Following on from my post about breaking into web design, I’d like to talk about how to be a successful freelance designer. What qualifies me to talk about this? Well that would depend on what you define as being successful. Success in the freelance world is all about keeping busy, avoiding barren patches and retaining clients – which is something I have thankfully managed to achieve.

Over the past 4 years I have established a method to my work, a set of rules that have formed my working code which have now become habit… (more…)

I was recently asked by a client to provide multiple different design concepts (3) for the same website, yet this is something I haven’t done in years. I don’t have a problem with it, but in my opinion it’s the wrong way of doing things, and here’s why…

The way I see design, it’s all about educated decisions. From the very start of a project you will make numerous decisions and you will discount certain things based upon a combination of the current brief, your experiences from the past and what you believe is right for the project. Producing multiple varying visuals goes completely against this. (more…)

So here we are in 2009 and it’s my first post of the year. The big talking point across most of the popular design blogs and industry magazines seems to be what trends will emerge in 2009? I have to admit, it was initially something I wanted to post about, but having now given it more thought – I’m not even sure that trends exist in the way they are made out to. (more…)

I’m not entirely sure why I wanted to write about texture in web design this week, but for some reason it seemed appropriate – maybe it’s because I associate autumn with texture more than any other season, or maybe it’s just because I’ve been seeing a lot of it as I’ve searched the net lately (probably).

Anyway, here is a round up of 5 sites that I’ve stumbled upon lately that I think for one reason or another really make the best of texture. (more…)

Early in my career I would occasionally suffer from design block. It’s like there’s some kind of mental block where nothing seems to work and the longer it goes on the worse it gets. In an industry that is all about deadlines, it’s the last thing you need.

A few years ago I accidentally stumbled on a very simple technique that seems to combat design block and as a result I’ve never suffered from it since. (more…)