After a few weeks of thought, I’ve decided to turn my PC hat in (not that I ever really wore it, nor was I proud of it and in it’s place I will be taking a big bite out of the Apple.

I don’t for one second think that being a Windows or a Mac user determines your abilities as a designer, or your levels of creativity, but things like productivity, reliability and ease of use seem to come into play. All of the Adobe products are the same whether you’re on a PC or Mac, so it is up to the designer to make use of them, and being on a Mac doesn’t make anyone a better designer whatsoever. Switching to a Mac based setup seems to the right choice for me as there are some apps I would like to use that are only available on a Mac, and the general work flow of a Mac will probably sit better with me.

I am currently looking into purchasing a Mac Pro for my main desktop, and a Macbook Pro for when I’m out of the office. Even though I am sure the Mac “genius” at the Apple store will be able to help me with some questions I have, I am more than confident that you, and many of my regular site visitors, will be able to give me much more valuable and insightful advice.

So, if you’ve got a few moments to spare, and have been using Mac’s for at least a year or so, I would be delighted to hear your advice on what apps to use, what works for you , what doesn’t etc…

Also, anything you think would be helpful to know as a Windows user going to Mac would be great also.

I was driving home earlier today from a client meeting, and I had a moment of a type of self-awareness that I’ve never had before.

I realized that sometimes I allow myself to fear success. Even if it’s for only a few minutes.

This might sound strange to some, but it is definitely something I imagine affects others. As you grow in your career, and bigger opportunities come your way, you can either jump in with bags of confidence or hesitate a little , fearful of not being up to the task.

When I meet with new, bigger clients (not talking about their midriff circumference, but company size & budget) , I sometimes procrastinate just a little and up until today, I never really knew why.

It sort of makes sense, right? You get taken out of your comfort zone a little with greater challenges, and if you are in a mood of feeling weak, or lacking in confidence, you hesitate. And hesitation is one of the characteristics of failure.

The more I thought about this, I realized that while I might feel that slight hesitation off the bat, I quickly snap out of it, and start taking steps to ensure I take advantage of these bigger opportunities, embracing the challenges rather than fearing them.

Everyone knows there’s leaders and followers in this world. I think those that follow are the ones that allow this fear and this hesitation to take control of their actions, and thus, they are always following.

I’d be interested to hear from you in the comments if you’ve had a feeling of “fear of success” like this in the past.

I don’t usually post the Seth Godin style article, but it seemed appropriate today.

Now that 2010 is just starting, many web designers have to update the copyright year on their own websites, and their client’s websites.

Many end up doing it manually and waste a lot of time with this tedious task, but some use a better method, and it’s as simple as one line of PHP.

Copyright <? print(Date("Y")); ?>

No longer do you have to manually edit the footer of your websites with each year that passes!

Earlier today, my company received an inquiry on our contact form from a 14 yr old simply asking for some feedback on three designs that he has created. I am always more than happy to spend time helping others , especially younger designers just starting out and I am impressed by this 14 yr old for simply sending us an email and asking for some basic feedback.

So, I thought I might as well share my response to him with you, and it may end up helping someone else similar to this 14 yr old that emailed my company.

The three pieces you sent are quite impressive for a 14 yr old (for any age really). You obviously have a natural artistic ability and this is vital to being a good graphic designer. You can only learn so much but you need that intrinsic ability to know what visually appeals and works for the look you are trying to achieve.

It is important to learn how to combine your creativity and natural artistic ability with the business aspect of being a graphic designer. As a graphic designer, you also play a large role as a marketing professional, and you need to learn how to apply your art and design skills to the business world. This is vitally important as this will allow you to make a living from your craft. I know many designers that are extremely creative but lack the ability to use that creativity in a business / advertising environment.

Professional graphic design is all about communicating a message as powerfully and memorable as possible. If you become a professional designer, you will have clients that have messages (products , services etc) that they need to communicate to their market through advertising, and it will be up to you to figure out how to use your design skill and knowledge to present that message in the most effective way possible.

Another piece of advice is to always continue learning and expanding upon your skill set. Never settle for the knowledge you have at any point. Always strive to learn more.

Some other recent posts that I have published that provide advice for young designers are "50 Reasons Why You Will Not Make It As A Freelancer ", "What Not To Do When Designing a Logo " and "Most Important Thing I Would Tell A Design Student "

**update – submitted this article to Just Creative Design’s Group Writing Project for charity along with a monetary donation over at Just Creative Design’s fund raising page **

Static design visuals: all web designers use them as a way to present the designs to a client. I personally upload a jpg of the visual to my server in a client specific folder, and then email the link to the client with a paragraph explaining the design, the inspiration, the purpose of each element and so on.

Along with this explanatory paragraph, I always find myself spending time writing notes for the client about each piece of functionality that they will NOT SEE . Kind of a downer if you are the client I imagine. As these are static visuals, I cannot show the client the cool Ajax stuff that I have planned for the site, the hover and the click effects I plan for the navigation, and the really slick jquery slide show I plan for the homepage! "Client, you will see none of that, so have fun just looking at this bland visual. It looks good though…right?"

With the online technology that is available today, we should all be coding websites more creatively than using simple images and html/css . Our clients have come to expect a higher level of functionality and interactivity as they visit more and more websites that utilize things like Ajax, and JavaScript. So, often a client is disappointed when they receive the very first static visual from you when it has none of this interactivity.

Static visuals are used for one good reason….Time . Once we have designed the homepage of a new website, we can simply jpeg it and upload it to our server or email it as an attachment to the client. Simple, quick and easy. This process does not take much time at all. When the client replies to us with a few changes, we can go back in the layered mockup file, make the changes, and jpeg it again, and send it to the client again, and await approval.

Often clients will struggle with receiving these static visuals, especially the more experienced, high-end clients. My company, Brian Joseph Studios , has grown a lot over the past year, and we are now obtaining clients with bigger budgets, higher demands, and higher expectations. This means that what they see on CNN.com or their favorite online shopping website, they want to see that on their new site that we are developing for them. Imagine their disappointment with a static visual jpeg.

Of course, as stated earlier in this post, you can spend time explaining to them all of the things that you have planned for the website, all of that great interactivity….and much more, and that right now they don’t get to see it……(not fun to receive a response as to "why can’t we see all of this now?" even after explaining it already. Open. Can. Worms.

So, for some time now (almost 1 year) and for most projects (not all) , I have stopped sending static visuals to clients during the review process.

What do you replace static visuals with then?

It takes a little extra time to do, but I have found that it greatly reduces the overall project development time and streamlines this process tremendously. I design the homepage after carefully learning about what the client’s goals are for the website, and then I cut it into css/xhtml, and add any pieces of interactivity that I have planned for the site. I upload the "working" page to a client folder on my server, and send the link to them. Again, in this email I explain each element, and it’s function and why I think this is a powerful solution for what they are looking to achieve with their site.

Then I hit "send". No time spent writing notes about what they WILL NOT see, why they won’t see it, and why they can’t see it. Also, I will not receive a reply from the client saying "I understand what you are saying about not being able to see all the stuff you have planned, but why is that not possible? I know you explained it, but I guess I just don’t really understand the web that well". No matter how much you explain it, some clients struggle to understand it. That is why you must find a way to prevent this discussion from even coming up.

After all, do you really want to have any type of negativity in your very first email to the client during the design process?

The words "won’t", "can’t", "unfortunately" etc are not great to hear when receiving a service from someone, and I am sure some clients think that.

So, the client goes to the link that I sent them; they rollover the navigation and see an underline appear or a color change. They click on the latest news tab and see a nice slider effect that shoots over some latest news headlines (that are being pulled dynamically from live news feeds **because this is NOT a static visual!**). The impact of this is much more positive than the static visual I used to send, and because they are able to get the exact feel of a working website, they (100% of the time) have less revision requests.

What if the client wants a lot of graphic changes?

With today’s web standards, usability factors, and all of the other aspects that control how we design websites, in my opinion, modern websites should be low on the image file count on each page . Not only is this better for SEO purposes (visible content, faster loading times), but it also means that the website will most likely be clean and user friendly. Don’t get me wrong, there are a lot of exceptional, modern websites out there that are heavy with image files, but with the advancement of CSS, a user friendly and interesting user interface can be designed with a few images and excellent use of CSS.

So, if you regularly design your client’s websites keeping image files to a minimum, it will be extremely easy to revise the design you send to a client when they request changes. Your "real" website page that you sent the client may have only 10 image files on it, and the rest of the colors, and format are controlled by CSS. If the client requests changes, you only have 10 image files at the max to modify, or some simple CSS tweaks.

Take this "Surf in Paradise " website for example. It is clean, organized, and very low on image count. The client may have asked for a different water background, or a different girl image. Making these changes takes just as much time to complete in Photoshop as they would in CSS. In addition, you save the time that you would have spent jpeg’ing the image, and uploading it to the server or emailing it to the client.

Another point worth noting about design revisions and working with clients. Clients differ greatly in their approach to a web design company as most of you know. Some hire us and outwardly acknowledge that we are experts in this field and we will provide a solution that we think is best for the client . Other clients, well….they want what THEY want, and it is often difficult for them to be open up to a designer’s opinion. Just today, I saw a tweet on Twitter from a fellow designer that read "doing an advert for a client who has 1200 words to go on an A4 Ad and their company font is Comic Sans".

So, if you obtain clients that more often than not, understand that you are the expert in web design, and once you get to know their company and their website’s goals, that you can provide a design that they need….then you will probably see that they will usually have very few revisions to the design you send them. The working website page you sent them now looks perfect, and they love the way it works. Guess what! Now you have the format laid out in CSS/XHTML and your client is happy with the overall design. Imagine how quickly you will get the project completed now!

What are your thoughts on static design visuals? How do you present your website designs to a client? What works for you?

Some designers make a great career out of freelancing, some struggle to ever pay the bills solely from freelancing income.

If you are already a successful freelancer, you will probably see that you are not guilty of most of the points made below. If you are hoping to be a full-time freelancer, or are currently finding it difficult to get your freelancing going, some points below may help you figure out why!

To explain this post a little better, my personal opinion on when a freelancer knows they have "made it", is when you own your own house, own your own car, and can comfortably pay 100% of your bills from your freelancing income. Some of you may disagree with that description of "making it", but that is how I personally measure it. I encourage you to add your thoughts in the comments at the end, thanks!

And so, the 50 reasons why you will not make it as a freelancer:

1. The thought of working a 16 – 19 hour day makes you feel violently ill
2. You sleep in past 12pm most mornings
3. You don’t know what the word "typography " means
4. You hear the word "Hex " and you think someone is talking about dinosaurs
5. When meeting clients, you wear jeans and a t-shirt
6. Your hair is a mess, all the time
7. Your phone manner is terrible (you answer with "hello", and nothing else)
8. You don’t understand what a "bleed " is
9. Your business card is a home-made Microsoft Publisher job
10. You have never started conversation with a stranger
11. You are not confident
12. You are not likeable
13. You do not manage your personal finances well
14. Your mum doesn’t even like your design work
15. You want to be successful, but your drive is completely lacking
16. You are not self-motivated
17. You don’t have a desire to be the most successful person you know
18. You don’t have a website
19. Explaining the difference between 300 dpi and 72 dpi is like speaking a foreign language to you
20. You think white space is wasted space
21. The bevel function in Photoshop doesn’t work anymore because you have worn it out so badly
22. You struggle to actually complete a project
23. You have to give your clients money back because you over promised on your ability
24. You have 0 business skills and have no idea how to develop them
25. You really dislike sales and feeling like a sales person
26. You don’t make your clients sign contracts
27. You think it’s cool to be flaky and disorganized because that is what "us creative types are like"
28. You think you are right, and the client is wrong
29. You think that your prices need to be lower than anyone around so that you can get the business
30. Your people skills are terrible
31. You don’t have a plan for your freelancing career, you are just floating along
32. You don’t really understand what marketing is
33. You haven’t developed a brand for your freelancing career
34. You are unable to save money
35. You don’t have a desire to continue learning all the time
36. You have never worked more than 40 hours a week in your life
37. You have never worked for a design company
38. Seeing a logo you designed on a billboard or on tv doesn’t give you a rush
39. You design things that look good but don’t match the brief whatsoever
40. You spend most of your time working on entries for silly online design contests
41. You let clients name their price
42. You’re not a risk taker
43. You do not manage your time whatsoever
44. You are not disciplined in a daily routine
45. You don’t study your competition
46. You don’t even know who your competition is
47. The word "crop " makes you think of the farm
48. You suck at Photoshop
49. You are guilty of over 20 of the points above
50. You are angry at me after reading this

Do you have any to add? How many of the 50 are you guilty of?

Related links and helpful articles about freelancing

How To Fail Miserably as a Freelancer

How To Fail at Freelancing in 5 Easy Steps

Why Failure as a Freelancer can be a Good Thing

The 7 Deadly Sins of Freelancing

10 Tips for Getting More Personal Interaction as a Freelancer

I was recently interviewed by a graphic design student from a near-by University and a few of her questions made me think more about my career as an owner of a creative design and development studio . It also made me think about how it was to start out in the design industry…the things I did to get myself known, and the jobs that I took to gain experience.

One question the student asked me really struck a note; "What is the main thing you would tell a design student / freelancer starting out in the design industry?". ONE THING!? I can think of about a thousand things they need to know. My immediate answer was "Find a different career, designers are never fully satisfied with their work, life can be easier! "

So, I took a few moments to think about my actual serious answer and here it is:
Always strive to further your skill set, your experiences, your knowledge and your overall "sellability". What is "sellability"? – well, it’s not an actual word but I like to use it when I speak with students and freelancers trying to get a career in design going, and "sellability" seems to perfectly group all aspects of what I think are extremely important for designers trying to make a living out of playing with pixels and vectors.

"Sellability" is your ability to make money from being a designer. The higher your sellability is, the more successful you will probably be. How do you increase your sellability? Well, you do every thing you can to be ahead of the competition; the guy or girl sitting next to you in University,;the local freelancer down the road.

Here are some ways to do this: (not easy ways, but this isn’t an easy business. Those that think it is are in for a rude awakening.)

• Increased Skill Set : do you only work with print design? Guess what, you are missing out on more work than you actually receive. Everything is online now, and if you don’t understand CSS and HTML, you need to. Right now. Understanding website coding gives you the ability to not only create and control your own online marketing, but it also gives you the ability to provide this as a service to potential clients. When my company receives a new client, they rarely just come to us in need of a newspaper ad design. They almost always require some work online, whether it is a new website, or some touch-ups to their current site.
• Be Likeable/Interesting : obtaining clients and projects is very similar to dating. (no, seriously!). Just like single people looking for someone at a bar, clients look around for different companies/freelancers to do business with. They eventually pick one to move forward with, just like that single person in the pub. A girl can get chatted up by 50 guys in one night, and guess who the one guy is that gets her "real" number….the interesting guy that is likeable and is different than all of the other 49 suiters.As a freelancer/design student/business owner, are you likeable and different than the average designer? What makes you interesting? If you are not sure, you need to figure it out. This will help you to increase the percentage of leads you receive that turn into actual conversions.
• Be Confident : confidence plays a huge part in the success of an entrepreneur. I cannot speak enough about how important it is to be confident in every part of your life. Confidence displays strength, lack of confidence displays weakness. Guess who survives in the jungle….the strong. You may not be the best designer in your area, but then again, who is? Why do you think that? When you speak with potential clients, make them think that you are the best choice for a number of reasons. Especially if you are a design student, you now have the official education to back it up. That should give you the extra confidence to really present yourself and your skills well. Confidence builds trust and when people trust you in business and your career, you will be successful.
• Folio, Folio, Folio : do you feel like your portfolio of design work is a little bare? Invest some hard work and time into increasing the number of pieces in your portfolio. Create fake companies, design things for real companies etc. Anything to get your portfolio more stacked is great, and allows you to really display your ability. Some designers seem to like the No Spec stuff on sites like 99designs.com where they compete in design contests , in the hope to win $100 or so. This will give you real life (sort of) experience, and it will boost your portfolio if you take part in these contests, but many experienced designers do not agree with these contests and what they promote in our industry.
• Be Dedicated : do whatever it takes to get projects completed, and completed well. For the first year of starting my own design company, I could count the hours of sleep I got each day on one hand. Now when I look back on it, I am proud to say that I worked extremely hard to get where I am and to set myself up with a career that I love and always dreamed about. Drive and dedication are key to success. Almost everyone wants to work for themselves, but it is only the ones that have this exceptional passion for success that ever achieve it.If you are trying to make it as a freelancer, or entrepreneur, can you look back at your last year and think to yourself, "Man, I worked my ass off"?
• Be Organized : organization makes it easy to move forward with your goals. Do you have a "To Do" list each day? If not, start doing this each morning, and you will be shocked at how much your productivity will increase. Once the day is over, you will look back and see that you got a lot of work done, and you will feel great knowing that you accomplished the entire list.
• Look for Help : I’m not saying that my own site is a great help for freelancers or design students, but all of the blogs and tutorial websites provide a ridiculous amount of information and guidance to really help you along. Seeing as you found my site, you are probably on the right track with reading information online to do with your career.Here are a few sites that provide excellent information, often relevant to beginners, and freelancers.Spoon Graphic Blog : Chris Spooner | Abduzeedo | CSS Globe | PSDTuts | Web Designer Wall | N-Design Studio | David Airey | Randa Clay | Just Creative Design | Six Revisions | Tracey Grady

Always make sure that when you look back over the previous year, that you can truly and honestly say "Wow, I learned and accomplished so much! I can’t believe how much I have progressed."

Experienced designers, entrepreneurs and successful freelancers, what would be the single most important thing you would tell a design student ? Add your comments below!

A new blog diving into the online design community is Craig Farrell , and this week he has asked everyone to show their workspace, whether it be a designer’s corner in an office block, or a programmers dungeon with no sunlight.

Nice idea and it will be fun to see our online friends’ work areas, what kind of hardware they use, etc.

Here are a few shots of my office and workspace (click on the below image to view larger)

1: Seagate External Hard Drive (for backup)
2: 22" Samsung SyncMaster T220 : LCD Monitor
3: 22" Samsung SyncMaster T220 : LCD Monitor
4: Notebook (notes from phone calls and quick sketches of ideas and things go here)
5: Wireless Microsoft Comfort Keyboard
6: Cellphones (Mobile phones for the UK and Ireland visitors!
7: Ray-Bans (always have them handy as Florida sunshine is tough on the eyes.)
8: Bob the Buddha with Candle (He promotes peace and serenity, especially when I want to throw my computer out the window.)
9: Wireless Microsoft mouse and Allsop Pad (love it!)
10: Appointments/Meetings book and my "To Do" pile.

I have a nice window to my left that keeps me sane when I am deep in CSS and PHP.

On the walls of my office are 3 photos in frames: Marylin Monroe, Elvis Presley and The Beatles (The Beatles poster is above my head, behind my seat.) I also have posters of Bob Marley, and James Dean that I will put up someday.

The "Greats" of their industry surround me and inspire me each day. Oh yeah, and Bob the Buddha keeps me calm. The candle also smells pretty good!

What does your workspace look like? Head on over to Craig’s site and post the link.

Yesterday, Google Chrome , Google’s open source internet browser, launched with a live video press release. Matt Cutts, head of Google Spam team was in the room, live blogging from his seat .

So, many of us developers and designers thought "Oh no, not another browser! Please not another CSS rendering nightmare to add to the pile!". No need to worry, Google Chrome uses Webkit to render html/css, the same engine that Safari uses. So, if your site looks ok in Safari, you will be fine.

Let’s dig into the browser itself a little more to get an idea of what we are working with:

• The interface seems very bare by default . I imported my Firefox bookmarks and popped them onto the top area of the browser just like I have in Firefox…one click away from my most important sites; Emails / Stats / Webmaster Tools / Google Reader etc.I do like the cleanliness of the Google Chrome browser. The top bar is a nice vibrant blue, and the tabs have a subtle vertical gradient that adds to the softness.
• Tabbing system – since Firefox was one of the first ever browsers to display tabs, we now rely on the speed and efficiency of this feature. Google Chrome does tabs, and does them well! I really like the way they have designed this aspect of the interface. The active tab slightly overlaps the others next to it, giving it a much clarity than the tabs in IE7 and Firefox.
• Status Bar – We are all used to the status bar at the bottom the browser, showing us the length of time the page takes to load, the url the browser is trying to connect to and more…..Google Chrome, being a minimalist interface by default, fades this status bar in and out of view as it is activated by the various mouse events. This is another small feature that allows for a more spacious and clean browser interface.
• Most Visited – Like Opera, the starter screen shows you a list of sites. In Opera, these are your "Speed Dial" sites that you set yourself manually. In Google Chrome, the sites that display are your most visited sites within your browsing history. I don’t think I will use this feature as I have those same sites in my bookmarks in the toolbar already.
• Crashing Tabs – most of us have experienced the problem where we have 5 tabs open, one of them freezes up, and the entire browser needs to terminate suddenly. This happens to me quite frequently on my Windows Vista Laptop with IE7 when testing sites, and is a huge annoyance. Google Chrome is built in a way so that each tab is separate from the others, and not reliant on one single browser engine. To explain it better, here is a comment from Matt Cutts as he was watching the Google Chrome presentation in the room;
  

  11:44 : Brian demonstrates a stuck/hung tab. You can still switch tabs! You can kill the tab from the tab strip or from the process manager. When you kill the tab, you see a “sad tab.” If you reload the page, Google Chrome will even remember the scroll position.

After only a few hours of playing Google Chrome, I can only give my opinion so far. I am impressed with it, and the fact that it is open source, the amazing developer community out there will just make it better and better as time goes by. Look at what open source did for WordPress. I think Google Chrome may achieve a similar rate of success in the future. Oh yeah, forgot to mention, there are no built in ads within the browser at all. I was exepcting some level of ads….but I guess that’s the cynic in me!

For more information on Google Chrome have a look here , some good Q&A..

Official Google Chrome Site

Google Chrome Comic Strip Explains It All

Have you tried out Google Chrome yet? What are your thoughts? At the time of writing, according to GetClicky, Google Chrome has hit 2% market share in eight hours. Will it continue to grow and be more popular than Firefox among designers?

Twitter, Technorati, Digg, Stumble Upon, Design Float etc etc…..the list is endless. Social Networking consumes a lot of our time, and it is now a difficult task to manage that time effectively, and remain as productive as possible with the jobs that pay the bills.

Later on in this post we will be discussing this with a few other designers; Chris Spooner , David Airey and Jacob Cass .

Most of us now have at least two monitors on our desks. Too many browser windows and applications open for any single monitor to hold! Our Blackberry’s / iPhones are buzzing beside us as our mp3 player blares from the wireless speakers mounted on our walls. So many distractions, so little time to be distracted. I wonder what it would be like to simply sit in a loft, with a typewriter, writing the draft for this post!

So, as we manage all facets of our businesses/freelance careers, information on how to remain productive in today’s online world is valuable.

Here is a list of some things that I personally do to stay focused:

• Make "To Do" lists each day and mid day if you complete your list quickly. I’m not saying you have to make lists like the guy in "Chaos Theory " , just jot down the goals / projects for the day that you need to get done. Organization like this is key.
• Remove distractions – turn the tv off. If you are able to have the tv on in the background while you work, please tell me how! I used to leave CNN on, but have since found that I concetrate much better without it.Close your email programs/gmail while you are working on a specific project. This will remove the desire to continually check that new message that comes in every 2 minutes.If you are a mother like Randa Clay with young children, make sure they behave well and understand that you have your "work time". Or, you could simply put them in a sound proof cage for a while, just be sure there is hole for oxygen to get in. Whichever you feel is more appropriate.
• Take a break! Have a kit kat. – one of the most difficult aspects of my career is that I struggle to take breaks, and remove myself from a project to clear my mind and relax. I have often worked 22 hour days, and this is not healthy. There is a good and a bad side about finding it difficult to take breaks from your work. The positive is that this usually means that you love what you do, and you feel adrenaline running when you are in the middle of a design project. This excitement causes you to forget to take the dog out, you miss lunch, and you sometimes forget what the sun looks like. (Those in England and Ireland don’t really see the sun that much anyways, so this may not be a problem! The negative side of struggling to take yourself away from the computer is that you will eventually feel like absolute death. You will be grumpy, moody and most of the other dwarfs to say the least. Your projects will be effected by this and you need to recharge your mind, and body. A trip to the gym, a jog around the neighborhood, or even a simple couch break with a glass of water will do you good.

The above are a few of the things that I do to stay productive. How do you stay productive? Leave your comments here and help other designers with your bit of advice.

So, about 2 weeks ago, I asked Chris Spooner, David Airey and Jacob Cass a few questions related to this post that I had planned. Their answers are below:

Question 1:

With all of the social networking that goes on, and that we all need to stay
involved in to market our sites, how do you stay productive with client work? Do
you have a specific routine or schedule you have worked out that helps you?

Chris:
At this particular moment in time I am under fulltime employment as a designer at a local studio, where I tend to undertake various networking and promotional tasks on an ‘as-and-when’ basis between jobs and projects, during my lunch hour as well as in the evening when I arrive home.

In the very near future however, I will be beginning my freelance career fulltime which means self discipline is of high importance. Although time wise it will mean I should have a little more time to work on blog related content. In reference to a specific routine I am looking to set aside strict time periods in my day/week to work on certain tasks.

David:
Perhaps 4 or 5 hours per day are devoted to actual client work. The remainder involves marketing, writing, responding to enquiries, accounting, and some menial taks. As for a set routine, I always start the day by checking emails. After that I prioritise according to deadlines.

Jacob:
Staying productive is something that comes to me naturally which I suppose is due to the fact I love what I am doing so much. It also helps having a large subscriber base as they do the work for you (thank you) which leaves more time to do other things. I have no routine as such however I always seem to do my emails in the morning and the designing in the afternoon. Also, as I have set days studying at University I can plan my week around the days that I do not have to go.

Question 2:

On an average day, what is your monitor (or monitors) filled with? What
browser tabs do you have open usually, and what programs do you always have at the ready throughout your day?

Chris:
Being a Windows user primarily I am quite pedantic over the order of the programs in the taskbar, my email client must always come first!
I am a dual-screen user with a widescreen for main applications, then a 4:3 for extras such as MSN Messenger, Notepad, and reference material. I also have most of the application toolbars situated on the left of the second monitor making for a nice large working space.

In my browser I can’t help but check over the stats of my websites first thing in the morning. I also often bring up Twitter throughout the day to check everyone’s latest updates.
Through normal browsing I tend to open up multiple tabs in the background by clicking any interesting links, which I then follow them through once I have finished on that particular page. This could mean a long list of random tabs with content from a number of websites!

Program wise, my applications of choice are Adobe Photoshop, Illustrator and Dreamweaver. These are soon launched at the start of each day.

David:
GMail is always open. That’s the only constant. Beyond that, Google Reader, my two design blogs, and Adobe Illustrator / InDesign / Photoshop.

Jacob:
My two monitors (one 24”, one 17”) are always filled. I have my computer set to open all the programs I need when I turn the computer on (Twirl, Skype, MSN, iTunes, Firefox) which means I can turn on my computer (with a remote next to my bed), go have breakfast and then come back and everything is ready to go.

My homepage in Firefox is my Google feed reader however the tabs I usually have open are my WordPress admin screen, my latest blog article and usually about 10 other tabs that vary – it usually is articles I want to read, research I am doing for other projects, Facebook and other links that people have recommended. I usually have Photoshop and Illustrator open all day as well however I do not have them programmed to start up when Windows (yes I am a PC man). I also mentioned earlier the other programs I use on a daily basis: Twirl, Skype, MSN, iTunes, Firefox and Outlook.

Question 3:

In an average week, give percentages to each activity that takes up your time working:

Chris:
I would say my daily/weekly life is something along the lines of:

50% Client related work
20% Website browsing and feed reading
15% Personal projects or blog content
10% Checking out the latest movies at the cinema
6% Realising my design skills are much better than my Maths

David:
You had to ask a maths question, didn’t you Brian? This is a rough guess, as I don’t track actual times, but here goes. 35% for client projects. 30% managing websites. 15% fending off my girlfriend (she can’t get enough). 15% reading / watching movies (it’s hard work). 5% dreaming of that first retirement cocktail on Mauritius (15 months and counting).

Jacob:
30% Client work
15% Replying to Emails / Paperwork (100% sometimes or so it seems)
30% University work
20% Blog Work (Writing articles + Replying to comments)
5% Reading other articles (I really need to put more time into this, I have been slack of late.)

An extra 20% is dedicated to food and drink breaks. 20% more to procrastination.

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I’d like to thank Chris, David and Jacob for their answers, providing such great sites that we all learn from on an almost daily basis.

How do you manage your time? Please add your comments below and we can see what you all come up with. Also, add your daily/weekly percentage answers for question 3 listed above! It’s a nice insight into your normal routine (and it will expose any addictions/problems you may have! Mine are Warhawk and Fifa 08 on the PS3.)

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