Confessions of a Graphic Designer

Note: hyperlinks in red I think of Twitter as a cocktail party, and FaceBook as dinner party. Both can be fun, but they can also be noisy and full of drunk people. LinkedIn is a place where business happens. I’ve been on LinkedIn for four years. LinkedIn is a social network that allows you to make connections with trusted contacts and essentially create a personal Rolodex in the cloud. But it's much more than that. In addition to the convenience of finding your important business connections in one place, it offers a host of useful resources for job seekers, sales people who are prospecting, and recruiters who are looking for qualified people to fill jobs. There are too many benefits to enumerate, but it’s not just a social network—it is a database of people and companies that can be searched geographically—and most of what it offers is freely available. In 2006 my real-life best friend and fellow graphic designer started a job at PopCap , and she invited me to j...

My BFF Paula Wong and BTF Krystyn Chong. Photo by The Milkie Studio I've lived in Seattle most of my life and have friendships that span decades. My BFF Paula Wong and I are both sansei — third generation Japanese-Americans. We went to some of the same schools and through different paths we became graphic designers. Knowing each other for 45 years, we've watched our kids grow from infancy to adults. Professionally, we’ve gone from lead type, phototype and Exacto knives, to falling in love with our first Macs more than 20 years ago. In fact, I have Paula to thank for my tech addiction! When she worked for Aldus, Paula gave me a much-needed nudge to switch from traditional to digital design. Having shared history, knowing each another's families, being there to experience and support major life events means we share a friendship with great depth and meaning — a rare gift in an era where life moves so quickly that often all we can do is skim the surface. I th...

In October of 2008, Aaron, a client, told me I NEEDED to get with it and get on Twitter. Aaron (@SeattleBlank) is, like, 30 years old, and is a VP for a public relations firm, and someone I respect. As a graphic designer, it's important for me to keep up with what's current. It's tantamount to social currency. So sheepishly, I opened an account. It felt weird, though, all alone in what I'd describe as my "Twitter Room," and since I didn't really know what I was doing, I proceeded to post rather banal tweets about who I was meeting for dinner and where, or the projects I was working on, etc., as if anyone could care. There was no interaction or response by anyone. Was it any wonder that I was unimpressed with the whole thing? It seemed pointless and stupid. I did very little with Twitter for the first 4 months. Whenever someone started following me, I couldn't understand why. They didn't know me. I thought, "why in the world would this...

I'm a self-employed graphic designer, so it's important for me to establish relationships with clients in order to cultivate ongoing work. It's usually easy to do this since most people are basically nice, and often my clients become close, personal friends. But on occasion you might encounter "the client from hell." -- you know, the one who calls you evenings and during the weekend and emails you at all times of the day and night, expecting you to drop everything so you can finish their urgently important project. Please note, these are precisely the people you don't want to have your home phone number. In case you don't know, the clients who are the most trouble almost always are the ones who want to take the greatest advantage of you. In fact, there seems to be an inverse ratio of “pain-in-the-ass factor” to “billable hours/expenses.” The more problematic the client, the more demanding they are and the less they want to pay. The pro-bono clients ...

My best friend and I both are graphic designers. We're sort of geeky because we like talking about new hardware and software (we both idolize Steve Jobs) and sometimes even reminisce about our favorite versions of various applications, like Freehand versions 3.1, 5.5 and 8. (Freehand MX is a pain!) Since we're both self-employed and occasionally suffer from that odious malady, procrastination, at times we've had to explain to clients why a project may be delayed. In discussing this universally common situation with colleagues, we found designers have some unique and some not-so-unique excuses. Some of the more believable ones (because in some cases, they were authentic) include: 1. My hard drive crashed and I had to reformat my drive and reinstall all of my software 2. I had a press check or the press check was delayed 3. I had to visit someone in the hospital / go to a funeral 4. My email / network / server was down and I never received the files / images / work ...