Presentation, Professionalism, and the Forever Geek Redesign
Two weeks ago I put a call out looking for a designer to handle the Forever Geek redesign. Within 24 hours I had received over 30 emails from designers that showed a great deal of interest in doing the work. No surprise because freelance designers can only survive by doing design, duh. I went with Forty Media for a couple of reasons and thought if I shared my reasoning this would help everyone out in the future when trying to find client work.
Read the Instructions
In the entry I asked for links to sites you have done and what price you estimate for the FG redesign. I would say only 50% of the submissions contained a price. Now understandly I didn’t give a lot of details with regards to the design so giving an estimate might not have been possible from your perspective, but in this case I think it’s safe to give a range, while also inquiring more about the project itself.
Either way if you didn’t give pricing or at the very least an estimate I skipped the email and never looked back. Because of time constraints I am no afforded the time to exchange 30 different sets of emails with 30 different designers working out pricing details so the easier you make my job, the better it looks for you.
Pricing
I have spoke many times of the importance of putting a value on your work. Pricing too low can make you look unprofessional even though your intentions may be to undercut everyone else. Pricing too high can chase someone away simply due to the price being out of budget. When putting out the inquiry I had a price set in mind and honestly free wasn’t part of it.
I expected to pay for this work and I expected to get quality from it.
It was interesting to see how much the quality of the portfolios matched the prices given to me. Forty Media had the second highest bid, so please don’t think I went for the cheapest alternative. I also chose the third highest bidder for work on two other sites.
Portfolios
A surprising number of links, portfolios, and sites were either unfinished or showed poor execution. I can understand many of the people inquiring about the work approached the job as if I were a friend and kept everything informal. I would’ve probably fell into the same trap myself. However, when going for work it’s important to have everything in order.
As a freelancer you don’t have to act like a corporation, but you should show the same professional-grade presentations that the big dogs show. Going to Forty Media’s site I was able to quickly find their portfolio along with a quality presentation of each site.
If you find yourself saying that you don’t have the time to put work into your own portfolio then you should really reconsider doing this on your own.
I don’t like all the sites they have designed, but very rarely do I find a designer who designs to my liking every single time. So making every site perfect and to the liking of a potential client doesn’t have to be priority #1, but presentation of those sites goes a long way towards how your potential client will view you.
Quick Deadlines
Forty Media was able to give me a deadline for each phase and they hit each one on the mark. This works wonders in spreading word of mouth and having a client return back for more work.
I am not writing any of this to promote Forty Media (especially since Business Logs does desgin work as well) or to insult any of the others that may have submitted emails to me. I am hoping that this helps everyone get a better understanding of how far professionalism and presentation go in the eyes of a client.
Note: Some of the pages on FG are not yet finished and should not be used as a reflection of the work done by Forty Media, but in my work to implement all the changes sitewide. They did everything that I asked and a bit more.
Thanks for the coverage, man.
You were a great client — not nearly as much of a pain in the neck as I thought you’d be. ;-)
By James Archer on April 25, 2005 5:19 pm
The new site looks excellent — very open, very clean, lots of emphasis on content. If there is one suggestion I’ve got, though, it’s to either include the link to the site in each post, or put a bit more emphasis on the “Visit Site” link (perhaps the nice red used on hover?). I might be the only one, but it took me looking at 5 or 6 entries before I finally noticed the link.
I really enjoy your posts here on the 9rules network blog — you always offer great tips and suggestions.
B.J. Schaefer
By B.J. Schaefer on April 25, 2005 5:26 pm
The new design looks pretty good. Good call on the wide page width.
From my limited experience with Forty Media, they have been awsome, completely reliable. It’s no suprise to hear such a great review.
What was the range on the bids?
By Jason Marble on April 25, 2005 6:05 pm
I asked for 35,000 but Scrivens removed me from his buddy list. Thanks Paul!
By Colin D. Devroe on April 25, 2005 6:14 pm
Nice, that’s a pretty good re-design. I like the header, slick. real slick.
Everything is organized well and tidy, too. It’s hard to work with mountains of content and still make a “clean” design.
Awesome work! :)
By Jenni on April 25, 2005 6:17 pm
Well this was the first thing I read when I came home from work, had to list it on unmatched style because it was that good. Great job on FortyMedia’s behalf.
Although I’m kind of disheartened that I didn’t get to do the redesign. Did my bid of 3 items off the dollar menu, and 15 minutes with indoor heating come off as a bit desperate?
By Ryan Latham on April 25, 2005 6:46 pm
The bids ranged from free to $3000.
By Scrivs on April 25, 2005 7:00 pm
Interesting insight.
By Tom on April 25, 2005 7:11 pm
Agreed - an interesting insight on hiring and being hired. However, a couple of questions -
1. Wouldn’t you agree that one of the most essential parts of being a successful freelancer is going out and finding those “right clients” who will go out and help promote you or be your cheerleader after a successful project?
2. If you’re going to include a blurb about BusinessLogs, why didn’t you hire them to do this?
(Yes, I know you’re BusinessLogs, but wouldn’t the FG redesign have worked great as a self-skills sharpening / team building exercise?)
3. Continuing the team thing…Among the most important responsibilities a CEO has is delegation skills and furthermore making sure that the people on their team have the opportunity and motivation to do what they do best. Given that, why didn’t the 9Rules CDO handle this project (either by doing it himself or hiring it out) and post the follow-up?
4. Finally, as a professional courtesy, wouldn’t it be nice to place the disclaimer at the top of the post?
By Mark on April 26, 2005 7:11 am
1. Indeed, it is almost essential (not completely however) to find clients that are willing to promote the work that you have done. Usually this reflects well in the real world, but if it can be done effectively online as well then more power to you.
2. As I mentioned in the entry calling out for designers, the team is currently deluged with other projects, along with getting the network up and running. Trying to squeeze in a redesign that had been in the plans for months was getting us no where, so I chose an outside source.
3. Also among the responsibilities of the CEO is to make sure that he does not overdelegate the work to someone who is already overloaded. Also, since I have been running the site for the past year I am most familiar with the audience and the needs of the site so I found it in our best interest that I managed the project.
4. To you or to them? :-)
By Scrivs on April 26, 2005 7:25 am
The new design is great! But why the hell don’t they use background : white; somewhere so I can read a page as it loads, as it is it looks like they are using a background image for all the white.
This is a real pain in the arse.
By The Wolf on April 26, 2005 7:40 am
So does that mean since I offered to do it for free and you think the quality of the work has a relationship with the price of the bid, you think my work sucks?
Just wondering.
By chet on April 26, 2005 10:26 am
I have a couple issues with the design, but my main one is that it is incredibly hard to scan the page, due to the fact that the headers seem to blend into the background image. Setting the font-weight to bold would help out a lot in that regard, and for a site like FG, I think it’s very important to be able to easily scan the headlines. People aren’t going to be interested in everything that is posted there, but will rather scan for headlines they do find interesting.
The other thing I don’t like is that the “categories” links have the same treatment as all the other links in the left and right sidebars. Seems to me that these should be presented a bit differently, but maybe that’s just me…
Hopefully all that is taken as constructive criticism. :)
By Ryan Brill on April 26, 2005 10:51 am
For what it’s worth, we’ve received more traffic and leads from Scrivs not promoting us than we have from almost all of our past clients promoting us combined. I have no regrets about my choice of client. :-)
By James Archer on April 26, 2005 11:44 am
Chet,
At times the quality of work is reflected with the price of bid. This is not always the case. For example, I didn’t think highly of the highest bidder’s work at all. I should’ve mentioned in the entry that the main factor of not going with certain designers was that their style did not fit my tastes. This is something they cannot help.
By Scrivs on April 26, 2005 11:51 am
Chet,
You can design one for me for (free), I wouldn’t mind.
By Arun on April 26, 2005 12:06 pm
It´s really a great joy being here. Your site is a varied mixture of the latest news, specified information and
activ power.
By Jonathan Maurice on April 27, 2005 4:27 am
“Now understandly I didn’t give a lot of details with regards to the design so giving an estimate might not have been possible from your perspective, but in this case I think it’s safe to give a range, while also inquiring more about the project itself.”
For what is worth, here’s my piece of advice to freelancers: stay away from clients that are not willing to provide a full specification or a real briefing about what they expect you to do. You’ll save both a good deal of time. There are just too many risks involved in providing a quote for something you don’t understand in detail and chances are you will end up losing money or having to reconsider your quote once you are hands-on the project. Neither of those things are healthy to your business.
I never bid for the above mentioned project but I find this discusssion interesting because it’s just too often that clients take for granted things they should explain in detail. On the other hand, it is unproffessional to quote on something you don’t fully know what it is about. The author dismissed 50% of the sumissions that contained no price tag. I am certain among those there are many that understand things like I do. Don’t worry, there are plenty of clients professional enough to understand it is not in their best interest to ask for quotes without providing all necessary information and feedback for the job.
By daMax on May 9, 2005 3:29 am
Good point, daMax,
I couldn’t agree more with you, even if I find often myself asking quotes from freelances without providing a closed specification of the work to be done.
Sometimes you have to risk to win (I’d say even always). And not giving a price (or an estimate) if requested, can let you out of so many good deals, you should reconsider to think about it.
Anyway, we don’t know how detailed the RFQ was!
By FerN on May 9, 2005 7:45 am