Free Photoshop book

Okay it’s happened. I’ve officially lost my mind.

Today I’m releasing a GIVEAWAY book. But it’s not a book written to ‘give away’ as such. It’s not a 20 page excerpt of a greater volume or a few random thoughts thrown together with a view of giving it away. No, this 176 page full color book was published in March 2008 for the purchase price of $48 (or $38 e-book) and has sold reasonably steadily.

Except that now I’m giving it away. Or at least a limited number of copies anyway.

The book is 25 Essential Photoshop Moves. Inside are 25 skills, tools and techniques that you should know if you want to call yourself a Photoshop user. It was created for the latest version of Photoshop (CS3), but most of the techniques are retro-possible.

If you want to download your copy of this $38 book, go tohttp://www.freephotoshopbook.com

http://www.freephotoshopbook.com

I’ll keep you posted on the comments and feedback I receive. And I advise you to get the book while you can…

A free book on Photoshop?

Who gives anything away these days? It seems there’s a price on everything, from bodily fluids to personal recommendations. “There’s no such thing as a free lunch!”

But I’m going to buck that trend.

A few weeks ago I published a book called ’25 ESSENTIAL Photoshop Moves’. What it’s about is… well, twenty-five Photoshop skills, tools or methods (‘moves’) that I believe are ‘essential’ for a Photoshop user to know. These are all given in tutorial format with large images and simple explanations.

This 176 page book is available at http://www.lulu.com/content/2204608 for fifty bucks, or $38 download.

However, sometime in the next few weeks I’m going to give away a few hundred copies for free! (Downloads, not printed copies – do you think I’m stupid?)

The question you’re probably asking is…

Why?

Okay… that’s a question I sometimes ask myself. But no, too late, I’ve decided. So what does make me want to give away something I’m actually trying to SELL?

The answer will be in the next post. Stay posted…

Everyone’s a designer!

If you’re a famous actor, people will give a double-take when they see you, then sometimes come up to you for autographs or photographs of them with your arm around their shoulders. It goes with the territory of being famous. If you’re a doctor and the people at a party find out, you can guarantee it won’t be long before someone is explaining their baffling symptoms to you. Again, it’s part of the job.

And if you’re a designer, it’s inevitable that other people’s designs will be thrust in front of you for ‘comment’.

But be aware, it’s not ‘comment’ that they want. It’s praise. None of these would-be designers would go near you if they knew you were going to laugh at their work and utter something like “you’ve gotta be joking, right?”

No. All they want from you is a “hey not bad, you could be a designer” or a “Wow, did YOU do this?”

You see, everyone’s a designer. While many part-time or wannabe ‘designers’ will outwardly disparage their own work (It was just a quick job, I’m sure you could do a lot better, BUT…), deep down they think they’re brilliant, and at a level much closer to the surface, they want other people to acknowledge their brilliance.

That’s the funny thing about design. Design is everywhere and everyone is a designer. Truly. It’s unlikely that the doctor at the party will ever hear “oh yes, I’m a doctor too. I put a band-aid on my cut the other day and I DID NOT faint at the sight of all that blood. That makes me a doctor.”

But anyone with a computer and Microsoft Office, with its ubiquitous WordArt, is suddenly the logo king or queen. Anyone with preset templates is the layout whizz. And heaven forbid if they manage to lay their hands on Photoshop or InDesign.

But the thing that baffled me for many years was that these ‘non-designers’ seemed somehow blind to their own lack of ability. They honestly believed that they were designers. They believed that the crap they printed on plain paper on their inkjet printer with the magenta ink running low was as good as anything a designer could create. How could that be?

Well I think I finally have it.

Here it is. Drum roll please…

The primary difference between designers and non-designers is this; it’s their ability to RECOGNIZE what is good design and separate it from the bad.

That’s it.

As designers we can look at a crappy logo and say “that’s a crappy logo”. But non-designers (especially the creator of said crappy logo) cannot see it.

As a professional designer many is the time I’ve had to not so much ‘design’ a logo or a brochure or a poster or an ad layout for a client, but ‘tweak’ their own design. A client will come to me with their WordArt or Publisher logo and ask me to ‘round off the rough edges’. Sometimes it’s more a matter of making it printable (the printer rejected the Word document as not being ‘print-ready’).

Sometimes I can even see that it’s not their decision to do this, but their partner’s (in life or business), and they actually like the ‘logo’ in its present form. That only makes it doubly hard for me. Because if designing a logo from scratch is a 7 on the difficulty scale, cleaning up someone else’s amateur work is a 10, or higher if the scale went that high. Not only do you have to come up with something that won’t cause a wince whenever you see it in the wide world, you have to satisfy the client (who will see every change you make as a personal affront).

One option, of course, is to refuse to do this kind of work. And that’s a stance I used to take. Me, all high-and-mighty, “I’m a professional, I don’t DO that”. But who misses out? The client doesn’t, because they either keep their crappy logo and are proud of it, or they go to another designer. The only one miserable is me – without work.

Another option is for me to lecture them on the necessity of proper logo creation, denigrating their logo in the process, and then quoting them $3000 for my services. Do you think that’ll work? Do you think, even if they say okay, go ahead, that our relationship will be a good one – after I’ve called my new client’s design ability into question? Chances are they’d tell me to stick it and go back to option one.

No, the only real option is to do it. Take their crappy logo and turn it into a something a little more professional. BUT, do it in only a few hours, because the budget is unlikely to stretch to the thousands I usually charge.

In a way, though, this can sometimes turn into a good thing. The resultant logo may never grace my portfolio, but it will be better than the client’s original attempt, and the client will have a buy-in to the logo. In fact he or she is likely to tell everyone they know that THEY designed it, and that pride of ownership is the foundation for a great ongoing relationship. After all, once they have their logo, they need stationery, brochures, signage, advertising and marketing material… the list goes on.

Some of my best ongoing clients ‘designed’ their own logo. And, as time goes by, if the logo truly is a problem, I’ll one day get the chance to ‘modernize’ it.

Here’s an example:

This is the logo the client brought to me. He loved it, but felt it needed a little ‘tweaking’. He didn;t know what I would do to improve it, but was prepared for me to alter it slightly, so long as I didn’t change it too much.

Here’s what I did, and charged him an hour of my time.

Everyone’s a designer, and only ‘true’ designers can differentiate good design from mediocre (notice I didn’t say bad). But keeping a good relationship with ‘amateur’ designers can lead to a lot of work. If anyone ever comes up to you in a party and shows you the new logo they designed themselves, say “hey that’s nice, would you like me to tweak it for you…”

Freehand is dead, long live Illustrator?

The demise of Freehand is like the passing of a dear old friend – but one who has been ill for years. Sadness is tinged with relief on the passing of this venerable drawing product. It’s like seeing the last of the VHS videos come out of the factory, knowing that if you haven’t yet converted to DVD and Hard Disk recorders, you’d better hurry.

In its day Freehand was my personal weapon of choice. CorelDraw was full of great fruit, but couldn’t make Postscript, while Illustrator was quirky and lacked the fun tools.

Freehand’s precision and superior Bezier tools (in my opinion) made it perfect for constructing logos, and much morebesides.

But using Freehand today is like driving a ten-year-old car with no airbags, no ABS and a smoky exhaust. The world has moved on.

I will be sorry to see the end of Freehand, but I won’t be sorry to see the end of Freehand files arriving at my office for print – with all their quirks and lack of transparency support. (I mean, Acrobat 4? Come on!)

Nor will I miss the use of Freehand as a page layout package by so many young designers. It’s too easy to have a page in the middle of the document being the wrong size or orientation. Despite all it’s good stuff, Freehand is not, and never was, an alternative for Indesign or Quark. Not even Pagemaker.

All we need now is to wait for the design schools to catch up and stop teaching Freehand to their students.

Is time really money?

We’ve all heard the story about the lawyer who billed an extra $20 for ‘crossing the road to speak to you, but discovering it wasn’t you’. I have worked for firms in which every minute of every day is billed out to someone, even trips to the bathroom and coffee breaks. If you start a job at 10.00am and finish it at 4.00pm, that’s 6 hours to be billed. Never mind the lunch hour in the middle, or the phone calls taken (for other clients) or the photographer dropping in for a chat before she went home.

I have seen three creatives gather in a huddle for fifteen minutes to discuss a job, and each one charge half an hour to that client – at $120 per hour each!

But those were the ‘old’ days (I hope) and they’re well past. The fact is that clients are more savvy now, and this sort of budget blowout won’t be tolerated for long.

On another tack, it’s common knowledge that new designers take longer to complete a task than their more experienced colleagues. That should be reflected in their respective charge-out rates. In other words, a novice charges $70 an hour, an intermediate $120 an hour and a star can charge $180 an hour. By rights all three should end up charging the same amount for the same result, right?

Unfortunately this isn’t always the case. Young designers often charge out at a ‘standard’ rate, while older designers might get the job done quicker, but will often ramp up the hours anyway.

The fact is that design, like every other business, is affected by the market. The market sets the price, and unless you’re a superstar with billion dollar clients, you buck the market at your peril.

Let’s say for example that you’re designing a brochure. The client has had similar brochures created in the past, by you as well as by other designers. She knows that the last one cost her $1100 (by a rival designer) and the one before that was $1000 (by you). That means your bill for this job had better be in the region of $1200 (allowing for inflation) or you could be in trouble. Too much more and you’ll lose a client. Too much lower and, although you might make that client happy, you may also be undercutting yourself, not to mention creating a monster. (You charged me $800 last time, what do you mean it’s $1300 now!)

All of which means that the job is a $1200 job. Full stop.

Is there any mention of an hourly rate? Or of whether the designer is a newbie or a seasoned veteran? Or even how long the job will take?

No there isn’t. I would suggest that the bill goes out at $1200 and how the job was completed is secondary. At a charge rate of $120 an hour, that equates to 10 hours. If you managed to complete it in eight, you’re on the winning side. But if it took 12 hours, the only person who knows is you, and any issues arising from the extra time are yours to deal with alone.

But there’s one more thing to consider. Let’s say the 10 hours for the job finish at 3.00pm. If you complete it by 2:47pm and sit back feeling smug with yourself, just ask yourself one question.

What do you do now? Is there another pressing job that’s been waiting for this one to finish? If there is, then get on with it. But what if there’s not? What if, as is likely to be the case, there are other jobs pending, but none that MUST be commenced at 3.00pm?

Can I suggest that if your most likely action now is to knock off early and play tennis, or goof off for a while, you instead spend another hour or two on the brochure? The ‘time’ would otherwise be wasted, so it’s not an issue, right? And an hour or two spent tweaking and perfecting the job will only add to your reputation, improve your portfolio and (hopefully) cement your relationship with a returning client.

Time, therefore, is not money. The finished job is king.

Charging for your valuable time

If you’re a freelance designer, you’re running  a business. That means you charge for your time and – in theory – your clients should be happy to pay for it.

I see many discussion threads on the pros and cons of hourly rates versus flat charges and both arguments have their merits. I do feel, however, that there is a third option.

An hourly rate is traditional among designers, and I myself have often quoted for work on a ‘should take me about 10 hours’ basis. Time is, after all, money. Most designers that I know charge by the hour, although many have instituted guidelines in order to aid the client in estimating the probable bill. Much like the way mechanics will say ‘should take me about 2 hours, so with parts, I expect around $400’. Then, if it takes longer, due to broken bolts or whatever, and the bill comes to $600, you’re not usually surprised (when was the last time your mechanic charged you exactly what he quoted?).

Unfortunately designers also fall into this category. The feeling among the great unwashed (those who make up the prey of designers) is that receiving a bill for the ‘quoted’ price is worthy of celebration.

A flat rate can therefore have major advantages of its own, especially when dealing with a client who is new to the concept of using a designer – a new business owner for example. Or a client who has been burned by extra hours spent in the past.

$500 logos, or $999 websites allow the budding businessperson to budget accurately, and if the designer actually honours those charges, should bring him or her back for more.

But flat charges have one major flaw; no two logos are the same, just as no two websites can take the same time to design, assemble, test and launch. Another problem with flat fees is that by offering a set figure, you open yourself to direct comparison (and competition) based on price – not your skill level, your past successes or your ability to get the job done. And with some websites offering $60 logos while-U-wait, and Free Websites (just host with us), that competition is unfair.

Okay, so what’s the solution? I did say there was a third option.

How about… wait for it… an unadvertised flat rate.

Here’s how it works. You’ve been around a while and have some examples of what you can do. You know, for example, that the website for the old lady’s flower shop took you X-hours and you charged Y for it. You also know that the logo you designed for her was a simple three hour job. And there are more.

So you have a $500 logo, as well as a $1000 logo and a $2000 logo. Plus you have a $1000 website and a $2000 website and so on.

When you’re speaking with a client, you show them a logo you have done that suits the expected budget of their company and tell them “that’s a $1000 logo”. Then gauge their reaction. If their unimpressed, and seem able to spend more, you continue along the lines of “but of course for your company, I’ll pull out all the stops. This was a strict budget job.”

See where I’m going here. If you want to advertise a flat rate, do so – but with the addition ‘from’. For example “Websites FROM $999”.

But most important of all, MAKE SURE YOU STICK TO THE CHARGE. Nobody likes extra charges or fees or unquoted elements. If the job does take you longer than you predicted, consider sticking to the quoted amount and swallowing the extra. You’ll gain a lot more business than the few extra bucks you’d get by charging those extra hours.

Trust me… having the adjective ‘reasonably priced’ in front of your name when being recommended is worth its weight in gold. You just don’t want to be ‘cheap’.

InDesign is King! (Or is that Queen?)

Several years ago I was a teacher of computer graphic design. The five software packages that the college taught were (in no particular order) Pagemaker, QuarkXpress, Freehand, Illustrator and Photoshop.

While a resident I increased substantially the input of Adobe Acrobat, and added a bundle of prepress elements to the school. But when I tried to introduce Adobe InDesign, I was thwarted. Flash-in-the-pan, I was told. Quark is king and we only teach Pagemaker because of the number of companies still using it. I left not long after that (for unrelated reasons primarily involving $$$).

Recently I considered a brief return to that noble profession of teaching. But one of the drawbacks (for me at least) was the necessity to bring myself back up to speed with QuarkXpress, which I hadn’t used since the last time I tutored graphic design (sometime around 2002). The college had – in time – replaced Pagemaker with InDesign. I knew this and was pleased by their momentous decision.

But imagine my surprise when I learned that the esteemed institution in question was about to drop QuarkXpress! As an InDesign user I couldn’t be happier. But surely there was still a major market share for the venerable Q out there?

Apparently not. The college – who remains among the most popular in its field – must have done its homework, and InDesign is it. In fact, Adobe Creative Suite is it, for Freehand is also for the chop. The new line-up is InDesign, Illustrator, Photoshop and Acrobat. Flash and Dreamweaver for the web components. Imagine that!

So for this teacher of young graphic designers, Quark is banished and InDesign is the new ruler!