3 Terrible Excuses For Not Starting Your Own Company Today

In a tech world where hugely successful companies like Apple and Airbnb compete on design, there are surprisingly few designers out there creating their own startups. Why? A lot of it comes down to mentality on both ends. Most designers aren’t taught to think of themselves as entrepreneurs, and lots of businesses are still getting over the idea that designers are consultants you bring in at the end of the day to “make things look pretty”” rather than key players.

Here are three of the biggest sticking points we hear from designers as to why they aren’t starting their own company and why they actually don’t matter.

1. “I don’t know enough about coding/hardware or business”

Welcome to what being an entrepreneur is all about. One of the most fantastic things about founding a startup is the opportunity to always be learning something new and flexing your skills on the go. Yes, that can be incredibly stressful, but it’s also exhilarating and one of the things that keeps people coming back to game over and over again. Trust us, no one knows everything they need to when they first start a company.

Secondly, don’t forget about your team, especially your cofounding team at first. Part of the point of cofounders is to close the insanely large sink hole of knowledge that is missing. Then you add in a few choice advisors.

Your cofounders and advisors are there to support you with knowledge that you don’t personally have, and help you learn more about the different angles to what you’re doing. In describing the partnership with his Behance co-founder Scott Belsky, Matias Corea noted, “When I met Scott, I was just a designer…I turned Scott into a designer, he turned me into an entrepreneur”

It’s never too late to learn a bit about these things you don’t know about. Learning the basics of coding can be a great way to enhance your skills as a designer in general, and you don’t have to have detailed back-end skills to be able to make the right decisions and work with others. And you may be surprised to find that design-thinking applies to business in almost every way. Just ask designer entrepreneur Christina Wodtke.

2. “I’m not ready”

How long have you been saying this? Make no mistake, taking the first step is damn scary. But there is never a perfect time. You can choose to wait forever and wonder what would have happened if, or have the confidence to take the first step. A great place to begin is by starting side projects. Not just on your own, but with others.

If you’re struggling to find inspiration, “stop trying to be the next Facebook or have the next billion dollar idea—don’t think about it like that,” says web-design great Jeffrey Zeldman. “Think about what isn’t out there that you wish was out there, and scratch your own itch”

Collaborate with people on projects you’re passionate about, and you’ll quickly see if you like your potential co-founders and if your project is becoming such an obsession that it can’t be a side-project anymore. Then maybe it’s time to take things to the next level. Maybe even more importantly, you’ll figure out what your deal breakers are in a cofounder.

3. “I don’t do work for free”

One of the things we often hear from designers is “I don’t work for free” And that is valid. Chrisina Wodtke explains, “This is one of those ‘good things gone wrong,” AIGA and other design organizations have said over and over again, ‘Never ever do work for free.’ While it is important to defend the value of your work as a designer, following this rule to a “T” can keep you from engaging in wonderful opportunities to co-found early on, when nobody else is making money either.

Starting a company is about diving in and creating with your co-founders; it’s not like being taken advantage of by an employer who doesn’t respect your craft. It’s a risk, but one that everyone is sharing together. Rather than thinking about getting paid in money, think about in terms of value. Are you getting value for what you’re doing? Do you have a large piece of the company if you’re cofounding it?

What’s Stopping You?

Of course, there will always be hurdles in the way of creative people who hope to impact the world, but if you’re one of those would-be designer entrepreneurs, a combination of experimentation, confidence and design-thinking can help you take that leap of faith.

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Jessica Alter is the Cofounder & CEO of FounderDating, the premier network for entrepreneurs and advisors to connect, share and help one and other. Previously, Jessica led Business Development and was GM of Platforms at Bebo (Acquired by AOL). Prior to Bebo Jessica worked in business development at Hands-On Mobile. She is also a mentor at 500 Startups and Extreme Startups. She holds a Bachelor’s in Business Administration from University of Michigan and an MBA from Harvard Business School.

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3 Terrible Excuses For Not Starting Your Own Company Today

Things to Remember when Starting a Design Business

Have you been thinking about starting a design business? With all the outstanding reasons to do so, we can certainly see why. You might be drawn by the independence, the market opportunity, the creative possibilities, the enjoyment you get from it, or any combination of these and other motivators.

The cost of self-employment in design is not too prohibitive. Money is, of course, a consideration, but your biggest investment will be the time you spend promoting yourself.

Building a Reputation Online

The first step to be taken seriously for your design skills is to show that you take your own skills seriously. Personal branding should be a high priority for you. Thanks to your graphic design expertise, you should have no trouble coming up with a personal logo, font, and color palette to use in all of your promotional efforts.

Next, join every online community where you have a chance of getting your name out in the market, such as news websites with active discussion boards. Use your logo as the avatar picture for your social media accounts, and fill them with carefully selected posts about relevant industry news, as well as your own personal projects. Design a portfolio to showcase your best work, with avenues for potential clients to contact you. The well-known Behance and Dribbble are just a couple of the many excellent portfolio hosting sites available to you.

Don’t undercharge, under-schedule, or under-network. You should have a good handle on what your services are worth and what you’re capable of accomplishing during the day, so you don’t sell yourself short on money or time.

As far as networking goes, becoming a fixture in your online community is a good strategy for gaining referrals and connections. It can also be a wealth of information on the best new tools and can inspire meetups where you build camaraderie with other designers.

Taking Your Message Offline

While all of these online methods go a long way toward building your reputation, don’t neglect offline advertising. “Isn’t it a little incongruous for someone who works solely online to waste time advertising offline?” you may ask.

Actually, it isn’t a waste of time at all. Physical promotions stick in people’s minds and make them more likely to remember you, as these engage the tactile and olfactory memory as well as the visual. Even if you don’t have a physical item on hand to give them, the fact that you talked face-to-face rather than through a screen makes you infinitely more memorable.

Some ways to make yourself stand out offline include finding a workplace that isn’t your home. If you can pull it off financially, your presence in the public space makes more people take notice of you. You can really play this up with bright, fun window decals or even lawn signs — any indication that you are ready for business. Even if passersbys don’t need your design services themselves, they may know someone who does.

Image Source: Old Postcard Design via Shutterstock.

Consider sending physical samples of your work as postcards to your desired potential clients. It’s easy to stick your web address and social media handles at the bottom of something like this, encouraging them to engage with you further online and see more evidence of your talent. When you feel a genuine connection with a new acquaintance, having a business card and/or a useful personally branded item to give away also increases your top-of-mind presence.

Optimizing Both Channels for Maximum Growth

Whatever you do, don’t fall into the trap of seeing your online and offline promotion as separate endeavors. They must work together for your best chance of success. The printed materials you give out or feature at your work space should point people online, so they can see more of your design in one place.

Your online presence should always have the goal of talking to people in person and getting your work into their hands, so they will be more likely to remember you favorably.

For a step-by-step business-launching journey that takes into account both the offline and online requirements of starting a business, check out Graphic Design Blender’s article for designers. The tips here will give you your best chance of success.

In addition to all of their great suggestions, the best piece of advice you can remember is not to be scared! You can definitely do this. It’s better to try to see what you’re capable of than to assume you’ll never succeed and stay put in a job you don’t love.

Finished

If you’re starting your own design business, what advice do you have to share? Tell us your personal experiences below!

The post Things to Remember when Starting a Design Business appeared first on Speckyboy Web Design Magazine.

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Things to Remember when Starting a Design Business

Starting a New Project? Do These 5 Things Before You Open Photoshop

For some designers, the first impulse is to open Photoshop and start going right away, but most projects require some substantial work before digging into the actual design. Here are some of the things you should get done before you start to put together images, layers, vectors, and everything else in your design.

1. Get Core Project Information

Before any design work begins, the client and designer have to agree on the fundamental basis for the work itself. This can include project briefs or folders that go over the top-level objectives, the scope of the project, and what the project should accomplish.

For example, designing a glitzy marketing campaign on a few keywords can be really insufficient if there are specific messages, target audiences, or angles that the client wants to address. This resource from iDesignStudios goes into more detail about planning before designing.

2. Nail Down Contract Issues

Professional freelancers and designers who work directly with clients know firsthand the importance of tackling contract questions before any design work is done.

You may know what you’re supposed to do, but what about the size of the project? Do you know how many pages are to be done, what format the results are to be in, and how long all this will take? Is compensation clearly detailed in the contract?

These are some of the issues that have to be negotiated between the involved parties prior to doing any design work.

3. Figure Out Methodology

When you have determined the goals of the project and its scope, you can start to lay out your preferred toolbox. Think about the software you use to create a design project; for example, is Photoshop the best tool for the job or is it time to try Sketch? The tools that you choose determine your workflow and how you actually do the many tasks that make up your complete project.

4. Go to the Drawing Board

With goals, tools, and a solid understanding in hand, designers can start to experiment with drawings, mock-ups, sketches, or other rough ideas that give the project a skeleton and an overall structure.

Professionals do this in different ways. Some use project-specific software. Others like to use paper. Then there’s this approach, where mobile app designers create paper runners that thread through a cardboard iPhone prototype in order to simulate the scrolling that users will do on the page.

In the end, it’s best to go with whatever feels most comfortable and makes the most sense to you. Anything less tends to obstruct the process and limit the ways that the project develops.

5. Make a Preferred Short List

After doing typography, layout, image editing and so on, you’ll have a collection of possibilities that compete for a place in the completed project file. It’s often useful to build a short list or mark the options that seem best out of whatever’s been generated. In some cases, you’ll end up with a set of very similar plans. In others, you’ll have several options, and the client can choose. Either way, the narrowing down or winnowing of the process is a way to guide the focus of the project as it evolves toward eventual completion.

What Do You Do Before Photoshop?

All of these steps are critically important in the design process. It’s just not as easy as clicking open some software and throwing some images and text around. Anyone who sees design as a simple process hasn’t been in the driver’s seat when putting together quality projects. Leave a comment below and tell us how you kick off a project. What critical steps have you added to your workflow?

Starting a New Project? Do These 5 Things Before You Open Photoshop