How I became a freelance graphic designer
So in Part One of this thrilling account of my professional life, we saw our hero (me) leave the safe harbour of an agency job in Cambridge and sail off into the sunset in the general direction of freelancing and Cheltenham. But we should probably scoot back a bit and find a bit more about [...]
How I got my first design job
I first wrote this a couple of years ago and it’s been lingering on a blogger site. I’ve been asked a few times recently about how I got into the industry so thought I’d repost here for your reading pleasure. Note: there’ll be a part 2 next week about how I successfully became a full-time [...]
Intellectual deletism
(or, the difficulties of editing copy) You know the bloated corpses they sometimes find floating in rivers? Well, that’s how I felt about the writing on my website. Disgusting to look at, unwieldy, past its sell-by date. I’d composed it in a fit of verbosity some time ago and knew it needed editing, but every [...]
Routine maintenance
I’m going to be blogging a lot more frequently from now on. I’ve intended to do this before, but this time it’s personal, as they say in that there Hollywood. And it is personal. The thing is this: I’m very flexible, which is usually an advantage for a freelancer. I just go with the flow [...]
Great expectations (and how to manage them)
Frustration comes from expectation. Remove the expectation, you remove the frustration.” – Sister Shelby Hellbound I’ve been thinking a lot about expectations lately. Not the real, tangible, obvious ones (a client asks me to create a logo for them, I agree, therefore they have an expectation that that’s what I’ll do), but more the sort [...]
Say what you mean, mean what you say
Those of you who subscribe to my newsletter will know that I have recently been despairing at the way some companies communicate with their customers and prospective customers. I am saddened, and sometimes angered, by poor communication. I think of how much better it could have been if the sender had thought for a moment [...]
What designers want from PR people
I could rant for hours about the general ineptitude of PRs and their inability to see that the better the image they provide to us designers, the better their clients will look. Peter Bartram of PR Success Monthly cleverly managed to limit me to five minutes, though. Read his interview with me here!
New website. AGAIN. Why?
A few months ago I updated my website. Now I’m considering doing it again. Say what? The last update was an emergency thing (sort of. No-one’s house was burning down or anything). I wanted to add a contact form and other bits and pieces to the site, and the theme I had used originally was [...]
Why Parkour can – and should – change the way we live
Yesterday, the divine Noreen Blanluet invited me over to her house to watch My Playground – a documentary about parkour. What is parkour? This is parkour. I’d seen this kind of thing before, and thought, “wow, that looks like fun”. But this doc opened a door for me. It reminded me why I’m doing the [...]
Thoughts on discipline for freelancers
I haven’t blogged for a while. I feel bad about that. Therefore, this post is on the subject of discipline. Judging by how frequently it happens, I can’t be the only person who works from home to hear the words “You must be very disciplined” all of the time. My response is generally that I [...]
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