Several years ago I wrote a post which became shockingly popular called “Free Project Management Tools.” Well a lot has changed since 2008, especially regarding free (or almost free) pm tools. When I first wrote the post, there were some good options but no great ones. Today, the opposite is true. There are so many […]
If you are in the design business you will run into post-approval changes, nothing is going to eliminate this headache completely. It is easy to shake your fist at the client but in all honestly it really isn’t their fault. They want to end up with the best product possible and sometimes that means that […]
Designers, how you show your clients/bosses a concept has just as much impact over sign off as the concept itself. I am sure that we have all been guilty of saving a PSD to a JPG and e-mailing it off for review… Or maybe you were coming up with a price and the quote was […]
There is so much that happens with web design it is easy to miss important pieces of technology. After all there are new technologies introduced all the time and a lot of the time they are never adopted (*cough* silverlight *cough*). I hate to say it that Microformats was never high on my radar. Over […]
Being environmentally friendly doesn’t just apply to automakers. We all should be aware of how our companies (or ourselves as freelancers) are effecting the environment around us. The actions we take today not only effect the world that we live in but will continue to shape the world that our future generations will experience as well. Just because as […]
As a creative type project management ranks on the “fun scale” somewhere between falling off a boat and getting assaulted by farm animals. Luckily the other advantages and benefits of being a business owner make doing project management work bearable. That being said I am always looking for ways to “ease the pain” of managing […]
Here in Ann Arbor we have a weekly lunch group which discusses new media and digital marketing techniques called LA2M (which stands for Lunch Ann Arbor Marketing). Each week a speaker will discuss a different topic for 15 – 20 mnutes before taking questions and answers from the crowd. Earlier in March I had signed […]
Web design has reached a point of maturity where we should no longer simply be a collection of pages ripped from a corporate brochure. There used to be a time where as web designers we did little more than apply a splash of paint to an assortment of text and images. This was OK as […]
While I have a minor in business, most of the lessons that I have learned about how to run a company were through making mistakes and figuring out ways to avoid them next time around. Sometimes I made mistakes many times before I realized it. In this case I still struggle with this mistake from […]
When running your own business, especially a small one (meaning it is myself and two helpers) I often find that you can spend just as much time (if not more) on all the details surrounding work as the actual billable hours themselves. When I say this I don’t necessarily mean doing all the non-fun things […]