The Business of Design and Offering Discounts

A few weeks ago I read "10 Mistakes Designers Make with Clients" by Preston Lee. Preston was extremely insightful and covered several areas. One of which hit me for 6 - Offering Discounts. He says "Discounts are for grocery stores with rotting produce... Your design isn’t old. It isn’t rotting. It isn’t yesterday’s hot item...It tells your customers that you are not in high demand and you are desperate for some business."

I mused on this for a few days. I even discussed it with my Accountant / Financial Advisor and friend and he agreed. Preston Lee was right, when supermarkets sell products at a discounted rate they still make a profit. When I give a discount as a designer I make a loss.

Very often I'd give my customers discounts but couldn't understand why they kept asking for more, even when my rates were below my competitors. I was sending the wrong message.

I found INSPIRATION downtown

I’m working on a project that beckons me to design a myspace and it’s been a minute since I’ve designed a myspace page, especially since myspace went web 2.0.

In an attempt to sharpen my tailoring scissors, I flipped through a few web pages to find a suitable concept, that would spawn inspiration. I observed a few well known myspace pages - Kanye West, John Legend, Lil Jon, Jay-Z, Alicia Keys - just to name a few and nothing assaulted my attention, though the all had elements I liked. Therefore, I resorted to many popular web 2.0 template sites and galleries. But again, nothing!

Sell wholesale templates and get out of the rat race

A few weeks back I played a board game, Cash Flow, created by the author of ‘Rich Dad, Poor Dad’, Robert Kiyosaki. To me, the game is a warped version of Monopoly. The concept of the game is that we are living in a world filled with expenses, budgeted and unexpected. The ‘Rat Race’. And the only way to get out is to have a passive income that is more than your current expenditure. Then and only then can you chase your dreams.

After playing the game I was desirous of applying some of these principles to my life. But the thought of making a passive income from designing website templates did not seem feasible. Until I saw this:

“Since joining ThemeForest I'm making enough passive income a month to cover my mortgage and its afforded me to buy a new BMW M3”

- Contempoinc (from ThemeForest)

Joomla or WordPress...which is better?

I've been working freelance for a while and as the workload increases I remember the words of my former supervisor, Roland Booth, "Work smart, not hard" (paraphrased). That has been my motto for a while. So when I'm about to develop a website I think Joomla or WordPress?

For me both are in two different categories. Joomla is built to be a CMS, which can be used like a blog and Wordpress is a Blog, which can be used like a CMS. I remember having a discussion about Joomla with a web programmer, from the Gleaner Online, who exclaimed "Joomla is an overkill..." for some projects. I agreed, but somehow found myself, always, using Joomla (and sometimes CuteNews) on my projects, promising myself that one day I'd use WordPress. Well that day has come!

I recently bought 2 excellent books, WordPress 2.7 Complete & RockStar WordPress Designer, which helped me to better understand how to use WordPress as a CMS. I also read some tutorials on Theme Forest's Blog - In the Woods. And I'm now more educated, my eyes have been opened! I'm now using WordPress on my latest project and for my company portfolio - The Gist (coming soon).

Web Development Project Estimator

Have you ever been to a meeting where a client asks you to estimate how much a project will cost and you think to yourself " I wish I could tell them right off the bat!"

Well now you can with the Web Developer Project Estimator. It a hosted service that is free and allows the developer to quickly punch in hourly rates for each task and have it calculated on the fly. If the default listed items are not tasks you would do, simply delete them and add those that are relevant to your development process. Once you're done simply click "view estimate" and you are good to go! As simple as that.

I give the Web Development Project Estimator a 4 out of 5. All that's left for it to get another star is the ability to download or e-mail estimate as PDF to client.

MySpace 2.0...I'm so late!!!

Recently I had the opportunity to customize a MySpace page, for Danah Cameron. Though I've always wanted to customize a MySpace account I've often feared using CSS to manipulate a webpage heavily designed using tables.

However, from the experience I've decided to add MySpace customization to the list of services I offer and I started looking more into how to use CSS to achieve this. Only to find that MySpace has decided to make their layouts tabless and added ajax to the member interface. They have joined the web 2.0 movement (in terms of design).

With the 2.0 layouts pages will load faster and members have more control over the look and feel of their MySpace pages. In Tom's blog - on Nov.10.2008 - he highlight that the new 2.0 layouts are "fully W3C compliant" and incompatible with Internet Explorer 6. Which is great! My only disappointment is that the 2.0 layout is not available for musicians, flimmakers or comedian profiles.

To learn more about MySpace 2.0 Layouts CLICK HERE and HERE. You can also get additional themes from PYZAM and I'll be sure to have some on the PXL Junkie soon.

Collaborate on Creative Projects

More and more people are working from home/virtual offices but have to collaborate with associates and clients on projects. Meetings can be time consuming, especially if it's just to discuss small changes in design and every minute counts. I've found two solutions that help to make the feedback process on creative projects a lot much easier - ConceptShare and ProofHQ.

Both ConceptShare and ProofHQ are similar to Octopz. Unfortunately the interface for Octopz is not as intuative, as the 2 I mentioned above, or offers a free personal account.

ConceptShare allows creative teams to create a workspace for each project with description and client name. Packages determine how many projects can be active simultaneously, 35 being the most with the Business Package for USD$99/month and 5GB of storage. With ConceptShare you can review from photos to video files and everything else in between. Once the client has signed off you can print out the workspace with all the comments for reference.

ConceptShare also makes it easier to upload files from your desktop with a new aplication, ConceptShare Desktop Companion, written with Adobe Air.

ProofHQ is on par with ConceptShare in terms of features and cost except that it doesn't support video files. Approval of proofs are a more explicit with ProofHQ by simply selecting a button that says "Approve" or "Approved with Changes" when viewing the proof.

Unlike ConceptShare, ProofHQ allows the administrator to send a public url which allows viewers to see the proof without the need for a password. ProofHQ also integrates with 37Signals' BaseCamp. The most expensive plan on ProofHQ cost the same as ConceptShare with 1GB less but allows you to have over 200 proofs.

These web services have made life easier for creative professionals who want to get the most out of their time and ensure that the clients get what they desire, avoiding any miscommunication.

You've been equipped now choose which one is suitable for you!

NotePad Chaos - Free Wordpress Theme

Notepad Chaos was designed by Evan Eckard for Smashing Magzine users.

Download:
WP Theme | PSD

SplashUp - Edit Photos Online

There are a few good desktop photo editors out there, some of which are free and other have the be purchased. However, the paradigm in technology is slowly sifting with the advent of Google Docs. More and more applications are online based making it easier for users to access them at any given time without administrator restrictions.

One useful applications have come to me attention regarding photo editing it's called SpalshUp. SplashUp is a powerful web application with great features, giving users - pros and novices - the ability to turn dull photos into masterpieces. Sharing these works of art can be done seemlessly using a flickr, facebook, picasa or splash account.


SplashUp has an interface that resembles that of Adobe's flag ship product, Photoshop. Users can use multiple layers and similar photoshop filters and tools (like the lasso, marquee, paint brush and many more).

All in all SmashUp, though in it's beta stage, is a wonderful application to have in a upcoming designers arsenal.

website: www.splashup.com

Face Your Manga - Make Custom Avatars

Just a few days ago I was on flickr and noticed some cool avatars and I got a little bored with my display picture for my messenger so I went looking for one online and I came across Face Your Manga. I've always admired manga and this was an opportunity to do just that so indulged.

Face Your Manga allow users to select the features of their avatar - hair, eyes, complexion, background, you name it you can change it. Users get to express themselves in an artistic and fun way, plus if they like the art enough they can order prints or larger versions which they can use as desktop wallpapers or whatever they desire.

Here is my avatar...






Website: www.faceyourmanga.com

Infinity - Free Wordpress Theme

I came across this free wordpress theme recently and I liked it so I thought I'd share.

Download: WP Theme | PSD

Designers Toolbox - A Designer's Dream

The key to being effecient as a designer is working smart and with the resources from www.designerstoolbox.com, a designer can do just that.

At DesignersToolbox.com there are multiple resources for the freelance designer - from free photoshop and illustrator templates to paid contract templates.