web designer from the Durham Region area, have a look at my portfolio before you make your decision, Digital Deceptions creates all types of graphics from logos to print layouts and I specialize in web design and animation.

So what has brought on the influx of designers? Is it the fact that almost every household is on their second or third home computer, or maybe it’s because the software is so much more powerful and easier to use today? These are both great arguments and although I think both do play huge factors I also very strongly believe that the state of the industry not being regulated in any way and how design schools just throw it’s grads to the sharks after graduation without any business skills to be the true culprits.

Freelancers Know your Worth

Very good even great designers fresh out of school hungry with that passion most of us eventually lose are inexperienced when it comes to their worth and usually lowball their prices for fear of losing the job.

Even worse contracts are typically nonexistent causing problems at some point in a project and that point is typically realized when the designer finds they are in a cycle of making never ending repetitive changes for an indecisive client.

Before Alpha and After Omega Protect Yourself

All projects no matter the size or scope need to be clearly defined with a beginning and an end, always! No matter how solid your contract is you will come across contract issues with clients, it is just part of doing business. When these things happen adjust your contract accordingly to prevent the same issue in the future, you have to evolve and adapt to survive in this business.

Always keep in mind that as a freelance designer you will most likely be dealing with business owners, executives and VP’s who all make financial decisions on a daily basis. Usually they aren’t handed their position, they’ve earned it by getting things done quick and under budget, and they can sniff a sucker out a mile away.

Don’t be a sucker :p

This kind of thinking is a “Big-box” type of customer service model that has been done to death and is so cliché. It may work in those types of industries or not I am not here to dispute that, where I know it doesn’t work is in the Web Design industry.

Here is a good example, say a first time client who owns a bookstore and who has never had a website before wanted to finally get a web presence, that’s great right? Say they also wanted a shopping cart on the site so they could sell their books online.

What they want is a website that they can tie into their already established products, services and business model making them some extra money. What they need is a basic website telling potential and existing customers about the company, what is going on, store hours and contact information.

Website Owner’s Have an Obligation

Having a website is a responsibility and if they can’t live up to a little one how are they going to be with a much larger and sophisticated one? You also have to let your clients know that just because you build them what they ask for that people aren’t just going to come and use it.

If you don’t have an existing audience or a limited number of visitors you are really going to need marketing and advertising which costs lots more money if you want to let the world know you are out there. Ideally and financially it is better to grow and adapt to achieve client expectations.

A Freelancer’s Obligation

As a professional it is your job to tell your client the truth and not to up sell them on extra services that they don’t need. Be honest and tell them that to justify having a shopping cart on a website you are going to need a certain amount of traffic to make it beneficial to them. To convert visitors into shoppers is a numbers game.

Until you get that target amount of visitors surfing the site a shopping cart is not going to be worth the extra cash to your client. You can built them what they need instead, keeping track of their web statistics and future proofing the design with the knowledge that they want a shopping cart at a later date.

So by telling the truth and not going for the up sell you can potentially get two or more websites out of them. Let them know that websites are like any other type of branded material they have and every so often they need to be redesigned, reproduced, rethought out and recreated.

It is this type of honesty that brings back repeat business and makes every potential client a lifelong customer. Which in the end is they type client you want.