It’s much easier and more cost-effective to hire a professional freelancer rather than hire an employee. All it takes is a bit of communication and an IRS form 1099 a year later.

Let me state the benefits of going with a freelancer:

1. Freelancers have less overhead.
   Skip the red tape and the layers of bureaucracy. We’re leaner, faster, and better. On average, you’ll spend about 60% of the cost of going with a web firm.
2. Freelancers have a greater desire to excel.
   I’m a freelance- and my livelihood rests on doing a great job. When you call, I am the one who answers. Going with a larger firm, your project might be handed to an intern with nothing on the line.
3. Freelancers provide a wide range of services.
   Anything a media firm can do, a qualified freelancer can do. This is because most freelancers are entrepreneurial go-getters who used to work for those same media firms.
4. Freelancers are cool.
   Well, some are nerds… but I digress.

So, just because you have to be careful with your marketing dollars, doesn’t mean you can’t get some quality work done. Contact an independent contractor (such as myself) and we’ll fix you up good.

business_trends economy freelance freelancer independent_contractor job marketing media_firm small_business web_firm

While I’m not privvy to the conversations that were had with my various competitors and their clients, I hope the clients aren’t being fooled into thinking that they are buying custom design.

While using a pre-made web design templates is a good idea when the client wants to save money, taking credit for these designs and removing the original credits is usually illegal and unethical, as it can violate the original designer’s terms of use.

Let’s go ahead and review some basic ethics:
When using a ready-made template,

• Notify the client
• Don’t call it custom design
• Pass the savings on to the client
• Don’t claim the design as your own
• Stick to the copyright obligations regarding the display of original design credits

Tags: web_design web_development custom_design design design_fraud ethical ethical_practices ethics fraud template templates copyright

Since the economy is chugging slower now, as things slow down for me (IF they do) then I’ll probably get more time to write.

The Colts horse logo design project seems to have been abandoned. The page of finalists still exists, but no update since April.

What a weird “contest” it was. If anyone knows what happened, I’d love to hear about it…

indianapolis design colts logo contest

Finalists: Voting will begin by early next week (around April 28th) and will be open for approximately seven days.

Here’s my take on the five finalists:

1. Number 1:
   This is one of my favorites. It’s got character.
   
2. Number 2:
   I really dislike this one. The pose, while unique, reminds me of someone hurling over the side of a cruise liner deck railing. Also the disembodied legs are slightly creepy.
   
3. Number 3:
   Porportions are off, and this lacks character and style. It looks like re-colored clip-art. The pose is predictable and ho-hum.
   
4. Number 4:
   Like number three, it looks like clipart. There is no facial expression, no sense of “knowing” the horse’s personality.
   
5. Number 5:
   And saving the best for last: This one gets my vote next week. This one has character, facial expression, is youthful, has a fun and unique visual style, and an interesting, not-oft-seen pose.
   

Head on over to the Colts contest page to see the larger versions.

It may be worth noting that in our discussion of the contest in my last post, it was brought up that none of these really looks like a colt, but rather appear to be all full-grown horses. It would be downright funny in my opinion to have a mascot that really looked like an actual colt, this is the brutal NFL, after all! In this picture, the colt is the small one.

UPDATE:
The colts have changed image #4 to this:

It’s an unfinished sketch, a mustang logo ripoff with a blue triangle behind it. The previous version was at least at a presentable state of finish.
Also, voting is now active. Once you vote, you have to clear your cookies in order to view the logos again. (Thanks Rob)

(All images are copyright their respective owners.)

Technorati Tags: indianapolis_colts, logo_design, design_contest, horse_logo, colts, horses, graphic_design

What will the winner get?
According to Colts.com, “Five finalists will be chosen and their submitted logo will be posted on Colts.com for fans to vote for a grand prize winner. The grand prize includes two lower level season tickets for the inaugural season at Lucas Oil Stadium plus $1,000.”

To give you all a head start I have collected some famous horse logos from around the web. Horse logos have been done since the beginning of time- now is your chance to add to the global horse logo pile. You can use these logos as a guide, or you can use them as a guide of what not to do (my recommendation). My entry is shown above, so please, no stealing.

[Via Colts.com]

Technorati Tags: indianapolis_colts, horse_logo, design_contest, logos, horseshoe, sports_logo, colts_logo, nfl_logo, logo_design, horse_symbol

The Vineyard’s website design was one of these satisfying projects. The slate was almost totally blank; and what little restrictions I had were more or less my own; as my wife and I are solely responsible for the branding of all the church’s materials.

Visually, the overall goal was to capture the “coffee house” feel of the Vineyard. This is pretty clear in the use of colors and textures. (My wife really got me into textures last year). The design strives to capture the artistic nature of the church. It’s one of the most artistic churches I have ever personally seen, with regular integration of fine art and multimedia into special events and other programs. I was asked to enlarge the logo, but I resisted.

In order to keep things as usable and as accessible as possible, I opted for good semantic markup and tried-and-true tab navigation for global levels, with sub pages being listed on the side for flexibility. I make no use of flash except for video content, and kept the javascript minimal – using it only to fade in the randomized homepage images and to display flash with swfobject, to get any flash used to validate. The homepage at 150k is a little heavy on the bytes for my taste; but it is a sight better than many new CSS websites I see going up these days. I still believe in being nice to the few folks left on dial-up – perhaps out of sheer habit. The images could use a little less compression, but I’ve reached a nice balance of “looks nice” and “under 200k.”

The site is run by Etomite, one of the best kept secrets in Content Management and best known for it’s extreme flexibility; and is tweaked to be as automated as possible so that the editors only have to worry about their content. Multiple editors each have rights to manage their own sections, and have access to automatic image handling and the ability to add photo galleries and flash content with no knowledge of html. Sermons are handled by a nifty mp3 management snippet, which also generates a podcast feed for those who want to subscribe.

I made use of Google for the events calendar and the maps page… you gotta love Google. Initially I searched about for a good solid open source calendar, but did not find anything that I was comfortable with (if you know of something nice, post a comment and let me know.).

Technorati Tags: Castleton, church_website_design, css, Etomite, Indianapolis, sermon_podcast, vineyard, indy_vineyard, web_design, xhtml

Technorati Tags: maps, street_view, indianapolis, google_maps

I know Ben and Dan are great designers as well, and they have come up with a simple, cool and creative design for the FAB Crew website.

From the website:

Indianapolis-based artists Ben Long & Dan Thomson started the graffiti mural crew FAB (Fantastic Aerosol Brothers) in 1998. They have been working together and separately since. Their site presents their collaborative work and their strengths as individuals.

Pay them a visit, drop them a line, send them some love.

Technorati Tags: aerosol, artwork, fab_crew, graffiti, Indianapolis, web_design

Stepping out of my clean and organized world of validating XHTML, CSS, and good design, I entered a world where it just didn’t matter. Before stopping by several shops, I went online and hit every website I could find. I found that roughly 50% or less of the companies I went to see has websites; and the ones who did, were terrible things; old table-based layouts using templates that may have been designed 10 years ago. Content was sparse, uninformative, and out of date.

Of course my eyes lit up as they always do at the opportunity – all of these companies in need of what I provide.

My outlook quickly changed however, as I stopped by each business. These independent business owners looked up at my arrival like I was bothering them, turned me away because they were heavily backlogged, or paid scant attention to me at all.

A well-designed and smooth-running website was the last thing on these people’s minds. Validating XHTML? They don’t need it. Their websites, where they exist, were like a discharged fire extinguisher sitting in the corner. They thought they needed it once, may have a nagging suspicion that it’s still important, but over the years they’ve done just fine without it.

I suspect this is pretty normal for much of the service industry.

Technorati Tags: web_design, service_industry, perspective