Freelancing

The Real Reason Why Your Emails for Design Jobs Are Ignored

May 24, 2016SheilaBusiness Tips, Freelancing, Marketing, Random2 college, design, email, etiquette, jobs, portfolio, students, work

Hey design students! Stop sending those lame job-seeking emails They say you’ve built a successful business when you start getting regular spam and solicitation requests. I say it’s when you get inundated with endless emails asking for employment. Around this time of year, right when the design students are putting away their graduation gowns, is when my inbox gets flooded with various cold email requests. (For those of you who don’t know, a cold email…

25 Ways to Tell if You’re a Graphic Designer

November 23, 2015SheilaFreelancing, Random6 bad logos, comic sans, funny, graphic design, jokes, Logo Design, mad max

You know you’re a graphic designer when…

8 More Client Red Flags to Watch Out For

October 3, 2015SheilaBusiness Tips, Freelancing2 business, clients, contracts, design, freelancing, logo, red flags

Another article on red flags to watch out for with clients? I know what you’re thinking: man, she must really hate clients. But that’s not true. At all. Most of my clients I truly enjoy working with, and we have great relationships. Some I even meet for drinks! But the reason I do love the vast majority of my clients is because I try to be selective about whom I work with. Unfortunately, there are…

How to Get the Best Images for Your Business Marketing

February 24, 2015SheilaBusiness Tips, Freelancing, Marketing2 business, depositphoto, free, images, istockphoto, marketing, photography, photos, shutterstock, stock images, stock photos

The first question most people have when they start to think about images for a project they’re working on is, “Where will I find good images to use?” To answer that question we’ll start by looking at the four options for getting images, and what the pros and cons of each are. (I’ll give you a big hint: stock photos are one of them!) Option 1: Take your own photographs You can take your…

5 Reasons Why Design Contests Are Bad for Designers

September 22, 2014SheilaFreelancing, Marketing, Random34 AIGA, contests, crowdsourcing, design, designers, logo, spec work

Whether you’re a designer or a client, I’m sure you’ve heard of these things called design contests. Also called crowdsourcing or spec work, websites like 99designs, CrowdSpring, among dozens of others, dot our graphic design landscape. And they’re here to stay, unfortunately. And I’m sure, either as a designer or a client, that they’ve had a certain pull or power over you. Or at the very least, you’ve been curious about them. If you’re a…

Who Owns the Rights to Your Design Work?

August 27, 2014SheilaBusiness Tips, Freelancing, Random69 client, copyright, files, freelancing, graphic design, InDesign, ownership, rights

So you’ve just gotten a killer brochure designed. You can’t wait to print it and start using it. But you’re also thinking long term…what if, in a few months, some of the information needs to be changed? So you decide to ask the designer for the native or source files (i.e. the program that the file was originally built in, and is editable). And they happily say…no. Wait, what??

Why Lupus Made Me a Better Small Business Owner

May 10, 2014SheilaBusiness Tips, Freelancing15 business, fatigue, freelance, freelancing, Lupus, SLE

I’m going to share something with you that I don’t tell very many people. I have Systemic Lupus Erythematosus, otherwise known as SLE, or simply, Lupus. Lupus is a chronic autoimmune disease, which basically means my body is attacking itself and I’m pretty much stuck with it. The reason why I want to share this with you is because I’ve been gleaning some valuable insights about running a small business with a chronic illness. Surprisingly,…

4 Things I Learned About Contracts from the Little Mermaid

March 16, 2014SheilaBusiness Tips, Freelancing5 business, clients, contracts

I was watching Disney’s iconic 1989 masterpiece (throwback!), wondering what to write this blog post about, when it dawned on me: OMG, the Little Mermaid has contracts in it! I could write about that. (Remember the part when the evil sea witch, Ursula, gets Ariel to sign away her voice in exchange for legs? Yeah. Contract!) And the irony here is that contracts are not bad, they just have to be used in a smart…

Show Your Clients Some Love

February 14, 2014SheilaBusiness Tips, Freelancing, Marketing2 business, clients, love, marketing, Valentines

It’s super easy to neglect your current or past clients and customers. Why is that? Probably because, as a small business, you’re up to your neck in a million other things—invoicing, marketing, paying your bills, walking the dog, meetings—it’s so easy to neglect the people who are most important to your business: your clients. But whatever you do, don’t.

5 Freelancer Myths

October 28, 2013SheilaFreelancing, Graphic Design8 design, design firm, free, freelancer, graphic design, marketing, myth, professional, projects, testimonials

As a freelance graphic designer, I’ve come across a few myths in regards to my chosen profession. People seem to have some understandable, and sometimes strange, objections or concerns to hiring a freelancer. Hopefully this should clear some of those up.

Category: Freelancing