Over the past week, I read about clients and many ways of dealing with them.  Now I always knew that dealing with clients wouldn’t be easy, but I didn’t know it could potentially be VERY hard.  There are many dos and don’ts when dealing with clients.  For instance, there are many designers who complain about their clients.  These designers are wrong if that is all they do.  You have to think that they are trying to cover up their poor ability and skill by blaming their clients.  A practice that will ultimately lose them clients and put them out of business.

Some things you should do is treat your client as you would treat a friend.  That way they feel welcome when you do business together.  You must also take the client’s views into consideration, which is what arrogant designers may not do.  Be aware that your client/designer relationship is give and take, no one will get anywhere if they won’t listen to each other’s opinions and views.

In order to attract new clients, you must be able to find ways of producing work in unique ways that will get you noticed consistently.  Having one big success will bring you work for a little while, but the flow will not last forever.  You must try new things consistently in order to get attention more frequently.  Adrian Shaughnessy suggest entering design competitions, designing for a reduced rate so you can try something experimental, keep in contact with design colleges and such.  These things will help you get noticed and attract you new business.

This week I began to think about format.  Format of my portfolio that is.  I think I will need three versions to have all my bases covered.  I would like to have an online portfolio so people can browse work on their free time from anywhere with an internet connection; a PDF version for mailing and download (today there are online file storage systems that hold larger files should the PDF version be too large to email) and lastly a printed version of the PDF version in a nice book to bring with me when being interviewed.  With this combination, as I said, I would have all my bases covered.