So where have we been?

Cupcake Project

Well, first of all, we’ve launched one of the biggest projects we’ve worked on to date.  This was an immensely fun redesign for us to be involved with.  It had lots of challenging components to it including an 800+ post migration from Blogger to WordPress, a custom programmed home page the gave the client lots of options on how she could display her content,  custom recipe indexes – both visual and text based, custom sliders, widgets and more!  You can read more about the work we did on the cupcake project.

sondibruner.com

This was another interesting project that involved combining two sites (one a portfolio site and one a recipe blog) into one cohesive business site, all while migrating a WordPress.com site into a self-hosted WordPress site.  The project had a heavy planning stage as we worked out the best way to marry all the different components to make it easy and seamless for both potential clients and faithful blog readers.  Visit the sondibruner.com portfolio page to read more about the project.

Food Bloggers of Canada Conference

In April Melissa presented at Canada’s first National food blogging conference, FBC2013 alongside her colleague Dave Zille from dazil internet services.  We presented a packed blog tech session to 120 attendees that touched on mobile site design, understanding accessibility and how it helps your readers and your SEO, Google authorship, understanding h tags, alt tags and title tags and even more.  The session was well received and we had lots of great chats with attendees about their blogs.   Melissa also worked on all the design development and collateral for the conference including working with Blurb books fun new magazine publishing tools to create the conference magazine (seen above).

So that’s where we’ve been.  And now we’re getting ready to start work on a batch of new and interesting projects!  We still have part 3 in our Taking the Freelance Plunge series to come, as well a bunch of new, fun, summer colour palettes so stay tuned!

This is part 2 in our series on Making the Freelance Plunge.  Part 1 was all about getting your financial house in order before going out on your own.  That may mean taking or staying in an employee position for a little while.  But whether or not you have to stay in a full time job for a bit or you can go out on your own right now, you can still start working on building up your resource library right away.

What is a Resource Library?

When I say “resource library” I mean two things – building up your information resources and building up your people resources.

1. Information Resources

Information resources are the stuff that will help you do your job better, faster and easier – so you can work smarter and earn more:

• find expert blogs with advice and resources in your field – no matter what you do, somebody is writing about it and writing about it well.  Find them!
• reuse and recycle.  Don’t write the same piece of code over and over or the same client contract or the same email.  Create templates for yourself for everything from code to emails to invoices and then tweak them for each job.
• if you’re a designer like me, create a design asset library with things like stock photos, theme templates, photoshop brushes, patterns, backgrounds, vectors, fonts.  You never know when you might need them and there’s so many great resource sites out there.
• subscription websites for graphics, stock images and other goodies – some are extremely reasonable
• don’t forget resources outside of your industry – look at resources for small business, bookkeeping, marketing, social media, SEO, and anything else that can help you get yourself and your business out there.  That’s half the battle.
• magazines and books.  If you work in a visual field like design or photography, magazines are still a valuable resource, whether it’s an actual physical magazine or an e-subscription through an app or zinio or another subscription service (hint: the UK produces some excellent design, web design and photography publications)
• resource websites that offer on-line tutorials, in person classes or video classes like lynda.com, NAPP, Kelby Training can be well worth the annual membership fees.

2. People Resources

You need people! You need them to be clients and you need them to be colleagues.  But how do you find them?

Go Out.

That’s right.  Get out from behind your laptop and go play outside.  You need to actually meet new people and tell them what you do.  Go where potential clients are.  Talk to them.  Ask them questions about themselves and be genuinely interested in what they have to say – you never know where it may lead!  It might be a cocktail party or a continuing education class.  Just go out!

Give out your card.  People remember things when they touch them.  Sure they might put it in a jacket pocket but who hasn’t reached into a pocket a few months later and pulled out something and said “oh yeah… I remember that person”.  You never know when somebody might need your services… or when their friends will.  People are always more likely to recommend somebody they’ve met face to face.

Know Your Pitch.  Be able to tell people what you do concisely and quickly.  Attention spans are short.  This is really hard to do and you’ll have to change it depending on who you’re speaking to.  And revisit your pitch every few months.  You evolve, so does your business

Attend Industry Events  This is how you meet people who can become colleagues, who you can hire as sub contractors and who can help you out when you’ve got too much work or when something comes up and you can’t finish a project (stuff happens – people get sick, accidents happen).  And in turn, you might pick up extra work from other people in your field if they’re too busy or need help!  Believe it or not, most freelancers like to have a small group of trusted colleagues that they can refer people to when things are busy.

Find a Mentor an often overlooked step but one of the most valuable ones! Find somebody established in your industry.  Approach people you respect, admire and who are successful at what they do – and remember, the definition of success varies from person to person.  When you find the right person, ask questions, listen, observe and be respectful of their time – they are being generous with theirs and with their expertise.

Don’t forget… a lot of people will help you out when you’re starting out.  When you are established, give back to that community.  Help out those just entering your field and be open to being a mentor yourself.  It’s good karma and will gain you a lot of respect in your profession.

Join us for Part 3 of Making the Freelance Plunge: Personal Portfolio Projects, next week!

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For the last year and a half I have been a guest lecturer at BCIT, speaking once a semester to New Media Design students who are coming up  to graduation.

What do we talk about?  Freelancing.

Freelancing is the direction a lot of New Media grads head in – it’s an industry that lends itself to starting your own business.  And New Media is just that: new media.  It usually refers to web design but includes app development, web development, mobile development and it’s a field that evolves at a very fast pace.

BCIT has a great program and they do their best to prep students to work for themselves.  But really, until you’ve done it, or spoken to somebody who’s done it, you don’t have a true idea of what you’re getting into.  So that’s where I come in!

I go in and talk about the things I wish I had been told.

I thought it might be helpful to those of you thinking about making the freelance plunge, no matter what your industry, if I shared a few of my “been there, wish I’d done that” moments!

So the next series of posts will be all about preparing yourself for freelancing, whether it’s as a designer, photographer, writer or any type of creative professional.

Today’s post is on the big one… money.

Stabilizing Your Finances First

Perhaps the biggest mistake I see freelancers make, and one that I fortunately learned from others before I started out, is that they don’t stabilize their finances first.

When you start out as a freelancer you have three things on your mind:

1. finding clients
2. doing good work and getting paid for it
3. building your business so you can do the kinds of projects you love and get paid well for them

Starting out with a mountain of debt is a disaster waiting to happen.  No steady income?  No guaranteed paycheque?  And thousands of dollars in credit card debt, car loans or student loans?  All you’re going to be doing is stressing out about how to pay for it all instead of focusing on what any new freelancer needs to do – the above mentioned three things.

It also means you’ll probably wind up taking on a lot of jobs you really dislike or that don’t pay well just to have some kind of income coming in.  That’s not fun.  One of the best parts of freelancing is getting yourself into the position where you take on projects that get you fired up.

If you’re in debt or have no savings, do yourself a favour and take a paying job for a year or two.  And while you’re working for somebody else, start doing the following:

1. Clear as much debt as you can, starting with the highest interest rate ones.
2. Scrape together a minimum of 3 months living/operating expenses (better yet, 6 months or a year!)
3. make a list of all the additional expenses you’ll incur as a new business owner.  These might include:
   • software
   • computer equipment, camera equipment, jewellery making tools – whatever your field calls for
   • business licenses
   • insurance – your car insurance and health insurance will be changing (yes, even in Canada – you will still have to pay provincial medical premiums), you may need liability insurance
   • an accountant – you may be able to do your own bookkeeping but I highly recommend meeting with an accountant when you first set up shop just to make sure you’re doing things correctly
   • a lawyer – somebody who can help you draw up a boilerplate contract
   • office or studio space
   • marketing materials
4. Start scaling back your living expenses – you’ll probably be forced to do that when you make the plunge.  If you get used to it now it won’t be so hard and you can put all the extra money you have towards your debt or your living expenses fund

Ironically one of the things I really wish I’d done before quitting my job was buying a new car.  My old one was long paid off and I thought why go through the hassle of having another payment and perhaps delaying my plan to quit my job.  Now I wish I had.  It would only have extended my job by another 6 months but it would have been worth it!  Weigh out those pros and cons.

How Big Should Your Living Expenses Fund Be?

For many people, having 3 months of living expenses set aside is enough – it’s big enough to fill in the gaps, but small enough to keep you hungry and looking for work.  6 months is a nicer cushion to have in that first year when things can be very lean. Remember, this fund doesn’t have to equal your current salary.  But it should cover off all your critical expenses like rent/mortgage, food, utilities, transportation and insurance.

Having a one year fund can open up a lot of new possibilities.  It can actually give you freedom to say no to projects you don’t want to do and say yes to bigger projects that might otherwise be out of your scope.

Larger projects often require more than one set of hands and to bid on them you may need to hire subcontractors.  And subcontractors need to be paid – on time.  You might not get paid for the project for 6 months but if you hire a sub contractor and they complete their portion in the first month, they need to be paid in 30 days.  Having a bigger living expenses fund means you have the cash on hand to pay them on time (and pay yourself while the project is ongoing!)

The key to this fund though, is remembering to pay back into it when times are good.  Freelancing is erratic and there will be slow times, even when you’re successful.  The economy can tank, your market can change – being prepared can buy you the time you might need to seek out a new niche, learn a new skill or widen your market.

Doing More With Less

Remember, you don’t need to have the best of everything.  Look at areas where spending a little more might be critical, and areas where you can scale back.

Maybe you can work out of your home for a few years, perhaps you don’t need brand new office furniture, maybe you can rely on public transit over a car for a year or two.  Do you need the most expensive internet or smart phone package?  Can you do with a 13 inch Macbook Pro over a 15 inch?  It will all depend on the nature of what you do – but look for ways where you can scale back without impacting your productivity.  It may mean having a very honest talk with yourself!

Give yourself the best chance of success before you step out of the gate.  Don’t become another small business fail statistic just because you didn’t wait a year and get your financial house in order!

Join us next time for Making The Freelance Plunge Part 2: Building A Resource Library.

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my first attempt at a Vine mini WordPress tutorial!

A new app has been released through Apple called Vine.  People were joining up all in a flutter yesterday, anxious to share 6 second videos with their followers (the app has been acquired by Twitter!) and some very creative ones are already appearing.

We can already see how brands and blogs and small businesses could use this as a really creative social media and marketing tool.  The app is easy to use, the editing happens in app, you can use it on both the iPhone and iPad and of course, it jives nicely with Twitter.

Six seconds may seem like nothing – especially in your first few attempts to create a video – but, just like Twitter’s 140 character limit forces you to get to the point, this really forces you to think about what you want to say and think outside the box with how you film it.

We thought it might be a really fun way to do mini WordPress tutorials, (not to mention Photoshop and Lightroom) so I gave it a try this morning.  You can see my first attempt at a WordPress tutorial on Vine here.  That took about 4 attempts and even now I see how I can make it better but I see definite possibilities!

You can find me on Vine as mhchipmunk – Melissa Hartfiel so come join in the fun!

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This is a paid app for both iPhone and iPad that allows you to cut an element out of one of your own photos and create a retro poster with it.  Only released in November of last year, Retromatic comes with 11 background images, 30 retro style oranments and 17 filters, all with customizable colours.  Add in your own words in your choice of fonts (comes with all the standard iOS fonts) and you’ve got yourself a funky old school poster!

Retromatic says that it will be continuously adding filters, backgrounds and ornaments and they did introduce a Christmas bundle as an in app purchase.

The interface is really easy to use – especially the tool for cutting and pasting elements from your own photos – it has a nice auto refining option that works pretty well in most instances – below you can see my original photograph. It was easy to cut out the wine bottle but the stems on the glasses were too skinny to work.

Add your element into your poster where you can resize it, copy it multiple times and rotate.  The only thing I didn’t like was that you could only add one original element – I hope in future releases you can add multiple original elements from different photos.

The selection of backgrounds, filters, fonts and ornaments is fun – providing lots of options.  But, I  do hope they add more as time goes on to keep it fresh.

All in all, it’s a fun app, quick and easy to use and something different for the design crowd who want a little more out of their photo apps.  I made this quick little poster in about 2 minutes.  Spend a little extra time and you could create something pretty funky!

Retromatic is $1.99 in the App Store and Retromatic HD is $3.99.

Disclosure Notice: Fine Lime Designs was not compensated in any way for this review.  The app was purchased and tested by us and all opinions are our own. 

Two involved Blogger to WordPress migrations:

Roasted

Roasted was a complete Blogger to self-hosted WordPress migration.  The new site included a recipe and restaurant index, Google Maps integration and and interactive Events calendar.  Visit the portfolio page for all the details.

Everything You Do Is A Balloon

Everything You Do Is A Balloon had already made the jump from Blogger to WordPress but we came in to help them fine tune it – ensuring they had proper redirection and SEO protection after the move along with some design assistance.  You can read more about it here.

Building from the ground up

We also had two sites that were ground up builds (starting from scratch), both built on self-hosted WordPress platforms.

Earl Grey Editing

Earl Grey Editing is a business card site that includes a portfolio – we also did a logo design and the site relies heavily on typography.  For more info check out our portfolio entry.

The Living Loft

The Living Loft is a full on resource site and blog with customized WordPress child theme and custom graphics.  Read all the details here.

And last but not least…

Menopause Chicks

The Menopause Chicks project was all branding.  We designed a new logo and assisted Dazil Internet with the branding of the new Chicks website, which you can read more about here.

We’ve got a full docket for the rest of the winter – if you’re interested in working with us this coming year we are now taking bookings for March and April!  Feel free to contact us for more information.

Time for a new colour palette.  This is one of my favourites – I have an affinity for citrus tones (limes, anyone?).

Feel free to download it if you wish to use the colours in your own projects (right click on the image to download to your computer).  The hex values are included.  (Hex codes are how colours are described in CSS).

I’ll be working on some more autumn/winter tones in the next few weeks but I had a few summer-y ones I wanted to get up first!

The time has come, you think to yourself, to redesign your blog or website.  Technology has changed, site designs have changed or perhaps you’ve changed.  But where do you start?

Here are 5 questions to ask yourself before you start your hunt for the perfect web designer.  They’re questions we ask every single potential new client who comes to our door (we ask a lot more than this but these are a really great start!) and so many of our clients tell us that the exercise of sitting down and answering them really helps to clarify what they want in their minds.  So why not give it a go?

1. What do you want to achieve with your new redesign?

There’s lots of valid reasons for a blog redesign.  Some include

• keeping up with new technology like a mobile site or responsive design
• your look is outdated or you’ve re-branded
• you want to improve the functionality perhaps by adding a recipe index or a portfolio
• your focus has changed

There are many others but these are the ones I most commonly see from clients.  Being able to tell your designer what you want to achieve will go a long way to having a successful project.

2. What is the one thing you want your readers to do when they visit?

We call this a “call to action”.  If there was one thing you wish every visitor did when they came to your site, what would it be?

• share your posts on social media?
• purchase your latest e-book?
• leave a comment on a post?
• contact you directly about hiring you?
• visit more than one page of your site?

Again, there’s many things you might want them to do but have you done everything you can to make it easy for them to do that one thing?  That’s where a designer can definitely help.

3. What’s your budget?

A large percentage of potential clients who approach us have no idea what their budget is, or they don’t have a realistic idea of what an appropriate budget is.  Sometimes that’s because they just don’t know what web design costs.  And that’s completely understandable – how many of us know how much it costs for new brakes on our car unless we’re mechanics?

There’s another group who do have an idea but are reluctant to share that number with us.  Again, I understand – there’s a feeling that if you tell us a number and then tell us what you want, we’ll charge you that number even if the work doesn’t warrant such a high price.  My only response is, an ethical, competent designer will not do that.  We want repeat business and we want you to recommend us so we want you to have a positive experience and feel that you got value for your budget.

Every project is different and while some designers do offer set package prices, most don’t.  (Keep in mind that while set packages may be less expensive, they are also very structured and offer limited flexibility in the design process).  Most of us will want to know what you need done and craft a quote based on the amount of work.

If you can tell us your budget, we can determine what can be done from your wishlist within that amount.  If you don’t know what your budget is, we can prepare a quote based on your wishlist.  If the quote causes you to choke on your coffee, tell us! We can discuss it with you and show you areas where you can cut back or give you alternate solutions.

4. What’s your time frame?

Web design is a collaborative process between the client and the designer.  You will be required to do some work.  Unless your designer is also your content writer, logo designer and photographer, you’re going to have to have your content ready within the time frame you’ve asked your designer to work in.

Look at your schedule – can you pull together all the pieces in the time frame you’ve laid out?  Be brutally honest with yourself.  You know better than anyone else how you work.  Some designers will charge an additional fee if your project goes over deadline and they are waiting on you to deliver content.

5. What inspires you?

When you are about to embark on a redesign, you want your site to be your own and express who you or your company are.  You never want to copy the look of another site, nor do you want to ask your designer to do that.  It’s not legal or ethical.

Having said that, we’re all inspired by things.  If you can show your designer sites that you like the look of, or how they function, it can go a long way to helping us out.  Don’t just think about websites though.  Consider paint swatches, pictures from magazines, maybe a font on a menu that caught your eye or an illustration in a shop.  Take a quick photo with your mobile phone and create a visual record.  All of these things help us a get a feel for the style and statement you want to make!

Now you have some things to think about before taking the next step and finding that perfect designer for your project!

This is a good thing because it’s also part of my job!

In an effort to get this blog back on track I thought I’d start sharing more bits and pieces that you can use to spruce up your own sites or blogs or use in your other creative projects: colour palettes, social media icons, quick banners and other odds and ends.

The first few palettes I’ll be putting up were posted up on the Facebook page months ago but I never got around to making them available here.

Feel free to download them if you wish to use the colours in your own projects (right click on the image to download to your computer).  The hex values are included.  (Hex codes are how colours are described in CSS).

I’ll be sharing more of the results of my fun little hobby every few weeks.  But in order to say goodbye to the last little vestiges of summer, here is Beach Glass!

Responsive themes adapt to the device they’re being viewed on, whether it’s mobile, tablet, laptop or desktop, making them easier to read and navigate.

Tusk Embedded

Tusk Embedded is a young, new company that required a brand new site built with the future in mind. We kept it clean and easy to navigate but one of the most important requirements was designing the site architecture with future expansion in mind, including product catalogues and support resources and a quote request system.  For the design, we customized a Woo theme.  The site will be easy to update and maintain for the owners.  You can read more in the project profile.

Feeding Ethan

Feeding Ethan is the on-line home of writer and photographer, Ethan Adeland, where he blogs about food and life.  Ethan was very firm that the site not look like a traditional blog and wanted something a little ediger. So we built the site on WordPress from the ground up, including a new logo design, custom graphics and a highly customized version of Canvas by Woo.  The site is built to be responsive for mobile devices and tablets and a custom mobile site was also created with help from dazil internet services.

This is probably one of the most complex blog designs we’ve ever worked on but we think the result was worth it!  You can read more of the specifics and see more images on the project profile page.

Two very different projects but both a lot of fun to work on.  We wish both Tusk Embedded and Feeding Ethan much success!