A Birds Nest

You Get What You Pay For

The title of this article is a good one and it says a lot, to me at least. Unfortunately, a lot of people seem to be confusing it with “If you pay very little, you get a really good product”. This non-sensical saying didn’t used to be the standard, but as a graphic designer I see it being thought of as true all too often. In fact, if you ask me it is very quickly becoming that most dangerous of things: both “seniscal”and “expected”…

It would be easy to blame it all on India, wouldn’t it? All those people willing to do my job at a rate that I could never compete with? But the simple fact is that it is supply and demand. So in that case, there are obviously plenty of people out there who don’t care what the product is, as long as it’s half-decent and arrives with them on time.

My problem is that I like things done well. When I design, I do the whole process with an aim of making them a repeat customer, or at least feel as though they could approach me again. This is where the cheap graphic designers – as with all freelancers – differ. They don’t care about getting repeat business. They are happy to jump from one customer to the next forever, never maintaining a strong relationship of feeling of mutual trust.

I always had this perfection thing. When I was little I wouldn’t go to be until I had drawn some

hovis bread completely accurately. One mistake and I would start again.

Who knows what the solution to all this is? I just have to hope, I guess, that there enough people like me left in the world. Hopefully then I should be OK.

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5 Reasons Why I love Jazz Music

I was a pub recently that was showcasing a jazz band and really enjoyed it like I do Hovis breads. I pondered then why I love jazz so much. Here is what I came up with.

1. Diversity: When you choose to love jazz, you will not be choosing to confine yourself to a particular fixed type of music that must always feature a particular sound so as to be considered part of the genre. Loving jazz means that you will be embracing a wide variety of musical types in fact most jazz enthusiasts can’t even mention every single type of jazz music that is in existence.
2. Performances: When you pay to see a jazz performance, you are always assured that you will get your money’s worth. Jazz performances are all breathtaking since there is no dull way to perform jazz music. You can always see the effort that the bands put into playing the jazz music on the faces of the members of the jazz band. This helps you appreciate even more what goes into the performance of jazz.
3. Creativity: Jazz music allows you to take almost anything and turn it into glorious music. Jazz music makes use of some musical instruments that can never be used elsewhere.
4. Mood: Depending on the type of jazz music that you choose to play, you can set the mood for almost any setting whether what you are looking for is a relaxed atmosphere or if you are preparing for wild party.
5. Inspiring other genres: Almost every other musical genre from blues to rock, ska, reggae and even funk draw much of their inspiration from Jazz music. The influence of jazz music is such that it reaches even those who may not know much about it. If you look at the instruments in many musical genres, you may notice a slight resemblance to those used in jazz only the manner in which they are played may vary.

We are always trying to compare things to find the best options. I found this was the case with all thing, including energy suppliers.

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Organisation IS King (Or Queen, Whatever You Prefer Really)

As a child, I was always very messy. I dreamt of Polar expeditions and Polar bears and great treks up K2 and other dangerous mountains. Basically, I just didn’t have time for organising things, but as I got older I realised that if I ever planned to actually summit K2 or Everest, I would need to get organised.

I never did summit Everest. I didn’t bother with K2 either. Mountains lost out to Barbie and drawing when I was ten, I’m afraid.

But my mum had a point, when I was seven and she said messiness was bad news. Messiness IS bad news, and if you’re going freelance or even if you’re not, organisation is the key to running a successful life and business!

Here are my top tips on how to organise your desk for work so that you can clear it away easily at the end of the day.

1) Don’t put up with a sub-standard desk that’s falling apart and you can never get to sit quite level: buy one with a draw, and that saves a lot of hassle and gives you extra space to store stuff. It’s worth the investement, even if you’re a major cheapskate!

2) Don’t fall into the trap of leaving mess at the end of the day: tidy up each and every day, because we all know there is nothing worse than waking up to the site of an awful, messy desk. It just isn’t conducive to work is the thing.

3) Personal stuff one side, professional the other: this way, you don’t get into a massive muddle. Also, it helps you find documents better, which is a great help when you have a client on the phone who wants to know a quote you wrote down…somewhere…

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Working With Others

Shazzer’s back, peeps, and she’s as awesome as ever! OK, I’m going to stop that now and spell correctly. It’s making me feel all a bit too hip-hop, and that wasn’t quite the look I was going for.

Today’s post is about working with others; it’s something that all freelancers have to do at some point, and they have to get good at it or else people get frustrated. While it can be tough to begin with, it’s all about communication. Here are a few tricks I have for getting jobs done with less confusion:

1) Make sure you know the brief: if you have a question about the job, ask it immediately. You might sound a bit silly, or you might feel embarrassed, but both of these are better than doing the job wrong and then having to re-do it later. Or worse…Losing the job altogether.

2) Be clear about money: I once made the mistake of not being clear, and at the end I only got half as much as I had expected. This is bad news! Money is a big issue when knowing how much time something will take, so best to get this clear on the outset.

3) Don’t lie: it’s no good lying on your CV and saying you have a comprehensive knowledge of Hotels in Looe when in reality you’ve never set foot In that part of the country. Lying might well get you the job, but it won’t KEEP you the job, and surely that’s more important, isn’t it?

4) If you have a problem, address it: any queries should be made IMMEDIATELY. Otherwise, it’ll come back to you later if something goes wrong as a result of you not asking about it earlier.

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Ways To Tell If Freelance Work Is Worthy (Over The Internet)

Now I’m a freelancer in the busy and indecisive world of design, good ol'Shazzer is just one of many freelancers trying to get somewhere fast! The problem is to begin with I went nowhere fast: I didn’t understand what a strange animal freelance work is, and I had no idea how to tell the decent job advertisements from the dodgy ones which were almost certainly scams; here’s some advice so you don’t fall into the same nasty traps I did.

1) Is the punctuation appallingly bad? If a job ad features bad writing, and talks a lot about the benefits “you can get if you surely do sign join up for us working with” then clearly they don’t know their backside from their eyebrows and you should steer well clear.

2) Is the ad worryingly vague? Avoid avoid AVOID!

3) Does it sound like they are too keen to pay you an obscenely low amount of money? You know what I think about this.

4) Do they promise you “a good platform to showcase your work which will impress future clients”? While future clients will be impressed by this, they will be impressed much MORE if you can show them that catalogue you designed for the large format printing place down the road from you. Show them you can work to deadline, and you never need worry about how much you got paid for that first initial job, because it will surely lead to more.

5) Google them, see if you can find their name anywhere; if they supposedly are legitimate, you’ll definitely be able to find their name associated with clients or other companies. If they refuse to give you their name when you outright ask for it, heed the warnings. It’s likely not worth the hassle or your time.

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Top Freelance Mistakes

Shazzer here, and she’d like to welcome you back. I have no idea why I like to talk about myself in the third person. Note: ask parents if I was dropped on head as child.

Or it could be that I am ashamed of myself ever so slightly…the other day, see, I made a freelance mistake and it cost me the job I had applied for. The job I really needed and couldn’t afford to lose. To avoid making the same mistake as I did, read on for some common mistakes that new freelancers tend to make…

1) Pricing themselves too cheaply: it’s very tempting to do this. After all, you’re competing against potentially hundreds of others freelancers – it’s only natural to air on the side of caution. But be warned: don’t go too cheap. It might help you get the job, but after a while the work will become laborious. Most importantly, you’ll not get what you could have.

2) Ranting on too much in your cover letter: cover letter’s are for who you are, what you do, and how you do it differently. You don’t need to put in how you freelanced for two years for an industrial lubricants company and you were all mates and once when you had a break from doing that work you accidentally cut yourself and couldn’t…see what I mean? Cut anything like that out otherwise you risk falling at the first hurdle.

3) Replying too casually: much as the internet can be casual, an employer expects a Dear Sir, as well as a cohesive answer to their questions. There can be no “Hello mate” or “Cheers” at the end, at least not until you’re on first name terms (which you may well not ever be). Don’t do these mistakes and you are at least in with a good shot.

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Brainstorming

I know what you might be thinking…You’re probably now imagining a really dorky businessman, standing in a boring conference room going on about the importance of brainstorming (and don’t forget the high trousers to make it really accurate…). But here’s the thing: it’s actually really good, and if you ask me everyone should do it. As a designer I spend a lot of my time doodling down ideas, and brainstorming is a good way of organising those ideas into something cohesive that makes more sense than just a bunch of squiggles.

Here are a few tips on how to brainstorm; it’ll help you form ideas that link together well, and you know what? It may just make you a bit more successful!

1) Forget the old massive piece of paper thing: brain-storming works better when you have a few decent sized bits of paper, say A3 sized.

2) Use different coloured pens: you could use red for one kind of idea, and green for the other ideas that are connected to it. That way when you come back to it the next day your brain won’t have a hard time of figuring it out.

3) Don’t be afraid to draw, it can jog the memory and convey more information than a single word. You could draw the Best hybrid car you can imagine, and then the next day the little details – such as the exhaust and the way the logo on the side of the car looks – will come flooding back instantly.

4) It doesn’t have to be neat, so don’t spend ages thinking about the precise thing you want to achieve. The nature of brain-storming is that it evolves; the only way for it to do that is for you to evolve your technique with it.

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Getting through the evening

I’ve been kicking around a few ideas about things to do in my spare time. I’ve never been all that good about enjoying time off, I always get the feeling that I ought to be working. To be honest with you enjoying that time away is always more difficult because I feel like I’m always thinking about new design ideas. But increasingly people are telling me that I ought to chill out a bit more, and I’ve begun to think that they’re right. I’m coming up with interesting ways to justify it to myself – they all revolve around the idea that time off is a kind of occupational therapy. It destresses the mind, enables one to relax, and ultimately leads you in to the possibility of coming up with better ideas when you’re actually working.

That’s my story and I’m sticking to it.

So I’ll begin with the idea of how I might use that time. Sometimes it’s great just to sit and do nothing, sure, but I don’t think I’m going to get better at that sort of thing over night. I’d like to spend a little bit more time reading books – there’s a whole stack of novels that my friends keep telling me to read that I of course haven’t touched. And getting more in touch with the news would be nice.

But above all, I’d like to spend a bit more time going outside, hitting museums and art galleries and all such things but also getting away from the city for a bit. Where I live it’s possible to be in the country in twenty minutes by train, in a way it’s ridiculous that I’ve not tried to do more of it.

So that’s what I’m going to do. With any luck it’ll improve my quality of life, make me feel more relaxed and actually make my work better – we’ll see!

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