Archive for Mart, 2009

What is Design?

Posted by admin in Art and Design on Mart 26th, 2009

This post is for beginners who have newly entered the world of design. I hope it helps give you insight about the life ahead of you.

Nowadays wherever we turn our eyes we see expressions like “Design of the year”, “Designer furniture”, “Designer’s handbook”, “Design of this…”, Designer’s that…”, etc.

What is Design?

This question is one of those questions that when you get a glimpse of an answer it can change your life forever.

Actually I have no recollection of any question as powerful as this one, except for the mighty question “is there God?”, which as a question can keep your mind puzzled all your life. You may never get an answer at all. you may give up asking and just go on with your life.

However, if you are in a profession related to design, you need to know the answer of this question. How can you produce something that you don’t have an explanation for? how can you earn your living off design if you don’t know what it means? It is one of those things that you can’t hold on to with your bare hands but you get an insight of. So I ask again:

What is Design?…

I asked this question over and over again in my university freshman year. The instructors of Basic Design 101 told us many things to explain this phenominal question, such as;

“Design is like a recipe you must have a specific amount of the right ingredients to make a pot of soup”; or,

“A good design is a sum of the components, but the whole of the design is much more than the sum of the individual components. The components are arranged so as to create the quality of the whole.” The arrangement of the components gain significance in this explanation.

How are the components to be arranged? With a specific order! This is when we learn about order… Then oops… before I understand what design is, I must learn what order is.

So I asked what is order?…

I mean I know what it is in general terms, but how does it take place in a design? If I am going to produce a design, how do I use order?

The instructors said you have to put together a set of rules to define and implement your design. Then, for which reason I did not know, I started to make up some rules to get to a design I had in my mind. Somehow I thought it was stupid, the process of making up rules to get to a final design, a design I already had a picture of in mind.

The process wasn’t complete for me. I had to complete a task, a task expected of me that should be a good design, but how? How to get there? I had to create a set of rules to complete the design. But then came another question beginning with how… How was I to set the rules of my order that put the components together to achieve a whole that was of a greater quality than the sum of its components?

This line of questions grew longer and longer, then after many exercises and tasks, I had begun to look at everything with a critical eye. Whatever came upon my way I was always thinking about whether it served its purpose as a design. Then one day…

Since I was continuously observing everything around me. I realised that everything had a purpose. The tv was there in that particular shape for me to watch it, the table was such a table for a reason, my car was in that shape to serve more efficiently, even the painting on the wall was there to remind me of something. Every object was a necessity, and seeing these in that way changed my approach to every step I took. It occurred to me that designing was a lifestyle, a way of looking at things, an attitude towards life.

“Design” (as a noun) had to have a purpose. And “designing” (as a verb) was a method of solving a specific problem within a given environment to serve a purpose.

So I was enlightened. Design seemed more like a mathematical formula than an abstract entity.

It is clear now. Design is a process where you start from scratch and you end up with a product, which serves a purpose or set of purposes:

1. Define the problem: What is the task at hand?

2. Case study: Analysis of any given data.

3. Research: Investigation of alternative solutions. Develop your set of rules.

4. Decision Making: Deciding on which solution is best. Decide on an order for your design.

5. Development: Producing principal design solution. You get your preliminary design approved.

6. Implementation: Constructing the design.

7. Evaluation: Completion of project and user criticism.

Maybe it seems very technical but with a touch of aesthetical value, when you apply such a process to the design task at hand you will find that your design is much more practical, efficient, appreciated and successful.

And when you do get it, you will find that you apply it to every part of your life, even to your personal problems.

Design is nothing but a solution to a problem. When you feel that the process is a part of you then you know that you are a Designer.

Methods of Making Money for Freelancers 3

Posted by admin in Freelancing, Tutorials on Mart 25th, 2009

In sections 1 and 2 of Methods of Making Money for Freelancers I mentioned about the problems of income flow for freelancers and of methods to ease the problem. In section 1 I wrote about promoting your public profile. And in section 2 I wrote about getting new income sources and of microstock firms. Now I would like to give some detail about these firms based on my personal experience.

The first site I applied to as a producer was Istockphoto. I had heard of this site from a friend, and in a period when I had nothing to do (there were no new jobs to be seen to in the near future) I decided to give it a go. I had some 3d works which wouldn’t create any copyright issues when published. I had stored away these files somewhere on my computer. So I opened those files and produced some animations, rendered 20 second clips from these animations and I was ready to begin.

A Review of Microstock sites

As I said I first applied to Istockphoto. Here you have to be accepted first as a producer to be able to upload any files for sale. The application is a wee bit difficult than most sites, since you primarily need to pass the initial application. In my case it took more than a month for my application as a photographer to be reviewed. Then you you have to get every file uploaded accepted. And this takes time, generally 1-2 weeks. This is because there are so many files in queue. So you can guess that this site is a popular one. Yes, that is true, and it is a growing community. However, the rates paid to the producers are low on this site, but you can compensate the difference with other sites because the sales are rather high comparatively. Another thing about Istockphoto is that it is very eager to make its members exclusive. It pays much more if you agree to the exclusivity terms (not to sell anywhere but on this site). Other sites also want exclusive members but this one puts more emphasis on exclusivity. Another thing to mention is the user interface; it is very simple and user friendly. The difficulty I experience with most sites is the uploading process for videos. Here you only have to upload the main version of your clip and the interface will do the rest. I’m talking about conversion of the video file to to other formats. I mainly upload a HD1080 video and it automatically converts it to HD720, PAL, NTSC and web formats. However, because I’m not an exclusive member I don’t have permission to use the ftp for uploads. Uploading 150MB files through html interface can be a drag. See what I mean about the emphasis on exclusivity?

Revostock is is the second site I uploaded my video clips. Its was a new site when I first started uploading and the community is growing very fast. This site pays higher rates per purchase than Istockphoto and the sales are not so bad. However the thing about this site that it isn’t for photographers. You can sell your video clips, After Effects projects and audio files here. The application process is similar to Istockphoto, but it doesn’t take so long. Revostock is a good fit for videographers, but, yes there is a but, the upload process is a bit slow. Although you have access to ftp, you firstly upload the main file, once it is accepted (in a few days) you upload the other formats which you convert yourself. If your internet connection is slow this process can stress you out. Still it’s a rewarding place to sell your stuff.

Another site focused on footage is Pond5. For now you can only upload footage files to this site. I don’t know if we will be able to sell other media on this site, we will have to wait and see. The interface is fairly simple and the rates per sale for producers are rather high compared to other sites. A nice thing about this site is the widget you can download from Pond5. With this widget, you can display the files that you have uploaded to Pond5, on your own site . The approval of uploaded media is quite fast (1-2 days), however there is again the problem of uploading all formats of your video clips yourself. You get them approved separately and they are also displayed as separate files.

Shutterstock, is another popular site for selling your image and footage files. The community is large and this firm is one of the biggest in this industry. The sales are good, however I must say I’m not very fond of this site. The web interface is terrible, I always get lost whenever I visit this site, and I never seem to get what I’m looking for. Initial application to be a photographer for this site is a bit tough also. The approval process of files is also a bit difficult. Their perfection level is a bit high. If you don’t believe your file is perfect do not upload to this site, it will be rejected, even if you think it has sales potential and is on sale on other sites. It is still rewarding so you should give it a try.

When I first joined I could only upload images at Fotolia, newly they have added footage. I’ve experienced no problems with selling my images here, and I’m new to selling footage on this site. So we will have to wait and see how it goes on.

At Dreamstime prices are low for Royalty-Free stock photography, so you can see that the sales are high. Therefore it is a good site for getting good results for image purchases.

123rf, Bigstockphoto, Canstockphoto, and Cutcaster are also good sites worth trying, if you want to expand your audience.

All in all you should try each site individually even if you don’t go exclusive to a specific site, and then you can see which files have a better audience at each site, and then you can decide to sell a particular exclusively to that site. It can take your time but if you are up to this job as a good means of income you should try.

I have one note to add: if you want to upload your files to more than one site (if you don’t want to go exclusive to a specific microstock firm) you should keep a table of your file descriptions and keywords. Everytime you upload a file filling out the keywords and file description can be very boring believe me. Copying from the table will shorten the process and you can keep your files consistent on different sites. If you have a load of files keeping track of them can also be a big problem. You can hold track of your files acceptance and popularity at different sites by creating a database for your media files.

I hope you have a good time selling microstock.

Read my other articles about Methods of Making Money for Freelancers:

Methods of Making Money for Freelancers 1 About promoting your public profile.

Methods of Making Money for Freelancers 2 About selling microstock.

Methods of Making Money for Freelancers 2

Posted by admin in Freelancing, Tutorials on Mart 19th, 2009

Relying totally on freelance jobs can create some stress if you don’t have jobs flowing in on a steady basis, or if you don’t have some money set aside as a buffer for those dry periods. I can assure you that while working freelance by itself creates enough stress by living off routine you don’t want to think about ‘what if I can’t provide for the next month’. Freelance working should be supported by other means of income, income that could let of the steam in those periods when money runs short and there seem to be no new jobs in the near future. Don’t rely on one source of income, especially if you are a freelancer. So my advice for you would be to create alternative sources of income.

Multiply your income sources

There are various ways of creating other income sources such as blogging for adsense income, or setting up an e-commerce site. The type of income I am going to explain in this section is passive income earned from selling stock material. The beauty in this type of income is that you do it once and the income flows steadily once your system is up and running. Also, since you have all the resources, creating the material can be a piece of cake. What to do with the designs customers don’t like? Or your personal designs that you haven’t found an outlet for? Polish them up a bit and submit those work for others to appreciate and buy. This kind of work creates income which can be slow at first, but when on track can become your primary source. You have to be patient at first though. It’s just the job to do when there is nothing to do but to wait for a new job.

Assuming that you mainly do creative work such as in photography, videography, flash designs, illustrations, audio my advice will be about the sites relevant to these fields. Of course there are other sites for other media but because of my experience I’ll be talking about the creative fields I mentioned above.

About 2 years ago to this date (March, 2006) after learning about Royalty free images and videos I decided to give my talents a go and I made an initial effort to compile a few video and image files. I applied to Istockphoto at first and that was the start of my earning of passive income. Later on I searched for other sites and came up with quite a list. After reading about which are the best on various articles I decided to upload my media to the sites listed in this article.

Go Microstock

Now before I give detailed info about these websites I’d like to shortly explain what Stock Photography means. Stock photography is a term for a collection of photographs, not necessarily about a specific subject but of a certain quality that publishers, advertising agencies, artists and etc. use in their creative assignments.

You can also check it out on wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stock_photography

The contract by which they use these images or videos or etc. can be either Royalty Free or Rights Managed. Well as in our case I’ll be explaining the methods of selling your media via Microstcok photography companies. Microstock photography is a derivation of Royalty Free photography, where as a photographer or creative entity of other kind you sell your media through internet based companies to a wider audience for much lower prices down to 1$ a piece, since there is also a wide range of competitors to your production. But still, the good thing is you don’t have to be a pro to go microstock. You can read more about this on my article about stock photography coming up soon.***

Talking about microstock companies, there are a lot of alternatives but the best are still the best. Here is a list of the most popular ones on the net.

Istockphoto: Stock photography; search royalty free images, photos, illustrations, flash, video and audio. A lot more than just photos all in one site.

Revostock: Affordable stock video footage, music and sound effects. This site firstly started with only footage and then in turn added music, sound effects and after effects projects.

Pond5: The world’s stock footage marketplace. This site is focused only on footage for now.

Shutterstock: Royalty- free subscription stock photography & vector art; Royalty – free stock video and footage clips.

Fotolia: Royalty- free stock photos, vector art and footage.

Dreamstime: Lowest prices for Royalty-Free stock photography.

123rf: Stock image and photo subscription

Bigstockphoto: Royalty free photos, download stock photos and images stock photos royalty free downloads.

Canstockphoto: Stock photography images.

Cutcaster: Buy and sell royalty free images, stock photos and vector illustrations.

All of these companies have their pros and cons but before I go into site specifics I’d like to explain another term you’ll come up with once you try to register any one of these sites. This new term is exclusivity. Each one of these sites will ask you when you sign up whether you would like to be an exclusive producer to the microstock website, or if you wish to sell any of your material exclusively when you upload. saying yes to becoming an exclusive producer means that you agree to selling your media only on that site. Whether you would like to go exclusive on a specific site is totally up to you. You may be a fan of one site only and hate the rest, or you may try selling stock at all the sites you find. The most important thing you should bare in mind is that going exclusive is limiting your audience. Selling microstock to more than one site multiplies your audience. On the other hand sticking to one site only can let you get more money per purchase and frees you from all the uploading work to all the sites. Believe me uploading files, managing their keywording and keeping track of their acceptance can be time consuming. Well its up to you to decide.

Going exclusive? Which site to choose? Or if you want to work with more than one firm, what should you expect?

For more in depth info on these microstock sites you can read my next post in Short Guides for Freelancers.

Methods of Making Money for Freelancers 1 About promoting your public profile.

Methods of Making Money for Freelancers 3 A Review of Microstock sites.

Methods of Making Money for Freelancers 1

Posted by admin in Freelancing, Tutorials on Mart 17th, 2009

Working freelance can be a way of expressing our freedom, being our own master but it can also become a nightmare, especially when the jobs don’t keep a’coming. What to do when there is a dry period? Well what I can tell you is to develop alternative methods of earning income. The web is a vast ocean for this, you can make a decent profit or you can also drown in the abyss. I can’t say I’ve gained a fortune at this, but with trial and error I’ve had some experience and reluctantly I have seen that it works. Thus, I would like to share some of my few dollars worth notes with you folks.

Firstly lets depict what freelancers do and we’ll continue from there.

Freelancers are self-employed people who work for employers on project basis according to the deal between them. When the project is finished generally the freelancer is free to go and work wherever he/she pleases. The freelancer gets to choose from a variety of jobs on the contrary of the normal worker and as having a variety of cients also has more than one income sources. Check this out for a more detailed explanation:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freelancer

If the job you do fits into the depiction above, working freelance for can be the all that you dreamed of from a profession or it can be quite the opposite. You don’t work for a single employer but get to choose from the employers you can reach out to; yeah that sounds nice but what if you can’t reach out to the number of employers you wished to, or think about if there are times when the workload is more that you can handle and then suddenly all work is cut off, and there are no more employers who wish to give you work? Sounds stupid but don’t laugh, it is very possible, ‘been there, done that’ many many times. Many times jobs would rain out of nowhere, sometimes 3-4 jobs at once would come. Because of the deadlines, I would have to reject many good jobs and then suddenly when the project at hand was finished I would have to wait sometimes for months to get a decent job. Freelance working isn’t always that nice. Sometimes there can be dry periods, and it is most likely that many freelancers are experiencing the dry period nowadays due to the global recession. So you have to keep your public profile nice and smiling. Networking is an important part of the freelancers workload. So if you work freelance you have to get out there and present yourself to get new projects. For this to easiliy happen you can become members of the freelancer service sites and boards listed below to display your profiles and portfolios . You can also blog and create your own communities on most of these sites. Some are for free but some have limited use unless you pay for subscription.

Reach out to new Employers

Although it seems attractive at first to become a free member of the paid sites your account will be limited to a limited type or number of employers and accordingly your options will be few. Also if you compare the paid sites to the free ones you will not be supported by some services that are applicable only by the paid sites such as the resolving of conflicts between the freelancer and employee. This can be releiving for freelancer during or after the job.

Here is a list of the sites I have come across:

crowdSPRING :Global marketplace for creative services: logo design, business card design, graphic design and website design.

AuthenticJobs :Full-time and freelance job opportunities for designers and developers.

Elance :Service for connecting employers with qualified professionals for all types of jobs.

Getafreelancer :Custom web design and programming. Freelance programmers. Web development outsourcing.

Eufreelance :European freelance market. Custom web design, programming, copywriting.

Coroflot� esigners job board.

Krop :Creative & technical design jobs

Jobpile :List of Jobs on the web.

Freshwebjobs :Jobs board for web design.

Slashdot :Technical Jobs (Company Logo is “jobs for nerds”, get the idea?).

Guru� aid listing service and marketplace.

Serebra Connect :Online Outsourcing and employment marketplace.

Freelancers.net :Freelancers, freelance jobs & freelance projects.

Freelanceswitch :Freelance advice and freelance jobs.

Talking about advice you can find some helpful links for freelancers from billing to management and orgnisation on Freelanceswitch:

http://freelanceswitch.com/general/101-essential-freelancing-resources/ Here you can find many links to freelance job sites and other practical information for freelancers.

Need a logo? Try crowdSPRING!

This post is just an introduction to the ways of earning money in the freelance world. If you want to learn some more about increasing your income continue reading Short Guides for Freelancers

Methods of Making Money for Freelancers 2 About selling microstock.

Methods of Making Money for Freelancers 3 A Review of Microstock sites.