Jared Latigo
I'm a designer, husband, father, and Christ-follower for life. Usability is key, sandwiches are awesome, and there's just no beating a Starbucks white chocolate mocha. You are cordially invited to be a twitter stalker of mine and I hope you love the articles so much it makes you want to share them every 15 seconds for the rest of your life. That would be some serious sharing going on. Drop me a line on my site even if it's just to say "Hey!"
Design Trends vs. Great Design
Here is something that I believe touches the design community and each of its members on a personal level each day. We all use inspiration and we have a “design style.” But where the line begins to become blurry is right between trends and greatness. It’s not so much that I believe a particular design trend is great or that one isn’t, but moreso that we need to take a step back and remember that trends come and go and that one trend doesn’t make a design great. Also remember that just because a trend works for one project, doesn’t mean it works for another. So what I’m going to do here is give a nice little reminder to think before you design and take each project on its own.
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Details in Design – How Much Difference Do They Really Make?
I recently read an article on SixRevisions called Details Make the Difference in Web Design by Jason Gross. I thought it was a great article for the most part, but that it left out a few things and didn’t touch on the importance of making sure a design detail is actually needed. So I thought I’d expand on it a bit. I’m looking for feedback here for sure. I’m also not claiming that I have this down personally, we all need to work on some area or another. Be sure to leave your thoughts below!
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Freelance Series Wrap-Up: Moving Through the Project
As we finish up this freelance series, I thought it would be great to go through the phases that every project needs to be successful. I’ll touch on things like analysis, sketching, design, development, content, and testing. Now, remember that I’m coming from a web design perspective so there will be some phases in here that wouldn’t be applicable to a graphic designer or someone who’s project doesn’t require development. But all in all, I think that the majority of freelancers would use a very similar process. Here we go.
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Freelance Proposals and How to Make Them Effective
I’ve been getting requests for the article on doing proposals, and it is finally here! This will cover the portion of your freelance career where you get the joy of quoting a project now that you’ve met with the client and have some time management skills under your belt. Whether you’ve done this two times or 200 times, the process will constantly need refining but the most important thing is to be clear, concise, accurate, and on time. Make your proposal bulletproof. Make sure it includes the scope of the project, so that anything outside of the scope will be billed extra. This will help with your time management, your billing, your timeline, and of course, your sanity. We’ll also talk a bit about a proposal system I love and highly recommend. Here we go!
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What You Need to Know About Freelance Invoicing and Accounting
I could probably sum this up very quickly with the few words “keep it simple.” But because I want to provide you with enough information as to why you need to do that, I’ll elaborate a bit. This is not a list of great programs or apps to use but rather just explaining why it’s important to use something. However, I have my favorites I use so they will be mentioned throughout the article for reference. Alright, let’s get started!
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Freelancer Time Management and Why Time Tracking Sucks
We’re going to continue on with the freelance series from a couple of weeks ago but I wanted to touch on this subject before going any further as I think it’s vitally important to your survival in the freelance world. The statement in the title is a bit bold to say and many people will go against me when I say it, but time tracking is a waste of time. Time management however, is your best friend. Just listen to what I have to say, then critique it in the comments, I can handle it.
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Options to Consider When Looking for Stock Photos: Free vs Paid Solutions
As designers and bloggers, pretty much every project we do is going to involve photography in some way, form or fashion. With the way the internet is today, there are photos floating around everywhere and it’s very easy to grab one for use even though it may land you in some huge trouble. This isn’t a post on which is better so much as it is weighing in on the different uses for free and paid photos. I’ll interject some of my opinions in here but mostly keep it factual so the information is as correct as possible. What’s your opinion on free vs paid?
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What Everyone Ought to Know about Initial Client Meeting
In the glorious field of web design there are far too many prices, skillsets, levels of professionalism, and difference in deliverables for any client to really understand them all or even comprehend where to start. We live and work in a field that is ever-changing and as hard as it is for us to keep up with technology, clients can’t possibly be expected to. This post is going to be the start of a series on the entire process of building a website for a client. It will entail many phases from initial meeting to design mockups to development, testing, and launch. Within each of the articles there will be pertinent information for anyone in the freelance field whether you’re a full-timer or not. My simple goal is to provide information for each of you that will aid you in streamlining the process and help cut out some pitfalls along the way. I’d also like to ask for your feedback on each of the phases I’ll be outlining here. There is no “right way” to do things so give your thoughts and opinions, no holding back. Let’s get started.
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Can Free Design Resources Be Exemplary?
As designers we’re always after some good resources for inspiration and even for design elements to help us when we have a mental block. But the thing is that there’s not very many GREAT resources out there that give FREE stuff away. You have inspiration sites like Dribbble and DeviantArt (deviant does give some things away) but there’s a new community emerging where the resources are not only free, but also outstanding. Let’s take a deeper look into this new community called DesignMoo.
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