The problem: as many as possible

When I started designing I used to work for small clients with tight budgets: just a logo, just a mascot, just some icons…

As my demand was increasing, the orders became bigger and bigger: brand identity + 12 poses of mascot design + full website.

I was a newbie so I thought that having 12 poses in my portfolio was better than a single one, so I just kept posting images like the one in the left.

The issue is, the more of these images I added, the more common I found myself repeating this dialog:

Client: Hey nice work, how much for a mascot design?
Designer: Thanks!, I charge 700 US$ per mascot.
Client: Great!, just within my budget, please, design 12 poses for me.
Designer: Hmm… sorry… this is the price per pose… (add here a long chat about how much time I spend on every design).

So we have a problem: what you put in your portfolio is what the client expects you to do for him. So if you put lots of stuff in your portfolio the client presumes that the production is not too time consuming, if it’s easy to produce then he obviously will want the biggest amount possible.

The solution

Every design is unique, it’s not just about cut, paste and rotate. Each pose is almost as time consuming as the original design and this is something the client should assume.

In my new portfolio the images will feature single poses. But I don’t want the client to think that I have limitations when it comes to pose the character, so:

1. I will have cases studio, not at first glance but accessible enough for any client that needs it in order to make a sale.
2. At the end of the page I will feature some image of a character posing in different situations.

Do you have any suggestion?

The next time we will discuss how to choose the projects that should appear in our portfolio.
I hope you enjoyed it!

So let’s talk about the brief

1. How important is for you the brief you get from your client when you’re asked to design something?

In my current situation it’s not that important because my services and style are very defined, anyone that visits my portfolio knows what I do and what to expect, so I don’t need a very detailed brief. Actually I wouldn’t recommend an extensive brief if you work for small client profiles with low experience in the design process, in some cases it´s appreciated negatively, clients tend to think you are so lazy that you give them homework to save time yourself.

I recently had to do a refund because the client was so rushed that he refused to write a brief, he textually said:

 "We don’t need a corporate message… It seems to me that you have boilerplate questions that you ask regardless of the design goal or source and try to force your customers to answer them by repeating the same questions over and over. Your design process needs to work with the customer, for the customer — not force the customer to work around your methods or requirements."

2. Are you fully satisfied with the briefs received from your clients?

They usually don’t provide a brief, there are exceptions, specially for web design orders since the client perceives the task as more complex. For logo or corporate illustrations I usually ask some informal questions and they tend to reply briefly. It´s tough, on one hand you need to get the info, on the other hand, you need to ask carefully or the client could be offended.

3. Do you help your client to create his brief? If yes, how do you do it?

Yes, I do. I openly ask for their brief, they usually don’t have one so I write a list of key questions to understand their needs. As I previously said, it needs to be a short list and direct to the core.

4. How hard is for your clients to create a brief even if they receive some helping questions?

Most of the clients have problems to define their own corporate values and their corporate image, they actually are not conscious about their brand identity. If I ask something like: "what are the feelings you want to communicate? or how would you like to be perceived? they reply with series of adjectives with so wide meaning that is not too helpful, like: cool, professional, sleek, good looking… they don’t elaborate their replies too much.

5. Are you satisfied with the solution you use right now in order to get complete briefs from your clients (meaning a brief that is really helpful for you when you start working at your client’s project)?

Yes, I do. It’s not perfect but it works. 

The problem is not my design process, it’s a deeper problem, it’s my whole brand identity. Right now I’m perceived like an artist, but I’m redesigning my corporate stuff to be perceived like a brand manager with very good artistic skills.

6. An I add the following questions: What do you do when the client refuses to write a brief or he does it sloppily?. Would you accept the work even if you know it’s not going to be a good logo or web?

Honestly, at this point, sometimes I don’t know how to act. I usually refuse the work and I offer a refund… what do you do?

In the meantime, there were some other redesigns, but none of them came out. I made a big mistake: I wasn´t clear about the reasons for the redesign.

But this time it´s definitive, at the beginning of the year SOSFactory V2 will finally see the light. I´ll tell you the main reasons for the redesign:

1.- I didn´t know the clients, I designed for myself.

When I designed SOSFactory my skills were quite limited. So I designed my web considering my tastes as an user. It was created by an artist, not by a designer.

The problem of this philosophy is it attracts one type of clients characterised by their low chances of success in their projects, regardless of their budgets. This kind of client makes decisions with the heart instead of with the head. No ofense, all of them were great to work with but a big percent of these projects never will be even started, obviously it doesn´t help to promote my services.

Now I do know my clients.

However, every corner of this new version is aimed at the client. Moreover, at a very specific type of client. My objective is to recycle my clients educating them, both directly (by articles and tutorials) and indirectly (acting as a model). And maybe to reach some other clients who appreciate communication strategies above visual impact. I mean, clients who put the reason before the heart.

The objective is to get a good portfolio of successful clients vs portfolio of profitable clients.

2.- I didn´t know my own needs.

Since I didn´t know my clients, I didn´t realise my own needs. SOSFactory V1 main page is a reflection of this fact, it´s just useless. I don´t need such a big news area, neither I need a welcome message, nor those links to my tutorials… everything randomly laid out.

Now I do know my own needs.

SOSFactory V2 is hierarchical. All the elements are distributed according to its relevance. My priority was design above illustration. Every decision has been taken in order to reach these 2 main tasks:

Improve my conversion rate:

1. Show my work in the most quick and effective way.
2. If the client decides to hire me, he has to find a quick way to do it.
3. If the client has doubts, I must offer him some reasons to decide.
4. It he finally doesn´t, at least he should enjoy the web and remember me.

Attract my target clients:

1. I want to attract a medium-high profile client: design agencies, big corporations, enterprising entrepreneurs with successful projects…

3.- I denied the social side of my job.

At first, I thought a blog would only distract the clients from buying. In fact, I had two different webs: On one hand SOSFactory, my portfolio, on the other hand SOSNewbie, which was my blog, rather a personal than a professional project.

Integrating my blog and my porfolio in just one domain is one of the best decisions I have ever taken since it increased my presence in the net.

Now I understand that the social side is the key.

This step made me understand how important the social factor is in the Internet. So I´m currently very active in the following networks:

• Facebook
• Twitter
• Youtube
• Deviantart

The new SOSFactory takes social networks into account. The objective is to improve my social support to improve my brand image. These are secondary objectives, but they´re quite important anyway:

1. Keep the users (clients or designers) well informed about possible events, thanks to the up-to-date news.
2. Offer resources to my users, through my articles, tutorials or my Youtube videos.
3. Promote my profile in social networks.
4. Promote my passive income by selling stock designs or premium tutorials.

4.- I didn´t have an identity.

Since I didn´t know my market, or my audience, I didn´t understand my needs, so I could´t have a corporative identity.

In time, I know myself better.

Now I know my own identity, I need a web which reflects my way to interact with the world:

• I´m a businessman more than an artist.
• I achieve my goals, in a simple and funny way.
• I´m a perfectionist, practical, modest and open-natured.
• I´m generous, my success depends on my clients´ success, and the success of everyone who interacts honestly with me.
• I offer good quality service which is worth a decent remuneration.
• I´m honest and I demand the same in exchange.
• I don´t need everybody to like me.
• I believe in hard work above talent.
• I believe in intelligence above aesthetics.
• I believe in facts above words.

5.- I was breaking all the basic rules about usability.

This was the weakest point in SOSFactory V1, I have a brilliant set of utterly silly decisions in this area:

• Instead of emphasizing my logo, y gave priority to this kind of "space" button with links to secondary parts of my web.
• Another epic mistake was using Flash for the navigation bar, just to add some animation and sound, because that was cool!
• The container is optimized for 800x600px resolution, so the content looks too compressed and the text is hard to read.
• The texts are corporative texts, quite generic, so they don´t reflect my personality.
• There is no room to display big images.
• … we could go on and on.

Now I know the basics about usability.

Even though I´m not an expert in this area, it´s one of the aspects of design I enjoy the most. I´m following some interesting blogs about usability, and I think I´ve improved quite a lot in this area.

Everything must be where it has to be, and if it´s not, just change it.

6.- I chose the wrong technology.

As a noob I was, I limited to use what I knew. I used plain HTML with some Flash touches. Templates are restrictive about the design, and the management takes quite long. Each change has to be done page by page.

My new web will be flexible and easy to manage.

It´s created with style sheets (CSS) + HTML, each element of the design is cut in different PHP files. I gain flexibility with this, it´s quicker to manage, and there are many more advantages. In addition, I have some Ajax touches to charge contents effectively as well as Javascript to make changes on the interface.

Final thoughts

The key to build a good website is the intentionality, every small choice must be oriented to a goal, in my case it was atrackting a different kind of client. But before you must know yourself and your market, so you can create the right enviroment, with the right tools.

In the next post I will disclose all the reasoning behind my choices.
And hopefully SOSFactory V2 will be online around middle January.

I hope you guys a great holidays, thanks a lot for your support!

First of all, I must admit that the heading of this post is a misunderstanding, since it wants to mean just the opposite of what it says. I´m totally against "free pitching". It´s not for fear (luckily I´m not affected by this market). I write this just because, as a designer myself, with a relative comfortable position, I feel responsible of the education of novel designers (that´s the reason for this blog), who come along looking forward to having success but too focused on short term. Just like I was 8 years ago.

If you work participating in crowdsourcing sites, please read this post, and if you have some time, think it over. It´s not my intention to tell you off, I just want to offer some arguments that you maybe haven´t considered before. If you have and you are still positive that this is a good thing for your career, please comment your point of view for us.

1.- Are you a novel designer, so you need some experience and make your portfolio?

I can answer with another question: do you know any other job where people work for free to get some experience?

I can find it acceptable that if you have no experience, your salary should be lower than an experienced worker´s. But… working for free? If you have to do that, choose another job.

You can find many alternatives:

• You can work for an non-governmental organization.
• You can look for a job as a scholarship trainee.
• You can sell stock designs, sell tutorials or work like guest blogger.
• You can create your own blog and convert the traffic through advertising, while you promote your services.
• You can work for friends and relatives.
• You can work in personal projects or fictional clients.
• Websites such as Elance, where clients choose a designer according to their budget and their portfolio. It´s not a panacea, but at least there are some guarantees.
• You can offer your services in blogs, art communities and forums at a reasonable price.

There are only 3 rules:

1. Your salary (even if it´s not much) must be guaranteed.
2. Your prior objective is to learn, both in commercial and technical levels.
3. Making a good portfolio which contains quality work is the key of your future.

But, let´s suppose that the payment would be guaranteed in this contests. As we already commented in my previous post about 99designs, there are still many obstacles:

• Unidirectional communication: the client speaks and the designer executes.
• Communication is also poor: there´s not a good brief and feedback is limited and poor.
• Revisions are cumulative, that means the project evolves basing on other designers´ entries, which can make you "inspire" in other people´s work.

Are you really learning good habits? The only positive thing I can extract from this is that you will have known the hell of labour market, and you´ll become stronger… If you survive. But I think this is an unnecessary evil, discouraging and not useful… even counterproductive, because of the bad habits you would acquire.

2.- Need to work?

Ok, in these sites there are plenty of clients, some of them with acceptable budgets. But your salary is not guaranteed, there are hundreds of direct competitors (some of them without any moral principles) and the system doesn´t enable good quality results.

It´s like selling low quality fruit in a low quality macro-fruit-shop… I think it would be more intelligent to set up your own store far from that other one, and focus on the quality of your products. I mean, dont´you think it would be more intelligent to create a good quality portfolio and promote it yourself? If you´re a good professional and you offer good products, in a short time clients will knock on your door. Then you´ll be independent and you will set the rules of the game.

Otherwise, you´ll keep selling low quality fruit for your lifetime, you will depend on intermediaries and you will have the competence in your own home.

3.- Want quick and easy money?

Wow! 1.000US$ for a logotype I can make in 10 minutes!!!

Sorry my friend, you´ve chosen the wrong profession. In desinging, there´s nothing quick or easy. If you really want to have success you have to think in long term. You must improve your product and your service, you must promote your work, you must be a professional and then your work will be profitable, you´ll be able to choose who do you want to work for, and you will really enjoy your job.

Ok, let´s suppose you want quick and easy money. Is it really quick an easy? There are hundreds of designers and hundreds (even thousands) of entries. The chances of winning, even if your entry is the best one, are quite bad. Firstly, because of simple statistics, and secondly, because the client have the possibility, with a legitimate intention or not, of retiring his money and then there would be no winner of the contest.

Let´s pick the last 3 contest winners on 99designs.com and let´s check his conversion percentage:

Adisign09, Okydelarocha and Lene conversion rate. At best case the was paid 1 out of 10 projects, at worst case 1 out 50.

4.- Who is the one who loses out?

Crowdsourcing puts quantity before quality, they don´t promote clients´ education in design methodology. They think designers don´t deserve the guarantee of being paid. They offer low quality proposals, even when the clients have an acceptable budget… Designers without any methodology, not involved in the making of the brief, unfair competition, "free pitching" on principle, "quick" and "easy" money… The get-rich-quick culture.

The client loses, the designer loses… Who takes advantage then? As always, the intermediary, the organizer who earns his comission. Considering that 99designs generated last month 715.000US$, and they obtained a 15% benefits (forgetting the extra 39US$ for each registration), their income of the last month reaches the not inconsiderable ammount of 107.000US$.

Do you really think this is beneficial to your career? Do you think it´s beneficial to the client? Think about it, do you really want to promote these values?

5.- Is it unethical, immoral or something?

I have to admit that I don´t turn to designers code of ethics very often. I´m not a fudamentalist in any aspects of my life. My decisions are based on common sense. But it is always good to have a frame of reference and I agree 100% with its contents.

Let´s see what the AGDA code of Ethic says about contests:

• AGDA discourages members from predatory pricing practices such as free pitching, loss leading and other pricing below break-even. Members should be aware that such practices will damage the economic viability of their business.
• AGDA is unequivocally opposed to the unfair manipulation of designers with the aim of garnering unpaid work (commonly known as ‘free pitching’). Client practices which do damage to a member’s business are those that award projects or commissions on the basis of the commissioner’s acceptance of unpaid design submissions (eg. unpaid competitive tendering or speculative work).
• A Member shall not take part in any design competition if the terms of the competition are not approved by AGDA. AGDA bases its assessments on the International Competition Guidelines published by ICOGRADA (International Council of Graphic Design Associations). A Member or organiser of a competition can contact AGDA to review a competition’s terms and provide recommendations and/or approval.

This said, crowdsourcing websites break all ethical principles of our profession once and again. They buy designers´ ethics with promises of "easy" money. They sell lots and lots of low quality "fruit" to the clients. And in the meantime, they are filling their pockets at the expense of your dreams.

Please, share this post in your social profiles.

Something´s changing in the design industry. My clients demand +900 revisions for each logotype, I work blindly because I don´t obtain the information I need from them, the client changes his mind every second, my competitors are available to work for half of my prices, competition is unfair, and sometimes I don´t even get paid…

Hopefully this is not my case but it´s not a fiction either. It´s the situation of everyone who works through intermediaries, such as 99designs.com and the likes. Web pages where the client posts the requirements of his project and a pack of unemployed designers compete, sometimes loyally, against his colleagues until degrading limits.

Sorry for revealing my position at the very beginning of the post, let´s better make this way: let´s choose a random case and let´s analize the numbers. This one for example: The first proyect you can currently find in 99designs.com. I think it´s a quite representative case.

The facts (at the moment of writing this post)

1. Budget: 1,189US$ (1,000US$ + 99designs.com commission 39US$ + 15% of the prize)
2. Number of entries: 837
3. Number of designers: 164
4. The contest started 9 days ago and lasted for a week. There are 2 days left for the contest to finish. 2 weeks total.
5. Status: caution, payment not guaranteed.
6. Briefing:
   • Logotype design for Conway Wealth Group, the company seems to be some kind of financial analyst.
   • It must be elegant, crisp, good looking.
   • Preferably blue color.
   • It must contain a symbol that means whealth.
   • Aimed to company managers and executives within Fortune 500.

My Opinion

1. If you need 837 proposals to design your logotype, that means something´s wrong.
2. If you need 164 designers to design your logotype, that means something´s wrong.
3. Let´s make some numbers to realise how ridiculous the situation is: 6.10US$/designer and 1.20US$/entry
4. How long do the client spend watching, commenting and rating 837 entries from 164 different designers?
5. There is no lack of time (at least 2 weeks) or budget (around 1,200US$) to create a quality proposal.
6. The fact that the client extends the competition period means something´s wrong.
7. The fact that the contestants are accusing each others of plagiarism means that the system is not the ideal. Let´s see the comments:
   • 14 comments
   • 7 hidden comments
   • 3 accusations of plagiarism
   • 0 answers from the client
8. If you can understand the needs of the client from that briefing… then you better dedicate to clairvoyance, it´s much more profitable.
9. If the client didn´t say a word after 837 proposals, that means something´s wrong.

Results

These are the 3 entries which have obtained a better feedback from 837, for a logotype that will cost near 1,200US$.

Conclusions

On one hand, we have 164 designers, with 837 entries (and there are still 2 days left), with a non guaranteed prize, an incomplete briefing, a client that doesn´t respond to the proposals and constant complaining of plagiarism from the contestants. If we´d share the prize, each designer would receive just about 6US$. At least 163 designers (maybe all of them) won´t get a dime for his work.

Do you consider this aceptable?

On the other hand, we have a client who has a more than reasonable budget of near 1,200US$ and a deadline of two weeks. And if everything goes as expected, he will obtain a pretty mediocre logotype.

Does the client obtain a service according with the ammount he pays?

And in the middle we find the intermediary, 99designs.com, who will get near 200US$. Considering that this web generated last month 715,000US$, and they obtained a 15% benefits (forgetting the extra 39US$ for each registration), their income of the last month reaches the not inconsiderable ammount of 107,000US$.

UPDATE 16 March 2011: 99designs tried to censor this post due to an inexistent copyright infringement. This post is a product review and fit within the Fair Use doctrine. The contest object of review is now private, I bet my review went further than I predicted.

Please, share this post in your social profiles.

Today we have a post with some questions from the blog users: about copyright, confidentiality, how to improve our drawing skills and how to learn to design web pages.

So let´s go!

I’m in a rap band and I’ve designed a logo for it. And my doubt is whether I should register my design or not, just in case I could have any problems in the future.

Law (in Spain) protects the artwork since its creation. Registry is not necessary, although it’s good evidence that you’re the author of the artwork.

The best choice would be to go to a copyright registry office, as far as I know it’s not very expensive.
But be careful, registering the design and registering the brand is not the same, the registry of a brand is much more expensive. Moreover, the name could be already registered, or be very similar to some registered brand in the same sector.

There are some companies dedicated to advise their clients in this area, although you probably don’t need them by now.

My client ask me to sign a NDA (non-disclosure agreement). It´s fair? Do you have any contract you can share?

I state in my terms of service page I don’t offer confidentiality by default (5th point) since my portfolio is my only marketing tool to promote my services. If somebdoy ask me to sign a NDA I charge a fee, it varies from 0-100% the standard quote depending on my workload, if I’m extremely busy I charge 100%, if I have no work in that moment I negotiate with the client and I even could accept it with no extra charge.

The client should ask the NDA upfront since the quote can vary, but sometimes he does when the order is already finished, then I just redirect him to my terms of service page. I always charge 50% of the order upfront, so the client has 3 choices:

1. He pays the fee: I sign the NDA and deliver the files.
2. He doesn’t pay the fee but he pays the remaining payment: I don´t sign the NDA but I deliver the designs.
3. He doesn’t pay the fee and doesn´t pay the remaining payment: I warm him he would loses the design and the down payment, I keep the files to sell it as stock images or for personal projects, I never resell the designs as custom work.

This is not set in stone, if he’s a good client and he’s easy going you can make exceptions, but you need to cover yourself for worst case scenario.

A confidentiality contract and a copyright transfer, are they both the same thing?

No, they aren’t, a NDA is a document for confidentiality while a transfer of rights contract is a document where you agree it´s a work by hire and the client owns all rights about your designs, though a contract can include both of them.

While I don´t offer confidentiality by default, I always transfer all rights to the client, whenever a client ask a contract I provide it.

You can download some contracts here.

How can I learn to give expression to my characters? I usually draw them all with a psychopath face.

I’m afraid there are no magic tricks to improve your drawing skills, just practice, lots of practice… and lots of observation.

I have a file of facial and corporal expressions, and photographs and images from other artists as well. At first I used to copy a lot, with some time you’ll create your own style.

My advice is to search different sources so your style can be as rich as possible.

I’ve read your tutorial about creating a web page. It has made some things clear for me but, how did you begin? Did you use any tutorial in particular?

I’m afraid it’s not that easy, but you can make it with some patience.

1. Create a portfolio in some online community, Deviantart for example. This way you have something to show and you can make yourself a name. Besides, there is an area to create a portfolio independent from the community. It’s not perfect but suitable for a start.
2. Learn to use Dreamweaver, it’s a good program, very easy to use and you can design web pages visually. It’s not the ideal but a good training for the next step.
3. When you’ve get to have a good command of Dreamweaver, you’ll have basics of HTML. Try to improve and understand the meaning of each tag. You can continue using Dreamweaver or just the Notepad.
4. Learn CSS to separate content from presentation. It’s a simple language, the main inconvenience is to manage to make your web look the same in the different browsers (cross browsing).
5. Learn about usability, study the trends and practise a lot.
6. The next step would be to study PHP and MYSQL to add functionality to your web.
7. If you want to go further, you can learn Rubi, Ajax, Javascript…

If you enjoyed this post, please tweet it!!!

It can cost us up to 3.4% out of the money we receive depending on the country where you live, plus a 2.5% to convert the money to your local currency, so you might end up paying 600US$ for every 10.000US$ you get.

Pieces of advice to save money with PayPal

• Use a personal account instead of a professional one; they don’t have fees, but they have lots of limitations when it comes to move the money.
• Withdraw your money when the US$ is strong.
• Send your payments as a personal transaction instead of doing it as a purchase; you will pay a few cents, but the recipient will not pay anything.
• Send your payments using the mass pay option; you will pay up to 1US$ tops, but the recipient will get it for free.
• Use the cheapest online banking (see below).
• Check your monthly volume to access better fees:

Money Bookers

Advantages:

• It reaches some countries that PayPal doesn’t.
• It is very inexpensive:
  • Send money costs a maximum of 0.75US$.
  • Receiving money is free.
  • Withdrawing money costs a maximum of 5.24US$.
  • The money conversion into your local currency costs 2%.

Disadvantages:

• It is not well known, needless to say that imposing an unknown form of payment to your customers is like giving them a good reason to hire someone else, to delay the order or to never call us again.
• They say they offer support in almost any language, but it is limited to their web, customer support uses English only.

Epassporte

Advantages:

• They offer you a virtual Visa credit card (to be used online only) for free.
• It is pretty know for transactions with adult content.
• It is very inexpensive:
  • To send money costs between 0.3 -1 US$ per transaction.
  • Receiving money is free.
  • Withdrawing money costs 3US$ for US residents and 50US$ for Europeans.

Disadvantages:

• This system is not well known.
• Their website is very confusing and difficult to navigate.
• Their customer service is bad.
• To transfer your money to European accounts you have to pay 50US$, also you have to request the transfer to be done in your name, which often takes a long time (last time it took a month).

Western Union

Advantages:

• It is less expensive than PayPal.
• It reaches lots of countries in which PayPal doesn’t.

Disadvantages:

• It is not as instantaneous as the rest of the online forms of payment.
• It is more expensive than Money Bookers and Epassporte.
• You have to personally go to their offices, wait in line and fill out forms. We have the online option, but it is a lot more expensive.

Fighting the US$ devaluation

Workers outside the United States have an additional problem that is the devaluation of the dollar, currency in which most online transactions are done.

The ideal would be to be able to withdraw our US$ from PayPal, Money Bookers or any other system you use, into a local bank account and wait until it revaluates. That way we have our money secure and in hand in case we need it, but I’m afraid it doesn’t matter which system you use; you will not be able to withdraw your money in a currency other than your country’s currency.

So, either you:

• Spend your US$ in US shops.
• Keep your US$ in your virtual bank until the US$ revaluates, which might take months, even years.
• Withdraw your US$ into your local bank, subsequently loosing money.
• Create a new bank account in the USA, where you will transfer your US$, which is not very practical and might not even be possible.

None of these alternatives are good, but we have another option which we’ll see next.

Multicurrency Bank Accounts

The only way to keep your US$ in a bank account outside the USA is by opening a multicurrency account in our local bank. Actually, it is two linked bank accounts, one in US$ and the other one in your country’s currency, and they work like any other bank account.

Advantages

• They are usually very inexpensive, they only charge a fee to receive the money, which usually is less than 10US$ (check with your local bank).
• You have the security and all the guarantees of having the money in a local bank.
• You can keep your US dollars until they revaluate.
• You can instantaneously convert them to Euros whenever you need them.

Disadvantages:

• International transfers may take 3 – 4 days.
• You need much more information to be able to make a transfer.

Conclusion

The best you can do is to get familiar with each one of the payment systems mentioned above, and offer several options to your customers, organized by preference; in my case it would be like this:

• My first option would be a transfer in US$ to my multicurrency bank account.
• If the customer is in a hurry or the amount is very small, I would offer the Money Bookers option.
• In case that the customer doesn’t have an account with Money Bookers and if I see that the order could be in danger, then I would offer PayPal.
• In case that PayPal is not available in their country, I would use Western Union.
• I would only use Epassporte to receive payments from work with adult content.

So now we are going to start this new section

I’ll start with Evangelina’s case, beautiful name by the way. Eva is argentine but resides in the USA and wants to dedicate herself to the world of illustration, but she has lots of doubts and prejudices that I’ll try to clear out; at least orient her to walk her first steps. Here are the most interesting parts of that email:

I live in USA (I’m from Argentina) and I have wrote to many people with my heart in my hands, but not one of those people have found it in their hearts the willingness to help me. I think it is because they fear that I’ll get really good and that I might “steal” their customers if they told me their “secret recipe”, but…

Let’s start with the good news, you live in the USA; this will give you lots of opportunities that you wouldn’t have in Argentina; you are also optimistic and you really want to make progress. So you speak English and you’re eager, congratulations! You have the minimum requisites to start this difficult career.

Now the bad news

It’s not good to expect any help from people, don’t take me wrong, there will be lots of people who will be willing to help you altruistically, but that’s not the norm; it’s due to lack of time or energy rather than because they are evil. That’s why you have to keep in mind that every single triumph or failure you get will depend 99% in you, outside help is always welcome, but don’t count on it.

Forget about “secret recipes”, nobody will teach them to you because they simply don’t exist. The secret recipe is HARD WORK during a long period of time, applied to multiple fields: marketing, interpersonal communication, technical and practical knowledge… Also keep in mind that what has value for me might not have any value for your; you will have to find your own path.

This is a nice digital painting by Evangelina.

I am a completely “new” newbie. And I would like to start working as a freelancer. I have skills (no degree, though)…

Before venturing into freelance, I would recommend that you try to work for a design agency first; take it as a contact-making experience. I personally worked part time (4 hours a day) for 6 months at a local agency; the salary was really bad and those were the worst months of my working life, but working there cleared out lots of questions and I learnt a lot.

You don’t necessarily need to have formal training to be good at what you do; it might be harder that way, so you need to compensate your lack of formal training with willingness and a great portfolio. I recommend that you read a post I recently wrote about the advantages of self training vs. formal.

… but I believe I can create quality art.

This is your main weakness, design has an artistic aspect in it, but it’s not art; it has a function, its rules and a specific goal, while art doesn’t. Clients don’t pay you to recreate YOUR vision of the world; they pay you to recreate THEIR vision of the world for a targeted audience.

In other words, the artist creates without restrictions; the designer or illustrator on request has to adhere to some rules. So:

• Do you want to be an artist or you want to design/illustrate on request?
• Do you want to be economically stable and create with restrictions, or unstable (at least until you reach to the top), but with the ability to create freely?

If you want to be an artist I’m afraid I can’t help you; if you want to work by request, then keep reading

Very nice, but does it have a market?.

I plan to do lots of things, but I have to prepare my website and my portfolio first, I haven’t done it yet.

Having a plan is the first goal, so write down a list of tasks, organize them by priority level and get them done.

Like I said on the previous point you are confusing concepts, your portfolio is very artistic, there is no commercial intention, so you are going to have to radically change the direction of your work. A few pieces of advice to shift your portfolio to possible clients:

1. Work at least 8 hours a day until you reach a quality product. If you don’t have a quality product then nobody will buy it.
2. You already have a portfolio on Deviantart. The next step is to publish your own website.
3. Choose your strength and look for its possible commercial use. If your strengths are landscapes, then instead of making traditionalist paintings, why don’t you get into the world of video games or films as concept artist? If you like portraits, why don’t you make caricatures on request?
4. Discover reference artists inside your field and study them. What makes them different? Why are they so good? What kind of portfolio do they have? Who does it target? Try to discover their marketing plan.
5. Make a list of potential clients and put yourself in their shoes. If you were a client, what kind of portfolio would you like to see? What type of work pieces would you be interested in?
6. Don’t forget about the minimum requisites to work on the internet: English, PayPal and lots of promotion.
7. Keep working at least 8 hours a day until you reach a quality product. If you don’t have a quality product then nobody will buy it.

What if a potential customer sees my portfolio and likes it? They call me and ask me, “What are your rates? How much would you charge us?” … What should my answer be? Probably what is preventing me from making any money right now is the fear of not knowing what to say to a potential customer.

Think about the fact that every single one of us have gone through this and we have learnt from our mistakes; believe in yourself even when things go wrong, think that you have just discovered a way of NOT doing things, if you make mistakes lots of times, then you will have a beautiful catalog of mistakes that you shouldn’t repeat.

Be honest, tell the customer that you don’t have the experience but you are eager to do the right thing, ask them how much they are willing to invest.
Be realistic and don’t expect to get paid a fortune, sometimes they might not even pay you, take it as a semi-paid training session. With time, if you do things right, you will get paid according to your skill.

Concept artist Feng Zhu. This have a market.

I have done my research online to see how other people do it, but most artists don’t advertise their rates; they encourage their audience to contact them by e-mail or phone!

Designers with a lot of demand don’t usually publish their rates because it minimizes their negotiation margins. They calculate their overhead, based on their clients’ capacity and their needs; I recommend that you read this post about the pros and cons of publishing your rates. Needless to say that to reach this level you still have a long way to go, don’t worry too much about that for now.

A few final considerations

Well Eva, first of all thank you for allowing me to share your worries, I’m sure that you have helped lots of people. I hope I haven’t been too hard on you and that my words have been helpful to you, if you have any doubts just leave me a comment.

Finally, I would like to encourage you to keep working, it won’t be easy, there will be moments in which you will feel like crying, you will get disappointed or depressed and you will think that you are going nowhere … but don’t ever stop, keep going with passion and energy, because finding your path is just a matter of time. One day you’ll go to sleep with a smile on your face and you will understand that you are living your dream.

And when you get famous, don’t forget about us
Cheers!!!

How about you, are you also lost?

If you are a newbie designer and have doubts, contact me and I’ll do my best to clear them out for you; I’ll publish the most interesting emails in this section.

Imagine you earn 100US$ a month, this would sum 1.200US$ a year… Enough to buy a good new computer.

Advantages of selling stock resources?

1. You can make some passive income, this means you work once to create the resource and you sell it very cheap, but forever.
2. It´s a social network, so you can meet other designers. And other designers will use your designs. This facts can help you to make yourself a name.
3. It´s a market test. Looking at the sales, you can check which product or style has the most success.

Disadvantages of selling stock resources?

1. As a designer working by order, I had some doubts about this kind of business. Maybe it could impoverish the industry, maybe it could be counterproductive for my business.
2. You´re letting your resources at the reach of the competence.
3. Your clients can choose stock images instead of works made by order. In my case I´d have to sell 300 times each design to match the income provided for a single design made by order.

Where to sell your designs?

My prefered place is from the Envato network, creator of such great webs as PSDTuts, Vectortuts, AETuts, Nettuts… and owner of some marketplaces:

• Graphic River online marketplace for graphic resources.
• ActiveDen marketplace for Flash developers
• Theme Forest html templates, WordPress, Joomla, Flash Sites
  PSD Templates, Javascript, PHP Scripts…
• Video Hibe video resources.
• Audio Jungle same for audio.

How does it works?

You simply have to create an account, fill in a test (quite simple) to demonstrate you´ve understood the terms of use of the web and you´re ready to upload your graphics.

The web itselft sets the prices, quite affordable, and negotiates the whole process.

How much can you earn?

If you sell your graphics exclusively in Graphic River you´ll get 40% of the sales, which is quite a good percentage comparing with other similar webs. If you sell your resources in other sites as well, then you get 20% of the sales.

This web hasn´t been working for a long time, but seems to be as effective as the other ones in the net; for example Flash Den, where some users have earned thousands of dollars selling their resources in Flash.

There is a referral program too, after you create your user you are provided with links like this: http://videohive.net?ref=SOSFactory. Whenever somebody click on it and deposit some money I would get a percent of it.

My advise

As a marginal business I think it´s not a bad idea for designers. You can make some easy money, but be careful not to share your best weapons.

I´d sell old works, designs you don´t use anymore, failed orders or made in your free time, experiments… and I would keep the high quality ones for my own clients.

Patchmatch

We isolate the bird, set the structural guides and Patchmatch do the rest. This new application is really powefull, anybody can do basic photo manipulation with just a few clicks. I strongly suggest you watch this video, you won´t stop drooling:

New brushes and Wrap tool

Photoshop CS 5 have a new brush system similar to Painter where you can visualize the brush and mix the colors in a physical way. We can use wet brushes so we will be able to get more organic renderings.

This is the new Wrap Tool, just set your pivot points and can manipulate the image easily.

That is it for now, I will keep you updated!