Many of the same questions come up time and time again from design students and fledgling graphic designers. Questions that rank high on the list often revolve around deadlines, charging clients, and how to manage potential clients who have unreasonable expectations.

How to qualify potential clients goes a long way in addressing all 3 of these issues, finding the right clients, and not wasting time on dead end leads.

A sweet collection of honey packaging, labels and logo designs.

The starting point for many freelance designers is typically a relatively small webpage, maybe 4 or 5 pages. There are hundreds of other graphic design websites out there, and while we would all like ours to be the one that appears at the top of Google and gets the visitor, if you think logically – and honestly – about it, your brand new website isn’t really any better or more deserving of visitors than any of others that are already online.

Regular blogging can be an excellent means to overcome this and continually increase the number of potential clients that land on your website.

Design contest and other speculative design work websites try and wow potential participants with attractive numbers and golden opportunities. If you whittle these figures down to what they mean for the individual though, the numbers are far from attractive, and the opportunities are few and not nearly as golden.

A question every new designer and student inevitably asks is “how much do I charge for my work?”. If you asked a business professor to sum it up for you, it wouldn’t be unusual to be told “charge what the market will bear”.

This is definitely not to say that you should attempt to gouge clients on price. Many in the graphic design industry rely heavily on customer loyalty and repeat business in order to thrive, and nothing puts people off more than being unfairly treated on price. On the flip side, nothing makes a client happier than being quoted less than they had budgeted for (as I’ve done on several occasions).

It is however an important philosophy to understand when developing your price strategy.

For some time the Askimet plugin/service has been the go-to spam filter for WordPress websites. Although Askimet is good in a lot of ways, it’s not without its problems.

In any business, clients are only willing to part with their money when they’re confident that there paying for something they need or want.

If your car breaks down, you pay a mechanic to fix it – they fulfil a need.

If you don’t particularly like the colour of your car, you can pay a painter to respray it for you – they fulfil a desire.

You don’t take your car in and say “Everything’s perfectly fine, I love the car. I just want you to spend a few days coming up with ideas and do some work on the car and if I like the changes, I’ll pay for your work”. That would be ridiculous.

I’m all for tradition, but there is definitely a part of me that loves a more outlandish approach to things. These fluorescent pink wedding invitations by The Hungry Workshop (in letterpress, my favourite) definitely fall into that category.

You may recall from some time ago the series of illustrations imaging if Google Maps were real, by Illustrator Alejo Malia. Alejo has recently expanded his vision with the above new series on Google Sky.

“The Perfect Pour”. A must have infographic for every graphic designer. Be sure to view the post in full for the full, large graphic.