Bran­don Cox is a Pas­tor, logo, iden­tity and web designer and blog­ger (Life Here and There, Fuel Your Blog­ging, and Cre­ative Cox) in north­west Arkansas.

He’s orig­i­nally from Ken­tucky, but now lives in north­west Arkansas with his wife Angie (who blogs at The Sweet Life), his daugh­ter and his lit­tle dog Beau, and is expect­ing a son in April of 2010. He also really loves sweet iced tea and Pixar movies!

Bran­don is very active in the design com­mu­nity. You can con­nect with him on Twit­ter, Face­book, and LinkedIn, as well as Fuel Your Blog­ging on Twitter.

First off, thanks Bran­don, for tak­ing time out of your sched­ule for this inter­view! Can you tell our read­ers how you first got started in design and about your free­lance design stu­dio, eGrace Creative?

Sure thing. My brother is a web devel­oper and writes appli­ca­tions in Cold­fu­sion. Way back in 1998 he cre­ated a web­site for my church and installed Macro­me­dia Home­site on my com­puter and showed me the very basics of man­ag­ing the site, which was good old-fashioned sta­tic html. Soon after that, I bought a copy of Macro­me­dia Stu­dio, which of course has since been absorbed into the Adobe fam­ily, but I really began to love cre­at­ing for the web.

Over time, other churches and friends would ask for my help in get­ting basic sites up. About three years ago, I met Word­press for the first time and began dis­sect­ing the plat­form and some of the free themes that were avail­able at the time and started devel­op­ing my own themes. Because of increas­ing demand for com­mer­cial work, I launched eGrace Cre­ative in Jan­u­ary of 2008 and the rest is history.

Through eGrace, I focus mainly on logo and iden­tity design and Word­press theme devel­op­ment for busi­nesses and non­prof­its. Because of my many roles and because design is not my pri­mary call­ing, I have to turn away work and be selec­tive, which cer­tainly has its advantages.

You recently switched from Win­dows to a Mac, cor­rect? What has that expe­ri­ence been like for you and what prompted the switch?

Macs are just cool. I’d been want­ing one for a cou­ple of years, but had always opted for less-expensive PC’s so that I could get “more” for my money in terms of spec­i­fi­ca­tions. Never again. I real­ize now that Macs just make life eas­ier. I open it and I’m typ­ing. With my PC’s, I always had to wake up the ham­sters inside and wait till they had the wheels turn­ing fast enough for me to work.

What are some of your favorite apps (web or desk­top) that you incor­po­rate into your free­lance business? 

I used to be a big Dreamweaver fan for cod­ing, but since get­ting my Mac, I’ve fallen in love with Coda. I use Illus­tra­tor for logo design and Fire­works for web design (I still think it’s bet­ter than Pho­to­shop for this pur­pose). For pro­duc­tiv­ity, I like the extremely basic Google Tasks. I han­dle all of my billing with Fresh­books and my bud­get with Mint.com. I’m a Word­press junkie, not only for site devel­op­ment, but even for per­sonal writ­ing projects on my Mac. And I browse with Chrome (the dev ver­sion so I can uti­lize extensions).

As many read­ers may know, you are the Edi­tor of Fuel Your Blog­ging and run a cou­ple of your own blogs and occa­sion­ally guest post on oth­ers. What got you inter­ested in blog­ging and how has blog­ging impacted your design business?

I began blog­ging per­son­ally way back in 2004 and then expanded to mul­ti­ple blogs about two years ago. I really don’t blog for the money (directly) but rather for the increased influ­ence. For me, blog­ging is both an art form and a mat­ter of per­sonal brand­ing and brand expan­sion. It’s an out­let for ideas and one of the more addic­tive sides is the con­nec­tion factor.

Blog­ging has def­i­nitely expanded my busi­ness con­nec­tions, prob­a­bly at least dou­ble. As a mat­ter of fact, many of my busi­ness rela­tion­ships have formed not only via blog­ging, but through Twit­ter and Face­book. I’ve never really “sold” my ser­vices in this way, it’s just that you build rela­tion­ships with peo­ple and they see you as a knowl­edge­able per­son on the sub­ject of design.

As read­ers who fol­low you also know, you are a Pas­tor in addi­tion to designer and blog­ger. How long have you been in the Min­istry and how do you man­age the sometimes-challenging work-life bal­ance of your respon­si­bil­i­ties there, with your design busi­ness and your family. 

I’ve been a Pas­tor since I was 19 years old, serv­ing my first church in 1997 (I’m spilling my age, aren’t I?) I’ve been in my cur­rent posi­tion just over four years.

Bal­anc­ing my var­i­ous respon­si­bil­i­ties is the sin­gle great­est chal­lenge I face, espe­cially since they all over­lap to some degree. I joke that my favorite pro­duc­tiv­ity tip is out­sourc­ing my sleep. Actu­ally, I made a deci­sion when I began doing design work that I would never let design or blog­ging out-prioritize min­istry, but I’ve watched growth hap­pen in my min­istry role that is the direct result of my other roles.

It also helps that design and blog­ging are my hobby, which every­body in min­istry needs to have any­way. In min­istry, you can’t always con­trol results or peo­ple, but I can go home on Sun­day night and use css and html to make some­thing hap­pen and see the results on the page — it’s a ther­a­peu­tic and finan­cially ben­e­fi­cial hobby to have.

There is a tremen­dous advan­tage some­times being a designer with friends in min­istry, just as there are advan­tages to being a Pas­tor with lots of friends in the design world.

Lastly, what advice would you have for begin­ning freelancers—or those who are look­ing to grow their free­lance business? 

I think every begin­ning free­lancer needs a multi-pronged approach to grow­ing your busi­ness. Build your skills even if it means tear­ing apart old stuff to see how it works. Make con­nec­tions and get involved in the larger design com­mu­nity. And always work on per­sonal projects that give you a nice out­let from the frus­tra­tions of work­ing to please clients.

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Thanks Bran­don, I really appre­ci­ate you tak­ing the time to share your story with the Free­lance Show!

Again, be sure to con­nect with Bran­don on Twit­ter, Face­book, and LinkedIn, as well as Fuel Your Blog­ging on Twitter.