FiftyThree.

I constantly look back at work I did even a month ago and feel like it is subpar compared to whatever I am currently working on. Sometimes it even makes me feel bad for the client. I think to myself;

“How on earth did they OK that design?!”

It is this feeling that makes me question if I should not show some of my past work in my portfolio. On one hand I feel like I shouldn’t show any work that I am not proud of or isn’t my best work. The problem with that logic is, that at the time I made those designs it was my best work.

So, should I assume that potential clients can see and appreciate the progress of my design skills? Or will they just see the older designs as a poor reflection of my skills?

This is where the other hand comes in and makes me think I should post almost everything that I have ever done.

I guess there is no right or wrong solution here. It is really what you feel most comfortable doing. My solution is to do a little of both. On my new portfolio site I will be showcasing about half a dozen of my own personal favorite projects. I will then have a past project archive page where people can view work chronologically if they want to see some more work.

This way they can see what I feel is my best work up front, but can also see that I have done a lot of work over the years.

What is your take on this?

We all know that slick interface designs are pretty to look at. Personally, I ogle over them like the centerfold in a mens magazine. Is that weird? The more sleek and intuitive the design, the more I am drawn to it. Obviously, one of the results of good interface design is usability. Give me an app that looks pretty and works the way I expect it to and I am sold. Where do I pay?

I’m sure none of you will argue with the general statements above. Well, maybe the one about the mens magazines, but you know what I mean. So we all enjoy applications that work intuitively and and look pretty, but how important is good interface design to the overall succes of an application?

I say very.

I don’t just think that good interface design is important just from a usability point of view. I think it is important from a marketing and business point of view as well. It seems to me that your application ( assuming you make multiple ones ) should be an extension of your brand. I should be able to look at an apps interface and know who designed it. Obviously the general public (i.e. non designers/developers) may not be able to do this, but that doesn’t mean its not important. If you want a good example of companies that do just this, check out:

• Meta Labs
• Tapbots

One thing that I think that many app developers underestimate is the value of a good looking design. Just because the application is usable, doesn’t mean that it looks good. I have played with ( and lost interest in ) plenty of apps that worked well usability wise, but just were not pretty. Maybe I’m a design snob, but an app is so much more fun to use when it looks pretty. I am not the only one who feels this way, which is why application developers need to pay more attention to the design process. I can’t tell you how many times I have bought an iPhone app just because it looked pretty. I have at least a dozen apps that I almost never use, but bought because they look pretty.

What do you guys think about this?

I try so hard to stay organized on a daily basis. Keeping all my ducks in a row is what allows me to juggle way more projects than the typical freelancer. Despite all my efforts to keep my inbox clean, schedule calls ahead of time, run everything through my project management app, and other organizational methods; it seems like it can go to shit in a heart beat.

For me, this is usually the result of a client who refuses to use Basecamp once the project has been started. What happens next is like a monsoon in my inbox. Emails containing comments, feedback, files, copy, and other related materials come pouring in at an alarming rate. While some freelancers are used to organizing this way, I am not and it tends to throw off my whole system. Slowly my ducks are beginning to get out of line.

How Do You Stay Organized?

I’d like to hear your comments on how you keep your freelance work organized in a day to day manner. Any sort of tips and advice you can share would be great. Those of you that provide some of the best details I will contact directly for a follow up. Assuming there is enough participation on this post, expect a follow up in the next week or two with some more in depth information from your peers!

This is one of my shorter vidcasts, but an important one none the less. As your business grows and you start working with bigger companies, they are going to expect more from you than just a few emails and a contract. One essential element bigger clients expect is a formal proposal. If you have never written one of these, it can be a bit intimidating.

Waiting until you have a big name client ask for a proposal is a bad time write your first proposal.

Do yourself a favor and write a few practice ones first. Writing these practice proposals is a great way to learn what is expected in a proposal, feel more comfortable writing them, and maybe even get a job or two.

Writing these first few practice proposals will be time consuming, I can promise you that it will be well worth it. Not only will this skill help you land bigger clients, but it will probably help you land smaller clients too. Think about it, if you are after a small $2,000 job and you submit the client a well written, formal proposal, and all the other applicants just send in an email; who do you think the client will pick?

Just some thoughts I had today. What do you think?

This is one of my longer videos, so i will let it do most of the talking. No reason to bore you with a long video and a long post!

I’ll be honest, until recently, I knew very little about what I should be doing as far as bookkeeping, banking, and taxes go as a freelancer. I think it is safe to say that many freelancers feel this way. If you don’t, then you are a rare breed of super freelancer. Over the last few weeks however, I sought out to find an affordable and helpful CPA t help me get books in order.

In a 15 minute conversation with my CPA, I learned more than I had in 10 years of self study on the topic.

If you think hiring a CPA is to expensive, let me just say that its not. On top of that, it is money VERY WELL spent. Most CPA’s that specialize in working with small businesses and freelancers generally charge $50 to $75 a month for book keeping. Payroll services can usually be added for an additional $50 to $75.

If you have any questions about money and freelancing, I strongly encourage you to watch this video and seek out a local CPA in your area.

A few weeks ago I was lucky enough to listen to @CarlSmith talk at a local design group meet up I attended. If you aren’t familiar with Carl, he works at wicked cool company called nGen Works and is the mastermind behind Happy Webbies. But, enough about that guy…

Being the big usability expert that he is, he constantly mentioned getting feedback from his “pool of people” on various topics. He would poll the audience, so to speak, to see what the majority of people thought about a company name, a usability feature, layout, etc.

What an awesome idea I thought!

Now I can have a way to prove clients wrong when they are being idiots!

Ok, so there’s more to it than that, but that is certainly a perk. Whats great about this idea is that’s free to do and can do wonders for your work. Find as many people who are willing to give you feedback from time to time and add them to a list. Don’t just limit yourself to the design community though. In fact, the more your each outside of the community the better. It seems that a more diverse list of people from different backgrounds, ages, and internet skills would really improve the quality of feedback you get.

So, that’s it in a nutshell, watch the video for more details and share your comments below!

Last week I talked a little bit about the importance of joining social media design sites like Behance and such. This got me thinking abut how to decide what work to put up on these sites. After all, if the point in joining these sort of sites is to get more work, it only makes sense that you should only post your best work on them.

That seems easy enough.

But, if you are anything like me, you constantly seem less than impressed by work you have done in the past. I’m always improving my skills as a designer, so I tend to look at my older work as sub par. No matter how good I may have thought the design was at the time, in retrospect I hate it.

That isn’t to say its a bad design now, I just seem to see all the flaws in it and how better it could be if I were to redesign the site today. So, how do you get over this dilemma?

The first place to start is just post what you think is the best of your worse work. The other is to poll random people or fellow designers. By polling non-creative types you can get a sense of what work of yours potential customers may be impressed with. By asking fellow designers, you are getting creative feedback that could help you improve your skills over time. Getting feedback from designers who you respect can really help you step up your game and become a better designer.

Portfolio Review Resources

Sometimes it is a lot harder than one might think to get feedback on their design. Lucky for us, in this digital age, there are a number of sites that can provide you with feedback on your design. It is important to note that you should take any feedback you get on your design on these sites with a grain of salt. There is no telling the skill level of a person based on their feedback. I mean, do you really want to take the advice of someone who designs things in MS Paint? Ok, maybe that’s a stretch, but you get the idea.

Concept Feedback
Concept Feedback is a nice site that practically guarantees you will receive feedback on your design within a day or two of posting. It’s a great place to hear what other creatives think about your work.

Design Critique
Uses Twitter as a tool to get reviews for your site or design. Seems ok, but reviews are limited to 145 characters.

Feedback Army
This website cost money, but is pretty affordable. It is more based on usability, but seeing as how usability and good design go hand and hand, it seems like the site could be worthwhile.

How to Self Review

If for whatever reason you don’t want a public review of your portfolio or just can’t get any decent feedback, don’t fret. Self evaluation of your portfolio isn’t terribly complicated. I usually just ask myself a few questions when deciding what work to publish in my portfolio and online networks.

1. Does this design showcase my skills? – Ok, this one is kind of a given, but it’s still important. Don’t just add stuff to your portfolio for the sake of filling it up. Less is more in this case. It seems to me that 3 amazing designs are far better than 10+ sub-par designs.

2. What does the live version of this site look like? – Double check that your clients are still using your theme or that they haven’t broke it. If a would be client visits a site in your portfolio and its all jacked up thanks to your idiot client, it could reflect badly on you.

3. Is this a big name client? – A big name client can do wonders for your portfolio. Even if it’s a sub-par design, most people will overlook that aspect and just be impressed that so and so thought you were good enough to work with.

4. Do I want more work like this? – I think it is important to show off websites you enjoyed working on. For one, this will show through in the design. Second, it could lead to more similar work. Why not try to get jobs you actually like?

5. Does this design need explanation? – Sometimes a design can just need an explanation. Not because its a bad design, but some circumstances just call for it. These sort of designs probably aren’t the best ones to add to your portfolio.

I’m all about customer service. I have kind of taken on the Zappos philosophy when it comes to that area. I constantly go above an beyond to help my customers out. Rather than just give them design advice, I also help them with their business and marketing for free. I’m around to answer any of their questions five days a week and sometimes on the weekends. I make small changes to the site for free and a lot of other things that I could easily charge for.

Normally this isn’t a problem. But, it got me thinking, where does this sort of customer service stop?

Obviously major design and development things are going to cost the client extra. I guess more of what I am questioning is the back and forth changes? The little things that add up fast and make me feel like I’m being taken advantage of.

If, like me, you do all these sort of little things for free, when do you say that you will have to start charging for them? Better yet, how do you explain to your client that you’ll have to start charging them for it after doing it for free for so long?

Obviously you can setup guidelines in the contract, but I don’t like being restricted like that. I guess it’s just a slippery slope either way you look at it if you want to do business this way. That said, I have found that by doing business this way I have been getting a lot more repeat work from clients. Even before I finish one project for them They ask me to start on another one for them.

So, I guess there is something to be said about this business model.

My buddies over at 45 Royale worked on a project called Screenr. Basiclly, Screenr is a online screencasting tool that allows you to sign up with just your Twitter account. You can then create five minute long screencasts and share them on Twitter or just use the permalink created to share with others.

I’ll admit, at first I wasn’t very impressed with Screenr. Not because it wasn’t usable or functional, but because I didn’t really see the point in creating screencasts to share on Twitter.

My love for screencasting came one day when I had a client who was new to WordPress and wasn’t very internet savvy. After a handful of support calls that were very basic WordPress functions, I decided to create a simple screen cast for the client. The screencast walked the client through how to use the theme specific features as well as some basic WordPress functions.

I have not had a support request from that client since then.

Normally I used to walk clients through how the theme worked over the phone. They would write notes and learn how things worked. No doubt they would forget much of what we went over on the phone as soon as we hung up. The beauty of these screencasts is that they have them to view any time. So, if a month after they have tweeked their theme they decide they want to change something; rather than call me, they can check the screencast first.

I also use these screencasts to talk to my developers and explain to them how I think the theme should work or what some parts of the design may be. I’ll share one of these videos below in case you are interested in seeing it.