Join us on September 27 for the first of HOW's Marketing & Pricing Webinar Series. You'll learn how to develop lucrative business relationships, value and price your work so you don't lose money, and create an ongoing stream of new prospects and clients willing to pay you what you're worth.

Posted by Megan

There is a heated discussion in the HOW Forum about HP's new marketing campaign that features Paula Scher and offers a couple of free letterhead templates. The main argument is that offering design templates devalues the work of designers and is disloyal to the industry.

But after looking at the templates, which aren't particularly interesting, there's not much there for designers to be afraid of. Any business-owner who would choose a free template to create their identity isn't someone you'd want to work with anyway.

That said, it's still a bit surprising that Scher agreed to provide the templates in the first place.

Posted by Megan

This list of super helpful tips for how freelancers can maximize their income includes this simple formula for calculating an hourly rate:

Don't undersell yourself.
Set rates based on a simple formula:

• Rate = $D/ B hrs.
• D is the desired salary per year that you want.
• B is the total number of billable hours that you think you can secure in a given year. Most consultants/ freelancers estimate B on the basis of 15 billable days per month, for an 8-hour day. So that's 15 d/mth x 8 hr/d x 12 mth/yr = 1440 hrs/yr. The rest of each month will usually be spent doing administrative work, seeking out new clients, improving skills, researching, or possibly vacationing. Don't forget to factor in vacation time, any professional costs such as subscriptions, your operating costs, etc.

Once you have that hourly rate, translate that in to flat project rates, when necessary. You'll eventually get a sense for how long a particular task takes, but you might take in less than you want when you first start out.

via swissmiss

Posted by Megan

More and more these days we're hearing about designers staring their own product lines as a creative outlet. Pillow Pillow Pillow from creative studio Hornet Inc. is just such a project. You can see all the pet-shaped pillows on the site and they're available to buy from select retailers including Elsewares and Rare Device (search for "pillow").

Posted by Megan

Posted by Bryn