I have been called an “elitist design snob” more than once and you know what? I’ve learned to embrace it. Here’s why:

I believe in quality. That’s pretty self-explanatory. In a world where we want what we want and we want it now type world quality has suffered severely. The upspring of “crowdsourcing” web sites and what I refer to as “logo farming”, potential clients are seeing the industry in a very altered light lowering the overall value of what we do.

I believe in education. Let me say this first: I do not believe that you have to go to college to be a successful designer. I do believe, however, that you need to be educated about the way things work in the field be it self taught or otherwise. I see “designers” using 5 different fonts on a business card because they never learned that they should use as few fonts as possible or designing a logo in Photoshop when 99% of the time they should be designed in a vector program like Illustrator. In this day and age it seems that anyone that gets a copy of Photoshop can go to town and call themselves a designer again, shedding a crippling light on our field.

I believe in professionalism. Answer your phone! Reply to emails! Don’t show up to a client meeting in a mustard stained Phil Collins shirt. If you are a business owner (which includes freelancing in my opinion) act like a business owner. Look at some successful business in your area and see how they handle things. I bet they answer the phones and call people back.

I believe in you. By this I mean that I don’t believe in selling yourself short by charging exceedingly low prices because you don’t feel you are good enough. One caveat to this is that you have to be good enough to justify your fees. How can you do that? Focus on the other items I mentioned above and you will get better with experience.

*Phil Collins was not harmed in the making of this post.
**I realize there are exceptions to every rule, especially in design. Don’t flame me for my opinion.

Do you have opinions on this? C’mon, I know you do. Let me know in the comments.

First thing’s first… I love being a designer. I also like to rock. Did you know I was in a band when I was 19? No, that’s because we were horrible. Today I leave the rocking to the professionals. I will stick with designing killer logos.

Here are a few of my favorite logos of bands that I listen to on a regular basis.

Aerosmith – Aerosmith was the first band I really got into. It was also my first concert in 1997 at the ripe age of 13. I have always thought the logo was the epitome of clean line work and custom lettering.
Designed by Ray Tabano (original Aerosmith rhythm guitarist)

Korn – The Korn logo certainly does its job. The backwards R and lettering is instantly recognizable by anyone that is familiar with rock music. I started listening to Korn when I was 17 and it stuck with me. Designed by Jonathan Davis (singer of Korn)

Metallica – I got into Metallica on their decline, around the time Load came out. Unfortunately they haven’t blown me away with any of their recent music but the “Ninja Star” logo made up of  4 “M”s is killer.
Designed by ??

Linkin Park – I dug these guys from the start. They have started dipping into the rap genre a little more than I would like them to recently but the LP logo still rocks.
Designed by ??

Slipknot – Last but far, far from least is my favorite band. Slipknot’s raw energy and aggression combined with a certain precision comes through in this logo.
Designed by Joey Jordinson aka #1 (Slipknot’s lead drummer)

As you can tell I couldn’t find who designed the Metallica “Ninja Star” logo or the Linkin Park “Minutes to Midnight” logo. If you know please share.

Obviously this is not a comprehensive list of ALL of my musical tastes nor a complete list of the best logos in music. What are some of your favorites? Please try to include a link to the logo as well.

Georgefest 2008

The goal of this logo was not only to give the annual event an easily identifiable logo but to also integrate the new City of Eustis Branding (which I did not do). It was also decided early on to go in a different direction that previous years. Specifically, it was decided not to use imagery of George Washington as the years before had.

City of Eustis logo

The new logo would be used on every piece of marketing for Georgefest 2010. What I wanted to do is give the even an identity of it’s own yet keep it affiliated with Eustis. A metal sculpture of a heron graces the lake shore in Ferran Park and has become an iconic symbol for Eustis. The heron had also been used in the City’s recent rebrand so it was a no-brainer choice about how to integrate the City with Georgefest.

“Rusty” the heron in Ferran Park

I hope this in depth look at the story behind the Eustis Georgefest logo was informative. Please feel free to comment below. You can see the final logo here.

It’s nothing new to hear that a freelancer should never take on a job without a contract. I don’t have to tell most of you how important it is to have something on paper when starting a project be it a logo, website or anything, really.

Here is a short list of thoughts most new freelancers might come across when deciding if they should use a contract.

I don’t want to scare the client away with “legalese”.
The truth is that most clients will appreciate having things spelled out, so to speak, so that they know what to expect from you and they will know what you expect from them. To make things a little less scary I don’t even use the term “contract” very often. I call it a Project Agreement. That just has less of a “Oh no! I’m going to be locked into a contract!” feel and more of a “the job specs will be outlined in the Project Agreement.” vibe to it. See, less scary huh?

It’s too much work to go back and forth and get signatures on a contract.
Well, let me tell you from experience that it is MUCH less work than dealing with an epic case of scope creep. If this is really a concern for you then look into using digital signatures (I am looking into it myself) or even *gasp* using a fax machine.

It’s just a logo that I’m going to knock out in a couple hours. I don’t need a contract.
Remember what I said about scope creep? If you continue to take jobs without specifying what it is, exactly, that you are providing it will happen. That two hour logo, which by the way a logo should take much longer to design than two hours if you’re doing it right, can easily turn into a two month job that will end up costing you valuable, uncompensated time. Time is the only thing we can’t get more of. Value yours.

I’m not a lawyer. I don’t know how to write a contract.
The truth is that most designers are not lawyers. You aren’t in a unique position there. A contract, project agreement, whatever you call it doesn’t have to be a scary jumble of legalese. Keep it simple. Outline exactly what it is you are providing, what you expect the client to provide, how much it will cost, when you will be paid and when the job will be done. Those are the basics and you can add what you want but I would make sure that all of those points are covered at minimum. Though you aren’t a lawyer, you are going to want a lawyer to make sure your contract holds water if you ever had to use it in court.

Do you have any advice for dealing with freelance contracts? Let me know in the comments.

How to recognize, deal with and even prevent the dreaded Scope Creep.

Eww, Scope Creep? What’s that?
Well, let me tell you. Scope Creep, or creep for the purposes of this article, is when you take a seemingly straight forward project and over time the client adds tasks until the job is just a mere shadow of its former self. This happens a lot more than people realize.

How can I avoid Scope Creep?
Avoiding creep is fairly simple but you must stay vigilant. The best defense against creep is a rock solid contract. If you have a sturdy contract it will generally make Scope Creep thing twice about showing its fugly face. Yeah, I said “fugly”.

I didn’t have a contract and the creep made it’s move. What can I do?
First of all, why don’t you have a contract? Doesn’t matter, get one. The next thing you should do is let the offending client know that you will be happy to take care of the extra work but you will be billing them accordingly. This is much easier with a well thought out contract but you don’t have one… Usually telling them that any work not previously agreed to will cost extra will stop the issue and you may even get some more paying work out of it. That’s always a good thing. If they don’t want to pay for the extra work then proceed with the job as usual and call it a day.

Do you have any Scope Creep horror stories? I am very interested to hear them.

A lot of times when I call I get a robotic voice on the other end either asking me to push a series of buttons in order to get to another robo-voice (which I rarely oblige) or it asks me to leave a message. In some cases the robot tells me a bold-faced lie and says that they will call me back as soon as possible. Many times I never hear back from them so I must assume they are being held hostage away from their phone or email. Now I feel a little guilty for getting mad at them and think I should alert the authorities…. I digress.

In 2010 there is almost ZERO reason to be inaccessible  to your customers. We’ve got the email, Twitter, Facebook, Skype, instant messaging… and we’ve had the phone for, what, like 134 years? There’s really just no excuse for it. Now, before you jump me verbally in a hypothetical dark alley let me say that I understand checking every email or responding to every message or reading ever DM on twitter is difficult if you receive the onslaught of them like I do. Especially since most are spam. Especially since you are busy to begin with.

That being said, there is still no reason not to reply to those messages in a timely manner. I’m not saying that I reply the second I get an email but if it is something easily resolved I reply by the end of the day. If it is a question that I can’t answer but have the resources to find out, then I respond with that. If it is an angry client (which I rarely have by the way) I try to diffuse the situation and not make it worse by ignoring them.

In my opinion any business should have a few methods of contact at minimum:

Phone. This should really go without saying but I said it.

Email. Again, pretty common and almost expected no days. You can get free ones all over the place but I recommend you use the one that goes with your…

Website. In 2010 almost every business can benefit from having an online presence (I can’t really think of one that couldn’t). Honestly, today its almost as expected that you have a website as it is that you use email. On said website you should most definitely have a contact form.

Twitter/Facebook (optional) but recommended so that you can not only communicate with your customers and other business owners in a more relaxed, social environment. There have been numerous articles about using these services for businesses.

*Note for customers:

When you call and don’t receive an answer please leave a message. There are very legitimate reasons for whoever you are trying to contact to be out of the office especially in the case of a freelance designer.

In case any of you are wondering, yeah, I practice what I preach. Here’s how to contact me:

Phone: (352) 227-1359
Email: arron@brightasblack.com
Website: http://www.brightasblack.com (your on it now)
Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/brightblack
Facebook: http://www.brightasblack.com/facebook
Skype: brightblack13
AIM: photoshopninja13
Yahoo Messenger: photoshopninja13

There ya go. Oh, and one last thing another great way to contact businesses is to leave comments on their blogs. I expect to see yours there.

There are many cues that there gonna be problems in any business relationships. This is a short list of a few of my favorites that could lead to your designer cutting you lose.

1. Be incredibly indecisive. Very few things get under a designer’s skin like a client that just refuses to make a decision. This also goes for giving feedback on your job. Feedback is a crucial part of what us designers need to produce exemplary work for you. Being asked for feedback on a design and replying with simply “I don’t like it” is a start if you are trying to doom the relationship.
2. Pay late or, better yet, not at all. For that matter bouncing checks is just as bad. Most of us realize that sometimes things just happen and mistakes are made. Don’t make a habit of it and certainly don’t expect your designer to keep working while he sorts out the issue. Most freelance designers do not have a mattress full of cash in their second bedroom. A lot of us need every job that we take therefore we can’t afford to deal with clients that can’t manage their business budget.
3. Argue with your designer. If you continually tell your designer that he is wrong about color theory and he should use Comic Sans because your neighbor’s kid took a high school digital media class and he says it’s just fine you are probably going to irritate them to no end… well until they fire you.
4. Expect it for free. In my opinion one of the quickest ways to be a free agent again is to keep asking for work that was not in the agreement and expecting it for free. A lot of jobs need additional work but you should expect to pay for it. Granted, it is the designer’s responsibility to make sure you understand the terms up front. Keep asking for free stuff and your designer will probably drop you like a rock.
5. Undermine your designer’s level of skill. Even the most novice of designers should be treated with respect, the same level of professionalism as you would expect from them. Never say “well what am I paying you for?” or “I could just do that in Paint”. It goes without saying that the designer should have spelled out exactly what you are paying for in the original agreement and if you could do it in Paint we wouldn’t spend thousands of dollars on software.

BONUS!

6.  This is for designers. What I said above is 100% true in my opinion and valid reason to politely sever the designer/client relationship if it becomes a problem. That being said, it is YOUR responsibility to do your best to prevent these things from happening in the first place. Don’t leave a lot of wiggle room in contracts. Make it crystal clear what services and deliverables you are providing for exactly what cost within what time frame. If you don’t want your skill undermined don’t portray yourself as something you aren’t. My motto that has worked is to always be a straight shooter.

I’m not a lawyer, I’m a designer and these are the things I have come across in the bigger half of a decade in the industry. I’m sure there are others and I welcome them in the comments.