The question at hand here is this. Do you want to be a big fish in a small pond, or a little fish in a big pond?

This is an open ended article that I want to get some reader feedback on. I’ve tried writing this article 3 different times, get all the way to the end, and realize that I’m not able to come up with a conclusion. There isn’t any coverall answer here. I’ve seen companies that just do one thing, and they are excellent at that one thing, and they do great because of it.

On the other hand, I’ve also seen firms that offer everything under the sun. They do great because people like the fact that they do a good job, not great, but a good job on everything.

So what do you think readers? Do you think it’s better to be able to just do one thing and do it well, or do you prefer to be able to do a lot of things, and be average at them?

I remember the first client I had that tried to take over a project from me. To keep things ambiguous, I’ll call this person Mrs. X. Mrs. X owned a store that did invite design stuff. They’d help the client pick out the order and then place the order. Very little design other than picking a paper an a font. The rest they just sent off to a company who designed it and printed it. But Mrs. X was confident that what she was doing was design, and therefore she had an “eye” for design, and in turn, it gave her the confidence to design the actual site herself. She calls me up one day from a referral from one of her friends who was a client of mine. She calls in and tells me “I want a new website, I know nothing about the internet but what I do know is good design, and I wanna work with you in building the site.” I should have know then that this was gonna be a second guess the designer type of projects.

Our first meeting is at the shop. It’s a very cutesy boutique style place. She sets in front of me some examples of sites she likes. Pretty straight forward. I take her designs to heart and lay out a couple of potential website layouts. Over the course of the next few weeks, she sends me her comments. Nearly every design decision that I made was second guessed, questioned, and eventually changed. After making revisions to the layout numerous times, I tell her that I think there must be a lapse in communication as it never takes this long to design a website. I tell her I’ll be happy to finish the site, but the quote I gave her is no longer valid as I didn’t anticipate it taking this long for the design.

She writes me back a LONG verbally aggressive email claiming that I didn’t know what I was doing and a lot of the edits where things that she didn’t like. After going through the notes, and speaking with the designer that was working on the project I began to notice a theme. She would ask for something, then change her mind. I had no issue with charging more for things that we not my fault.

She calls me the next day and tells me that she has laid out the website and wants me to look it over. I agree to come in and examine her new layout. The website she laid out was quite possibly the worst design I had seen in a while. Imagine a pink gingham grenade exploded over a doily and created a super pink gingham doily mess. She decided the links should be in a certain array that basically removed any ability to edit them once they were up. The entire thing was against any morsel of design credibility that I had.

At this point I washed my hands from the project and just wanted out. We get the site up, it’s horrible atrocious. We didn’t even put our logo or name on the site cause we were so ashamed of the design.

That was the first project I ever did just for the money. It was kind of like having a one night stand with design! I felt a little embarrassed and didn’t like myself for it for a couple of days.

After that happened, I set down with my staff and we had a talk. We decided that from that point on, we would stand up for our design decisions and be more proactive about clients taking over a project.

Then in comes my next client who wanted to take over a project. This time, I saw it coming way in advance. This guy owned a car shop. He built custom cars that honestly looked really cool. We have our first meeting, and he comes to me with a couple examples of sites he liked. He also had a rough layout that he had his friend lay out that knew photoshop, but couldn’t program a site.

So this time, instead of letting him try and steamroll the project, I told him, I’ll give you one round of changes. We’ll take your ideas to heart when putting the design together, from there, you get one opportunity to make revisions. If there is anything major down the road, we’ll bill extra for each change.

It was amazing how the threat of adding a few hundred bucks changes someone’s attitude. We set down for the second meeting, where I had the design in front of him. He started to point things out and I politely stopped him. I said “design isn’t just design. You have web design, print design, car design, all of them require different needs…what would work with a print piece won’t work on a car.” Basically what I was telling him was that just cause you might have an eye for aesthetics, doesn’t mean that you’ll have an eye for laying out a website.

I didn’t bully him, there was no struggle for supremacy over the project. He respected me for standing up for the work we did, and the website came out really nice.

Now, the final example I’ll give you again is a client that didn’t necessarily what to take over the project, but felt that this was his baby,and didn’t want his baby to grow up to be a stripper. I can honestly feel for the guy. He spends years working hard to build his name up, make sure that everything he has done up to that point is quality, and it nervous about letting go of control and having someone else come in and mess up his hard work. That makes sense to me.

I find that a lot of times when a client oversteps their bounds in a project isn’t because they have control issues, or they think they know better than me, I think it’s simply because they see their project as their baby. They want their baby to grow up and be the best it possibly can be.

So next time you have a client that is trying to play god in the project, just tell them that their best interests are being taken into account, and that your work is just as important to you, as their project is to them.

I spend a lot of time on the internet. I’ve actually almost finished it. It’s good, it just falls off towards the end. Anyway, back to my point. I spend a lot of time on the internet. In doing this, I’ve come across a TON of bogus deals for designers and photographers. A few years ago, there was this program I went to that offered a free lunch. FUCK YEA I want a free lunch! I go, and it starts talking about schemes to make it big in online sales. Long story short, you pay them a few thousand bucks and they’ll give you a shopping cart ready to start making you millions!

Well, the latest thing I’ve come across is this dude that’s looking for a photographer for an event. He’s gonna pay $150 for 50 photos. The problem is the tickets to the show cost almost $300. Now, the deal doesn’t look so good. Now, I wouldn’t be writing this post if the story stopped there. Oh no…the rabbit hole goes much deeper here Neo.

Some like minded individual the posted a response on Craigslist. Saying how much of a rip off it was, and how the guy needed to get his head out of his ass….well that’s what I took from it anyway.

$ 125.00 for 50 pictures!!??? Only serious individuals apply….? I have Compact flash cards that cost more than $125.00. Get real. Serious individuals are looking for lot more than 125.00. Go hire some one with a point and shoot. Your not looking for quality work at that price.

Nothing too harsh I thought, so I wrote the guy telling him I agreed with him.

Well, later today, I go back in to check and see what’s new on there….and low and behold, the OP has gone and started himself a fight!  Here is what the guy wrote back.

the problem is, is that people like you pay to get your talent, I mean sure if I was in 6 figure debt due to student loans and paying 125 for a flash card I would feel working for 150 was pointless, fortunately my talent comes natural to
me I did not have to pay someone to teach me what depth of field was, or how to use NIK Software. I use a Sony Alpha A200 that I paid 400 for, did not have to re finance my house to get a camera and I am a artist not a photographer but I can certainly give 50 professional photos of $150. Guess when you know how to use your camera that 150 seems worth it for a half a days work!

So if your so hung up on your self that you won’t work for $150 stop complaining and let someone who has the talent feed there family with the money!

WHAT?!?!??!!? I was really pissed when I read this. It was like I was seeing a girl get punched or something. I just knew I had to step in.  So I decided to pen my own little response to the whole mess.

To the person that originally posted the ad for hiring a person for bonarroo. You lack a general understanding of both economics and how the industry works. I’ll explain.

First off, a ticket to the show along with parking costs about $300. You’re paying $150. “Oh cool, that’s 1/2 my ticket price.” Well not exactly. Figure you’re paying $300 to go to the show. You’re already planning on paying the $300 for a 4 day show. Split into 4th (4 days of the show) we’ll call it $70 a day, for the sake of easy math. So you’ve spent $280 to go to 4 days of shows. Now you’re only spending $130 after you pay. But, you’re also only getting to see half of the shows. Cause you need to take 50 photos. Taking 50 photos isn’t just pointing the camera and clicking.

It’s asking someone to take a photo, setting up the photo, taking a couple of pictures to make sure you get the best shot, then I assume you’re going to have some sort of release for them to sign right? So that can easily take 10 minutes to do. That adds up to 500 minutes or 8 hours of work. Working 8 hours as a photographer is a long day, and doing it in the sun, outside during the summer is even longer, so they’ll probably split that time up between a couple of days. Each day at the show is $70, and they split that up to 2 days…that’s $140 worth of show time. So they’re only getting 1/2 of the show they paid the full price for. You’re paying them $150. So, in the end, them spending time and effort in taking photos for you will come out to them making a whopping $10 or about $1.20 an hour!

Also, you’re not looking for a legit photographer. You’re looking for a person that owns a camera. As you are just a person that owns a camera. Owning a camera doesn’t make you a photographer. Just like owning a paintbrush doesn’t make you an artist. It’s stuff like this that drives me to insanity! This guy is trying to screw people out of money. That shit about “put food on your table”. How are you gonna put food on the table when you’re making that kind of money? You honestly don’t understand the first thing about how the creative industry works, and you’re in here trying to preach to people about it.

Good day sir!

So who knows, maybe my little not will make the guy understand that what he’s doing isn’t a good deal and maybe i’ll have changed the world a little bit. But I doubt it.

How about some of you guys help me pick up the fucking torch! It’s heavy and I’m tired of being the only one fighting the good fight!

Firstly, when you haggle with a client on the front end, you know that this client is “cheap.” Meaning they want to spend the least amount of money possible. This can be a hassle down the road when you are doing printing. They want to use the cheapest printer, and don’t wanna do ANY add-ons that will help make the project better. If you’re doing business cards for this person, expect to probably send them off to some internet printer that will just throw together some sort of digital card on a standard stock.

Second reason you don’t want to cut a deal is if they do pass you along to another client, they’ll pass along the fact that “they’re cheap” which isn’t a precedent you want to start. When you get into bed with a cheap client, it’s tough to get out. My advice would be to just get out.

When it’s tight outside, you’re bound to get a few people that want to cut a deal with you, but BE CAREFUL.

Have you looked for a new job lately? It’s pretty bad out there.  There aren’t many jobs available, and the ones that are available aren’t very good. Many of the jobs are asking for so many different skill sets, it’s tough to even get in the door.  Maybe I missed something, but a graphic designer isn’t also a programmer, animator, photographer, videographer, and a sandwich artist.

I for one think that design is dead. Gone are the days of comfortable budgets allowing you to explore creative solutions to a project. Gone are the days where you have enough of a budget where you can spend time on customizing fonts or creating a website from the ground up.  The new theme is beat the price. Damn the design, just get the price down.

So how do we get out of this mess? You have clients cannibalizing one another by building sites for next to nothing. Creating a logo for dirt cheap. Producing work for so small of a price, they HAVE to do tons of work just to stay afloat. All at the expense of good design.

To fully understand the problem, I think you have to look at it from an outside perspective. So let’s just for a minute create a made up client with a made up project.

Client: Billy Bob’s Crazy Ass Hot Sauce

Project: New Website, Logo, and Marketing Material

Hey Y’all, I’m Billy Bob and this is my crazy ass hot sauce! I’ve been making this hot sauce for about 5 or 6 years now.  We started just canning the sauce in mason jars and writing our name on top with a sharpie marker.  Then my cousin’s best friends nephew was in art school, so I paid him $40 to create us a logo.  That’s what we’ve been using and it works.

Problem: Billy Bob didn’t go to art school. He see’s good design as something that works for him. So if he’s able to move his product in a mason jar with a sticker…it works.  But what he’s neglecting to realize is the potential he’s missing out on. Creating a professional brand will not only reap immediate benefits in his ability to become a legitimate producer, but he’ll also be building brand equity.  His myopia (shortsightedness) is going to maybe not keep him from making a sale out of the back of his pickup, but it will keep him from being a player in the hot sauce industry.

So as a designer, your job isn’t to show people that what they have isn’t working, but instead, what they don’t have isn’t helping.

This goes for freelance designers looking for a project or designers looking for a job.  Make yourself part of their future. Show them with your skills and vision what they can be as opposed to how you can fit into that mold.  Cause when someone is hiring someone, they aren’t looking for the same thing.

Alright, so I’ve been doing the job search thing for a bit now….to call it frustrating is a HUGE understatement.  But I’m starting to see a pretty big issue here.  For one, there are almost no design job, secondly, the jobs that are out there want you to be able to do a dozen different things.  So instead of a well written, insightful post, today, I’m going to asking you a question.  (it’s not like any of these are well written anyway, notice my misuse of commas?)

So, the question, what do you think are acceptable skills sets for an employer to ask you for.  Assuming that this is a graphic designer job, is it ok for them to want you to be able to do the following?

Copywriting

Proof Reading

Programming

Event Planning

Marketing

Photography

Is there something I’ve left out?  Let me know.

As you may know, I’m on the job hunt.  For the past year or so, I’ve been looking for a full time gig somewhere.  Needless to say it’s a bit frustrating.  Just the other day, I found a post for a job where they wanted someone who can design, update the website, write marketing material, photograph at events, and do the social media and SEO for their website.  Oh, also, they wanted you to have a Masters….all for the low low price of $38,000 a year!  Pretty disgusting.

So I ask you a question.  What are some things you’ve done to beat this decline in our industry, and why is our industry particularly susceptible to this drought in the economy verses other industries?

Do you think that websites like 99 designs and other competition based websites are part of the reason for the constant “lowering of the bar” for our freelance industry? Are we cannibalizing ourselves by allowing sites like this to exist or is this just survival of the fittest? I want to know what you think.

It’s tough out there! I know that. But the design community has recently been cannibalizing itself. We set the fair market price for design work, and we are somewhat responsible for “lowering” the standards for design.

There are a number of websites out there that have cause the design community to force us to become sharks.  Websites like 99designs and elance make a mockery of good design.

If you’re not familiar with 99designs here is how it works. A client posts a project on the website. The client posts the needs for the project as well as their budget. Designers are able to posts their designs on the site, and the client chooses which logo or design they like best. The winning designer gets the money, and the rest don’t.

Maybe this sounds like an acceptable way to do business, but not to me. If I’m going to work on something, I better know I’m going to get paid. You don’t go to a restaurant and eat a steak, and if you don’t like it you don’t pay.

These websites wouldn’t function if it weren’t for designers. So by doing work on these websites, we are allowing our work to be prostituted.

The REALLY scary thing about these websites is a lot of the work on them is REALLY good! I looked through a number of the projects, and there are multiple logos that work. So these designers are working for free essentially.

My advice to all designers is don’t do it. Don’t let your work go for free. If you are hungry, figure out a way to make some cash, but don’t just give your work away for so cheap that it hurts the industry.

A couple of years ago, I had some guy call me up about creating a website for a dog / cat supply company.  I had just gotten a dog, and I forget how we met, but he said he could train my dog, if I could do a banner on his website.

“Sure, banners are easy, I can do that, and you’ll work with me on my dog?  Great deal?!??!”

So we sit down on the computer, and he shows me his website, it was one of those horrible template things where you can’t change hardly anything!  I begin to work on the banner design and spend about an hour on it.  I go to grab a drink, and come back and see the monster I had made.

It was seriously the ugliest thing I had ever done!  It was blue beveled paw prints with a yellow outline.  Then behind that was this horrible photo of a dog house!  It was so nasty.  I erased it, and started doing something else.  I spent about another hour, and then realized I had done something even worse.  This time, everything had drop shadows, outlines….it was like I had woken up in some designer zombie hell.

Needless to say, I called him up and said “I’ve changed my mind” and now my dog will only pee inside.  That didn’t work out so well!