Digging Yourself Out of a Creative Black Hole and Getting Back on Track (How’s that for a mixed metaphor?) Sometimes you just freeze up. No matter how much you try you keep recycling the same failed idea over and over again as if somehow you’ll find the magical tweak that will save it. I say [...]
July 4, 2010
Get Your Design On! The secret to a successful long-term career as a freelance graphic or web designer has little to do with design itself – it’s how you handle your business. I’m not saying that your design skills don’t matter, they do, but if you don’t get your business end together, it won’t matter [...]
June 15, 2010
Four Legitimate Reasons Why Your Designer May Not Want to Release a Layered Photoshop or Illustrator File…Plus One Illegitimate One. I hear this a lot. Designers don’t want to give the layered masters to their clients. Clients rightfully feel a little miffed about not getting something that they assumed they had paid for. There are [...]
May 9, 2010
Good-bye AI…Hello PDF For most of my career, when I started a new Illustrator project and went to save the file, I choose AI for the file type and only used EPS if there was a special request. However, now that Illustrator can save layered PDFs as editable Illustrator files I’ve made the switch to [...]
April 16, 2010
What is Good Design? Good Design is Design that Makes Your Client Money If you ask a designer what makes a good design they’ll rattle off a list of impressive sounding terms: good contrast, effective use of type, good use of white space, logical hierarchy and so on. Ask a client and they’ll tell you [...]
April 11, 2010
How I’ve Tricked Out My Work Station to Make Sure I Never Go on Disability Again I know what it’s like to wear a wrist brace for three years, to be in so much pain that I had to ice my hand after brushing my teeth, and to have my partner pay all the bills [...]
April 2, 2010
Nigerian 419 Scam Turns into Comical Lesson on How to Prepare a File for Print Sometimes opportunities just fall into your lap. In this case, a spammer using a classic Nigerian 419 scam ends up providing the perfect example of how NOT to prepare a design for professional printing. The first email arrives with a [...]
March 11, 2010
Plagiarism Shmagiarism Plagiarism is a huge problem on the web. People tend to treat anything they can access through a browser as “free”. Not free as in “I don’t have to pay to enjoy it”, but free as in “finders keepers”. The problem is kind of invisible until it happens to you. One form of [...]
March 8, 2010
Shhhh, It’s Our Little Secret I know I’m supposed to do it, but I just can’t. Everyone tells me to do it, and my entire industry encourages and promotes it, but it just feels wrong. Even my clients expect me to do it. But I just can’t. It makes me feel dirty and cheap. I’m [...]
February 15, 2010
I Hate Bon Jovi. I Mean I Really, Really, Really Hate Them. If hating Bon Jovi was a medical condition I’d have to carry an injector with me to keep me from going into anaphylactic shock every time “You Give Love a Bad Name” came on the radio. I don’t hate the members of Bon [...]
September 9, 2010