Another issue can be location: even if a company has a need for one or more full-time designers, they may find none exist within their area that fit their needs.

And then even if you decide to staff internally there are costs to be considered — the fully loaded cost of one employee goes far beyond the wage or salary that is paid to that person when all factors are figured in such as benefits, insurance, IT costs, etc.

Other problems arise when a business is seasonal or only occasional needs arise. Hard to justify keeping a full-time specialist on board that is really only needed during your August-November holiday push.  Even companies that have full staffs find they they are under or overstaffed almost as a rule during certain periods of the year or just for reasons that can never be factored into an annual plan.

As a creative director for a large international company I always found many of these things to be true even though we had a creative staff of 20+ people spread between print media and online properties. Sometimes it was enough, sometimes lacking, sometimes there just was not enough going on to keep everyone occupied.

What You Can Do

1.  Use creative staffing agencies.  Aquent and The Creative Group are very good and I used them often to fill these needs. The downside is that the markup on staff wages is often huge since you are paying for the convenience of having workers at the drop of a hat that can be gone the next week. You can also hire the people on full-time if you like them but there is always a large acquisition fee that makes it usually more expensive than hiring off the street. The biggest upside is that you are protected and usually guaranteed of getting someone at least competent and work with an agent who can match you with the right person(s).

2.  Post jobs on job sites.  Sometimes risky and sometimes great. You really never know what you are going to get. I’ve had great experiences in the past and some pretty awful ones. And it’s really hard to tell from the work record, testing and feedback.  The biggest benefit is that the costs are usually very low, but in many ways you get what you paid for.

3.  Use an outside agency. And, of course, this is where someone like me comes in!

Crispee Grafix as YOUR Design Department

When I first went full-time on my own, my best clients were people from the outside world who were familiar with me and wanted to work with me and had high-end needs, but low-end staffing capabilities, budgets or work available. Sometimes they also want someone with my background and experience in their industries and simply could not find anyone nearby who fits the bill.  I handle their ads, banners, programs, catalogs, brochures, business cards, other collateral and more.

And the truth is — most agencies do not want to deal with this kind of stuff, but I find that having an ongoing relationship with a client is sometimes more rewarding than a “one-and-done” type of project where you never speak again.

I use Basecamp with most clients but it really comes into play for ongoing design clients as it allows them to add projects, due dates, milestones, files, copy and more to a project and it gets inserted into my work calendar so that things don’t go awry. When a draft is done or files need to be sent I can upload them and all parties are notified that need to be. Every company gets their own space and private message and file area so we can keep everything on-time and organized (even if there’s tons of people that need to be looped in).

If this sounds like your situation then please feel free to reach out to me and see if this arrangement can work for you.

Help raise donations to the Red Cross with this WordPress plugin – Page.lyWordPress Hosting Blog | Page.ly.

This is the site to promote the app linked from the Apple App Store.

Their new app especially for iPad shows off all the myriad uses of the device – and helps tap into the fascination by getting people excited about giving way their email address! I can see it being a great use at trade shows, stores, restaurants and more. I would suggest locking down the iPad so it doesn’t find a new owner though.

MailChimp’s iPad App, Chimpadeedoo, is live

That numeral shows how many plugins are out of date.

This is a problem, but usually not the thing that is going to cause the site to not function or function better after updating. Most plugin updates are fairly minor but some are very important.

WordPress updates however should be done either immediately if it is an dot.dot release or wait a week or so if it is a major release (or wait for the .1 increment to come out.)  The increments are usually bug fixes or security patches. Look at the release notes or the blog post in your dashboard.