What you’re about to read isn’t stuff I read in some book or overheard some lawyers talking about in a coffee shop. These are just a few things I’ve picked up on this sometimes winding and bumpy road of owning my own business. Hope you enjoy these points and get something out of them!

Communication is the key

I’ve said this a million times on this site and IgniteLiving.com, but if you don’t communicate, you’re not gonna make it.

It doesn’t have to be artsy, poetic, business-like or even intelligent communication. It just has to be communication.

Your client doesn’t care if you use the words “empowering”, “networking” or “flux capacitor” in your email. He doesn’t care if your sentence structure is a little funky. He doesn’t care if you floss regularly or subscribe to any particular political stance.

He just wants you to exist and act like you’re actually there.

When someone writes you, write them back. When someone says they like your stuff, say thank you. When someone says it’s urgent, don’t go out for a long lunch before you answer. When someone calls, call them back.

It doesn’t matter if you don’t like the phone. I’m with you; I hate the phone. Ultra-hatred bordering on homicidal and/or suicidal psychosis probably. But it’s not about me. It’s about the client and the client wants a phone call. Seeing as how that client’s money will be paying my bills or buying me some groceries, I guess I ought to just shut up and get on with it, eh?

When you do communicate, have fun

If your business is anything like mine, you might have a LOT of clients. That’s not a boast; I’m just saying I don’t charge an arm and a leg for what I do, so have to make up for it in volume.

If I wrote every client the same email, over and over and over, I’d go insane. I try to keep it fresh and interesting and inject my personality into what I do. It makes it way more fun for me, and I’m sure clients enjoy my messages more than some generic bland form letter I could send. Plus, if you act like yourself, your client probably will too. You may even end up making some good friends along the way!

Pay attention

This is a tribute (or anti-tribute maybe) to the old used-car salesman mentality.

You go in looking for a car. You say, “I want one in blue.” The car salesman says, “We don’t have that, but look at this stunner in bright pink. Now that’s you!” And you think to yourself, “Is this guy a moron? I want a blue car and he is showing me one in bright pink? And it’s not even the same model!”

This happens all the time in business, especially via email. Client says, “I have a 50-page ebook I want designed.” Don’t write back and say, “How long is your ebook?” It makes you look stupid. It makes the client think you’re not really paying attention…which you weren’t. You can lose business this way.

It takes much less time to read an email all the way through and get it, than it does to read another email the client has to send because you weren’t on the ball. Wastes their time too.

Don’t take every client

I always run the danger of estranging clients when I speak of “Clients from Hell!” on this site, so please read this disclaimer first lest you think I’m pointing a finger at you:

Clients from Hell don’t care if they’re Clients from Hell. If you have the sensibility to even worry that you may be a Client from Hell, you’re not.

If you have to ask a client four or five times how long their book is, you might be steering into dangerous territory. If you ask the client, “Is it okay if I get this to you on Tuesday,” and they write back, “My favorite color is blue,” you might be in for some trouble.

You bring in what you put out

That probably sounds a bit enigmatic, so I’ll explain. If you want work to come IN, you have to put OUT communication. If you want a new client IN, you have to advertise OUT. If you want someone to know that you sell special wedding napkin rings with ducks on (business IN), you have to tell them (OUT).

Make some noise, tell everyone what you do, post to your blog, pick up that phone, spark up conversation even if you hate talking to people. Your reward will be new business. It never fails.

Take care of those who take care of you

When you find someone with whom you work well, boost that relationship and protect it as much as you can.

There are a few clients for whom I’ve done countless projects, one after the other. They make my business and life so much easier, having their repeat business. I have no illusions about that whatsoever, so I take good care of them. The more I help them the more they help me, and that is a fantastic way of things.

If you find yourself in a similar situation, do your best for them. Well, you should be doing your best anyway, but maybe you could do extra your best. Or something more logical perhaps.

Keep getting better at what you do

This is not only essential for keeping up with your competitors but also is a great trick for keeping interested in what you do.

Case in point, after designing about 8,384,859 ebook covers, I was feeling a bit stagnant and burnt out, and wanted to spend all my time watching Square Dancing DVDs.

So I started learning 3D programs, different Photoshop skills, studied up on classical typography and layouts, figured out what the Golden Mean was and how it could help me in my designs. All of a sudden I was interested again and started having better ideas and more of them.

So, long story short is don’t type-cast yourself. You’re not necessarily going to develop new skills and competencies just working your routine. In fact, just in interest of time and keeping the machine running, you may end up doing the same things over and over. They’ve worked before and they’re easy for you, so you just keep pulling that same trick out of the bag. That’s not necessarily a bad thing, but it’s also not the best route to personal development either.

Of course, this not ALL I’ve learned over the past year of working, but these main points will leave one in good shape if they’re remembered and practiced. Plus, I just don’t feel like writing any more.

Next week, we’ll be posting the next installment in our old series: 10 ways to make your website look better. You don’t want to miss that so subscribe now. Oh…and here are the first three posts in the series, case you missed them:

• 10 Ways to make your website look better
• 10 ways to make your website better, Part 1 – Effective eye trails
• How proper line height will improve the look and stickiness of your site

First things first: where have we been? Busy as all hell, that’s where. We’ve just completed our second year of rockin’ the web with sexy design, and it was a crazy one. So much so that any update to this site’s content has been virtually impossible. Given the choice between client work and updating our own stuff…well, we chose the client work.

But then, we DO have a readership here that doesn’t consist entirely of clients. We can’t go on ignoring all of them, eh? So get ready for some new content on a regular basis. Yes…we’ve said that before, but that was all just a lie.

What’s new?

It is practically a requirement that a person write an “end of year, what I am going to do now” post every time we roll over into a new January. So, here you go:

New Charfish Design site! Now with twice the flavor!

While the old site was getting the job done just fine, we wanted to make some changes to its overall usability. First on the list was making it easier to navigate for Ye Olde Readers. We’ve consolidated the site quite a bit, but unless you’ve spent a lot of time here you might not notice the changes. Suffice it to say that we’ve saved you at least one mouse-click per visit to our site and thereby prevented years of index finger joint therapy. You’re welcome.

Second was getting the site up to speed design-wise. I mean come on, this is 2010, right? Eye-candy is out…minimalism is (still) in. So we went more minimal. There is altogether much more whitespace and breathing room here. Not only is whitespace awesome all on its own, it’s also really good for us lazy folk because we get to design less.

A new employee person item

Gang, I’d like to officially welcome a new employee to the Charfish tribe! Her name is Annora.

Who is Annora? First and foremost she’s a human, which saves us from awkward stares during client meetings. On top of that, she’s a pro photographer, wicked ebook designer, JavaScript junkie and all around amazing person.

And she’s wicked smart in the head area. You tell her, “Hey, Annora, why don’t you try to do this thing you’ve never heard of before and do it better than me without having any practice or even asking the Google?” And she’ll say, “Done. Here it is. I’m going for coffee.” And you look at what she did and you drool a bit. Amazing eye for design and you’ll see quite a bit of her work in our newly revamped ebook portfolio.

And speaking of portfolio…

As part of the new site design, we’ve also created slick new portfolio pages for our websites, ebooks and logos.

The way we coded up the portfolio pages is also going to save us about 18 hours per update, so you’ll be seeing more work more often here. Yay!

That about covers the update for now, so what’s in our near future? Here ’tis:

What’s coming up for us?

• We promise to post AT LEAST once a month, we swear!
• More goodies on the way…like textures! Everyone loves the textures. And more icons! Freebies galore and items you can give your granny via email! She loves that.
• A WordPress theme of awesomeness! That’s right…our very own theme. There are a gazillion themes out there. Some good, some bad, some exactly like every other theme. So why do another one? Because we’ve got some damn good ideas, that’s why! Not to mention, about 70% of our web design clients use a theme we developed but never made public. So we figure if it’s good enough for 70% of them, it’s good enough for the general populace as well. The theme promises sexy whitespace, super-ultra-simple navigation, plenty of admin options, clean code that doesn’t suck, jaunty angles and a gorilla. Wait…no gorilla.
• TONS and TONS of design work! Our clients are pure awesomeness. We’ve got more work than we can shake a stick at, and you can shake a stick at quite a lot of work. A big thank you to our clients, one and all. You guys have made our time in business a dream come true!

Well, there you have it. You’re updated and you know more about our business than I do.

We’ll be back soon with a great post that you budding designers and old timers alike will really enjoy: what we’ve learned in our first two years in business.

Subscribe to our feed so you’ll know right away the next time we post! Like maybe even next week!

Happy New Year!

While there was really nothing wrong with the old site, it was nonetheless a bit drab. It was drab in a pretty interesting way, but for a design blog, still pretty drab. The mundane quality of it actually deterred me from updating the blog as much as I’d like. It’s really no fun writing content for a blog that personally makes you go, “…meh.” It’s like putting on a silk suit after a hard day’s work in the sun, and not taking a shower first.

The new Charfish theme is based off a theme by Derek Powazek called Depo Clean. I’m a super picky guy when it comes to clean code and having things arranged in a logical manner. I’ve been disappointed by popular and often expensive WordPress themes which have code so messy that altering it was like a trip to the dentist. Derek’s theme is not like this. It’s clean and beautiful and working with it was a pleasure. You Premium theme sellers should take note.

Things that may be of interest

• The Archives page is stellar, if I say so myself. Which I just did. It’s neat, tidy and shows everything I’ve done here at Charfish.
• The Portfolio has been redone and updated with some recent work. A lot of the work in the portfolio was produced as a joint effort with Men with Pens and has been noted as such. To read more about my relationship with Men with Pens, read the original post by Pen Man James. I couldn’t say it any better than he does.
• A slick new 404 Error page. Hey…just because it’s an error page doesn’t mean it can’t be fun, right?

What’s not new

The content itself is the same as it was, although I did delete a couple posts that were redundant to things already in the Portfolio. I also got rid of a couple categories that were bulking things up unnecessarily. But everything that was here before is still here in one place or another. If you discover any broken links in the coming months, give me a shout. In exchange I’ll shower you with my choice of either money or thanks.

The hook. That’s right. I actually had one very specific request to NOT get rid of the hook. (Thanks, Kelly!) It’s still here. Not as much as the old site, but it’s here and wearing a new tux. By the way…if you need proof that branding matters, this paragraph speaks volumes.

Now what?

If it seems that Charfish is a foundering blog or small design firm that does one logo every trimester, don’t let appearances fool you. This is a very busy little design firm and things don’t appear to be slowing down any time soon.

That said, I’m first and foremost a writer. So while I may be designing a lot behind the scenes, I’d sure like to be writing more. And that’s what I’ll be doing, so you can expect more blog posts on a regular basis. Topics of note will be:

• Basics of Design
• Real, usable, applicable tips on freelancing
• Tutorials on Illustrator, Photoshop, Cinema 4D and After Effects
• Case studies on real-life projects
• Process studies
• A gazillion other things

What I’d like help with

While the readers here aren’t many, I can say that we’re a closely knit little bunch. As you can tell from the redesign, I do care what you think. I’d like to open up the comments to your thoughts on the redesign, topics you’d like to see here, etc. If you don’t feel like baring yourself to the public, feel free to drop me an email instead. But either way, I’d love to hear from you.

Thanks for sticking with me through the rough stages. Here’s to the future!

Where have I been?

I’ve been right here. Yup, the whole time.

There. Wasn’t that fun?

In all truth I’ve been busy. Insanely so. 18-hour days sort of busy. At the current moment I’ve got 16 projects cooking all at the same time.

They say if you need something done, give it to a busy man. Well, that’s me. In the past couple months I’ve done everything: album covers, book covers, book design, some writing gigs, about 8000 website/blog designs and about triple that in headers and banners.

I haven’t blogged because, well, I’ve been busy with the things that pull in the dough.

That’s not totally cool to you readers, though, is it? From the comments and emails I’ve gotten here at Charfish, I know a small number of readers (zero) care about how much money I’m making or how busy I am. The more popular posts here are about how to run a business, how to design, things like that. Having realized that, I can start cranking out some more content for you.

Where is this blog going?

To the moon, that’s where. What I’ve got planned for the next couple months:

A brand new design

Why a new design? Because it’s time, that’s why. For a design blog, Charfish is a bit subdued. The new version will also be subdued, but subdued in a way that totally kicks subdued ass.

Want to see a preview? Here you go:

That’s all you get.

Cinema 4D experiments and tutorials

I’ve had some questions about how I’ve done certain 3D models and designs, and in response I plan on releasing a series of tutorials about just that. The tutorials will cover not only software specific workflows and such, but will also discuss why certain decisions were made compositionally. A 3D model still has to be captured properly and with an eye to final layout.

After Effects experiments and tutorials

There seems to be a growing fascination with After Effects and I’m a victim of that myself. I try, every day, to at least do a little something in After Effects. It is a limitless program with which you can create some of the most insanely interesting effects with just a few minutes. I’m going to be sharing some of the experiments I’ve been making as well as creating some tutorials around them. The tutorials will be created if there seems to be interest so be sure and comment.

More frequent blog posting

Yay! One of the reasons I haven’t posted much is that, frankly, the upcoming blog design will house the blog posts I have in mind much better than the current one. Charfish is going to be more of a multimedia experience with tutorial videos, animation experiments, etc. and the new version will do them justice!

Case studies of real-life projects

Another type of question I get quite regularly is, “How did you start?” or “What’s your background?” The answer, which I won’t get into here, would certainly surprise a good 90% of you. The new blog will answer all those questions.

And so will my book.

Wait, what book?

I’m writing a book about how to run a successful design business. I will probably call it something really appropriate, like:
How to Run a Successful Design Business

Running a design business is about 10% design and about 90% other things, like workflow, bookkeeping, marketing, customer relations, etc.

I love the business I’m in because I’ve figured out how to extract maximum happiness from it. And the income is good. And the clients and connections you make are great. It’s not just another job.

BUT, it certainly could be if you do it wrong, and that’s where the book comes in. There’s really no reason to be self-employed and stressed out beyond belief. I mean, why not just get a “real” job? You’ll be just as stressed, but at least you’ll have a steady paycheck, right?

There’s an art to running a design business. Especially when you’re doing about 90% of it yourself. I’m hoping my new book will help shed some light on the subject and help out newcomers to the field as well old-timers who may be feeling the stress.

Another book about design

Another book? Yes, another book. Why? Because you all keep asking for it!

“What do I need to know to get started in this career?”
“Do I need a portfolio or diploma or something?”
“Am I a failure if I don’t know about the golden proportion?”

These are the real questions that prompted the book.

Here’s the thing: I don’t have a background in graphic design. Nor am I all that smart. I couldn’t develop a software application if my child’s life depended on it, which makes it very fortunate that I don’t own a child.

My design career started the very second I got a client and no sooner. Everything I’ve learned about design and websites and code and all that stuff was learned on the job. What’s the point? The point is that I’ve learned through fire and brimstone how to deliver.

Now…I’m not perfect. I’ve been fired by a client before. I’ve had a client drop completely out of communication with me for reasons that I can only assume are my fault. But…the percentage of happy customers is a mile long and the list of the latter type is, as of this writing, 3. Long story short, I know how to design, but it’s not because of any schooling or formal training.

I put off this career for a LONG time, thinking I didn’t have what it takes. That I was too inexperienced. Or a thousand other excuses. Once I started, everything I needed to know came very quickly.

I’m hoping my book will shortcut this process for you. It’s really a distillation of everything I know. Honestly. It’s probably going to sell for about $10,987 because of all the info I’m putting into it.

To the future

I have to thank you for your patience so far. I haven’t posted in a while, but despite that, my RSS numbers are on a steady increase. That means someone’s doing a better job of spreading the word than I am. Thank you.

But your patience will be rewarded with an all new, improved beyond all recognition, Charfish Design. It’s only a week or so away (crosses fingers) so…just a little more patience, please.

I’ll see you on the other side with some insanely great and useful content.