Tag Archives: Project Management

Offline Mondays

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I don’t know about you, but my weekends are often just an extension of my work week. While I might not be working, per se, there are tasks that assume their place on Saturday and Sunday, leaving very little room for anything else. Having a home means keeping up with said home, and that includes laundry, mopping, dishes, grocery shopping, etc. These tasks have to be done through rain, snow, sleet, or hail.

I decided about a month ago to declare Mondays “Offline Mondays”. I know an independent artist who works in a cafe/pub on Friday afternoons, and another who is completely offline on Fridays.  Now that I’ve tried it, I am convinced this is the way I must do things. Here’s why I love it:

  • When I’m online, I often have about 5 tabs in Firefox open, Illustrator and Photoshop running, and a handful of chat windows asking for replies. Being the obsessive consummate multitasker, I actually enjoy this environment. Tons to do, flying a mile-a-minute through windows and screens and programs, making it all happen. Offline Mondays, sans computer, I am able to let my brain stop and breathe, and after about 11:00 on Monday morning, ideas I’ve been packing into the back of my mind begin to gingerly emerge. Baby ideas that aren’t strong enough to demand attention while I’m multitasking. It’s quite exciting, actually. I wouldn’t get to that part of my brain if I didn’t stop and let it happen.
  • I usually work on the weekend. Often I am timing loads of laundry with chunks of time for project management or creating patterns. Again, being a multitasker, I enjoy the challenge of a long to-do list and seemingly not enough time to finish it. I’m just not convinced it’s the best way for me to do things every day of the week.
  • I. Need. To. Draw. And I need my eyes for this. I need my hands. Being online requires both my eyes and my hands, so I don’t have a lot of focused creative time while I’m online. My creativity and drawing have soared since the advent of Offline Mondays.
  • My brain is so addicted to multitasking that if it’s not doing fifty-seven things at once, it starts to invent things to take up all that extra thinking room. When I step away from the computer, all that extra thinking room is available for new ideas, new plans, thinking through past half-ideas, and making coherent thoughts into plans. It’s like running through a field of flowers I’ve never seen. I wake up Tuesday full of plans, hope, resolve, and usually a handful of sketches. That takes focused time, time that is hard to come by at my desk.
  • Yesterday, I planted blueberries and grapes in my garden. On a weekday. When everyone else was working. But while I was planting, I was able to mull over a couple business ideas I’ve been ping-ponging around lately, and actually have a more cohesive plan. And I’ll have fresh fruit in a few weeks to boot!

Of course my crackberry is on the ottoman in front of me, and if someone needs something, I’m right there. But generally, Monday is the day the whole world is putting their head back on straight after a relaxing weekend, so I rarely have emergency calls.

Try it! Just once. Give yourself, your creativity, your brain some time to itself. I think you’ll be surprised at what the break will do for you.

Name-Your-Price Freelancing

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I read this article this morning, and it has my brain a-buzzing. I’d love to know any other thoughts on the matter. I am certainly intrigued by the idea of letting the client tell me what they’re willing to pay, but incredibly apprehensive as well. Yes, I can decide to which clients I will extend this billing method, but it still scares me. On the other hand, billing disputes would all but evaporate. Would it leave me licking my wounds? Or pleasantly surprised? Has anyone tried this? What do you think?

The scariest pricing idea ever. That works.

…with a side of OCD.

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This morning as I created a new folder on my computer for a new client. I was organizing all my subfolders and thinking, wow, every folder on my hard drive looks pretty much like this, and because of that, I know exactly where everything is. Kind of a self-affirming moment, really. And then I got to thinking about why I do it that way and when I started that.

I’ve worked several places: packaging company, graphics firm, school, etc. Each place had great practices in place when I got there, and each place had room for my ideas on how to improve things. I left each place a little better AND I left each place a little better (read that a few times, alternating emphases).

The graphics firm actually had a script you could click that would auto-create new project folders. It was flipping awesome. Con. Sis. Tent. Loved it.

Another place I worked had ZERO organization, and I was given 4 (FOUR) separate TB drives to organize. Files with names like “heycheckitout.ai” and “usethisattheend.jpg”. Thousands and thousands (possibly a million, not kidding) of files to sort through and organize. (Note to self: Keep your love of organizing to yourself next time.)

For your OCD pleasure, here is my folder-naming convention. It’s a combination of a few systems I’ve worked with, and a little of my own love of content management.

Client Name>Year-Month_Project>Received, Work_Files, Notes, Backups

Received is not organized. I need a place to dump the images, ideas, questions clients send me. I can tell by the date when it was sent, so I don’t rename the files. Should they refer to something as “IMG-00056-22.jpg”, I need to know exactly where that is. If necessary, I’ll make date folders to sort them, but I’d prefer not to bury things that deeply.

Work_Files is hyper-organized. Inside this folder are two folders: _old and images. I name projects, again, in a way that makes sense to me, so in Work_Files, you might find “2010-BusinessCard_v3.ai” and the corresponding proof. Old versions go under _old, and any linked images go in, well, images. That way when I open Work_Files, what I’m looking at is the current version and the most recently sent proof. Also, I save versions. Many, many versions. My policy is that if it would take me more than 15 minutes to un-do what I’m doing, it becomes a new version. Plus, the glory and joy that comes when the client says, “eh, I liked it better the other way”, and whipping out that specific version is matchless.

Notes. NOTES! I highly recommend having a notes folder/file. If you’re anything like me, despite your keen intellect and rock-solid, steel-trap memory, YOU WILL NOT REMEMBER IT, no matter what it is. The importance of the thing is directly and conversely proportionate to the likelihood that you will remember it. I’m serious. So just jot it down. Some of these files say things like “10-4-2008: Moved button Home to the left of  Contact. Increased margin by 5px on left.” Ever searched through your emails for “what was I thinking when I did that?” Yeah, don’t do that. Just write it down.

Backups is essential, especially if you’re working on a website. If you don’t know what goes in this folder, come to my office so I can lecture you about how important it is to have duplicates of everything in several different places. Imagine this (and this has happened to me): a client emails you in the middle of the night, completely panicked. She was “playing around with her site and saw a bunch of extra files and decided to do some housekeeping on the server.” And deleted every image on her e-commerce site. Yep. Whaddya do? Oh! Right. Replace them and bid her a good night, after cautioning her about “creative housekeeping” in the future. BACK. UP.

There are extraneous circumstances that warrant different folder schemes and naming conventions, but generally, that’s my structure. Organize in a way that makes sense to you. If you’re at a firm or on a team, have discussions about what makes sense to everyone. You will spend less time discussing it and doing it right than you would trying to find something at the 11th hour when you really need it. This is one of the only times I would condone committee meetings. (Sorry, Switchfoot, but time is money.) When I pull another artist in for a big project, the FIRST thing I do is familiarize them with the way I’ve organized the files, and ask that they follow suit. Call it OCD, call it someone who values sleep over late-night file-hunting.

How do you do it? What is your tried-and-true MO?

Honest Questions, Honest Answers

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A couple questions come to mind, this beautiful Friday morning. I am hoping for some honest answers from other designers, but would also welcome non-designers to lend their perspectives.

  1. You design something for a client, and after the project is finalized, you think of a better/new way to do it. Do you tell the client?
  2. You design something initially, and the client requests multiple rounds of revisions. At what point does your role change from Designer to Consultant? And do you inform the client?

My inclination on the first question is to say no. It would depend on the client and my relationship with them, but in my experience, this can depreciate my status as the Expert (in the client’s eyes). What I struggle with, as a designer, is feeling like it could always be better. Even when it’s at its best, it could be better. A tweak here, a tweak there. I lay in bed at night, redesigning things over and over in my mind. It’s just who I am, and the way I process. Ten years from now, I will still be mentally redesigning everything I’m working on. It’s not a lack of experience; it’s a creative process. But what if I have a sudden stroke of genius, late in the game (say, post-finalization or post-site launch or post-printing)? Should I tell them? Again, I think it depends. The balance is a better end-product versus your status as the Expert, which could affect potential repeat business.

The second question: I have no idea. If I present myself as a Designer, does that morph over time, or should I stick to my guns? Do I allow the client to dictate the specifics of a project, even if my own design sensibilities are in disagreement? Is there a formal switch from Designer to Consultant? Answering a question with questions: I am clearly tossed.

Would love some feedback.