Mint

Today I’m thrilled to be a part of the Creative, Inc. blog tour! Creative, Inc. is Meg Mateo Ilasco and Joy Cho’s new book, and it’s a must-read for anyone who is a creative freelancer or wants to become one. Last weekend I picked up the book and literally didn’t put it down until I was finished! I made a few notes, marked a few pages, and am looking forward to reading my favorite sections in depth. The book covers everything from preparing for your freelance career and calculating your rate, to dealing with tough clients and maintaining your personal life. As a newbie freelancer myself (about to hit the one year mark, y’all!) I have a lot of questions for Meg and Joy. They were kind enough to answer some of them right here!

Your books Creative, Inc. and Crafting a Meaningful Home were just published this summer, and in October you’ll release the first issue of your new magazine Anthology. On top of that, you’re a mom… my head is spinning! What’s a typical day like for you?
MMI: Sometimes I wish I had a typical day! But everyday is a little different for me. Though it normally starts off with dropping off my kids at school and picking them up in the evening—what happens in between varies. For example, today, I finished pass #5 of the magazine layout, I had a phone conference with Anh-Minh Le (magazine’s editor in chief) to go over the stories for the next issue, and I delivered a print out to our photo editor. Yesterday, I had a lunch meeting with my book editor and a new co-author, wrapped up an illustration job, and reviewed the proofs of a book design. The beauty of a freelance career is that you never have a dull day!

How did your very first book, You Can Wear it Again, come about?
MMI: My first business was a wedding invitation company that I started in 1999—so it was natural for me to think of book ideas related to weddings. My first book proposal was actually turned down. In hindsight, I probably should not have included putting a gold toof on for your wedding (That’s  right “toof”!). However, the editors invited me for a meeting to discuss other ideas I may have—and You Can Wear It Again, a book about bridesmaids’ dresses, was greenlighted during that meeting.

Did you intentionally set out to become a freelancer after leaving the marketing research firm you worked for, or did it happen more organically?
MMI: Oh, it’s all organic! I should really make a flow chart and timeline to describe of my career path. I actually started the wedding invitation company on the side while I was at the marketing research firm. Then I brought the business with me when I went to graduate school for architecture. (Word to the wise: architecture + a side business do not mix.) The wedding invitations took off and I chose the business over finishing graduate school. I eventually sold that business to currently have the freelance career you now see. With my career, I feel like I’m just following a string and I’m never quite sure where it’s going to take me!

Many freelancers describe their work as “feast or famine,” and that makes it hard to know if you need to hire an employee (What if the work dries up in 6 months?) or or if you should just try to push through on your own. What’s your advice for figuring out if someone is ready to make that step?
MMI: Hiring an employee is a big commitment—you need to have space in your office and provide them with tools to work, you need to have enough money to cover payroll, and you’ll need to make sure they have enough work lined up everyday. If you tend to be in a feast or famine situation regularly, I wouldn’t recommend hiring someone permanently. Instead, if you’ve got more projects than you can handle, farm the work out to another freelancer (subcontractor). Once you have a steady flow of regular clientele, then you can start to think about hiring an employee. You should hire an employee to do the things you don’t have the time to do (like scheduling and paperwork), to make up for the skills you lack (like accounting) or to elevate the talent in your company. Also, if you’re wary about hiring, start off with an intern first to get your feet wet.

Tell us about a fun design/illustration project you’re working on or recently completed.
MMI: I recently finished designing a book called “The Repurposed Library” by Lisa Occhipinti. It was great to be on the other side of the book process.

I loved the goal setting section on page 138! You’ve had so much success as a designer and writer; what are a few of your goals as a freelancer (short and long term)?
JDC: I’m a big foodie and love merging food and design, so I’d love to work with more restaurants and food companies on their logo and branding efforts. I just came out with a wallpaper line and would love to expand into more large-scale interiors products like fabric. Oh, and I’m brain-storming some new book ideas, too! Stay tuned…

How did your collaboration with Meg on Creative, Inc. come about?
JDC: We met in 2007 after we did the Stationery Show together and quickly became long-distance friends. We often looked to each other for constructive feedback on our work and discussed working together on a project in the future. After the success of Meg’s book, Craft, Inc., Chronicle wanted to expand the series. We began brainstorming for ideas and with our joint backgrounds as freelancers, it was natural to write about that topic. We also felt there wasn’t a go-to bible in the market for any creative type looking to go freelance.

You do so many different things (graphic design, blogging, writing, and product design, for starters!). What are the pros and cons of diversifying your work and skill set, versus focusing on one direction?
JDC: The beauty of being a freelancer is that you can pick and choose the work you want to do. You can do lots of one type of work or take on a variety of projects that interests you. With most 9-5 jobs, you typically have the same clients or the same type of aesthetic you work in because the company you work for attracts a certain type of client. Being your own boss allows you to mix-and-match projects as you like. It can be as specific or broad as your portfolio. I typically recommend focusing on one type of work when you’re newer or starting out. You don’t want to look unfocused if you’re new to the freelancing world and you have lots of different work but not enough of one type of work. It gets to be easier to branch out once you’ve established your style.
For me, most of the things I currently do combine the “best of” from my past jobs and the parts of my past 9-5’s that I enjoyed most. I’ve worked at a boutique design studio with lots of fashion clients, so I love working with more fashion and design-savvy clients as well as smaller, newer businesses. And then I’ve also created products and patterns for past jobs, so I love being able to design products that people can buy at a store. The blogging and writing were happy accidents but have evolved to be integral parts of my business and they give my brain a nice “break” from design. For me, doing lots of different things keeps me stimulated and excited about my work.

I’ve had a hard time turning down smaller, relatively straight-forward design jobs, because I’m afraid to wait around in hopes of a larger project. That means I’ve ended up with a huge number of clients, and I wonder if having fewer, bigger projects would be a smarter route to take. How do you avoid situations where you become overwhelmed with many small projects?
JDC: I think that you can (and should) evolve your clientele and the type of work you take on as your business grows. Some freelancers prefer lots of little projects and some prefer fewer larger ones. There is definitely no right or wrong. The overarching fact is you should take on projects for companies you believe in, work that fits your aesthetic or the aesthetic you’re looking to go in, and jobs that are paying you what you feel you deserve. Having a mix is great too so that you vary the type of work you do and the amount of time spent on a project. Also, in terms of getting bigger clients: don’t be afraid to put yourself out there and simply approach clients you’d love to work for. Send them a short and sweet letter with samples of your work and let them know if your interest in working for them should they be looking for a freelancer in the near future. You can’t wait for big projects and clients to come to you, so reach out to them while being polite and not overly aggressive.

Tell us about a fun design/illustration project you’re working on or recently completed.
JDC: One of my favorite regular clients is Urban Outfitters. I recently designed a series of 7 packages for a new product hitting their shelves this holiday season. I can’t say much about it yet. It was a smaller project but super fun because I was able to come up with the names of the products as well as the concept for the graphics. I love it when clients trust you enough to give you full creative freedom! It doesn’t happen too often, so when it does, I savor them like the best cupcake I’ve ever had.

Thanks so much, Meg & Joy!

The Creative, Inc. blog tour lasts two weeks, and here is the schedule so you can follow along:

8/23 Poppy Talk {behind the scenes of the Creative, Inc. stop motion video, seen on Design*Sponge}
8/24 Oh Happy Day {interview with Meg & Joy}
8/25 SF Girl By Bay {tips for building a strong portfolio}
8/26 Mint
8/27 Wit + Delight {preparing for a career in freelance}
8/28 Cathy of California {giveaway}
8/29 Book By Its Cover {interview}
8/30 Not Martha {giveaway}
8/31 Frolic {giveaway}
9/1 Upper Case
9/2 Craft
9/3 Decor8
9/4 Kris Atomic
9/5 Grain Edit

Chronicle Books has generously offered to give 2 copies of Creative, Inc. to two lucky Mint readers! To enter the giveaway, (1) please leave a comment on this post and (2) tell us your #1 question about freelancing. ONE ENTRY PER PERSON, PLEASE. Good luck! Winners will be chosen at random on Wednesday, September 8.

Yes… remember Howdy Do It? Margot’s not here, but she’s been doing a few sporadic Howdy Do It posts of her own on Pitch. I was inspired to write this post today because I’ve been struggling a lot with my own product photography. I think I do an OK job with my West and Plum photos, but when it comes to photographing invitations for Hello Tenfold, I have a hard time getting an end product I’m proud of. I’d like to hire a photographer/stylist at some point, but right now it’s just not in the budget.

I started out with wood backgrounds, mostly because… well, we had just gotten married and there were a few fresh cutting boards lying around. The wood flattered some pieces, but not all of them, and I want consistency in my photos. After looking through a lot of invitation photography that I admired, I realized that many people photograph their work on top of fabric backgrounds. I’d tried this but I always had two big problems: (1) I don’t like ironing, and (2) I don’t have any great upholstered furniture, or even the right fabric scraps to make it work.

So, last week I went to a cheap fabric store and picked up half yards of five neutral linen fabrics. I ironed them and attached them to cardboard in the same way you’d stretch a canvas. I used 13×19″ cardboard cake boards for the base because I had them lying around, but you could also do this with wood and a staple gun. In case you haven’t stretched a canvas before, here are a few steps:

• stretch fabric across the longest side first
• put a staple in one side, then pull fabric taut and put another staple on the exact opposite end
• pull fabric taut and staple the third side
• pull tight (really tight!) and staple the fourth side
• once you have the first four staples, you just start going around and adding more staples. each time you add a staple, move across to the other side, pull taut, and add another staple. In other words, you should have an even number of staples. The more the better, I say! For the purposes of this project, nice and neat corners don’t matter so much. But if you have to have them and aren’t sure how to get them, I’d recommend watching this video.

Now I’ve got five neutrals to photograph with! I think I’ve finally figured out the best spot in the house and time of day to photograph with natural light, and my plan is to get some simple flowers to make the operation look more styled. Wish me luck! Here are some photos from the first attempt:

I think they look much better…

Howdy Do It is going on hiatus for a bit. Although I love writing the posts and reading your wonderful comments about your own experiences as freelancers, I’ve gotten to the point where the series is feeling like a chore, and the procrastinator in me (combined with a hectic M-F) means I spend a good deal of my weekend brainstorming for Monday’s posts. I’m taking my own advice for work/life separation and balance, and taking a break from the series. I hope it will eventually return in some form or another. Thanks to my friend Margot for all her posts and encouragement as I/we embark on this crazy self-employment thing. You can read all of Margot’s HDI posts here, and all of mine here.

Howdy Do It came from “how do you do It,” the question Ellie & Margot found themselves asking about their freelance lifestyles, and so Howdy Do It was born, a weekly column about the things we do to keep ourselves organized, inspired and on track. Margot will be here on Mint each Monday, and Ellie will be over on Margot’s blog Pitch Design Union at the same time. If you have any questions for Margot or Ellie, you can ask them on formspring.

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Recently my friend Michael, a 37signals employee, gave out a couple of copies of their newest book, REWORK. I was skeptical at first, because who reads business books? Dudes who use stupid business buzz words like synergy. But of course, 37signals is not your average company either, and considering their massive success I figured it was worth dipping my nose into. I absolutely devoured it though, cover to cover in less than a day. It is a such a breath of fresh air.

To read the rest of Margot’s post (with two great videos), click: (more…)

Howdy Do It came from “how do you do It,” the question Ellie & Margot found themselves asking about their freelance lifestyles, and so Howdy Do It was born, a weekly column about the things we do to keep ourselves organized, inspired and on track. Margot will be here on Mint each Monday, and Ellie will be over on Margot’s blog Pitch Design Union at the same time. If you have any questions for Margot or Ellie, you can ask them on formspring.

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Phewwww. You guys I have been floundering the past couple weeks, buried under work, email, bills, and not enough sleeping.

Then I be-grudgingly started my taxes and discovered that in 2009 I actually took in way less than what I thought. (Lame) And my 18 months allotment of el-cheapo subsidized COBRA health insurance is ending on the 31st. (Lame-r).

Here’s the surprising part though: it’s not as discouraging as I expected. These are just facts, and frankly, their existence doesn’t really change all that much in the long run. I had the same realization that Ellie talks about in her post on Pitch this week: it is just work. Only work. Loving it is great, but I’ve been letting it own me and that is a slippery slope to one heck of an epic headache. Equally importantly, working all the time doesn’t necessarily equate more money or better projects. It just means you work all the time.

Regardless of finances or what happens with my health care it is most important to me that I still love what I do. So I’m doing some spring cleaning and cutting back. Instead forcing myself to take a day off once a week or so, I’ve been experimenting with a new pattern: 3 days on followed by an easy do what I want day. When I’ve been able to pull it off, it’s been wonderful way to break up my time AND still feel like I’m getting enough done. Also, I’ve been checking my email less during the day, I’m on ichat less, purposefully putting my phone on silent at times, and I deep-cleaned my laptop with this tutorial by Mighty Girl.

And you know? Taxes can be super intimidating, but I get better at managing them every year. It’s not so bad, especially because I have an accountant whom I love.

So, what about you guys? Any spring cleaning realizations? How are you faring with the dreaded taxes?

{Photo credits: 20% off letterpressed prints by Orange Beautiful}

Howdy Do It came from “how do you do It,” the question Ellie & Margot found themselves asking about their freelance lifestyles, and so Howdy Do It was born, a weekly column about the things we do to keep ourselves organized, inspired and on track. Margot will be here on Mint each Monday, and Ellie will be over on Margot’s blog Pitch Design Union at the same time. If you have any questions for Margot or Ellie, you can ask them on formspring.

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It’s another guest post! This time it’s from a German student, who’s pretty much been The Post Family’s glue for the last 8 months. She mentioned one day that even though she’s not freelancing per se, she still loved reading the Howdy Do It posts. So I asked her to write one this week; I figured her perspective would be an interesting one about living abroad while making art, and what it’s like to run a studio with seven awesome dudes. Plus, Ina’s too shy to mention it, but she’s got a solo show opening at The Post Family’s gallery on April 9th. Details will be posted here soon.
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Hello! My name is Ina Weise and I’m studying Textile Design at a university in Germany. I’ve spent the last eight months in Chicago interning for The Post Family. I arrived in Chicago having neither an idea of what to expect nor what others expected of me. Fortunately, my family in Germany has been extremely supportive, and The Post Family and their friends share everything with me: resources, contacts, the space, and thoughts and ideas. I’m pretty much free to work on my own projects at all times. It is great to have an idea and then actually being able to realize it within a short time. It’s also nice to have people around: It’s impossible to lose inspiration when everyone around you works on crazy projects all the time, and it’s the best support when someone stops by and says “hey, that’s nice!” It keeps me going, and I’ll definitely try to share a studio with someone when I return to Germany.

As an intern, I’m not in quite the same position as Margot and Ellie. Nevertheless, my daily life needs a plan. And given that I work for seven designers at once, my daily life needs a good plan. My duties at The Post Family include anything from burning screens and answering emails, to helping install shows and being there when people want to see the gallery. Having seven “bosses” sounds like fun and it is, but it’s taken some work figuring out how to manage seven people’s opinions, requests and ideas. As you can imagine, there are disagreements. Fortunately, that doesn’t happen too often.

While working as an intern, I’ve noticed that I feel the need to finish small tasks before I begin working on another project. However, sometimes the small tasks never seem to stop. When this happens, I stay at home for an hour longer in the morning so I can avoid distractions and focus on a task that needs more thought. I guess distractions are one disadvantage of sharing a studio with a lot of people. So we created the “headphone rule”: Don’t talk to me — don’t even come near me — when I have headphones on!

I feel like the computer world sucks me in. Before I came to Chicago, I didn’t have a website and I never blogged. All I had was an email address. And now? Website, tumblr, Google reader & calendar, The Post Family’s blog, Grandma’s blog to keep family and friends updated about my life, and the tools The Post Family uses: Shopify, Backpack, Facebook, Twitter, Campaign Monitor… and not to forget Action Method. All of this means a lot of passwords and a lot of time spent in front of the computer. At the end of a day I always ask myself, “What did I do today?” That is, except when I letterpress or screen print: I can feel it in my arms and then I know what I did. I use every spare moment to print posters, create puppet shows with a group of friends or to work on window installations with INDO.

One tool that I use to plan my day is the Back to Action Method. It’s a simple, well-designed program to manage your projects by creating action steps. It also allows you to save references to your projects, ideas for the future, or to start discussions. You can delegate action steps to other people, which makes the Action Method heavenly for some of The Post Family members. By using the delegation tool, they don’t even have to call or email anymore – they can just delegate an action step and it’s on my list. At first I thought it was silly, but now I’m actually using it too. To be honest, before that I had a draft email that gathered half of the things on my to-do list. The other half was scribbled in either a little note book or another sketchbook. Finding where to read what you have or want to do was a project in itself.

Over time, I developed a better sense of how long various tasks take. Emailing people sounds like a quick task, but it takes much longer than I thought. I used to read an email and leave it to answer later. Usually I forgot about it, felt guilty, and in the end it took even longer to answer. So I decided to answer right away (apologies to my family and friends back home for being slow to respond. I like your long emails and handwritten letters. They are the best!). My Grandpa writes long letters, and I want to answer them as fast as possible because the sooner I answer, the sooner I will get another one back from him. It takes a while to convince myself to sit down and answer him. But it’s definitely worth the time. It makes me sit down and actually think about and write out what I have been doing, what I’m going to do and where I want to go with it. That applies to ideas, too. Writing a friend about your plans makes you think about them more thoroughly. Eventually, you don’t have to send what you wrote even though I’m sure the friend would like it. Figuring out my own point of view and considering a different point of view always helps me.

I say “yes” to everything right now. Everything, besides the thought of leaving Chicago. And yes, I get nervous and there are lots of thoughts on my mind when I go to sleep, but who knows when I will get this chance again. It will be hard to go back and leave all this behind. I guess I’ll take it as a new challenge. I want to have a Post Family in Germany and since I’m stealing all the knowledge on how an artist collaborative works, I think it’s possible.

Photo credits: Ina Weise, The Post Family & Ben Speckmann

Howdy Do It came from “how do you do It,” the question Ellie & Margot found themselves asking about their freelance lifestyles, and so Howdy Do It was born, a weekly column about the things we do to keep ourselves organized, inspired and on track. Margot will be here on Mint each Monday, and Ellie will be over on Margot’s blog Pitch Design Union at the same time. If you have any questions for Margot or Ellie, you can ask them on formspring.

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The past week or two, I’ve been switching back and forth between clients more than usual, up to several times a day. Which gets annoying having to remember to record it right all the time. Also, my usual M.O. for managing the details of a project is to keep an open Text Edit file for each one that is a running list of hours, to-dos and notes. Throw in more than one client and it’s pretty messy and hard to navigate sometimes. So I tweeted about suggestions for a time-tracking, billing, account managing software and I got way more responses than I expected. I don’t think I’d ever had so many people @reply to something I’ve posted before, which is pretty awesome. It gave me the idea that I should actually look into all the suggestions and come up with some reviews.

Specifically, this is I’m looking for:
- I need to know how to use the thing in less than 20 minutes.
- I’m not going to love it if it doesn’t look nice and work even better.
- Please… Can it be at least a little fun to use. No one wants to do boring admin tasks like invoicing, so the more fun it is the more likely I will use it.
- Pricing is a big issue (when is it NOT for a small-business??). I want either a flat-fee or very small monthly payment that doesn’t leave me hankering for the more expensive plans that my business can’t afford.
- Add-ons are huge plus. They’re what allow me to customize more to my taste. Plus, I’d prefer not to have to be tied to my browser entering in stuff all the time.
- Whether or not it will sync to my phone whether or not that adds additional fees.
- Needs to have some kind of timer function.

You guys suggested: FunctionFox, TimeNet, Freshbooks, Harvest, Billings, and Supernova as possible options. On first glance they all sound pretty much exactly the same, so I spent a few hours researching and downloading the trials just to get a sense of them. Here’s how they stacked up.

Overall, I want Supernova, followed very shortly by Harvest. They pretty much tie for the best bets as far as ease of use goes. But with Subernova, I like that the full program is available for a single decent monthly price, because then you never have to worry about upgrading. Also! You can schedule emails for the future, which I always want to do too. After that Harvest is a stand-out because I trust the name since so many people I know use it, and it does seem like a super solid program to boot. Honorable mention goes to Billings which I really wanted to like and go with, and I may still do it since I was so taken with it, but their pricing seems fishy. Everyone else has their pricing laid out easily and with Billings, I didn’t find it right away. AND there’s weirdness between the plans too. Dunno, maybe I’m dense but the all plans seem like the same thing, so it’s strange there are 2 different payment options. Also, minus points for such crappy reviews on iTunes for the app.

But the Oscar goes to (oh come on, they were just on last night, I couldn’t resist)…Freshbooks because it’s got the best free app. I just wish it was more fun to use and the mobile add-on had better reviews. I think I will start with there though just because I’m specifically looking to use their timer widget for now. It’s likely that I will revisit this decision whenever it is that I eventually outgrow the free version though.

Anyone care to chime in? I’m also wondering if I’m being cheap by choosing the free app first. Like maybe it’s time to pony up and spring for one that might actually be a real time saver. I mean really, $12-$14 per month isn’t all that much if it’s actually going to make a difference in my process. And it’s a write-off 100%…Tricky, tricky.

What would you do?

Click to read Ellie’s post on battling the freelance blues