Why 100% positive feedback isn’t necessarily good!

(Or why one person in a bad mood can ruin your career as a freelancer!)

With more and more people hiring online I think a lot of clients tend to search by rating first. But 100% positive feedback to me means one of 3 things:

1 - they haven’t taken on many projects

2 - they have been lucky

3 - they are a pushover.

Now the first could be fine - they may be new to the site but experienced elsewhere. But if they’re not - it could mean they haven’t been chosen for many jobs due to price or quality of work. They may be wonderful designers who refuse to work for peanuts, or they may be completely new to the business. Maybe the 1 or 2 client they have have been happy and that’s great, but maybe they had low expectations or were already friends with the designer.

When I say they might have been lucky this is me saying they might have only had decent/nice clients. Feedback scores reflect on the client as well as the designer. Some clients, not too many, but some are … to put it politely just not very nice. They can be unreasonable, demanding, changeable, stressed, unsure - anything anyone else can be. And if you cannot mind-read what they want first time or agree to every demand (at midnight - the night before the project is due - for no extra pay) you could be landed with a very unfair feedback score.

As for being a pushover. I expect some people are thinking - great! A pushover is just what you want to get your own way. It isn’t. You have hired a professional. 9/10 they know better than you what you want. If you say you want your book set in 18pt Comic Sans - a pushover will do it. A decent designer will not. They will explain why that isn’t a good idea, why it will reduce your sales and reputation and they will offer alternatives. THIS is what you should want. Someone to work with you to give you a better product. Not someone who will blindly do as you say.

So there you are.

If you are hiring online don’t take a 100% feedback score as the be all and end all. If you look at the work and someone with an 80% score looks the best to you… they just might be - read the feedback of course and make up your mind. Don’t just overlook them. You might be missing the best freelancers that way.

Information Designers - The unsung heroes or The Crystal Goblet

As opposed to the more showy graphic designers and artists, typographers & Information designers rarely become famous outside their own field and spend most of their working life trying NOT to get their work noticed!

This is because of the Crystal Goblet theory - something that was taught to me at University. I completely agree with this concept despite the fact it often makes my contribution to a project look extremely boring!

As this is something I think only a very small amount of the population will have heard of, and I think it is worth understanding, here it is in its entirety:


The Crystal Goblet by Beatrice Warde:

Imagine that you have before you a flagon of wine. You may choose your own favorite vintage for this imaginary demonstration, so that it be a deep shimmering crimson in color. You have two goblets before you. One is of solid gold, wrought in the most exquisite patterns. The other is of crystal-clear glass, thin as a bubble, and as transparent. Pour and drink; and according to your choice of goblet, I shall know whether or not you are a connoisseur of wine.

For if you have no feelings about wine one way or the other, you will want the sensation of drinking the stuff out of a vessel that may have cost thousands of pounds; but if you are a member of that vanishing tribe, the amateurs of fine vintages, you will choose the crystal, because everything about it is calculated to reveal rather than to hide the beautiful thing which it was meant to contain.
Bear with me in this long-winded and fragrant metaphor; for you will find that almost all the virtues of the perfect wine-glass have a parallel in typography. There is the long, thin stem that obviates fingerprints on the bowl. Why? Because no cloud must come between your eyes and the fiery hearth of the liquid. Are not the margins on book pages similarly meant to obviate the necessity of fingering the type-pages? Again: The glass is colorless or at the most only faintly tinged in the bowl, because the connoisseur judges wine partly by its color and is impatient of anything that alters it.

There are a thousand mannerisms in typography that are as impudent and arbitrary as putting port in tumblers of red or green glass! When a goblet has a base that looks too small for security, it does not matter how cleverly it is weighted; you feel nervous lest it should tip over. There are ways of setting lines of type which may work well enough, and yet keep the reader subconsciously worried by the fear of "doubling" lines, reading three words as one, and so forth.

Printing demands a humility of mind, for the lack of which many of the fine arts are even now floundering in self-conscious and maudlin experiments. There is nothing simple or dull in achieving the transparent page. Vulgar ostentation is twice as easy as discipline. When you realise that ugly typography never effaces itself, you will be able to capture beauty as the wise men capture happiness by aiming at something else.
The "stunt typographer" learns the fickleness of rich men who hate to read. Not for them are long breaths held over serif and kern, they will not appreciate your splitting of hair-spaces. Nobody (save the other craftsmen) will appreciate half your skill. But you may spend endless years of happy experiment in devising that crystalline goblet which is worthy to hold the vintage of the human mind.

Why Do People Hire Freelancers?

Why does anyone hire us?! Companies can always hire in-house designers or often, just do it themselves. What can we do, that they can't?

I guess sometimes a company is just really busy and needs an extra pair of hands for a little while, or whoever was doing the job has left for some reason. In that case you need to do a really good job to make sure they don't just hire in someone else permanent as soon as they can.

Maybe you can save a company money? As well as providing some great work of course!


Another thing I've been told is that I bring in fresh ideas. To me - my ideas are … well … my ideas! I always have them. I'm used to them. But to a company with in-house designers it's their ideas that are familiar - a freelancer can bring a new view to a project.

Or maybe, a freelancer happens to have a certain set of skills that no-one in-house has.



Maybe the company has heard of you from a similar project either within the same company or elsewhere. A good reputation can take you anywhere! So make sure you can always deliver! Then as soon as you know how things work within a certain company, you have a great chance of being called back so they don't have to start all over again training someone new. But at the same time - being a freelancer they are taking no long term risks.

Overall freelancers definitely have their place and sometimes have some specific advantages over in-house designers.

Being an Author, Being an Artist, Designing - why do it?!

I have a friend who is a self-published author. I was talking to him today about the effort he goes to and the money he spends on getting his books sold. It seemed to me the figures didn't add up! The amount he spends on travel, business cards and tables at fairs etc must be huge. It seems pretty tough starting out being an author, I don't think I could do it, seems really hard to break into, yet in a lot of ways it's like being a designer or any the creative job. You put your own work out there and everyone judges it. I read recently "if nobody hates your book not enough people are reading you" And I guess that's true of my work. No one can please everyone with their designs. If nobody thinks my work is bad, not enough people are looking at it!

I am hoping to start going round with this author friend to book fairs and hand out my new, shiny, business cards and have other self-publishing authors take up my book design services. But I wonder if I'll have the stamina he does. I think I can stand there for a day with the possibility of getting no work, but how many of those tables could I man? Waiting for people to come in, hoping they don't already have someone creating layouts for them, hoping they have the money to pay somebody to do it, hoping that somebody could be me.

He's been doing it for a few years now I think. Would I have the passion to keep designing if I was doing barely more than covering costs?

Worryingly. Yes. Probably. I couldn't help it!

Maybe it wouldn't be my job but I've always designed, before I even knew that's what I was doing - layout drawings for dollhouses, making tiny books for the dolls, drawing outfits and making fake catalogues with them. Then as I got older designing badges that my mum would make up on her home machine, making signs for my dads supermarket, making business cards… older still … laying out my author friends books, making bookmarks and posters for societies I've been in. All unpaid. All because I couldn't NOT do it. I couldn't bear for it not to be done by me, to my standard. Did I do any of it for praise? No. Did I think "this will look good in my portfolio?". No. I see things badly designed or badly printed and I get angry! I want things to be as perfect as possible. I need to help if I can. Maybe I'm just a control freak!

There are things now coming back to me that I haven't seen for years, had completely forgotten I'd done and now it's all coming together - this is what I do. I guess I've just realised how lucky I am that I can get paid to do it!

So the answer to my question seems to be, if you're a certain kind of person like I am, - because we can't not.

Beauty really is in the eye of the beholder

A job I wanted had a lot of applicants and so the company wanted all the bidders to provide a mock-up brochure cover so they could make their decision (on another note - fingers are still crossed).

Being me I couldn't simply create one cover and be done with it, I created four in the end and then spent 20 minutes staring at them with that blank look you get when you've been looking at a certain design/object for too long. So I thought the best thing to do would be call in some impartial people to take a look and let me know what they thought. I had my suspicions that the first two were pretty good, the fourth one was ok and the third completely hideous. So with that in mind I sent them off to impartial observer one - a friend. She said the second and third worked best for her and impartial observer two - my mum(!) said she liked the first and last ones best.

...

Now what do I do?! Out of four I have one vote for each. How on this basis do I have any idea which one my client would prefer having never even met them?

Well, I sent the three I preferred in the end! If I hate a design I can't work on it happily whatever someone else thinks. Lets hope the client has similar taste to me, if not, I guess it wasn't meant to be.

Bidding websites

As a newbie to the world of freelancing I have just come across the world of web bidding freelance sites. At first glance I thought this was an amazing idea. I sit here, in my pyjamas and tell various clients why I am great and they should hire me. No problem.

So I check out some jobs and find one I know I can do. I'm feeling confident. So I try to bid.

First hurdle - the profile section:

I fill in all the easy ones - my name and where I've worked. I can handle that. Then the skills and why people should hire me. Then I need to upload a portfolio.

Second hurdle - the portfolio:

So it turns out most of the work I want to showcase is hidden in my mums attic or still on the system at one of the companies I used to work for. Did I think this through before I left? No. Of course I didn't. So, I email and plead and climb into the stuffy, dusty loft and eventually get together a collection of goodies.I put up my portfolio. Finally I get to start bidding.

Third Hurdle - choosing what to bid on:

There is a huge choice of jobs but I only get 10 credits, unless I want to buy more, which I can't afford because I have no work… so I read and narrow down a short list and read again until I have some I'm happy with. NOW I can bid.

Forth Hurdle - the competition:

I've worked in the design industry for five years and I know what the companies I've worked for pay freelancers. So I feel pretty happy about my rate - until I see some of these bids. 1.50 per hour?!!?!? How are these people making enough to live? I can't do that. Yet, if I bid a decent amount surely I've got no chance?

Do I waste my bid by practically paying them to let me do the job, or waste my bid bidding an amount I can actually do the job for and knowing the client will tend to want the cheaper option?

Anyway, the outcome was, I placed bids on many different jobs, on many different sites, for various rates. I bid high, I bid low, I bid in the middle, I bid on small jobs and ongoing jobs … I tried it all. Then, the very next day, … miracle … I won a bid! They contact me, I feel smug, I tell everyone how easy it is to find freelance jobs, the client says they'd "love to get going on this project" so I wait for my deposit and contract … and I wait … and I ask if the project is going ahead… and I wait … and ask again. I am now not looking so smug. I'm still waiting.

So, it's back to the drawing board. Remind me why I left my 9-5?