Running a Design Business: Creative Briefs:
Learn to write a creative brief for client-commissioned projects and ensure you have a roadmap for developing great design, in this installment of Running a Design Business. Terry Lee Stone explains what creative briefs are, what goes into them, what they look like, and how to use them throughout the project.Learn how to establish the drivers, audience, competition, message, and other critical success factors.
These lessons cover interviewing, researching, drawing out consumer insights, and synthesizing all of this information into a cohesive and actionable document.
Topics include:
- What is a creative brief?
- Who uses creative briefs-and how?
- Reviewing sample briefs
- Working with clients
- Soliciting good input
- Developing actionable insights
Running a Design Business: Designer-Client Agreements:
As a freelance creative, you need to know how to write proposals and contracts for client-commissioned projects. Learn the basics of writing consulting agreements that are good legal and financial insurance and great tools for communicating with clients. Author Terry Lee Stone also introduces a pricing equation that helps you estimate your costs and charge appropriately for your work and shows how to manage complexities of client relationships, especially when it comes to defining an acceptable number of revisions.
Topics include:
- Understanding the anatomy of a contract
- Scoping the project
- Estimating your costs
- Subcontracting work
- Heading off problems
Running a Design Business: Freelancing:
By choice or by circumstance, most designers will be freelancing one or more times during their career. In this course, Petrula Vrontikis provides an overview of the financial and creative advantages and disadvantages of being self-employed, along with methods, tools, and insights for starting out. The course helps you customize a strategy for your unique situation, from setting up accounts and tracking business expenses, to entering into contracts and invoicing for your work. The last chapter contains Petrula's advice on maintaining good business relationships and tactics for staying motivated and inspired.
Topics include:
- What is a freelancer?
- Tracking expenses
- Paying taxes
- Understanding business licenses
- Creating contracts and invoices
- Preparing, transferring, and storing files
- Tracking billing and payments
- Managing your work-life balance
Running a Design Business: Presentation Skills:
Strong presentation skills are necessary for a good designer to be a great designer. How you present your ideas impacts how willing clients are to make meaningful emotional and financial investments in them.Let designer and Art Center College of Design professor Petrula Vrontikis help you convey your ideas with confidence and clarity. Learn to strategize, format, and time your presentation to fit your audience, craft a great message, gain credibility using research, develop visual aids, and deliver the final presentation.Throughout the course, Petrula gives you tips for staying organized and calm, connecting with your clients, and getting the approval needed to move your project forward.
Topics include:
- Presenting one-on-one, to a team, or to a larger audience
- Choosing a presentation format
- Introducing your design and providing context
- Persuading your audience
- Developing visual aids
- Creating a great first impression
- Understanding verbal and nonverbal cues
- Getting approval
- Facilitating a Q & A session
Running a Design Business: Pricing and Estimating:
Do you know what to charge for your design services? Too much and you risk scaring away potential clients; too little and you're not compensating yourself properly. Let Terry Lee Stone, a design manager who's priced thousands of design projects, show you how to calculate your work's true worth. She explains how to keep good records, set an hourly rate, create estimates then transform them into contracts, and successfully approach financial matters with your clients. Plus, like all the other courses in the Running a Design Business series, this course includes free worksheets-including templates for evaluating your expenses and calculating your fees.
Topics include:
- Thinking about money
- Factors to consider when pricing design
- Comparing time-based vs. component-based pricing strategies
- Scoping a project
- Determining your rate based on factors like industry standards and budget
- Creating estimates
- Communicating additional costs
- Invoicing the client
Running a Design Business: Starting Small:
Learn how to transition your freelance design career into a full-fledged business, one step at a time, in this installment of Running a Design Business. Petrula Vrontikis, founder of her own design firm, explains how to parse the legal options, business licenses, and tax ramifications that come with starting a small business; hire subcontractors and employees; get work; and maintain good business relationships. The course also points to important trends in the industry that your office might want to embrace, such as virtual partnerships that allow you to nimbly collaborate, and common small business challenges that you want to make sure to avoid.
Topics include:
- Naming and structuring your business
- Keeping records
- Cultivating business relationships
- Hiring employees and subcontractors
- Creating schedules and managing deadlines
- Understanding industry trends
- Avoiding the pitfalls of spec work
- Promoting your business through social media
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