Nothing feels better than the start of a new year — it’s fresh chance to take a look at where you’ve been and where you can go. While 2008 has been an incredible year for my business, I can only be excited at how much opportunity 2009 holds. Running a small design shop is very […]
Category Archives: Freelance
Portfolio Panic
November 14, 2008 – 10:58 am
Nothing, it seems, is more professionally challenging than re-designing your own design portfolio. It’s a perfect storm of conflicting issues — it’s difficult to scope the audience (is it you, other designers, clients?), the stakes are high (it’s most designers’ primary means of marketing), and it must be pitch-perfect in terms of design and content (you’re […]
Café Presse
October 21, 2008 – 4:43 pm
While it’s a bit more of restaurant & bar than a cafe, Café Presse does also live up to it’s name. It offers a great, open atmosphere for remote working (a big, naturally lit space), great coffee (from Cafe Vita), and wonderful breakfast and lunch food of the French sort. The wait staff […]
ABC’s and Thinking Like a Client
July 11, 2008 – 11:03 am
Of the many things I’m learning running my own design studio, is how difficult the sales process can be. At first, it all seems pretty straightforward. Once you start to tap into your network of connections, pitch your services well, you start getting a significant amount of leads. However, the leads are […]
Showing Off
June 26, 2008 – 11:58 pm
I find that the best way to present design comps to a client is directly in the browser, via a ‘faked’ webpage. The flat PNG or JPG of the design sits in the center, with a background pattern behind, to simulate the final site. The most obvious reason for this is that it […]
Reset Friday
May 19, 2008 – 11:20 am
Recently, I’ve stopped scheduling client work on Fridays, especially in the late afternoon. Instead, I’ve started to reserve much of the day as a ‘reset’ — a block of time to catch up on all the non-billable, non-design work that’s piled up over the week (stuff like invoicing, banking, project management, scheduling, file/resource management, writing, sales and marketing).
Condensing […]
Design and Text © Matthew Brown 2008. Most Artwork © Kevin Mahler. Hosted on Webfaction.
Older Posts
Innovation Insanity
November 19, 2008 — 5 comments
In Print
November 17, 2008 — 1 comment
Portfolio Panic
November 14, 2008 — 3 comments