“In no way am I suggesting that I’ve achieved the ideal balance between the personal and professional. I’ll admit, things skew a bit towards the professional in my life right now. If anything, though, I’m aiming to tip the scales towards the personal, especially going forward. I’m better at achieving this balance today than I was ten years ago, and I certainly hope to be better at it in ten years than I am now. I don’t want to find myself, in a decade, running out of a family vacation to make a business meeting. Even more to the point, I don’t want to find myself still working at the office at 6:30p when my children are growing up without me.”

“In the thirteen years I’ve been on the web, twelve of which I’ve spent doing professional web site design, and the last two of which have sent me to hundreds of artists’ web sites, I’ve come to the inevitable conclusion that the thing artists want most when placing their art on the web is for it not to be seen.” (Thanks Coudal Partners!)

“As I’ve mentioned in previous articles, the initial direct contact with clients during the discovery meeting is likely the most important moment in the life of a project. While most of my previous reference in this regard has been toward the establishment of designer competence and development of fellowship with the client, there is another vital aspect to this initial meeting: the specific questions asked.”

“Passion is not enthusiasm. It is not love. It is not enjoyment, and it is not flow. Passion is an unstoppable overflowing of emotion that destroys in its satisfaction, that torpedoes lives and marriages and nations, that shoots husbands or coworkers or strangers in rage. It is the hot lava of the soul, and it burns what it pours over. It is not the positive team-building thing your sup­ervisor would have you believe. Passion causes wars and brutal killings and divorces, and has astronauts wearing Depends and the headmistresses of girls’ schools going to jail, and gets husbands run over in parking lots. To say that a bunch of software engineers or graphic designers are passionate about their work is to try to interject sex and confusion and addiction and desire into a kind of work that is essentially asexual, organized, left brain, and sober.”

“Out of every design-related article and blog entry written over the past few years, very few have tackled the “taboo” topic of money — namely how much to charge for creative work. There are thousands of articles about CSS best practices but when it comes down to paying bills or putting food on the table, work-for-hire designers are on their own.”

“Running a business for yourself means you have to be inventive and always on the lookout for a new and better way to get things done. Innovation junkies, take note: the Internet has a lot to offer. From invoicing to marketing, these are tools that freelancers need to know about.”

“No matter how innovative or successful a campaign might be, the agency developing it is ultimately beholden to its client. Accordingly, compensation typically ends when the contract does.

‘We don’t think that is a particularly equitable way to do our business,’ said Jim Coudal, president of Coudal Partners, an interactive marketing agency at 400 N. May (about 1100 west, just south of Kinzie).

‘The whole work-for-hire thing in design and advertising, where the client owns everything outright, is a broken model,’ he said.”

“In advertising, branding, marketing, design, public relations, we live and breathe creativity. And the thing about creativity is, not everyone agrees on the interpretation of the brand, whether ad concept or identity design. Guess what? That’s OK. It’s called collaborating. A healthy debate can lead to the best product, but I feel it’s the agency that needs to lead with authority. Otherwise, you might as well ask ‘Do you want fries with that website?’ So what happens when the client doesn’t want to be led? When it stops critiquing and starts bullying over design issues that you know are detrimental to the brand?”

“As Web 2.0 Buying Season winds down, it is pleasant to consider what was different about it. This time, for the most part, the buyers have been farmers, not butchers. They bought to nurture, not to kill… I worked at other places over the years. The great ones were small and created their own cultures. The not-so-great ones had almost always been good until they got too big.”

“There are loads of different types of clients out there and chances are at some point you’ll get to meet all of them. So let’s take a look through some typical clients and see if you recognise a few of your own in there!”

“About a month ago I received some email with questions about how Airbag got started as a for-profit company. Here are the questions and answers for the benefit of others. ‘What factored you into quitting your day job and going solo? I’m assuming you built up enough of a name through your blog.’”

“…taking a ‘I don’t need to file copyright applications’ attitude can often come back to haunt you. The reason for this, under the US Copyright Act, is that registration of the copyright within ninety (90) days of publication (or before infringement takes place) is necessary to enable the copyright owner to receive what are referred to as ’statutory damages.’”

“The fact is that our reputation is a key part of our personal brand. Our ticket to fame or blame, our reputation is how we’re perceived. And just as a reputation can make or break a company, it can make or break a career. The HBR article refers to a ‘reputation-reality gap,’ or what we might call a perception problem. It’s where our reputation doesn’t match reality. On the corporate side, think Enron and WorldCom, both of whom once had excellent reputations but then got into trouble when they fraudulently tried to maintain those reputations.”

“Your contracts should have passages that state your client’s responsibilities to work at your level – not the other way around. You’re the professional they hired to do what they cannot do or conceive of themselves. They are required to work at your high level rather than their own (most likely) make–do, apathetic level. Make sure that they understand that the results of the project will directly reflect their own participation and level of commitment.”

“Today’s careers are made and broken by one’s ability to network. Please don’t post comments about how unfair this is — I know that people who are bad at networking think it’s not fair that the world rewards networking so much. But that’s the way the world is. You’re not going to change it by whining. Instead, be giddy: Networking is actually a lot easier than you think. Here are five reasons why…”