Graphic designers must master many visual disciplines in order to create work that will make an impact. Designers are students of form, composition, color, type, contrast, imagery, and pattern. A good designer knows how subtle effects of font choice, or image size, or color balance will impact their designs. Designers will labor over font sizes, […]
Category Archives: Management
The HeART of Design Business is a five part series that addresses the tensions artists feel when they face the creativity sapping realities of running a business. Part one dealt with matters of money and finances, part two with measuring time, part three with marketing. In part four we’ll talk about managing growth and the […]
If you don’t have time to read this post (or finish reading it since you’ve already started) you really should finish this one. When I consult design firms I use a methodology I call the 5M Assessment. It evaluates the firm, or the freelance practice, from five vital perspectives Money, Measurement, Marketing, Management and Motivation. […]
Can you relate to this common story? While moonlighting as a freelance designer, burning the midnight oil, sacrificing weekends, you dreamt of one day freelancing full time. Then it happened. You picked up a couple good clients and it seemed like it was time to make the leap. You quit your day job and set […]
I recently published a new article on HOWDesign.com about hiring practices for design firms. As I worked on this piece I couldn’t help but reflect on the many hires I made at Newfangled. Over the fifteen years I owned the company, I walked through every stage of hiring mentioned in this article. I started out […]
When I was transitioning from the start up phase of my web design company to managing a growing firm, I was often overwhelmed by how many things there were to do! Between doing some of the actual work (which had become an exclusively night and weekend activity), to managing employees, to hiring, to marketing, to […]
As a part of my marketing process for Rewarding Toil I spend a lot of time on LinkedIn reviewing design firm websites. Sadly, the frequency with which my research leads to 404 page is far too great. Design firms go out of business with sobering regularity.
Contending with cash flow can be one of the more frustrating aspects of managing your firm’s finances. But before we look at some solutions, you should first consider if what you think is a cash flow problem might actually be a profitability problem. After reassuring yourself that the ups and downs of receivables and expenses […]
This year my wife was very ill. For about six months she did not have the muscle strength to walk up stairs or even stand for very long. She was bedridden for about six months. Toward the end of that time, when we were feeling very hopeless that local medical system could help, we decided […]
Here’s a sobering rule of thumb. The easier it is to enter into a business partnership the harder and more messy it will be to get out. And since failure rates for design firm partnerships are very high (statistics vary, but a greater than 50% failure rate is conservative), when you enter into one you […]
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