Jeff Fisher, a 30+ year design indus­try vet­eran, is the author of The Savvy Designer’s Guide to Suc­cess: Ideas and tac­tics for a killer career and Iden­tity Cri­sis!: 50 redesigns that trans­formed stale iden­ti­ties into suc­cess­ful brands. He is cur­rently writ­ing the book Logo­Type, about typog­ra­phy in iden­tity design, with a sched­uled release of late 2010.

He has received over 600 design awards and his work has been pub­lished in more than 100 books on iden­tity design, self-promotion and the mar­ket­ing of small busi­nesses. He often makes pre­sen­ta­tions at design con­fer­ences, speaks to stu­dent audi­ences at uni­ver­si­ties and design school, and con­ducts work­shops for busi­ness orga­ni­za­tions. In recent years, Jeff has judged numer­ous com­pe­ti­tions, includ­ing Amer­i­can Adver­tis­ing & Design 25, the Logo­pond Awards, The Cre­ate Awards, and the Sum­mit Cre­ative Awards.

In Jan­u­ary, he was named one of design indus­try pub­li­ca­tion Graphic Design USA’s “Peo­ple to Watch in 2009.” In 2008, Jeff Fisher Logo­Mo­tives was rec­og­nized as one of the top 100 U.S. home-based busi­nesses by the web pres­ence Star­tup­Na­tion.

First of all, thanks for tak­ing the time out to par­tic­i­pate in the inter­view. I know you are cer­tainly a busy man, between design­ing, author­ing books, writ­ing mag­a­zine arti­cles, blog­ging, speak­ing, judg­ing and every­thing else you do! You’ve cer­tainly been an inspi­ra­tion to a lot of design­ers, myself included.

Neil, it’s a real plea­sure to be asked to be a part of the Free­lance Show—especially hav­ing met you at the first Cre­ative Free­lancer Con­fer­ence in 2008.
.

Can you com­pare start­ing out as a designer when you began ver­sus start­ing out as a designer today. What advan­tages do new design­ers have today? What chal­lenges do they have that you didn’t?

I started school to become a graphic designer in 1974. It was a dif­fer­ent world. For most, all aspects of design were lit­er­ally much more hands-on than today. I have the X-Acto™ knife blade scars, from hand-cutting var­i­ous films and out­put type, all over my fin­gers to prove that point. My school­ing included learn­ing a great deal about the print­ing process, design­ing typog­ra­phy, spec­ing type, prepar­ing final art for repro­duc­tion and any other processes nec­es­sary to take a project from con­cept to the final desired result.

While in col­lege, the com­puter lab was some unknown cam­pus loca­tion where self-proclaimed com­puter geeks went late at night to do their home­work. I couldn’t have even imag­ined using a per­sonal com­puter for the pur­pose of cre­at­ing my design work. In fact, I worked as a pro­fes­sional designer for about 13 years before my first The Mac­in­tosh IIsi appeared on my desk. The tran­si­tion from totally hands-on design to computer-generated out­put was a bit of a challenge.

I can remem­ber when the lat­est and great­est tech­nol­ogy was a new-fangled piece of office equip­ment called a fax machine. Fax­ing rough sketches of designs to a client was a really big deal.

Even in the early 1990’s there were some with access to a com­puter who thought the equip­ment made them a “designer.” I do think it was a bit eas­ier then for those with actual design edu­ca­tion or train­ing to prove the value of their time and talents.

The Inter­net had a major impact on my career. My first web pres­ence went life in the fall of 1998. I naively cre­ated the site as a per­sonal port­fo­lio for a poten­tially local clientele. It was a major shock to begin get­ting work from across the U.S. and for­eign countries.

All that said; design­ers today have such incred­i­ble advantages—many taken for granted on a daily basis. The access to infor­ma­tion and research via the Web and other tech­nolo­gies is almost unlim­ited. Com­mu­ni­ca­tion with clients, ven­dors, men­tors and peers is light years away from when I first moved to Port­land in 1980. The advances in com­puter and soft­ware tech­nol­ogy are a huge advan­tage to the designer start­ing a career today.

There are chal­lenges. With the per­sonal com­puter came many indi­vid­u­als call­ing them­selves “design­ers” because they had a PC and some design pro­grams. So many indi­vid­u­als fail to real­ize that such equip­ment is just a tool that is used most suc­cess­fully by those with the appro­pri­ate edu­ca­tion, tal­ent, expe­ri­ence and abil­i­ties. Plug­ging in a newly pur­chased com­puter is not going to make some­one a design professional.

I appre­ci­ate the cur­rent design edu­ca­tion pro­grams that don’t per­mit the use of a com­puter in the first year or so of one’s school­ing. The stu­dents learn the prin­ci­ples of design in the old-school man­ner, prior to trans­lat­ing their design con­cepts to a dig­i­tal format.

When I was in high school, few peo­ple even knew of a pro­fes­sion referred to as “graphic design.” Until I saw Mil­ton Glaser’s book “Graphic Design” in 1974 at my hometown’s pub­lic library, I had only occa­sion­ally heard of a career path in a some­what obscure field known as “com­mer­cial art.” The huge num­ber of stu­dents in graphic design edu­ca­tion pro­grams around the world will present a chal­lenge to any design grad­u­ate as they begin their ini­tial job search upon fin­ish­ing school. A design grad­u­ate with a kick-ass port­fo­lio, the abil­ity to write more than just a com­plete sen­tence, a great under­stand­ing of busi­ness and the abil­ity to effec­tively mar­ket and pro­mote them­selves is going to have the advan­tage over most of their peers.

I have come across a num­ber of recent design school grads that seem to think they are the hottest thing ever to hit the design pro­fes­sion. I always tell grad­u­at­ing stu­dents that when the door of their school smacks them on the rear-end, as they head out into the big, bad world, their true design edu­ca­tion will begin. It’s then time to set aside ego, eval­u­ate the real­ity of the cur­rent design mar­ket, become a sponge in soak­ing up every bit of infor­ma­tion one can, and do the best job pos­si­ble for any client or employer.

Get­ting a job, or find­ing inde­pen­dent design work, is a huge chal­lenge these days. I’m dis­turbed by the num­ber of new­bie design­ers these days who seem to think the only option for pos­si­ble work is to take on “spec” project assign­ments, or par­tic­i­pate in so-called “con­tests,” in attempt­ing to estab­lish a rep­u­ta­tion in the indus­try. The only thing worse than a poten­tial client who does not value the efforts of a pro­fes­sional graphic designer, is a designer who doesn’t appre­ci­ate the value of their own time and work.

A much more effec­tive use of a new designer’s time, energy and tal­ent is offer­ing to do work for a non-profit cause in which they have a per­sonal inter­est, inter­act with poten­tial clients involved with the orga­ni­za­tion, estab­lish a port­fo­lio of “real world” work, and take the time to edu­cate all along the was as to the value of pro­fes­sional design work.

.

Cor­rect me if I’m wrong, but you didn’t start spe­cial­iz­ing in logo and iden­tity design until sev­eral years into your career. What was it that made you decide to spe­cial­ize and how did your busi­ness improve because of it?

Logo design has always been an inter­est. As far back as junior high school I enjoyed play­ing with let­ter­forms and graphic ele­ments; com­bin­ing them into what were my early crude attempts at cre­at­ing logos. While in col­lege I had the oppor­tu­nity to cre­ate a num­ber of logo designs for busi­nesses, orga­ni­za­tions and pub­li­ca­tions. I was quickly hooked on such design efforts.

How­ever, start­ing out as a pro­fes­sional designer in 1978, for some odd rea­son I felt a designer needed to take on any and all projects that came one’s way. It was cer­tainly a way to make a liv­ing. So, I spent a good 17 or 18 years design­ing pub­li­ca­tions, adver­tis­ing, direct mail pieces, brochures, pack­ag­ing and what­ever any client needed—whether I liked it or not. The logo design and brand­ing projects were always the most enjoy­able challenges.

About 1996 I was being to expe­ri­ence some real career burn-out. I wasn’t sure I wanted to con­tinue as a designer; although I didn’t have a clue what else I might do career-wise. In a dis­cus­sion with my sis­ter, the owner of an adver­tis­ing and pub­lic rela­tions firm, I brought up the issue. She looked at me like I was a com­plete idiot and said, “Why aren’t you doing what you enjoy the most?” My blank stare prompted her to add, “Logo design.”

It was one of those “I should have had a V-8, slap your­self in the fore­head” moments. I sim­ply hadn’t given myself per­mis­sion to focus and spe­cial­ize on the most plea­sur­able aspect of my work. Once I did so, I had com­pletely renewed energy and enthu­si­asm for pro­mot­ing myself as Jeff Fisher Logo­Mo­tives and seek­ing the project work of great­est inter­est to me. The work, and rep­u­ta­tion as an iden­tity designer, so followed.

.

As you know, pric­ing design ser­vices can some­times be a strug­gle, espe­cially for those just start­ing out. What advice do you have for free­lancers? Do you rec­om­mend pric­ing flat-fee or hourly?

In most cases, when a designer is ques­tion­ing whether they are charg­ing enough for their efforts, the ques­tion has already been answered by the doubt being expe­ri­enced or expressed. It’s time to raise the rates. There’s cer­tainly noth­ing wrong with ask­ing oth­ers in your local area—from both the design and client side—about going design rates. How­ever, with Inter­net capa­bil­i­ties, no designer needs to limit them­selves with local billing rates or a local clientele.

In the course of my own career, each time I’ve raised my rates I got­ten more, rather than less, work. To many poten­tial clients there is a per­cep­tion that if some­thing costs more, it must be bet­ter. In my case, I’d pre­fer to exe­cute one iden­tity project for $5000, than slave doing 100 logos at $50 for the same amount of money. Not every client is going to be the one that pays thou­sands of dol­lars for design — you have to seek out that type of busi­ness. No designer needs to set­tle for the $50 a logo client—or even worse, “spec” projects.

With my smaller start-up clients I almost always charge a flat-fee for the project effort. I’ve done such projects for so long I’m sel­dom short-changing myself in esti­mat­ing the jobs. How­ever, when I’m doing a project for a large cor­po­ra­tion, or a busi­ness with mul­ti­ple lev­els of (lack of) approval, I bill the client hourly. Such efforts are always going to take much, much more time—most of it unnec­es­sary. I’m most likely going to earn every cent esti­mated. The most valu­able, and most lim­ited, com­mod­ity I have as an inde­pen­dent busi­nessper­son is time, and I need to be com­pen­sated ade­quately for my invest­ment in hours.

Years ago, at a HOW Design Con­fer­ence, I was asked to share my busi­ness mantra. My response was: “Work less; charge more.” I think it’s a way of think­ing that more design­ers should adopt.

.

How do you man­age all of your com­mit­ments and projects? You have to be a mas­ter at time man­age­ment. Please share your secrets!

I’d like to think that I just don’t take on more projects and com­mit­ments than I can han­dle. That’s not always the case, How­ever, I do try to not com­pli­cate my life.  I attempt to main­tain a good work/life bal­ance. I often tell pre­sen­ta­tion audi­ences “I work to live; rather than liv­ing to work.”

I only have client con­tact Mon­day through Thurs­day. Years ago, each sum­mer I would inform my clients about my “sum­mer offices hours” of Monday-Thursday; 8 AM to 5 PM. Fol­low­ing the Labor Day hol­i­day in Sep­tem­ber I would change my hours to a more nor­mal five-day work week. About a decade ago I adopted the four day “office hours” per­ma­nently. That allows me to have each Fri­day to do as I please.  Fri­days are often spent doing mar­ket­ing, net­work­ing, writ­ing and tak­ing care of business-related tasks. It’s been a great time man­age­ment tool for me.

I do real­ize that I’m lucky to be able to just take on the projects that really inter­est me. Doing so allows me greater flex­i­bil­ity in the sched­ul­ing of what I do on a daily basis.  For me, it’s also been very help­ful to lit­er­ally put any work needed for myself on my project cal­en­dar like work for any other client. Work I need to do for myself is just as impor­tant as any client job.
.

How has social media impacted your busi­ness? Has is become a direct source of work with clients con­tact­ing you through var­i­ous social media chan­nels? Or is it more an indi­rect result of expand­ing and build­ing your brand?

For over a decade I’ve been involved in online design and busi­ness forums. The ini­tial desire was to over­come some of the iso­la­tion from being a one-person, home-based business. Much of the inter­ac­tion of the forums and news­groups was really social net­work­ing in an ear­lier form.

I came to social net­work­ing through seek­ing alter­na­tive meth­ods to get the word out about my book, Iden­tity Cri­sis! Many of the social net­work­ing sites allowed for pub­lish­ing writ­ten and visual content—perfect for pro­mot­ing a graphic design book. It didn’t take long to see the added value in pro­mot­ing speak­ing engage­ments, dri­ving traf­fic to my busi­ness web pres­ence, dri­ving read­ers to my blogs and more. Social net­work­ing efforts have cer­tainly assisted in cre­at­ing a greater pres­ence for the Jeff Fisher Logo­Mo­tives brand—AND it has resulted in many new clients. Twit­ter has become an espe­cially effec­tive and valu­able mar­ket­ing tool. By the way, on Twit­ter I’m @LogoMotives.

An arti­cle I wrote about this topic, “Self-Promotion the Social Way,” was pub­lished in the Octo­ber 2009 issue of HOW Mag­a­zine and is posted on the publication’s web­site. (http://bit.ly/131Lvx)
.

Last ques­tion for you, Jeff…
If you had just one piece of advice to give a begin­ning free­lancer today, what would it be?

I would rec­om­mend that all inde­pen­dent designers—or all design­ers for that matter—always trust their “gut instinct.”  That lit­tle voice we all have within our­selves is most often our best busi­ness advi­sor. If our “gut” is telling us that a project prospect might be the future client-from-hell, a busi­ness part­ner­ship may not be in our best inter­est, or a poten­tial ven­dor may be a slime­ball; there’s usu­ally a legit­i­mate rea­son for the feel­ing.
.

Thanks Jeff, I really appre­ci­ate the inter­view and I know it will be a help to read­ers of the Free­lance Show!

You can find more infor­ma­tion about Jeff Fisher Logo­Mo­tives, and find links to Jeff’s blogs, at http://www.jfisherlogomotives.com.
.