Graphic Design School Blog

So you find yourself pitching for a job and have come up with an ingenious solution to a fiendishly tricky design conundrum, and all you want to do is get on the phone to the client and sing it to him from the bottom of your lungs. Slow down there pardner. To convince your client of the barnstorming excellence of your proposed solution, more often than not you’ll need to take him through things step-by-step in a presentation. Presentations are important to get right, and represent the ultimate test of your communication skills. Many a fine idea has been admonished or dismissed through poor presentation. Gulp down the words below to ensure this doesn’t happen to yours…

This week’s article on professional design practice concerns project planning. Good, thoughtful project planning can be indispensable to the smooth running of your professional life as a freelancer. By running your business along well-oiled, well-organised lines you’ll be able to wring the most amount of time out of your days, maximise your profits, avoid mislaying things and generally inject some calm into your busy life. A modicum of planning, far from acting as a restraint on creativity, can in fact free us to spend more time on the creative process. It should therefore be an integral part of all our working lives. Follow the guides below, or a life of professional chaos awaits!

Knowing how to price jobs and what to charge clients is as essential a component of being a successful fledging graphic designer as any. It’s a delicate thing to get right. Price a job too high and you risk your prospective client remaining just that—prospective. Too low, and the person on the other end might view this as a reflection of the quality of the services you provide in a “you get what you pay for” sort of way. So there’s a balance to be struck, and it pays to have some systems in place. Here in the second lesson of our series on professional design practice I’ll do my best to provide you with some frameworks below. So, without further ado, let’s dive in!