Goal Planning: Is There Life After Freelance?

A goal without a plan is just a wish. ~Antoine de Saint-Exupery

You might have noticed it already, but I really enjoy living the freelance life.  The freedom and the flexibility that I now have allows me to look at things differently.  I may not have the security that comes from… read more

On the Concept of Process

I’m going to start this discussion of by revealing a secret about my own design work: I don’t have a process. At least, I don’t have a rock solid, time tested step by step formula that I follow for all my projects. That’s not to say that I shoot from… read more

15 Essential Back to School Podcasts

Alexander Hotz is a freelance multimedia journalist and public radio junkie based in New York City. Currently he teaches digital media at Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism. Follow Alex on Twitter at @hotzington.

With another long hot American summer coming to a close, many students are scrambling to get back… read more

Blogging Basics for Designers: Choosing a Name and a Platform

Blogging Basics for Designers: Choosing a Name and a Platform

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Keeping Clients: Ongoing Clients & Agency Work

By definition, the word “freelancer” implies that you are self-employed take on several projects from multiple parties. Many freelancers find this sort of a glamorous life, but in a sense I have to argue against it. In fact, there’s not too much that is desirable about scraping for food. And… read more

Working For A Web Design Agency

The most obvious job for a web designer is working for a web design agency, but if you’ve never done that before… then how do you know what to expect? Is it even the right path for you?

Setting foot in an agency for the first time can be daunting. It’s… read more

20 Useful Free PDF ebooks for Designers and Bloggers

Over the years I have a saved a decent sized library of useful design and blogging related PDF ebooks, I love them. I have voraciously collected them, and all stored on my mobile for whenever the chance of quick read arises. In this post I would like to share my… read more

Working on Your Business, Not Just in It

Working on Your Business, Not Just in It

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10 Useful WordPress Plugin Recommendations Based on Personal Testing

10 Useful WordPress Plugin Recommendations Based on Personal Testing

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Review: Toodledo Task Manager

First, let me share a little secret with you.  I am a master procrastinator.  I always manage to get the job done, and often to the best of my abilities, but if I don’t have that looming deadline, sometimes time slips through my fingers.  I blame YouTube, Twitter, FreelanceSwitch, WorkAwesome,… read more

Finding Success Through Your Strengths

Finding Success Through Your Strengths

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Thank You Our Valued Sponsors For Being With Us In The Month Of August

This is a post in which we want to say a big Thank You to the SmashingApps’ fastest growing community for regularly visiting our blog. Do you want to be the first one to know the latest happenings at SmashingApps.com just subscribe to our rss feed and be the one… read more

How to Become a Pro Photographer: Part 1

Image by Romain Guy

As lovers of photography – we can all admit to dreaming of chucking in the day job and setting up shop as a professional photographer, but for many of us it can remain just that – a dream. But for those with the talent, support system and… read more

10 Requirements for Working with Clients in Other Countries

Freelancers are given the opportunity to work for either clients within their respective areas or clients coming from abroad. Personally, as a freelancer living in Asia, I’ve worked only with clients who run their businesses a hundred miles away such as those in the US, the UK, and Australia…. read more

Top Articles On The Web Design Billboard In August’10

A perfect layout, A Good Design and Nice Resource can produce a creative output. Layout, textures, typography and patterns are used more often than one may think but the outcome of different combination can result verity of excellent designs. Professionalism is built upon knowledge and experience. However, When it comes… read more

A Visual Explanation of 20 Logo Design Processes

A Visual Explanation of 20 Logo Design Processes

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How to Properly Format and Deliver a Logo

How to Properly Format and Deliver a Logo

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The Death of the Print-Only Freelance Designer

The Death of the Print-Only Freelance Designer

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Legal Agreements: Do You CYA?

As a freelancer, it’s sometimes easy to do a deal on a virtual handshake and feel confident that you know exactly what your client wants.  Usually, this is because they told you exactly what they “think” they want – but that’s a post for another day.  For the most part,… read more

What My Law Career Taught Me about Freelance Writing

When I was a practicing corporate lawyer and dreamed of getting into freelance writing, I didn’t think that the two worlds had much in common. Sure, I knew that both jobs required a good deal of reading, researching and writing. But apart from that fundamental skill set, I imagined… read more

70 Latest and Creative Logo Designs for Design Inspiration

A Logo is a graphical element that, together with its logotype (a uniquely set and arranged typeface) form a trademark or commercial brand. Typically, a logo’s design is for immediate recognition. The logo is one aspect of a company’s commercial brand, or economic or academic entity, and its shapes, colors,… read more

25 new business cards – Best of august 2010

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How to Make an Internet Web Page

Do you browse the internet often? Are you amazed at how many internet web pages there are in the world today? Don’t you wish you could get a piece of that action?

You’re probably thinking that in order to build an internet web page, you have to… read more

Super Stylish Posters by Protesto

There are all kinds of posters out there. B movies posters, gigs posters, and many others… and I truly dig a good poster design. Yesterday one of our readers, @henriquepetarli, suggested the work of Protesto.

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Protesto is the Brazilian designer Michel Diniz de Carvalho, who’s been living in Norway doing some… read more

Know When to Stop Talking

I think I experienced a new first for me in my life of freelancing.  I responded to a tweet looking for a copywriter to do some basic web copy.

I responded, and chatted with the client for a little bit, discussing his needs and my offerings.  Things were moving in the… read more

How CEOs Will Use Social Media in the Future

This series is supported by Gist. Gist provides a full view of the contacts in your professional network by creating a rich business profile for each one that includes the most news, status updates, and work details. See how it works here.

Today’s CEO is not social. So says Forrester… read more

Promoting Yourself To… GASP!… Live People!

By Speider Schneider

A friend of mine started an organization named “Creative Connect,” a twice a month get-together for anyone in the creative field. He said it was to, “get people away from their computers and to get them talking at least twice a month.” Mostly designers, programmers, illustrators and photographers… read more

Freelance Freedom #171: Client Philosophy

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Are You a Good Sport Freelancer?

Are You a Good Sport Freelancer?

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Linkswitch #33: Photo Manipulation, Investing, WordPress SEO

Why I Stick to Pen and Paper for Goals and Tasks

Technology is great…but I sure do like pen and paper – as I mentioned to one of our readers who asked me what I use to keep track of things. For one thing, I remember things better… read more

Top 10 Fantasy Football Sites to Help You Win

Miranda Lin recently completed an M.S. degree from the Columbia Graduate School of Journalism and now works as a freelance writer and full-time sports fan.

While the opening kickoff to the 2010 NFL season is still over 2 weeks away, die-hard fantasy fans are already hard at work crunching stats and… read more

Best of the Week #134

It’s time for our best news of this week. We have a lot of graphic and web design, a bit of architecture, ads, tech news, awesome reads and other crazy stuff! So take a look at the links we’ve selected for your inspiration and to keep you updated about what’s… read more

Minimalism in Logo Design: Positively Perfect Negative Spaces

Minimalism in Logo Design: Positively Perfect Negative Spaces

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International Freelancers Day: A Free Online Conference for Freelancers

There’s a very exciting online event happening in a few weeks. It’s the first-ever International Freelancers Day, to be held on September 24 and 25.

This two-day virtual event is the biggest-ever FREE online-video conference exclusively for solo professionals. It’s part of a global initiative to celebrate independent workers everywhere and… read more

Meaningful Work: Lessons from Eat, Pray, Love

Most of us who jump the corporate ship to be our own boss are looking for some kind of meaningful work and balance in our lives. We want to share our lives with our families, find our passions, and do what we love doing without all of the endless meetings,… read more

Profile: Getting into Character with Cartoonist George Coghill

From bad jokes to sultry devil girls, Cartoon Character Designer George Coghill knows how to inject some fun into life. He set aside some time to talk with us about everything from the importance of knowing how to run a business to what it’s like to see his characters come… read more

How to Find New Customers

A few posts back, I mentioned a handful of ideas that you can use to ensure you are able to line up work for the future. I didn’t mention anything about the ways that you can find new business offline, in your local community.

Here are a few ways to find… read more

Interview with Tim and Bram Vanhaeren from Into1

Tim and Bram Vanhaeren, belgium based artists, run a creative studio focused on graphic design. Read how the brothers get along working together

1. First of all we would like to thank you both for taking the time to provide abduzeedo.com with this interview. Please tell us more about your art… read more

Interview: Mark Julian Borg, A Freelance Web/Graphic Designer

Interview: Mark Julian Borg, A Freelance Web/Graphic Designer

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Free Wireframing Kits, UI Design Kits, PDFs and Resources

To mock-up the user interface of a website, software or any other product, you’ll need some basic UI elements. And this is where wireframing kits and UI design kits come in handy. When you want to create a low-fidelity prototype for your projects, you can use these kits to give… read more

A Freelance Graphic Designer’s Burnout and Ways to Avoid It

A Freelance Graphic Designer’s Burnout and Ways to Avoid It

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3 Steps To A Killer Freelance Social Media Process

You began with a glorious hallucination of what social media was going to do for your business, social life, and even writing ability. You tweeted, facebooked, and smothered Linked-in contacts with glowing recommendations. You commented on all the top blogs in your niche and dutifully updated your own blog on-schedule…. read more

Sites of the Week #117 – Ronin App Giveaway

For this Sites of the Week, we have a special edition with a giveaway from Ronin App, I’m sure you’ll love it! Also we have selected some great sites such as Organizze and Spring. As usual we would love to hear from you, keep sending your suggestions and don’t forget… read more

5 Good Ways to Close a Client Deal

5 Good Ways to Close a Client Deal

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20 Green and Eco Infographics

20 Green and Eco Infographics

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Logo Inspiration: Comic Characters

Everyone likes superheroes and other comic book characters. There is a plethora of stories and with subjects ranging from humor to the morbid. Comic books are deeply rooted in global culture, so that today we have several film adaptations of great box office.

Something that is very interesting is when we… read more

Freelancers: How to Get New Clients For Your Web Design Business

Freelancers: How to Get New Clients For Your Web Design Business

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How to Find Your First Client

How to Find Your First Client

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Advice from the Winners of The Money Book

During our recent review of The Money Book, we asked for your very best money-saving tips. The huge number of comments and savvy advice we received shows that our readership definitely knows a thing or two about saving pennies!

After careful consideration, Joseph and Denise, the authors of The Money Book,… read more

14 Resources for Free Fonts and Premium Fonts

You can’t deny that typography is important in design. You could have the most beautiful illustrations in the world, but if you use a font like Jokerman, your entire design will look iffy.

Now if you really want to blow your client away with an awesome design, you have to find… read more

Top 3 Ways I Find Clients

Top 3 Ways I Find Clients

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20 Clever Eco-Friendly Product Designs

20 Clever Eco-Friendly Product Designs

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Facebook Privacy: 6 Years of Controversy [INFOGRAPHIC]

Alexander Hotz is a freelance multimedia journalist and public radio junkie based in New York City. Currently he teaches digital media at Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism. Follow Alex on Twitter at @hotzington.

The release of Facebook Places raised serious privacy concerns for users of the social network. Places allows… read more

Expense Tracking Tips

Over the weekend I was taking a quick look at my expenses.  Being a freelancer has made me hyperaware of where money is coming in, and where it’s going out.

On my Mastercard statement, I found that I am paying for two different hosting plans, for two different websites.  Since I… read more

How To Create The Perfect Logo Project Brief

How To Create The Perfect Logo Project Brief

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4 Reasons to Track Time on Projects

I haven’t punched a clock in more than 10 years. And even when I did, I never cared much for the idea.

I guess I didn’t like the message it sent out: that I was being paid for my time — not for my ideas, creativity, excellent customer service and added… read more

20 Clever Eco Website Designs

20 Clever Eco Website Designs

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Can You as a Freelance Designer Compete with Bigger Companies?

Can You as a Freelance Designer Compete with Bigger Companies?

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Retro Illustrations by Janée Meadows

Janée Meadows is an award-winning freelance illustrator and graphic designer based in Los Angeles, California. It’s hard to peg her style, as it runs the gamut of photorealism to retro cartoons. Like the mockingbird, known for mimicking the songs and sounds of the animal kingdom; Meadows is known for her… read more

Freelance Podcasts

As you all know, the Freelance Radio podcast has come to an end.  If you didn’t get to listen to them all, you can find the archive on iTunes here.

To fill the void left by the team, I’ve found a few options that can’t replace Freelance Radio, but they will… read more

5 Tips to Prevent Bad Debt

One of the great things that I have found about freelancing is the thrill of finding new clients.  One of the roughest parts of being a freelancer is waiting to see if your new client is going to pay you for the services you provided.

Here are a few ways that… read more

50 Green and Eco Logos

50 Green and Eco Logos

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15 Logos With Hidden Messages

Designing logos can be very difficult. When designing a logo you want it to stand out from the crowd yet still be really simple. Sometimes the designer is really clever and makes the logo very simple yet includes a hidden message within the logo that has deeper meaning. In this… read more

Interview: Online Editor and Freelance Designer Stuart Thursby

Interview: Online Editor and Freelance Designer Stuart Thursby

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Remote Working from Anywhere

I know it’s not summer for everyone reading FreelanceSwitch right now, but up here in Canada it still is.  And one of my favourite things to do in the summer is to camp, but this year it was a little bit different, since this was my first summer as a… read more

Theme Trust Launches

Just over 2 years ago, I left my full time job as a web designer to go freelance, and it’s been one of the best decisions I’ve ever made. It’s been a wonderful ride up to this point, as I’ve been able to work on many exciting client projects and… read more

DesignChat Guest – Erin Loechner

This week, Erin Loechner welcomes US to the conversation as she has been writing about design on blogs for longer than most. Erin is a freelance design writer/blogger whose work has been featured in Glamour, Dwell, Lucky and Nylon magazines. She muses daily on her award-winning website Design For Mankind,… read more

Philadelphia Tax Code Sparks Big Controversy with Small Bloggers

Do you use Google AdSense or other ad services on your personal blog or website? If you live in the city of Philadelphia, you might want to rethink that decision.

Last week, the Philadelphia City Paper published an article discussing the potential impact of the city’s Business Privilege Tax on residents… read more

Freelance Freedom #170: Client Conspiracy

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50 Awesome New jQuery Plugins

The jQuery community never ever fails to let you down. Its constantly evolving, constantly improving and, thankfully, constantly releasing a tidal wave of fresh and powerful freely available plugins for every possible requirement.

Today we round-up the best and most powerful jQuery plugins from the last few months. You will find… read more

Tutorial: Create a Vector Infographic Poster

Tutorial: Create a Vector Infographic Poster

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Linkswitch #32: Productivity, Elevator Speech, Contracts

How to Stay Productive When the Internet Is Down

The Internet went down this morning at the home office. If I were in a deadline situation, I would have packed the laptop into the car and headed for the nearest caffeinated wifi hot spot. But I was under no pressure… read more

Best of the Week #133

It’s time for our best news of this week. We have a lot of graphic and web design, a bit of architecture, ads, tech news, awesome reads and other crazy stuff! So take a look at the links we’ve selected for your inspiration and to keep you updated about what’s… read more

Real Home Offices from FreelanceSwitch Readers

A few weeks ago I asked you to send me some pictures of your office, the response was even more amazing than what we got for our last showcase of home offices. There was such great response, that unfortunately I’m unable to showcase everyone’s photo. I picked out some of the… read more

Prospect to Client Tracking Spreadsheet

If you don’t have a client tracking system in place to measure how long it takes to convert a prospect – your potential customer – into a client – a paying customer – you probably will have a hard time predicting what your monthly income will be.

I am not an… read more

Doing the Little Things to Please Clients

Doing the Little Things to Please Clients

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How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love My Job – And Leave It

I’ve noticed a rash of design professionals leaving their jobs lately to pursue creative freedom. Designer Frank Chimero, Helen Walters of BusinessWeek, Andrio Abero of Wieden+Kenndey, and Alex Bogusky of MDC Partners have all written high-profile accounts or made announcements about going on hiatus or quitting. There are countless others… read more

20 Back to School Apps and Tools for Students

It’s August, which means school is about to start for many high school and college students. You’ve all probably had a nice summer, but now it’s time to get back to pulling all-nighters, listening to boring professors, and attempting to learn something useful.

A lot of you may be dreading school,… read more

Designing Microsites: Factors To Consider

When creating a website, so many things need to be planned and considered before even beginning the design — content, audience, goals, usability, color schemes, and so much more.

The design of a microsite, on the other hand, would seem to be an easier task to execute. But… read more

Freelancing Vs. In-House: Which Do You Prefer

Freelancing Vs. In-House: Which Do You Prefer

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Google Docs Templates for Web Designers and Developers

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If I am honest, I don’t really know how popular Google Docs is within the freelance community, but I have found that I have been using it a lot more recently. To the extent that I seem to have more documents stored online that I do on my hard drive… read more

Poll: Where Are You Finding Clients?

The last survey was quite fun, and seemed to generate some great discussion and results. This time, I’d like to suggest that we share where the majority of our clients are coming from.  If you have any tips or tricks on ways that you convert  a prospective client into a paying… read more

Design Makeover: S Virginia Higher Ed Center

A Smarter Logo

Client:
Southern Virginia Higher Education Center www.svhed.org

BEFORE

The Southern Virginia Higher Education Center’s logo is based on an abstract representation of the building itself, which stands on a hill overlooking a river.

The Southern Virginia Higher Education Center calls itself an “educational connector,” in the words of Communications Manager… read more

30 Creative and Inspiring Golf Logos

Sport logos are fantastic to work with – some of the world’s greatest brands are sport-related (think Nike, Adidas, ESPN and Everlast). Golf is a popular sport with wealthy and successful people – as such, golf businesses (such as golf clubs, golf courses and golf websites) can be extremely… read more

100 Magnificent Macro Photos

100 Magnificent Macro Photos

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The Perfect Brainstorm: A How To

By Robert Bowen

Given our fields of interest and chosen professions, most of us have at least once in our lives had to brainstorm for one reason or another. But for those of us who apply this mental tool in our creative pursuits much more regularly, learning to do so effectively… read more

GridIron Flow: A Visual File Workflow for Designers

In my last software review, I covered Blast, an application that shows you the recent files you’ve open or modified. In a similar spirit – but with more of a creative, professional spin – I’d like to introduce you to GridIron Software’s Flow.

Flow’s main goal is to help… read more

What to Do When a Client Kills a Project

So, there you are, working away on a project, and oh, is it a good one. You’re having fun, the client’s loving your work, and then…

…the whole thing comes to a screeching halt.

A quick glance through my Projectus Interruptus file shows the following:

A university department’s website redesign gets scuttled because… read more

Create a Custom WordPress Design Using the Starkers Theme

Create a Custom WordPress Design Using the Starkers Theme

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Interview with Featured Freelancer: Michael Saathoff

In my ongoing quest to learn more about the various ways to freelance, I keep finding interesting and helpful people right here on FreelanceSwitch.  I’m grateful that you have given me the opportunity to share what I have learned about these talented individuals.

Today I would like to introduce you to… read more

Head Up in the Clouds: Web Design that Uses Sky Elements

It is always amazing to designer incorporating different element of nature in their designs. This time the inspiration is cloud, sky and blue palette colors. In this post we are featuring some really beautiful website that used sky, cloud images and illustrations in their design.
Some of this website used… read more

10 Essential Free E-Books for Web Designers

While many may still prefer print for long-form reading, e-books are gaining popularity as a worthy digital alternative. Aside from all the usual benefits of digitizing a book (faster searches, less page-flipping, linked pages, additional resources, etc.), e-books are a huge help to digital and online professionals.

There are now e-books… read more

Review: The Money Book

Imagine if you will, just that morning you find out your car has given up the ghost and your only recourse is to consign it to the boneyard. Now after arriving home you find a burst water pipe and an impromptu swimming pool forming in your basement. Now… read more