Behind the scenes, white space also reigns as a design philosophy, with clean, elegant code being the sought-after ideal for functional web design. However, I’ve observed that some designers don’t truly grasp what white space is, or how to interpret it in less obvious ways to fully leverage this concept.

The What And Why of White Space

Early modernist painters were masters of white space, using the media of pencil and paint on canvas to elevate one essential idea, eliminating all else as unnecessary. When examining the sketches of artists such as Miró, Kandinsky, Mondrian, and especially Picasso, you will notice that the economy of form is often a key feature in their work.

White space emerged as a desirable feature in Western design (not merely an empty space to fill up with ornament or type) in the early part of the 20th century, at the peak of modernism. Artists and designers of the Bauhaus school in Germany united under the modernist idea of minimalism and had a profound effect on much of the art and design produced thereafter, continuing to influence creative professionals to this day.

The West has strongly embraced the feature of minimalist art and design in the last century or so. However, it’s crucial to highlight that Eastern art and design – specifically the art and architecture of East Asia – has delved into this concept for hundreds of years.

The late Apple mastermind Steve Jobs was heavily swayed by both the German Bauhaus aesthetic and the simplified forms and abundant use of white space characteristic of Japanese design.

Is White Space Really White?

In design, white space is, in essence, the absence of active design elements. It’s a common misconception that white space must, literally, be a) white and b) an open space.

Technically speaking, this is correct. However, most often, one can adopt a more figurative interpretation and still craft a “white space” as a non-active area.

Consider this: a blurred photo used as the background image on a website could be deemed “white space” under this broader definition, even if it’s neither white nor an empty space. Crucially, it’s not an active part of the site’s functionality—it doesn’t demand anything from the user. In this context, “white space” is about creating areas within a design that are free from active elements and allow the design to breathe.

You can rest your eyes while looking off to the side at this blurry image, and it will have a similar effect on your brain as a pure white box.

Reducing Back to White Space

Communication is the fundamental goal of any design. When you work through the design process, you determine how best to communicate with your audience. Frivolous details that simply obstruct this main goal don’t contribute positively. There’s an inherent challenge in the design profession to continuously think about how to achieve more with less.

Add Item, Reduce Space

As humans, our natural inclination is to fill up empty space with clutter.

Consider a disorganized garage or a room in your home that’s been awaiting a thorough spring cleaning for years now. When you first moved into your house, that room was empty and pristine. There was no need to create space – it was already present. However, through the process of everyday living, you actually reduced the amount of space in that room. This same phenomenon can occur in a design if we aren’t vigilant.

White space in design isn’t something you begin with. Rather, it’s something that must be intentionally created or “reduced” from what you’ve put up on your screen. It’s like a precious clue in a detective novel, needing to be discovered and coaxed out of hiding to shine and fill your viewer’s minds with the tranquility of zen-like peace.

Seeking White Space

In the realm of culinary arts, a reduction refers to a thick, syrupy liquid that remains after a chef combines various ingredients in a pot and lets them simmer for an extended period. This can serve as a helpful analogy when considering design white space. Much like unearthing a scrumptious gravy or sauce on your computer screen after “simmering” a myriad of design elements together for hours on end.

Admittedly, I might be slightly infatuated with the concept of white space. However, the crucial point is that white space rarely just “appears.” As designers, it’s our responsibility to intentionally seek out white space.

Drawing A Blank

One of the most effective methods to hone your “white space muscle” is to maintain a sketchbook. It may seem daunting if you believe your drawing skills are not up to par, or fear that someone might stumble upon your less-than-perfect doodles. However, rest assured, it’s perfectly alright. Sketching, in the realm of design, is simply a tool to fully exploit the potential of brainstorming.

Brainstorming by physically illustrating potential solutions is, in my view, the key to simplifying your designs, akin to the process used by a chef or an amateur sleuth. I personally favor responding to design questions through sketches. For instance, “what would occur if I omitted this color?” or “would the outcome be superior if I removed that type family entirely?” More often than not, the answer to most “should I eliminate this” inquiries is a resounding “yes.”

It’s fascinating to observe that the more you sketch, the more adept you become at minimizing clutter in your designs. Consider how many times Picasso had to put pencil to paper to master the delicate equilibrium between representation and abstraction? While I’m not a Picasso biographer, I’d venture to guess that the number would be “a substantial amount of times.”

Going Back To Functions

The students of the original Bauhaus not only incorporated minimalist concepts like white space in their work, but also embraced it as part of their mindset. Walter Gropius, the founder of Bauhaus and a renowned architect, was instrumental in pioneering the widely accepted philosophy in modern architecture and design – “form follows function”. This belief primarily stemmed from the observation that there is inherent beauty in the simple functionality of an object.

This, however, does not imply that ornamentation is unnecessary. There are instances where you might need to incorporate floral patterns or attractive navigation buttons. Yet, learning to recognize and appreciate the fundamental function of something is a skill that can be acquired, just like creating intricate illustrations or UI features.

In Conclusion

White space is more of an abstract concept rather than a rigid rule. To clarify, it is simply the inactive space in a design and the soothing effect it has on the viewer. There are no established guidelines for its use. It is advisable to use your own judgment, experiment extensively, and foster your unique relationship with white space.

The post A New Way of Thinking About White Space appeared first on Hongkiat.

In today’s post, I am going to introduce you to my go-to online PDF tool called HiPDF. I’ll talk about some of its useful features and certain drawbacks so you can make an informed decision.

What Does HiPDF Do?

HiPDF is a PDF solution to edit, convert, and manage PDF documents. You can convert PDF documents to and from any format of your choice, edit any or all aspects of your document, and compress bulky PDF files into a reduced size without compromising quality.

Being an online tool, you can access HiPDF from any device or browser. Additionally, there are also desktop apps for both Windows and Mac, with all the features of the web version as well as a lightweight Chrome extension.

It is also easy enough to be used by anyone from a school student to a professional from any field.

Visit HiPDF

Useful HiPDF Features

What I like about HiPDF is that it offers a whole gamut of features to manage PDF documents. Although the tool offers 39 different solutions for managing PDFs, in the following, I will talk about some of the useful and commonly-used ones, together with links to using them online.

1. Convert PDF

For most users, PDF is not the only document format they use. So HiPDF helps you convert PDF to and from different formats. These include converting from PDF to Word, PDF to Excel, PDF to PowerPoint, PDF to TXT, and PDF to HTML (and vice versa), among others.

The OCR function is another feature usually not available in online PDF tools. It lets you convert your scanned PDFs and images into editable Word, Excel, PPT, and EPUB documents. This tool can also convert JPG, PNG, GIF, TIFF, and other image formats to PDF.

2. Compress PDF

It is difficult to send bulky or media-heavy PDF documents via email attachments or other messaging services. With HiPDF, you can compress large PDF documents into reasonable or reduced size without compromising their quality or content.

Moreover, there’s no limit on the number of pages on your PDF or the file size. With one click you can get a reduced-seized PDF shareable through any medium or app.

3. Merge and split PDF

HiPDF has a Merge PDF solution to combine two or more PDF documents into one seamless file. It can merge any number of PDF files with different file sizes into a single document with just one click.

Similarly, if you want to take out certain pages from your PDF file or create multiple PDF files from one, you can use the Split PDF feature of HiPDF. It lets you split your PDF document by page range, meaning you can split your document from page X to page Y into X different parts.

4. Crop PDF

If there’s only a certain area in your PDF document that you want to focus on, then you can crop it with HiPDF. You can adjust the margin or size of the area that you want to crop out of your PDF document.

You can also rotate the pages of your PDF document in a vertical or horizontal orientation.

5. Edit PDF

Many times, I have to add certain elements to your PDF document. HiPDF can help you edit your PDF file easily. I used it for adding text, shapes, buttons, and even images on my PDF files.

Additionally, while working with a team on a PDF document, HiPDF makes it easy to annotate and add notes on the documents. And the best part is that you can even draw shapes on your PDF file.

6. PDF security

With HiPDF, you can password-protect your PDF documents. You can upload your PDF file and add a strong password between 6 to 20 characters to encrypt so it can only be opened through the designated password.

If you’ve encrypted a PDF document and forgot the password, then HiPDF can help you remove it as well.

You can also redact or permanently remove certain information from your PDF document with this tool. Just select the content that you want to hide and click Apply to remove it from the document.

Other Features

Apart from the aforementioned prominent features, there are some other interesting features in HiPDF.

These include extracting images from your PDF document, adding electronic signatures to sign anywhere on your document, and replacing text on top of an existing one among many others.

Pros

Here are some advantages of the tool that users will find useful.

Cons

Though HiPDF offers many smart features and solutions, there are still a few things that I find rather unflattering about the tool:

Conclusion

When you frequently deal with PDF files, it is wise to get a reliable and feature-rich PDF tool. I find online PDF tools to be handier than having to install an app on the desktop, and for that, I go for HiPDF.

HiPDF has many features you would need in a good online PDF tool. Plus, it’s free and requires no signup, so you can quickly work on your PDF documents anytime and anywhere. Do give HiPDF a try and experience all the features yourself.

Visit HiPDF

The post Wondershare HiPDF Review appeared first on Hongkiat.

Maybe your clients have pushed you to the brink enough to quit dealing with clients altogether and switch to working behind the scenes to produce a product based on your knowledge or personal ideas.

Switching over from one type of work to another can alienate potential clients who want to hire you for your normal freelancing work, and that can wreak havoc on your bank account, your reputation, and even the quality of your work, at least in the transition stages.

Luckily, there are a few steps to follow to make sure you aren’t undercutting your own chances of success. Here’s how you can change your professional focus with ‘minimal downtime’.

Save up some money first!

This may seem like a no-brainer, but it’s easy to forget when you’re nearly at the point of chewing your own arm off to get away from a job or a client roster you hate.

Before you decide to go from one area of focus to another, you’ll want to make sure you have enough of a financial cushion to rest on just in case things get difficult.

That may mean you’ll have to take on a couple more of your normal client jobs for the next few months, and also cut back on your spending. Keeping a budget is helpful for many reasons, not the least of which is making it easier to get by without your normal workload.

And don’t forget to adjust your income for taxes if necessary. Depending on what you’re going to be doing next, you’ll need to make sure you’re making enough to pay your income taxes and any other required fees.

Keep the cashflow secure

If you’re just making the leap, it’s a good idea to retain some means of income that’s separate from your new business. If a job is relatively painless to do, and you’re getting much-needed income from it, there’s really no good reason to discard it before it’s time.

It may seem like you’re wasting your time, but trust me, the longer you take to plan for your new career path, the smoother the transition will be. This brings me to my next point.

Have an "Escape plan"

Always have a concrete, specific plan of action when making any major career moves. Don’t just leap from one business venture to another without considering all the possible outcomes.

Of course, you want to figure out the logistics of how you’ll be supporting yourself and/or your family, but there are other things to consider as well.

Among the most important: your place within your new chosen industry. Is this new service or product of yours in high enough demand that it will sell to enough customers? How are you going to market yourself? Can you use your old networking connections to procure new work?

Sometimes, we dream of making the switch to doing something else, and by the time we actually do it, it turns out that we had miscalculated what would actually be involved in terms of selling and marketing.

Start small, test often

A gradual transition is key. Start small and gradually work your way up to your ultimate goal.

For example, if you’re planning on writing a book, you can start with a blog and slowly start compiling your posts into book form.

Take on a few new projects every month; go outside your normal pool of potential clients and start courting the types of people you’d like to work with next. Also, test, test, test.

If you’re not sure whether something will actually work, it’s a lot less painful to run a small test for a few months than dive in and devote a year or two to a full-blown development and launch.

For example, if you want to try selling an information-based product, like a course or paid tutorial series, rather than creating the entire thing in one go, try creating a shortened version of it and releasing it quickly to see if there’s any demand.

Don’t simply take it on faith that you’re right about something, or that you’re wrong. When in doubt, always experiment.

Change of identity

If practical, you may find it helpful to change the name under which you do business. This can be your personal alias, or simply your brand name. A name change will allow you to start over fresh without bringing over any client-related baggage to your new enterprise.

You’d be surprised at how much of a difference a new name will make, not just for your business but to your personal sense of identity as a working professional. This is also a perfect time to ditch any embarrassing names you may have felt stuck with ever since you chose it many years back.

Going from “digiboy2000” (worst case scenario) to something a bit more professional will give both you and your business a new lease on life. If you can’t change your name or you don’t particularly want to, you can always adopt a new name under your professional “umbrella” that specifically caters to your new work.

It’s up to you to decide whether to link the old work to the new. Sometimes this won’t make as much sense as you’d think. Some potential clients might get the wrong idea and make requests that are inappropriate for what you want to do next.

Say goodbye to your old work

So you’ve planned out your goals and your financial ducks are all in a row. It’s time to make your transition permanent. Make sure your past clients know what you’re up to now (it’s a good idea to keep them in the loop with a short email every quarter or so). You never know when they might be able to assist you in some way you hadn’t thought of.

Potential clients need to be aware that you are definitely no longer available for your previous type of commissioned work. It’s can be tough to have these conversations, especially if they’re offering you a tempting paycheck.

But waffling on your decision to quit your old line of work sends the signal that you’re wishy-washy and this can have a negative impact on your professional reputation.

Conclusion

One final caveat: you will likely lose a bit of income at first, especially when you bid your last client goodbye. But it doesn’t have to be as much as many freelancers fear, especially if you follow the steps above.

It’s been said that success in any business is mostly determined by how willing you are to make yourself uncomfortable. The earlier and more often you get the tough stuff out of the way, the easier time you will have in your new business venture. Good luck!

The post How to Change Your Professional Focus with Minimal Downtime appeared first on Hongkiat.

Sometimes they’ll even utterly confuse you with a vague or nonsensical request, like "make the black blacker," or "it’s just not poppy enough."

These types of inane directives have become so legendary in freelancing culture that, whenever they get mentioned out of context, any freelancer listening won’t be able to help give a sympathetic eye roll or shake of the head.

There are even whole blogs and other creative efforts centered around the weird things our clients sometimes ask of us; I’m sure you’ve heard of at least one.

Had enough?

As freelancers, we all want to please our clients and ensure that we maintain a good relationship with them. We want to remain in good standing to get referrals and repeat business and bolster our reputations. But sometimes, some clients really can try the patience of even the most saintly of designers.

Fortunately, there’s a simple solution that many designers often overlook that can alleviate or even completely remove these little professional hurdles. It’s called saying no.

We’re going to go over some of the different situations in which a designer can use this powerful tool respectfully and courteously while still being firm about holding onto their sanity.

Don’t let your guard down

It sounds horrible, but the harsh truth is that many people will be as naughty as you let them be. They will take the opportunity to con you or treat you badly, to justify underpaying you or even not paying you at all, if they believe they can.

Not everyone is like this, of course, but you can usually tell pretty quickly whether someone is looking to scam you out of valuable services.

Putting your foot down by saying no to the first signs of disrespectfulness or lunacy will set a precedent for the entire length of your interaction with your client. Initial impressions are hard to change, so it’s important to make them count.

The wonders of "No"

It’s quite remarkable, the power of this "no" word. I think every designer should add it to their vocabulary if it’s not already there. Practice simply saying no to requests you find strange, incomprehensible, or just plain silly, and see what happens. You can try it out first on a client who you know has a ‘thick skin’.

Later, you can move on to establish what you will and won’t tolerate from the very first meeting with any new client. In my experience, a lot of clients are actually just trying to get a feel for your communication style when they make an offhand, impossible request. They may be testing you to see how much you’ll let them get away with.

Don’t just blurt it out

First things first: when I say that designers need to start saying no, I don’t literally mean that you should respond to your clients’ requests with a blunt negative.

Saying no to a paying client requires a bit of finesse to keep the working relationship in a healthy place. I recommend writing out a few responses that you can use as reference in a future situation.

Something like "I’m sorry, but I’m going to need a more specific answer before I can give you what you want" usually works well, and you don’t actually have to blurt out "noooo!" like a two-year-old (or Darth Vader).

Rehearsing a reasoned, courteous response to an insane request helps you keep your cool, and it also keeps you on track to achieving your main goal, which is solving your client’s problem.

Not a therapist

Clients can be a kooky bunch but it’s not really your job to tend to them like a personal therapist. You can go ahead and let them be as crazy as they want to be, as long as they’re clear with you about what they need and how you can provide it to them. And as long as they pay you in a reasonable amount of time, of course.

How much rope should you give?

It’s up to you to decide how far to go with accommodating your client regardless of whatever unclear request he or she will think up. Sometimes it makes more sense to simply refuse to go any further on the project until you receive a request you can work with, since you’d only be guessing at what the client wants anyway.

Also, because there’s been such a lack of clarity, they may become even more upset if you do not deliver what they want, whatever that is. Not only will you have wasted your time, but, depending on your prior negotiation, you might even have a contract breach on your hands.

Strive to communicate

Alternatively, you could take more of an "onion peeling" approach, testing and rephrasing different questions until you and the client both arrive at a communication pattern that gets each of you the information you require to move forward.

This method is certainly more time-consuming, and it’s not unheard of for designers to add an additional amount to their revision fee (interrogation tax?) if it starts to take too long to achieve clarity.

It’s not always the client’s fault

That’s right, I said it. Sometimes a client gives you a vague answer… because you asked them a vague question. It really helps to learn the proper ways to phrase a question so that you get the answer you’re looking for.

Specifically, the thing I’ve found most helpful in achieving clarity is asking the client to give me a clear example of what they need.

Confined selections

This can take a few tries; for example, if a client wants a "prettier" typeface for their website but can’t exactly articulate what they mean by "pretty," you can ask them to browse a selection of fonts until they find something that is "pretty" enough for their taste.

This is an example of what I call controlling fluctuations. I don’t know about you, but I like to have as few surprises or brick walls (as possible) when dealing with clients.

Learning how to ask the right questions is crucial to getting through those unnecessary barriers so you can deal with the important stuff.

Conclusion

Designers speak a cryptic language all their own, and sometimes it can be difficult to bridge the gap between what you mean to say to a client and how the client will interpret it.

As the professional providing the creative service, it’s your job to make sure there is clarity all around. Your client is paying you to solve their problem, and you can’t do that unless you first establish exactly what the problem is.

The post When to Say “No” to Clients For Freelancers appeared first on Hongkiat.

It’s a convenient way to zoom in on exactly the type of client you want to serve as a creative business owner. In this article, I’m going to show you the steps to creating client profiles for your own range of clients so that you can better understand and provide valuable services to them.

Used properly, the ICP can be so effective that your clients will think you can read minds.

What’s a Ideal Client Profiles?

Though it goes by various names in the business and marketing sphere – some business owners even have their own proprietary versions, complete with personalized data and questionnaires – the basic premise of the Ideal Client Profile is the same all around.

Using detailed information on the general habits and needs of your target market, you can create a single, ideal ‘person’ that you can use as a model for your marketing efforts.

Forget trying to cater to hundreds or even dozens of different clients – with the ICP you can have a finely tuned ‘average’ that the majority of your clients will conform to, making it far easier to get inside their heads.

Data gathering

Just like a novelist creating a character for a book, a freelancer creating an Ideal Client Profile must first have some basic information about human psychology and behavior to use as a reference.

However, unlike a novelist, you can’t simply make things up or tweak the facts using your creative license (well, you could, but it wouldn’t be terribly useful in your business).

The easiest way to get accurate data on what type of clients you want to go after is to just ask them. Interviewing potential, current, and past clients allows you to find out what they hope for, fear, and desire most in their businesses. It’s something you should be doing anyway, in order to keep up to date on what clients are actually looking for.

What you should be asking

Just like the main character in a story, your client has motivation and an overall set of goals. Here’s some examples what you should be asking:

• Do they want more sales? Probably, but what else do they want?
• Do they want the respect of their peers? How about the trust of their customers?
• What gets them out of bed in the morning?
• What keeps them up at night?
• What are the three biggest challenges they’re facing in their business right now?

All of these questions and those like them will help you form the basis of your ICP.

Get clear on the basics

Before we go in-depth, however, we first need to establish who exactly your ideal client is as an individual. Start at the very beginning and build your perfect client from the ground up.

First, what is this client’s name? Don’t laugh. Giving this ‘person’ a name goes a long way in allowing you to connect with them and take their needs seriously.

With a name, the Ideal Client becomes a real human being, rather than just an abstract concept. So go ahead and name them, and also give them a gender. The gender should reflect the majority of your client base, but if it happens to be split down the middle, just pick one at random.

Dig, dig and dig

Next, how old is this person? Where do they live? What kind of business do they own, and how much revenue does it generate? What kind of lifestyle do they have? Do they attend lots of industry conferences and other events? How often do they travel? Are they satisfied with how much time they spend at the office versus with their family?

It’s important to be super specific when answering these questions. Like the exercise implies, you’re averaging your data and consolidating it into one person and one person only.

Again, be specific!

Don’t give answers like ‘so-and-so works in the manufacturing industry and his business earns around 8 figures in revenue.’ What, specifically, do they produce and how much do they sell it for? Put down a real figure (even if it’s just an estimate) for how much money they make.

Don’t forget currency – even something as simple as converting US dollars to Euros can become a powerful marketing tool when used correctly.

Avoid bad clients

In a perfect world, how could you turn this bad habit around? Answer those questions and add them to your client’s profile.

Maybe you realize through your research that only clients who have been in business for a certain number of years are the ones who give you the most trouble. Or perhaps your best clients all graduated from a certain university.

The possibilities for data points are only limited by your imagination.

Don’t fear the niche

Once you’ve answered as many of the basic questions as would be appropriate for your business, it’s time to go further into your ideal client’s mind. Ask yourself everything you could possibly know about a client that will help both of you have the best experience possible.

Remember, this is the perfect client we’re building, so don’t forget your own needs as a freelancer. Sick of clients who never know what they want? What information could you have about your client that would eliminate that problem? Or maybe you keep getting clients who throw scope creep at you like ninja stars.

And finally…

As you travel deeper inside your ideal client’s head, you’re going to start zeroing in on a particular niche that may be far more specific than you’re used to serving.

Say you typically serve clients in the tech startup space. By knowing the exact revenue of your client’s business and the exact products they offer their customers, it may turn out that you need to adjust your niche from ‘tech startups’ to ‘a productivity software company in Silicon Valley that earns $6.2 million annually and that has received at least one round of VC funding.’

Before you balk at how ultra-specific that is, remember that you’re compiling this ideal client from data you mined from your existing clients. If this is your perfect client, don’t second guess it – go after them!

The game plan

Focus your energy on becoming as attractive as possible to this client. Infiltrate their network and amaze them with your newfound ‘psychic’ abilities. Call on the knowledge you’ve gained from your ideal client profile to establish yourself as the go-to person to solve their unique problems.

If you’ve done your job correctly, word will spread, and you’ll soon find yourself with more ‘perfect’ clients than you ever thought possible. Think you can use an Ideal Client Profile to help you better serve your clients?

In what ways can you analyze your clients’ data and feedback to help you establish that perfect client for your freelancing business?

The post How to Create Your Ideal Client Profiles For Freelancers appeared first on Hongkiat.

The good news is there’s plenty you can do to reduce that overwhelm and become more efficient. Today, we’ll go over how to make room in a busy schedule for extra clients or projects without sacrificing the quality of your output.

Assembly line

Most people, when they start on a new project, tackle it from the top. That is, they’ll begin working on one thing until that thing is done. This is a highly inefficient method of getting work done, and designers, in particular, can greatly benefit from what’s commonly called "chunking" or blocking tasks.

Chunking is a productivity tactic that allows you to work in an "assembly line" style, thereby finishing several projects simultaneously in phases.

I use this tactic all the time, with both my design and writing work. It works so well for me that many clients are actually stunned at how fast I can get things done, with zero loss in quality.

Schedule a day just for planning

As we accumulate more responsibilities throughout our week, we slowly get more and more overwhelmed by everything that’s demanding our attention. Thinking and planning our work, believe it or not, can drain us and make us less likely to actually finish it.

That’s why it’s important to plan before you actually have to work.

It’s worth setting aside an entire day just to plan what you’re going to do over the coming days, weeks, or months, to avoid having it trip you up later. I recommend doing this over the weekend, but a weekday can work too, if your schedule is flexible enough.

Get curious

Instead of letting yourself get completely overwhelmed by all the things you have to do for a new project, try approaching each task with an attitude of curiosity. Just think: once you learn or implement something new, you’ll be able to do it forever. You’ll never have to re-learn that thing.

That adds to your confidence, because you now have a new piece of knowledge to store in your vault. This is especially good news if you’ve just finished a difficult bit of code or a design element that can be reused for later projects. Once certain work is done, it never has to be done again from scratch.

Role-playing success

Imagine if you were perfectly competent and able to juggle, say, 2 or 3 more client projects than you currently do. How would you go about doing it? You might think that if you were totally competent and efficient, your problems would solve themselves, but humor me for a minute anyway.

It may sound silly, but role-playing a really motivated, knowledgable person allows you to think about how he or she might handle the schedule you’re struggling with. You may be surprised at how many productivity roadblocks you think you have will disappear once you free yourself from thinking about them.

Become more efficient

You can’t be an expert in everything. Remember that even the most competent designer has weaknesses. It might be worth outsourcing parts of your project to other independent contractors (provided your client has no problem with it) so that you’re able to accept more work, as well as focus more on the type of work you enjoy best and are really good at.

If being effective is doing the right things, being efficient is doing things right. Both are important to a successful design business.

Conclusion

Success is nothing more than experience. If you drive, you remember what it was like when you first got behind the wheel and started learning. It probably took you many years of driving every day to become confident enough that it became second nature to you. Oftentimes it simply takes looking at a problem from a new angle to more easily come up with a solution.

The post How to Take on and Handle More Design Work appeared first on Hongkiat.

There are any number of reasons for this, but one of the most important ones is that many designers simply don’t know what these higher quality clients really want.

They don’t understand the problems these clients have, and thus have no idea how to approach them with a solution. We’re going to explore some ways you can dive deeper into the psychology of those coveted ideal clients (whatever that is for you), and how you can present yourself as their ideal designer.

It’s not about you

Sorry, but I have some hard news: no one cares about you. At least not at first before they have a chance to work with you and develop trust in your abilities. When pitching new clients, it’s important to realize that they don’t actually give a damn how awesome a designer you are.

Don’t give me that look – it’s true. I know you might have been told in the past that potential clients are looking for you to “sell yourself” and deliver a book’s worth of superlatives about your work to anyone who will listen

But I’m telling you right now: if you do this, you’re doing it wrong. It’s not about you; it’s about what you can do for them. Using too many “I’s” and not enough “you’s” will almost certainly get you ignored

Get into their world

All right, since it’s about them and not you, how do you convey this to a potential client? The key is to ask people in your target niche exactly how you can help them achieve the result they most desire.

Be specific. Asking what some freelancers call “lifestyle questions” can provide you with a wealth of information that you can use to zero in on the perfect solution.

Lifestyle questions are not just about a client’s specific project, but about how the project impacts their business and their customers’ lives. These types of questions help you get a sense of what’s really bothering your client.

The closer your solution is to a genuine, major pain point, the more a client will value your work, and the less they will complain about paying you what you’re worth.

Assist, don’t sell

Every business owner appreciates it when someone takes the time to think for them, providing even more opportunities to make money and connect with their customers than they would have thought of on their own. How do your ideal clients earn most of their revenue? What can you do, using your unique skill set, that could help them make even more?

Making independent suggestions for services your clients will appreciate gets them talking about you like little else. It’s important not to actively sell new potential clients on these types of services, as that can make you seem shady and mercenary.

Rather, offer them a taste of your creative problem solving with no strings attached, whetting their appetite for even more money-making possibilities from your designer brain.

Show, don’t tell

Credibility is the secret ingredient to any freelance designer’s success. Anyone can list off a string of accomplishments that sound nice, but real top performers are able to prove that they can do what they claim. In a meeting with a potential client, you should always lead with any relevant credentials or connections you have.

People don’t care about what you can do; they care about what you’ve done. They want to see hard numbers and proven results. They prefer a warm introduction from someone they know and trust over a cold, unproven contact. If you don’t have that, an impressive sheet of data proving your value is the next best thing.

Care about caring

Finally, being genuine and forming real relationships can carry you further in your career than you may realize. Tony Sheh, the founder of Zappos.com, is frequently asked to lecture at other companies about how Zappos managed to build its unique reputation for outstanding customer service.

He’s observed that a surprising number of CEOs have no idea of how to simply reach out and care about their customers.

It seems like such a simple concept, but just taking time out to make a human connection with someone is vanishingly rare in business. It doesn’t take much; a personalized email here, a special gift for a loyal client there. Be the exception and you will stand out to your clients and anyone else who associates with you.

The post What Do Freelance Clients Actually Care About? appeared first on Hongkiat.

However, freelance designers need to closely monitor their skills as well, to avoid getting passed up by the competition. Today, we’re going to go over some ways you can stay in the loop with all the new skills you need to know, while not driving yourself crazy by always playing "catch up".

Turning it inside out

One of the best ways to maintain an edge when it comes to skills needed to solve your clients’ problems is to examine them from an "inside out" perspective. Rather than seeing freelancing as simply a means to an end, it’s important to always start with your client – or rather, their target user – and place yourself in their shoes.

What are they hoping to experience? Then, it’s simply a matter of deducing which essential skills you need to help that user have the best experience possible.

This is a great tactic to use if you’re confused over which new programming languages you need to learn, or what new software you should seek training for. When the user’s expectations start to change, that’s when you change.

Outsourcing for fun, and profit

Plenty of designers outsource tasks they themselves are less than good at. There’s nothing wrong with doing this, and I’ve recommended it many times in the past to designers who feel overwhelmed by everything they have to do.

However, when consulting with a client, it’s essential that you yourself can actually do the thing(s) your client is coming to you for. If they are in the market for a designer who can code, it will be harder to sell them if you’re hiring outside help.

Look for assets, not crutches

Simply relying on another contractor for an essential part of your business is usually not a good idea in the long run. If you outsource frequently, stop to consider whether you’d be better off just learning that skill yourself.

Knowing what you are doing gives you a confidence that is palpable to clients, and they will value you a lot more because of it.

As an alternative, you could also choose to partner up with someone permanently – perhaps the contractor you primarily outsource to – and offer a joint service to a much wider pool of clients. Working with others certainly has its challenges, but there’s no doubt that the right business partnership can increase your efficiency, and your income, exponentially.

Follow your heart

Usually, the skills you yourself most enjoy can be integrated into your design process and the services you offer to your clients. Even if you think a skill is "weird" or not relevant, it can still often be incorporated somehow, and set you apart from others competing for similar clients.

For example, my love of food and cooking might not seem to have anything to do with design. But not only is it a point of interest that makes people intrigued about me, I’ve also found that my added experience in the culinary arts puts my niche clients (restaurant owners and chefs) at ease.

They are quite eager to work with someone who has genuine knowledge and enthusiasm about their industry.

Mine your hobbies

Everyone reading this has hobbies – stuff you love to do in your spare time without any expectation of getting paid. Remember, hobbies are skills too, and they can help keep you ultra-relevant and cutting edge to the right clients who will appreciate them.

As with other skills you have that you think might be unrelated to design, your hobbies can often point you in a direction that you really should be focusing on in your career.

We should all be striving to be in the position where we’re only doing what we love. It usually takes some effort to get there, but incorporating your hobbies and passions can make it much easier.

Target practice

If you’ve been meaning to pick up a new skill, taking on a freelance project that’s more multifaceted than usual can be a great way to learn or practice it. If you have a client requesting some high-level programming like Ruby on Rails, or a client who wants to branch into video, this would be the perfect opportunity to jump in and start gaining experience.

Again, try to keep as much as possible to a skill set that inspires you – believe me, there are clients who fit every designer’s unique offerings.

How has keeping your skill set up to date helped you advance your career as a designer? Are there any unusual methods you’ve used to sharpen your competitive edge? Do share!

The post How to Keep Your Design Skills Fresh appeared first on Hongkiat.

We’re going to look at some ways an overabundance of professionalism can actually hurt your ability to do great design. Perhaps at the end of this post, you might think that it isn’t such a bad idea to fend off being a professional just a year or two longer.

1. You Get Too Stuck In "Your Ways"

Once you become a “professional” designer, you stop bending to the whims of trends and fads which is good, but you also begin to dig your heels in, in order to have things a certain way.

You become entrenched in an established, “professional” methodology, which can make you rigid and resistant to new ideas that would otherwise improve your designs.

Being a professional means pleasing your superiors, whether it’s your boss, your clients, or your users. But that’s not where truly great design lies. Yes, of course your job is always to make your clients and users happy, but not at the expense of what you know is the best design solution for them.

Once your “professionalism” begins to dictate that you bend too often to the demands of clients and users, you divert your career immediately to the design by committee sector. What true professional wants to be in that box? Not any I’ve ever met.

2. You Stop Breaking The Rules

In order for great designs to be made, rules have to be broken. It’s practically a law of any creative discipline. No one ever got famous for producing the same old, expected work in a “professional” way.

Yet that’s exactly what will expected of you by the majority as you adopt more and more professionalism.

If you find yourself obeying the rules out of habit, it’s time to step outside your comfort zone once again. Don’t be afraid to break some eggs to make the delicious design omelette you know you’re capable of. Yep – I just said ‘design omelette.’ And no, I’m not going to apologize for it.

See there? Breaking rules is fun!

3. Your Designs Become Predictable

This one is closely related to the last. Once you start following the rules of design and client expectations like a good little professional, something starts to happen to your work.

People start having an easier time predicting what you’re going to do next. A “professional” designer may think that this is a good thing, but it’s actually career poison. Why?

The same old routine produces the same old designs. Even if they were fresh and exciting in the beginning, eventually, being too much of a professional will stick you on a path towards mediocrity. And no client worth having wants to hire a mediocre designer.

Despite what you may think, quality clients want to be surprised by your creativity and uniqueness. Clients hire you to solve problems for their users, which you won’t be able to do if you’re too busy trying to stick to routine and be “professional” all of the time.

Some of the most well known designers were the ones who broke away from routine and tradition. Follow their lead, not the professionalism-mongers.

4. You Stop Failing

This is perhaps the most dangerous consequence of professionalism overload. When you stop failing, you stop succeeding, because you need the former to achieve the latter. As the old proverb says, the master has failed more times than the novice has even tried.

It’s true that being a professional will lower your chance of making rookie mistakes. This is great… until the day that it isn’t. It’s fine until you find yourself in a room full of designers who, despite their lack of your experience and mastery, are getting picked over you for all the best, most interesting creative work. Sure, they may fail more often, but that’s a good thing.

Even if you consider yourself an expert, don’t fall into the trap of thinking that you’re somehow above failure. It never ends well for designers.

5. You Get Left Behind

All of the above signs of over-professionalism lead up to one, important result: the swift and brutal death of your career as a designer. If you fall prey to the seductive siren call of “being a professional,” you will get passed up by up and coming designers who are less professional but more innovative.

Once all of the other consequences of over-professionalism have come true, this one is, unfortunately, inevitable. Clients will stop calling, users will stop giving glowing reviews of your designs. You will have become the consummate professional: perfect, a master of your craft, worthy of a museum show… and out of a job.

What Do You Think?

How do you think an excess of professional, picture perfect behavior affects a designer’s career? Is there a way to balance an ideal amount of professionalism with a healthy infusion of rebelliousness?

The post 5 Ways Professionalism Overload Hurts Your Design Career appeared first on Hongkiat.

Whether this is a client, a potential client, or simply one of your personal heroes whose brain you’d like to pick, there is a way to make a request of them that will get them to happily reply.

Likewise, there’s a way to make requests that will get you ignored forever. We’re going to explore how to do things the right way, so that neither you nor your busy recipient will be wasting any valuable time.

Don’t Ask Bad Questions

Many people say there’s no such thing as a bad question, but I say that’s a lie. If it’s something that is frivolous, impersonal, or that could be answered by a five-second search on Google, it’s a bad question to ask someone who has a limited amount of time.

One thing I like to do, if I have a pressing, work-related question, is to find a popular book on the subject at the library, check it out, and read it. I take plenty of notes on all the possible answers given in the book, and usually I can find the answer to my question in short order.

If not, I can either choose to read one or two more books on the subject until I’m satisfied, or I can send a quick note to someone I know will have the answer, making sure to explain that I’ve already attempted to find it on my own.

People, especially busy people, appreciate initiative (why wouldn’t they, being so busy all the time?), and the fact that you haven’t simply come to them with a dumb, generic question will usually delight them and make them more interested in helping you out.

Be Considerate of Their Time

Let’s face it: we’re all busy. If you’re a working professional, you are inundated with a deluge of emails, voice mails, texts, social media messages, blog posts, and so on.

Not to mention interactions with the real people in your life and all of the tasks, large and small, that have to get done. Often, people are busy simply attempting to multitask their lives, not to mention their work.

Be aware of what’s going on in your intended recipient’s life before you pose your question. If possible, research them a little bit. Do they have a family? Are they currently observing any kind of holiday or taking a vacation? Are they in “work mode,” “family mode,” or “leave-me-alone mode?”

Finding out the current situation of your busy person will give you valuable information about how you should phrase your question, and when you can best expect a positive response.

Work On The Question

If you absolutely can’t avoid asking a question in the middle of a person’s busiest time of day, make sure you word it so that they can devote the least amount of brain power to their answer as possible. Simple, fill in the blank answers, or yes/no questions are the best.

Play with different formats, and if appropriate, consider a shorter delivery method, like a tweet or a Facebook post rather than an email.

Try to Guess Their Answer

By this, I don’t mean attempt to answer the question yourself. There’s no point in asking it in that case. I mean that you should try to guess the way in which they will answer you.

Before you send that email, tweet, or Facebook message, think of the likely response you will get. How does the language sound? Is it in simple terms?

Try to answer a similarly worded question yourself first. If it’s too difficult for you to answer quickly, it’s too long or complicated and you need to change it.

Make It Super Easy

Again, make it easy for people to answer your questions. Make them short, easy, and, if you can, entertaining. Busy people are human too, and sometimes a splash of humor is just what they need to pick them up and help them get through their hectic day.

And remember that not every question in your email has to be strictly work related. Engaging people casually, not just professionally, is what builds real relationships that last.

If they have a spouse or children, ask about them. If you know they’re working on an exciting project or are working on their graduate degree, ask how it’s going.

No matter how busy they are, everyone will be more likely to remember the person who took the time to ask them a simple, human question about their lives.

Give People a Directive

Calls to action aren’t just for websites and marketing materials. Everyone appreciates knowing what is required of them, and busy people appreciate it more than most. Don’t ask vague, open-ended question without giving directions on what, specifically, you want in terms of a response.

Tell them to do something, anything – click here, watch this, reply with your top 3 ideas, et cetera.

It’s not condescending or manipulative to have a call to action in your emails. On the contrary, you alleviate people’s stress and save them the mental energy of figuring out how to reply. As a result, your request is much more likely to get a response, instead of a short trip to the trash bin.

In Conclusion

Remember, if you do everything right and still fail to get a response, you shouldn’t take it personally. Most likely the person was simply too wrapped up in their lives and responsibilities that they couldn’t get to your request. It’s likely nothing personal, and most people will appreciate it if you simply try again, rather than vanish.

If you just disappear, it sends the message that you weren’t really looking to make a meaningful exchange with the person in the first place. Don’t come off like an opportunist – be persistent and respectful, and you may find that busy people will start carving out time to approach you with requests, rather than the other way around.

The post How to Get Buzy People to Answer You appeared first on Hongkiat.

There’s a good chance you could be making some extra money on the side from these designs. And there’s no reason why you shouldn’t. Let’s have a look at 5 tips on how you can do just that.

1. Make Sure You Have The Rights To Your Work

First, you have to make sure you have legal permission to reproduce old client work. If you don’t, either get it or skip that particular project. Even if you own certain reproduction rights, it doesn’t necessarily mean that you have the right to repurpose or even alter your own work.

If someone has bought the exclusive rights to reproduce the work, then you are not allowed to do anything with it (however, I hope you got paid a whole lot of money for those rights).

This is where a good contract comes in handy. You want to always be aware of exactly which rights you’re giving over to your client, and which ones you’d be better off retaining.

The fewer rights you need to give away, the better. Non-exclusive reproduction rights should be enough for the majority of client projects unless it’s a logo or something specific to the company’s brand.

2. Selling Prints

This is the most obvious course of action. Plenty of people enjoy purchasing prints of designs they like to decorate their homes and offices. If you have a style that grabs attention and your pieces would look good framed and hung up on a wall, then selling prints of your work is the way to go.

Of course, printing on paper is just one way you can sell prints. There are many websites now that will print your design on just about any type of merchandise, as well as handle the production and shipping for you, whether you want to print on a sticker sheet, a t-shirt, a coffee mug, or a throw pillow.

3. Licensing

This is potentially the most lucrative option, and – go figure – it’s also the most difficult to do successfully. The basic idea behind licensing is: you find a company that’s already manufacturing products that your designs would look good on, and convince them to reproduce your designs on those products.

In exchange, you receive a percentage of the royalties, about 8 to 10 percent. With licensing, you make money every time your licensee sells a product with your design on it. Also, you don’t have to deal with the hassle of manufacturing or fulfillment. The licensee handles all of that for you.

In order to make any real money from licensing, you or your licensee will need to have some sort of brand recognition. If both of you are relatively unknown, you’re going to have a difficult time making enough sales to cover the cost of production. Your licensee may decide that it’s not worth the time and money to license your designs, and you will be dropped.

To prevent that from happening, you need to do your part to help market your designs to your own platform. The more buzz you can create around your designs, the more excited people will be to purchase them.

4. Showing In Galleries

Now, you may be thinking “wait a second, I’m not some fine art painter who shows their work in galleries. I’m a designer, darn it.” But let me explain. Even if you’re not an artist, some of your more artsy or conceptual design pieces can still appeal to gallery buyers.

You never know what collectors will be willing to pay for. And who knows – you may find yourself in demand more for your “art” pieces than you were for your design services. Not a bad gig, really.

Shop around for the most appropriate places to show your work. The thing you need to know about most galleries is that they keep around 50% of all profits earned by the sale of a work. That means, if your piece sells for $1000, you only get to keep $500.

But in exchange, you get to say that your work has been shown in galleries and is owned by art collectors. This may seem frivolous, but believe me, it can lend a lot of legitimacy and value to your personal brand.

5. Don’t Forget To Market Yourself

Whether you sell prints, license, or show in galleries, it’s very hard to make any sales without promoting yourself. So don’t forget about marketing and building an audience for your work. Consider blogging or social media to reach out to people who might be interested in buying.

Cultivate a presence online that people can see and appreciate – let them get to know the designer behind the curtain, as it were.

What other ways can you think of to earn extra profit from your design work? Have you tried any of the above methods, and if so, how did it work out for you? Share your insights in the comments.

The post 5 Ways to Monetize Your Old Designs appeared first on Hongkiat.

This can be an incredibly rewarding experience that can enhance both the project you’re working on, as well as your overall career as a creative professional. Or, it can be a total nightmare, with clashing personalities and a muddling of the overall vision into an unsalvageable mess.

We’re going to look at how to handle being the boss of a team-driven design project, so that you, your team members, and your clients are all happy with the result.

Don’t Make Them Read Your Mind

Be direct and tell your team your exact expectations. What, specifically, do you want from them? What will happen if they don’t deliver? Never, ever assume people will automatically know what to do in any circumstance if you haven’t told them, especially if they’re new hires on an unprecedented creative project.

If they do know what to do, that’s a plus, but most people won’t know half as much as you think (or hope) they will.

Working Without The Manager

Give step-by-step instructions. The key here is to automate the process of creating the work as much as you can. In the book The E-Myth by Michael Gerber, there is a significant emphasis on “assembly line style” business practices — that is, setting things up so that you, the manager or business owner, are needed as little as possible in the day-to-day activities.

This may seem counter-intuitive, but the less your team needs to rely on you for little things, the more great things you can all accomplish together.

It’s always better to assume less knowledge and be pleasantly surprised than to assume more knowledge and be screwed come crunch time. I know I sound cynical, but after working with dozens of teams over the years, this is just the simple truth of the matter.

Be Generous With The Compliments

Your team is working long, thankless hours to make the company dream a reality. They made a choice to be there, sure, but weeks or months of relentless work on a single project will wear down even the most tireless worker.

Sometimes, all it takes is a simple compliment to keep someone engaged and willing to put in just a little more effort. People like to know they’re doing a good job and that their hard work is appreciated.

If your team is kicking ass, you owe it to them to say thank you in whatever way you can. This isn’t just HR psychobabble, by the way; it can literally make the difference between a project being a success or a failure.

I can’t tell you how many teams I’ve been on that have started out strong, and devolved into squabbling, demotivated groups of people completely alienated from each other and disenfranchised from the creative process — all because the manager was a jerk.

Defend Them & Take The Heat

If you’ve never been in charge of other people before, there’s some bad news I have to break to you: everything is your fault. You may have heard of the expression “the buck stops with you.”

What that means is that you are the final authority when it comes to all decisions, whether good or bad. You’re the judge, jury, and executioner, but your head is also on the chopping block when things go awry.

Specifically, this means that the mistakes of your team are your responsibility, not theirs. That’s why you’re the supervisor and they’re the employees. They expect you to protect them from the brunt of your client’s or boss’ wrath, and in return, you lead them to do the right thing for the company.

Filter Your People

This rule is non-negotiable, as it should be. There’s always a cost to power, and there are responsibilities that come with leading people. However, there’s a responsibility that your team has to you as well.

My personal rule is, if someone screws up more than three times, I immediately replace them with someone else. You only want winners on your team — all the losers can go goof off somewhere else.

Don’t Let People Get Away With BS

As the saying goes, you should hire slow and fire fast. If someone isn’t working out, it’s better to let them go sooner rather than later. Hanging on to a bad apple will only cause problems, not the least of which will be with other team members who are pulling their own weight. You owe it to the “A” members of your team to get rid of the “B’s,” “C’s,” and “D’s.”

The goal here is to have a team comprised of nothing but A-listers. That way, things will go much more smoothly, and you can focus on giving your team everything they need to be as successful as possible. It’s a little like cutting off the diseased parts of a plant.

The deadweight will do nothing but sit there and slowly poison the healthy leaves and flowers. You can’t afford that if you want to be the best.

They Must Earn Their Keep

Always make sure your team members are making you or your client a profit. Never pay someone more than what they’re actually bringing in to the enterprise. Team members need to earn their keep, and if they’re not doing so, fire them.

It may sound harsh, but remember, you want “all A’s” on your team — not someone who will drag down morale and make everyone else less productive.

If you’re working for a client or a boss, you have a responsibility to them to make their business as profitable as possible. If it’s your own business, your responsibility is to yourself and anyone who has a vested interest in your business’ success.

This will require some type of record-keeping of the profit margins and such, and if you’re not good at that kind of thing, hire someone who is.

What Do You Think?

Have you worked as a team leader before? What other insights do you have about choosing and bringing out the best of the best in the people working under you?

The post Building and Hiring an Awesome Team appeared first on Hongkiat.

Designers, on the other hand, are often eager to create valuable work for shady clients with no guarantee of payment. Today, we’ll explore how a simple role-playing exercise can help cure you of this malady, and ensures that you get paid on time, every time.

The Obvious First Step

First, the essentials. I don’t often write about contracts because every freelance designer should already be using one. If you don’t use a contract for every new design project you take on, I’m sorry, but you’re asking to be screwed over.

The contract doesn’t just protect you from shady clients who want to take advantage of you — it also protects the right clients, who make honest mistakes, from unknowingly costing you time and money. Clients are only human, but a contract helps keep people on track much more often.

Passion For A Price

Okay, so on to the exercise. Imagine you’re a plumber. Get a good visual going — perhaps you look like Super Mario. I don’t know — this is your scenario! Anyway, one day you’re approached by a client who wants you to do a complicated repair job. The price they’re willing to pay? Nothing. This client wants you to do several hours of plumbing work free.

Would you do it? Furthermore, how do you think other plumbers would feel if they heard that you said yes to these terms? Would they say, “Well, at least you’ve got some good experience you can show to your next client?”

Of course not. They’d lambast you and call you a moron for getting taken advantage of. Yet somehow, when a designer does the same thing, it’s overlooked as something acceptable. Why? Because designers keep allowing it.

Know Your Worth

Designers may have gotten into the industry because they love design, but they also need to make a living. A professional designer knows the importance of robust design in the pipeline of business. The difference between a well-designed product and one poorly designed can often mean the difference between thousands — sometimes even millions — of dollars of revenue.

Yes, marketing is essential, but if it weren’t for strong design, companies like Apple would be obscure, tiny, and non-competitive — if they even existed at all.

You are a very valuable part of your client’s business. If you weren’t, they wouldn’t have bothered hiring you in the first place. Keep in mind that they need you — just like someone with clogged pipes needs a plumber. The value you provide is just as significant in its way.

Stopping Delays In Their Tracks

Many times, a client who is withholding payment is not intending to be malicious. As Mike Monteiro reminds us in his iconic 2011 presentation at CreativeMornings in San Francisco, “No client enters into a relationship with you just to be a jerk” (I’m paraphrasing a bit, naturally).

They genuinely needed your design services at some point, and their delay in paying you could be a bookkeeping error or some minor oversight on their part.

There are also times where the client feels that you failed to provide a satisfactory result, which is entirely fair. Going back to our plumber example, if you went to use your newly fixed toilet, and found that the pipes were now leaky, you’d do everything in your power to withhold payment until that problem was fixed.

Sometimes, it’s a simple communication error between you and your client, which can be fixed with a simple, polite email or phone call.

Practice Your Acting Skills

You can put yourself in the shoes of a plumber, or any other independent contractor, every time you have to deal with a payment issue.

By remembering that your client needs a valuable solution to a problem only you can provide, you can maintain the upper hand and make sure you receive the promised compensation.

The post Boost Your Freelance Business by Roleplaying as a Plumber appeared first on Hongkiat.

Attempting to please everyone is said to be the fastest route to mediocrity. In fact, it’s the fastest route to outright failure. We’re going to look at why this is so, and how to go about streamlining your business to provide maximum value to the clients who are most worth it.

Too Much Hassle

You should happily alienate certain types of clients. You can’t please everybody, after all. Some clients can be more trouble than they’re worth. We’ve all had clients like these.

They’re demanding, yet tight-fisted about payment; they want plenty of options, but they don’t value you enough as a freelancer to compensate you fairly. They ask for services you don’t feel comfortable providing or which would require an excessive amount of time and resources to get.

To top it all off, they see almost no value in your work as a designer – maybe their spouse or colleague told them they needed a website or rebranding and they just went along with it. What are you doing serving clients like this? It’s a hassle that’s not worth it in any way, shape, or form.

Project Not A Good Fit

Some design projects are just not worth the trouble of taking on. Whether they’re simply boring to you, or they won’t contribute meaningfully to a strong portfolio, there are many reasons to turn down certain projects, even if the client is pleasant.

I can’t tell you how many times I’ve referred a perfectly good client to another designer friend of mine, simply because I didn’t think I was capable of providing the best value to them.

If you don’t appear greedy for business – any business – these clients will usually take notice of that, and when a colleague of theirs comes along whom you are a better fit for, they’ll call you first.

Who To Alienate

So, what types of clients should you alienate? Choosing who to focus on is a highly personal exercise. You can start by creating a list of the most common traits of your 5 best clients. What did you most love about working with these people? What about the projects was most interesting to you?

When you’re done, you will have a reference sheet of the single type of niche client to zero in on. Anyone who doesn’t embody, at least 80% of, what’s on that list should be referred to a designer friend of yours who is more suitable.

Can’t Afford To Ignore?

Focusing on a particular type of niche client can be scary for some freelancers who aren’t as secure financially as they’d like to be. We’ve all done things “for the money” that weren’t necessarily fulfilling or career-building, and that’s okay in the short term.

However, if you consistently find yourself taking on work you don’t enjoy, just to pay the bills, that’s usually a sign that something is wrong.

Either you’re not exposing yourself to the right type of clients who will pay more for your work, or you’re off the mark with your pricing and service offerings. Either way, you’re not providing the correct amount of value to the clients you’re serving.

Conclusion

No designer can be everywhere at all times, nor can they be everything to all people. There’s no single, solitary designer who can provide the perfect solution to a generic pool of clients, nor should there be.

If you want to be memorable in your clients’ minds, you have to first find the type of clients who are most likely to remember you – the ones who most value your contribution – and ignore the rest who don’t fit.

The post Why Alienating Potential Clients Can Be A Good Thing appeared first on Hongkiat.

Today, we’re going to go over the process of conjuring positive emotions in your users through the use of storytelling, improving the effectiveness of your designs in the process.

What a story is

What do I mean when I say the word “story?” Are we talking about Cinderella or Beauty and the Beast, with a handsome prince and a plucky heroine? No. Well, not usually, anyway. What I mean by storytelling is an event that happens during a user’s experience that creates a positive emotion.

Don Norman in the TED video Three Ways Good Design Makes You Happy gives a delightful example of storytelling in the playful designs of various designers, including an interactive ping pong table, and chairs by Jake Cress that appear to be “reaching” for missing pieces that are “running away” from them. In these designs, you can immediately tell what’s going on — the designer is attempting to communicate with you through the clever anthropomorphism of the products.

Stories keep us human

We digital designers can utilize the same basic principles to tell stories to our audiences. As can be seen in the previous example, it doesn’t take much to generate a story that makes people laugh or inspires them to feel a connection with you, the designer, through your designs. Just a small bit of humanization where there isn’t expected to be any can do the trick.

Otherwise, you can come up with your own simple stories to tell. Because if there’s one thing to keep in mind, it’s that…

Interpretive storytelling

Remember, if the key elements are in place, the stories will tell themselves. You don’t need to explain anything or hold your users’ hands — people are usually smart enough to “get it”. It’s all in the expression of your message. You can create a single word that gets people’s attention in many different ways and make that same message evoke mixed emotions.

An emotional response is not always about clear readability that’s rarely the case. It’s much more about using design elements — color, shape, composition, scale — to communicate whatever emotion will have the most significant impact.

Simple is better

The simpler your story, the more impact it can have on people who only look at it for a few seconds. The power of emotion can turn even the most generic imagery into a powerful storytelling medium. The popular website Reddit uses simple storytelling with its mascot, the little white alien.

Occasionally, the front page of Reddit will feature the alien in intriguing situations, such as (ironically) getting abducted by aliens. Alexis Ohanian, one of the founders of Reddit, has said that this simple use of storytelling on the Reddit front page has garnered the massive website traffic and advertising revenue over the years.

Stories make people happy

You make better decisions when you see good design. Why? Because seeing pretty things make you happier. Good storytelling will be automatically accepted and embraced by your audience. Again, you don’t even have to explain it — if it connects on a visceral level, the story will immediately tell itself. Your users will smile, laugh, and happily follow the calls to action you place before them.

On the flip side, of course, stories can evoke other emotions besides happiness. Pride, sadness, hope, confusion, anger — any feeling can be present in a design. Cultural and historical context is essential as well.

Political advertisements can conjure a drastically different emotion after a significant historical event (World War II, for example) than they did before it happened. What was previously harmless and intended to inspire happiness suddenly becomes a reminder of a terrible injustice or socio-political disaster.

Design in the world

Design isn’t just something that we as professionals get paid to do. Any instance where people interact with the world around them to create a solution to a problem qualifies as design.

Something as simple as leaning your bicycle against a tree — the tree is an object in your space that can be used to solve a problem you have (where can I rest my bike?). The stories we as individuals tell one another in the space where we live can be just as compelling as the stories we tell our audiences as designers — sometimes even more so.

Stories in graffiti form

For example, how people interact with a design can in themselves tell a story. Graffiti and vandalism can show a surprisingly wide range of stories about how the things designers create are received in the world. What businesses do people respect the most or the least? Where is a client’s message going to be most effective? Look at the graffiti.

I could go into extreme detail about the common indications of graffiti, itself a complex and fascinating form of design. But in terms of professional work, even digital design has its kind of “graffiti” in the form of comments, anonymous reviews, and even more malicious things like hacking.

Conclusion

It’s essential for designers to observe the storytelling that takes place all around us, and use it to start and lead conversations that will help shape the world. Being a thought leader is a high social position that is available to any designer, in even the smallest of ways. All you need is an outstanding story.

The post How Telling Stories Can Nail You More Clients appeared first on Hongkiat.