The Graphic Designer's Business Survival Guide
Lawrence J. Daniels
Language: English
Pages: 240
ISBN: 0814432417
Format: PDF / Kindle (mobi) / ePub
Graphic design is a crowded, highly competitive world. And it takes a lot more than raw talent and technical ability to make it as an independent designer. Successful graphic designer and entrepreneur, Larry Daniels exposes the weak spot of so many: the critical business side of running even a one-person design firm. Designers often prioritize aesthetics over a client's needs, and ignore basic business skills such as writing, record keeping, and relationship building. This practical insider’s guide explains how to build a profitable, sustainable design business. Packed with sample agreements, letters, forms, and more, it reveals how to:
• Create a website and portfolio that highlight design solutions
• Do pre-pitch research and deliver winning presentations
• Prepare inviting proposals that win lucrative contracts
• Establish a reliable system for tracking billable hours (and staying solvent)
• Use cold-calling strategies even sales phobics can master
• Quantify design decisions in ways that business management can relate to and respect
• Break out of “freelancer” mode to highly compensated creative consultant
The field of design is littered with failures. To stand out and succeed, you need to be professional, efficient, and focused on the bottom-line results that clients value. The Graphic Designer's Business Survival Guide shows you how.
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overhead, and operation; constant advances in digital printing; the globalization of competition; a weak economy; reduced budgets; and the fact that more businesses than ever are opting for an onlineonly presence (my personal thoughts on this last subject are voiced in Chapter 4). For those of us “seasoned” enough to have once depended on these services (and the commissions they brought), their demise is really kind of hard to take. Closer to home, some of the other essential resources that
such as overrun charges). This document also provides me with an instant, accurate record of all job specifications, which is an invaluable reference for reprints or updates down the road. Once the quote has been approved, the final specsheet, if required, is modified to reflect any changes and is resubmitted to the vendor as a work order. Cashing In on Media Commissions I may catch some flak for saying this, but serving as a client’s ad agency no longer seems to require affiliation with the
hiring, firing, annual salary negotiations, bonuses, and, of course, personality conflicts) that are part and parcel of permanent staffing. Perhaps best of all, this arrangement gives me the “breathing room” I need to grow my business by granting me the time I need to properly service current clients and to engage in meaningful new-business prospecting. You may be thinking that hiring a freelancer to do the work that you’ve been contracted to deliver is somehow “cheating.” Well, here’s a news
being charged by my client? A seemingly sound argument except for one major factor that I hadn’t considered: the strength of the bond that my client and his client shared—a genuine sense of trust and friendship that apparently transcended both creative output and compensation. As you can imagine, the end result was that I lost someone I had long considered both a client and a friend. It was a hard lesson that I wouldn’t soon forget. After recovering from that debacle, I attempted to figure out
no positive cash flow on the horizon, I was finally faced with no choice but to let all four of them go at once, scraping the bottom of my everdwindling bank account to pay out fully vested pension and profit-sharing plans and recurring, ever-mounting debt. It was then I resolved that if I were to somehow find my way out of this mess, I would do four things differently: 1. I would rebalance priorities in terms of work vs. selling. 2. I would never again fall into the “too comfortable/too