So my question to you is this: Do you give your clients source files? Do you charge for that? Why? Why not?

Here’s what some of my twitter friends has to say:

None of my clients would know what to do with source files
@travis_king

Thanks to everyone who tweeted back at me! Feel free to leave your thoughts in the comments!

Nick Snyder recently sent me an email with a question he’s been dealing with at his full time job. “Is it ok to show and code unused designs in your portfolio” I thought answering the question here in order to shed some light on this frustrating topic and hopefully help others out as well.

Niki,

Thanks for your time and keep up the sweet tweets
—Nick Snyder

Hey Nick –

Thanks for emailing me and asking. I’ve definitely been in your situation before and understand the frustration of dealing with designs that veer away from your original intended design (thats a huge topic to address in itself!). The first thing I would do is ask your employer about showing work in your portfolio. You have every right to show the work you’ve done, but its always nice to give them a heads up and credit where the work was created. I would even bring up showing the first round designs. If they are ok with it you are in the clear and everyone is happy. If they aren’t ok with it you could just show them during an in person interview – or on a special portfolio page that isnt public.

I would also say that showing the first design and then showing the coded result isnt a bad thing. I’ve seen situations where a designer shows their intended design but then notes that the live site has been altered by the client or they host their coded version of the site. Again I would ask/inform your employer of what you want to do just to be in the clear. Most design agencies or even those that work with designers understand that things change and clients don’t always give the best design direction.

I hope that answered your question Nick – thanks again for asking!

Do you show unused designs in your portfolio?

What would you do in Nicks situation? Have you been in this situation yourself? Leave a comment and let me know what you think!

Also – if you have a design question you want answered feel free to shoot me an email and ask away!

Photo Credit Pak Gwei

Computer – check. Photoshop – check. Lots of free time – check. It seems that this is all that is necessary to call yourself a ‘designer’ these days. I believe that there is far more to a designer than software, computers and free time. Designers should have critical thinking skills, understanding of design principals, knowledge of grid systems, typography and much more.

Read the rest of my guest post over at Design Reviver and join the discussion in progress!

In the wake of the popularity of the Clients From Hell site I thought it would be appropriate to talk about good experiences with clients. I had a chance to have a chat with Liz Andrade from CmdShiftDesign and discuss the topic.

What do you think?

Have you had good (or bad) experiences with clients? What was it like? What did you do to foster the client/designer relationship? Leave a comment and join the discussion.

In this fast paced world of design how do we keep our focus on quality and not quantity? For the past month I’ve taken some time to evaluate, rethink and regroup. I’m going to try to do a few things differently in order to bring this quality back into my design world.

Freelance projects

I’m going to be much more selective with the freelance projects I take on. No more last minute, oh no I needed it yesterday jobs! Not worth my time! I freelance in the spare time (currently employed full time) so this is valuable time that I could be spending doing something else (like washing my cat). I want to work with clients that respect and trust me as a designer and can trust that my design decisions are well founded. Good design takes time – and I’m willing to put that time in. I’m lucky to have a few of these clients right now. Interested in working with me? Fill out my quote request form.

Writing, thinking, and sharing knowledge

I want to spend more time writing and thinking about design. When I first started this blog it was really just a collection of cool designy things I found on the internets and has since then morphed into something else – what this is I’m not quite sure, but I’m ok with that. I enjoy writing and thinking about design and sharing my thoughts and getting feedback from you guys! As this blog continues to morph and change this will be more of a focus – with a dash of my patented smart ass humor^TM of course

Attention to detail

My recent re-entry into the print world (new posts on work to come!) has made me realize the importance of focusing on details – no matter how big or small. Will this tiny little detail work when the logo is 1 inch wide? Will it work when the logo is huge (*cue make the logo bigger song*) I’d like to transfer this focus on details into my writing, my personal projects and the web design projects that I take on. Hopefully this will mean more focus on typography, coding, usability and readability.

Reading and discussion

I’m also going to focus on reading things that are more in depth. Right now this means reading more design books and magazines. I plan on writing my thoughts and responses to my reading material and generating discussion. As designers I think we tend to shy away from reading… or skim and only look at the pictures *im soooo guilty on this one*

I also want to generating more thoughtful discussions around design, process and learning on this blog. Interacting with readers, learning and sharing knowledge are the best parts of blogging.

Summing it all up

To sum up this entire article in just a few words: I’m going to be doing less, but its going to be better.

How about you?

Have you made any design resolutions? What do you plan to do differently this year? Leave a comment and let me know!

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Impending doom of graphic design or another thing to ignore?

Breaking News!!!! iStockphoto.com will soon be selling stock logos for a few hundred iStock credits a pop… with a $5 dollar bonus to boot! I thought I would share some of my initial thoughts on this with you and encourage a civil discussion on the topic. Read my thoughts and the official statement below and feel free to sound off in the comments! *UPDATE* Also check out the announcement email that was sent to istock authors.

My Thoughts

I think its interesting that my gut reaction was to be angry about iStockphoto.com selling stock logos. I wrote a post a while ago on why logos should cost more than $300 that sums up some of my feelings on cheap logo design. Logos are a particularly difficult aspect of graphic design because they require you to summarize a company with a symbol and text. Logos involve a lot of back and forth with the client. A cookie cutter solution seems totally inappropriate!!! But then I remembered that I purchased a stock photo from iStockphoto.com this morning… and thought… hmmm hypocrisy?

Graphic designers purchase stock photos ALL THE TIME. (or at least I do…) By purchasing stock photos we are doing the very thing that we get angry about to photographers. I’m not trying to make the argument that we should spend hundreds or thousands of dollars on photography and illustration. But I think we need to reconsider our gut reactions to this. Sure it makes me angry that clients would go for this, but I think its our job as designers to explain to clients the value of our services. We need to let them know how the process works and they will realize the value in custom design.

Here’s the official statement from iStockphoto:

We’re excited to announce a whole new product coming to the iStock collection. Clients will soon be able to download a unique logo to brand their business or organization right here at iStock. This is a huge opportunity not just for existing iStock contributors, but for our community of designers as well. If you’re a designer, you’ve probably created hundreds of different logos over the course of your career and we’re offering you an outlet to start selling logos to the world’s largest community of creative buyers.

If you create one of the first 10,000 approved logo designs by January 1, 2010, we’ll pay you $5 per logo and another $5 if we reach 10,000 approved logos by that date. So fire up Illustrator to create some amazing logos or dust off all those much-loved logos that never made it past the third round with a client.

Vector files – iStock logos will be downloaded as fully editable .eps files. If you’re interested in contributing, hang tight; we’re almost done the Logo Training Manual.

One-time use – iStock logos will only be sold once. After a logo is purchased it will be indicated as “sold” on the site.

File exclusivity – Unlike other files on iStockphoto, logos can only be sold once and therefore need to be exclusive to iStockphoto. Once your logo is on iStock it will remain for sale for a minimum of six months.

Pricing – Because each logo will only be sold once, they have a higher price-point, ranging from 100 – 750 credits. When designers upload a file, they will set a recommended price and our inspectors will then make the final pricing decision based on that recommendation.

Royalties – iStock will pay a base royalty rate of 50% per logo design for the first 6 months. We’ll give advanced notice for the rate going forward after that.

Upload limits – There will be no limits for the first six months. Go nuts.

Fonts – If you are submitting a logo, you can only use fonts if:
– you own the copyright (in other words, you created the font yourself)
– you licensed the font with commercial rights to use the font for a logo for resale. Remember, there are many ‘free’ fonts that cannot be used in commercial applications.
The font itself will not be included in the file that the client purchases – it will only contain the vector outline. Fonts must be converted to outlines before the file is uploaded.

All-new content – Any logo submitted to iStock must not be in use or have been previously sold. It also cannot feature existing elements (including content from your iStock portfolio). These requirements allow our clients to confidently apply for a trademark on the logo purchased from iStock. Remember, your regular files are uploaded with the restriction that they cannot be used in logos and that still applies.

Read the forum thread here: http://www.istockphoto.com/forum_messages.php?threadid=119471&page=1ock

Are designers in the right to be angry about this? Are logo designers being short changed? Or should we breathe a sigh of relief because cheapo clients have another place to turn to after low balling us? Leave a comment and let me know what you think!

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Thanks so much for calling in and asking questions! I’ve tried you answer your questions to the best of my ability. See the questions below from this episodes callers and answer them or ask another question in the comments! If you have a design question please feel free to call 617.752.1483 and leave a voicemail!

Chand Engle: - What do you think of list posts on design blogs?

Steve Gordon: – Best online printer for business cards or any print media – quality not price?

Nikki Jeske – if squirrels could design – what fonts would they use?   font usage on http://designcoyote.com/

Brian Galloway – Contact form for website

http://wufoo.com

Brian Klepper – Most important aspect of design? color? typography? layouts? grids?

Brandon cox: Thoughts on usability of horizontaly scrolling websites
http://www.benekdesign.com/

What do you think?

Leave a comment and let me know what you think of the video format. (please excuse my rudamentry imovie editing skills) Do you have answers to these questions? Leave a comment and help these fellow designers out!

Its time for question of the week! I’m going to post a short little audio clip asking you a question. Feel free to chime in and let me know what you think! I’d love to get a discussion going on in the comments!

This week we are discussing what you do outside of the realm of design for fun or for a hobby.

*please ignore the horrible grammar

Have a design related question? Want to know how to do something in Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign? Want a critique on your latest logo project? Not sure if Agenda Black and Garamond Semi-Bold italic go together well? Get answers to your design questions by myself and the readers of this blog!

I recently received an invite to Google Voice and I’d like to try this out. If you have a question please call: 617-752-1483 and leave a voicemail. The magic of Google Voice will then transcribe your voicemail into text and I’ll get to work on finding answers for your questions and post them on The Design O’Blog!

So go ahead and make my phone ring and I’ll get to answering your questions!