Advertise here with BSA

Freelance collaboration is on the rise. Increasingly, teams of freelancers are now doing the work that in-house departments used to do. Graphic designers are now working on teams with writers and programmers.

But many freelancers are used to working alone. Collaboration definitely requires freelancers to make a few adjustments.

In this post, I’ll provide ten essential guidelines to help you put the pieces together for freelance collaboration. If you enjoy this post, you may also enjoy reading 15 Questions to Ask Before Collaborating.

Guideline #1: Do Your Homework

In the same way that you would research a potential client, learn all you can about a potential collaborator. Study their LinkedIn profile and other online profiles. Read any testimonials and recommendations they have received to see what past clients think of their work. Review their portfolio to get an idea of the type of work they produce. Remember, if you work together on the same project, your reputation will become linked with that of your collaborator.

Guideline #2: Provide Details

Once you have selected a freelance collaborator, provide them with as many details as you can about the job. Be specific. Remember, if the freelancer is working in a different specialty from your own, they may need entirely different information to get their job done. Give them an opportunity to ask their own questions and make sure that they get their answers. The more your colleague knows, the better able they will be to fulfill their part of the project.

Guideline #3: Use a Contract

Most freelancers understand that it’s important to get the terms of an agreement with a client in writing, preferably in contract form. However, when the project becomes a collaboration you now have an additional agreement to consider. First, there’s the agreement between you and your client. And second, there’s the agreement between you and your fellow freelancer. The second agreement should be handled as carefully as the first–get it in writing.

Guideline #4: Take Advantage of Online Tools

There are many online tools that can make managing a group project easier. Take advantage of them. Don’t try to reinvent the wheel and create your own online tools from scratch. This will only eat into your project time and cause additional frustration. Here is a list of collaboration tools, but there are many others to choose from.

Guideline #5: Designate a Lead

Whenever a group is responsible for a project, someone needs to act as project lead. If you’re the project lead, your job is to make sure the project keeps moving forward and to coordinate all the various players. If you’re not the project lead, your job is to make sure that your parts of the project are on schedule and make the leader aware of any needs that you have to get your job done.

Guideline #6: Exercise Respect

Be sure to show plenty of respect for your freelancing collaborator. Remember, you hired them because of their skills and abilities. Treat them like the professional that they are. Don’t try to rush them unnecessarily or underpay them for their part of the work. If credit is being given for the project, make sure that their part is acknowledged. Your goal should be to make working on the project a positive experience for both of you.

Guideline #7: Communicate Well and Often

Adding another person to a project adds a whole new dimension. Now, not only must you communicate regularly with the client, you must also communicate regularly with your collaborator. You may even need to schedule meetings from time to time. Good communication is an important part of a successful project. Allow for some extra time in your project plan to answer additional emails and phone calls.

Guideline #8: Keep Adequate Records

All freelancers should keep good records. After all, when you freelance you are basically running a small business. All businesses need good records. However, when you collaborate your recordkeeping impacts not only your own business, but that of your collaborator. Make sure to keep copies of all records that pertain the project including meeting minutes, important communications, project expenses, and any payments made.

Guideline #9: Pay Promptly

If the client is paying you a single flat fee for the project and you are responsible for paying the team members, be prompt. Don’t make your fellow freelancers wait to get paid for their part of the job. Nothing can sour good morale like late payments. Besides, you like to get paid on time for your work and so do your colleagues.

Guideline #10: Be Open to Feedback

Feedback is an important part of any project. No matter how well the project went, there is always some room for improvement. Ask for feedback from both your fellow freelancers and your client. Also, make sure to pass along any relevant feedback from the client to your team members.

Your Turn

Have you been collaborating on projects with other freelancers? Add your own tips and suggestions in the comments.

Image by Genista

Advertise here with BSA

Advertise here with BSA

In this roundup we have compiled some awesome and fantastic transparent business cards for inspiration. If you like these transparent business cards you might also want to check out our previous posts below.

26 Polished White Letterpress Business Card Designs

Showcase of Double-Sided Business Cards

Corporate business card

Transparent Business Card

Clear plastic business cards

Transparent Colored Business Card

Dreamten Studios

My own business card

Plexiglass Business Card

NetPlus ID

clear plastic business cards

transparent business cards

Clear transparent plastic business cards

transparent plastic business cards

Transparente Visitenkarten aus Kunststoff

clear plastic business cards

Zoo Business card

Translucent Frosted Plastic Business Card

Digital Fish Business Card

Business Card Transparent

Transparent plastic business cards + hot foil silver

my business cards

Transparent Business Card

Accent Creative Identity

Transparent-satinierte Visitenkarten aus Kunststoff

Biglietto da visita

MEME business card

Transparent Business Card w/ Hot Foil Stamping

Business Cards

Kristallklare Visitenkarte aus PVC

Transparent Business Card

Transparente Visitenkarte mit abgerundeten Ecken

Advertise here with BSA

Advertise here with BSA

Marketing is a huge part of building any company. And with proper marketing comes human networking which often involves the exchange of business cards. These bits of paper often contain information about your website, phone number, e-mail address, and location of your company headquarters.

With letterpress style business cards the type of relief printing uses a printing press accessible to a type-high bed. This allows for movable type and imagery which can be transposed over the card stock. Raised surface ink is pressed into the sheet of paper which allows for same-color stock to contain unique messages. Check out the fantastic gallery below and feel free to share your thoughts within the comments section below!

Cleverly Cut

Forget Technology

KG Creative

Justin Anonuevo

PAR

Bulldog Drummond

Distillery

thomas + kristine

White Wedding

Good Apples

Kim Bentley

Scarpetta

Colleen Elise

Scott Salvator

Dariana Cruz

Tiago

Identity Kitchen

Portland Sportsman

Ryan Prins

Yaili

Samer Ziadeh

Doug Maranda

Jessica Morresy

Jacob Ward

Faber Design

Duplex

Advertise here with BSA

Advertise here with BSA

A New Era at MOJO-Themes

In case you have not been formerly introduced the MOJO-Themes, now is the time. MOJO-Themes is a buy and sell marketplace for premium themes and templates.

We spent the last year building a solid product that has proven to provide quality themes and templates on the most popular CMS platforms. We have some of the most talented people who sell WordPress themes, sell HTML templates, and sell Tumblr themes. Seeing that we have an amazing community, we felt we had the responsibility for setting the standard for marketplaces on the web. It was necessary to step up and continue evolving and improving upon was has already been built.

A very large aspect to moving our site beyond year one was to ensure that our brand is scalable and professional from the items all the way down to the typography.

Finding the cream of the crop

We spent a long month interviewing and lobbying who we felt were some of the top designers on the market. Ultimately, we felt nobody understand how to gap the transition from a young new site into a flagship site like Brian Hoff did. Brian’s experience goes far beyond anyone we came across and it’s definitely worth noting a couple of his awards from Mashable and experience working with Apple Inc.

Brian, myself, and the rest of the MOJO team spent around 3 months editing, reviewing and brainstorming what we felt was going to raise the bar on theme marketplaces.

Highlights of MOJO-Themes.com V 2.0

Wireframe:

We felt we accomplished the layout rather quickly, this only took a couple weeks.

Colors:

We spent hour upon hour reviewing color combinations. Below is just a small sample of colors we experimented with. Although we didn’t choose any of the color combinations below, we feel like the one we selected on MOJO-Themes.com was the best one. View it here.

Typography:

Anybody who has or will get the honor of working with Brian quickly realizes his true talent. In my opinion, his greatest abilities are in his detail and typography. Brian successfully designed 95% of all typography through Proxima Nova (Created by Mark Simonson) and about 5% with Georgia. Proxima Nova has a very in depth range of sizes and we have portrayed almost all of them throughout the entire site.

Functionality:

Despite the large amount design upgrades we have spent equal time building functionality to match. Here is a teaser of what’s new:

• New Account Center
• MOJO Social: For those who know BuddyPress, MOJO Social is very similar. Users now can follow, message, and interact with other designers and developers through their new account center.
• Enhanced Seller Controls such as editing and creating items themselves.

Everything I said here are elements in and of themselves. Come on over to MOJO-Themes.com to see the complete build in all it’s functionality and design.

P.S. Don’t forget the Anniversary Bundle!

From the 18th to the 24th.

Author Bio: I am a 26 year old internet entrepreneur and co-founder of MOJO-Themes.com. In addition, I have been involved with custom design and development for the past 6 years out of Salt Lake City, Utah. Feel free to contact me on twitter and let me know your thoughts or just say hi! @bradynord

Advertise here with BSA

Advertise here with BSA

MOJO-Themes is a growing buy and sell marketplace for a variety of blogging and design platforms such as WordPress. New themes and templates are added daily and users are able to find themes based on theme style, cost, number of sales, and upload date.

Over the past year MOJO Themes has proven to continue to grow and keep building upon their thriving community of premium design products. In celebration of their successful year in business, MOJO-Themes is announcing their first annual MOJO-Themes Cyber Bundle packed full of the marketplaces top selling items such as premium WordPress themes. This is a package that is sure to make anyone salivate.

What are the Cyber Bundle details?

To begin, you get $579 worth of premium products for only $30! Don’t hesitate though, since the bundle will only last for 10 days, from midnight on November 29th (Cyber Monday) until midnight on December 9th.

What do you get for only $30?

The Cyber Bundle is packed with a total of 18 hand selected items.

• 6 Premium WordPress Themes
• 1 Premium WordPress Plugin
• 3 Premium HTML Templates
• 1 Premium Magento Theme
• 2 Premium Tumblr Themes
• 2 Premium Email Templates
• 2 Premium PSD Templates
• 1 MOJO/Fast Icon Set (160 Custom Icons!)

Now head on over now before it’s too late! Click here for more information.

Advertise here with BSA

Advertise here with BSA

If you’re a creative pro, it doesn’t matter whether it’s a photo, logo, layout, or video, someone’s got to review and approve your work. I’ve never met anyone who thought this process was fun, and it can be a huge hassle, especially if you have a big team of reviewers spread all over the globe.

If you want to stay in business, you must learn to streamline your review process and make the client happy with as few cycles and missed changes as possible. I’ve heard of people still using paper and faxes and all manner of markable materials to try to collect organized input. Then, of course you get the reviewers who disagree with each other, but don’t know it because they can’t see each other’s comments. There’s no getting around it — you can only try to maximize your time on creative and try to spend less in review.

Is this familiar? When you send out review, you:

• Save your work as a separate, non-native file
• Send the file to your list of reviewers
• Go to the gym
• Get coffee
• Sleep on it
• Awake to an inbox with as many replies as you have reviewers
• Sort through the comments, crossing fingers there are no conflicts
• Resolve conflicts
• Get back to creating

Sucks, right? Picture this:

• In your working file, choose Create New Review and give it a name
• Invite all your reviewers to comment online
• Skip the gym
• Get coffee
• Hop back into your artwork and find opinions already there
• Respond immediately for all to see (avoid conflicts!)
• Get back to creating

You’re in luck. Adobe CS Review is your escape from reviewing hell. CS Review is an online service that makes it easy to share, gather, and respond to feedback from peers and clients right in your project. CS Review is part of Adobe CS Live online services and is accessible from inside Adobe® Photoshop® CS5, Illustrator® CS5, InDesign® CS5, and Premiere Pro® CS5. All comments and replies are tracked and managed by CS Review, and are viewable in real-time back in your software. Now you can show your clients how quickly you can act on their feedback, all within the context of your project. Here’s how it works:

Step 1: Start a Review

Start a review directly from within your project, whether it’s a photo, vector design, page layout, or video sequence. You will give your review a name and set just the right upload parameters you want for the artwork. You can define page or frame range, quality, and intent so that your reviewers see exactly what you want them to see. When you upload your artwork to the review, your review will be saved on Acrobat.com which is where the online magic happens.

To start a review from inside your Adobe software, open the CS Live menu and click CS Review.

Step 2: Share with Reviewers

Next, you hop into the review and invite clients and colleagues to comment on your project — no need for FTP servers, printouts, or email hassle. When reviewers get your invitation, they click the link to open a browser — no need to download software or open files. To access the review, reviewers simply enter their Adobe ID or sign up for a free account, on the spot. Each reviewer can see the presence of others.

Sharing is easy with quick addition of reviewers from your contacts list and invitation via email.

Step 3: Watch all the Commenting

Your reviewers can add comments by clicking on the artwork and entering a message associated with that area. When you end up with a long string of comment boxes, you can simply mouse over them and see each corresponding area marquee highlight. If you give a reviewer permission to be a Co-Author, he or she can upload assets to your artwork (such as a replacement photo or color reference), can delete comments, and invite additional reviewers.

In the CS Review review browser window, see comments along with indicators on the artwork.

Step 4: Respond to Comments

Back in your software, you will see all the comments in the CS Review panel, including your own responses. In fact, you can even add notes from inside the CS Review panel and your reviewers will see them — real time. When you’ve made changes and your project is ready for another review, quickly create a new one and invite your team for the next round.

Back inside your Adobe software, take action using the CS Review panel, right on your artwork.

That’s it! To sum up, it’s just way easier to manage a review all online, all from your Adobe Creative Suite 5 software. Adobe CS Review is a simple yet revolutionary tool that enables you to share your work with just about anyone, anywhere.

You can find out more about CS Review on the Adobe website. Get CS Review as part of your purchase of Adobe Creative Suite 5. It’s an online service available from within Adobe Photoshop CS5, Illustrator CS5, InDesign CS5, and Premiere Pro CS5. Adobe CS Review is also available as part of CS Live which is complementary for 12 months when you sign up online or register your Creative Suite 5 product before April 30, 2011.

Advertise here with BSA

Advertise here with BSA

Thanks to smartphones, you no longer have to be sitting in front of your computer to upload, manage, publish and monitor your website. We’ve brought together a collection of applications for both iPhone and Android users.

WordPress

If you have a WordPress website, then you can manage comments, upload images, and write, publish and edit posts all from your phone. Both these apps are free and are offered by WordPress.org.

Left: WordPress for iOS. Right: WordPress for Android

Using the iPhone version, you can also take advantage of location sharing to give your blog posts added context, whilst the Android version is great for smaller screens.

iPhone: WordPress for iOS

Android: WordPress for Android

Google Analytics

Keep an eye on your web stats out of the office with Google Analytics apps on your phone. There are several options for both iPhone and Android users, so depending on how committed you are, you can opt for a free or paid app.

Left: Analytics App for iPhone. Right: Droid Analytics

iPhone: Analytics App. At $6.99, it’s not the cheapest, but it is very comprehensive. If you’re looking for a free option, try Blast’s Google Analytics app.

Android: Droid Analytics is one of the most popular choices and is just $0.99 (a free trial is also available). Mobile GA is worth considering if you’re looking for a free option.

FTP

Create, upload, download and edit your website’s files can be done for free with these useful FTP applications. There are some great free options out there, although the paid FTP On The Go is also a popular choice.

Left: FTPVIewApp for iPhone. Right: AndFTP for Android

iPhone: FTPViewApp (free), or FTP On The Go ($6.99).

Android: AndFTP (free).

HTML editors

Create and edit your HTML quickly and easily with these editors.

Left: myHTML for iPhone. Right: SilverEdit for Android

iPhone: iDoWebEdit or myHTML (both $0.99)

Android: SilverEdit (free)

Bookmarking

If you’ve got a Delicious account, managing and adding your bookmarks is straightforward with a couple of great apps – or alternatively the Delicious mobile website.  The apps feature more functionality options, but if you have limited space then you may want to opt for just the mobile site.

Left: Yummy for iPhone. Right: Android.icio.us for Android

Alternatively, you can use the mobile version of Delicious, although it’s fairly limited.

iPhone: Yummy ($1.99)

Android: Android.icio.us (free)

WHOIS

You can quickly check the ownership and contact details of a domain with one of these straightforward WHOIS apps:

Left: Whoiser for iPhone. Right: Whois for Android

They aren’t packed with features, but they do the job quickly and simply. If you deal with domain names on a regular basis, then this could save you plenty of time.

iPhone: Whoiser ($0.99).

Android: Whois (free).

Server Uptime

Monitor your server uptime and downtime using these handy apps. Montastic uses visual red and green icons to assess your servers, whilst Pingdom makes use of graphs and charts.

Left: Montastic for Android. Right: Pingdom for iPhone

iPhone: Pingdom for iPhone (you’ll need a Pingdom account).

Android: Montastic Widget (you’ll need a Montastic account).

Web Browsers

Opera Mini homescreen

iPhone: Opera Mini is a good alternative to Safari, as is Perfect Browser, which handily supports multiple tabs.

Android: Opera Mini is also available on Android, and has the benefit of lightweight browsing and homepage bookmark links. The highly regarded Dolphin Browser supports tabs and also boasts a range of optional add-ons for additional functionality.

Online File Management

Dropbox is a great tool for uploading, downloading, sharing and syncing files online. Happily, there’s a Dropbox app for both Android and iPhone users so you can access client files, documents from your office computer, projects in progress and much more via your phone.

Dropbox application

You’ll need a Dropbox account, but it’s free to sign up.

iPhone: Dropbox for iPhone

Android: Dropbox for Android

Code Cheat Sheets

Don’t trawl the internet looking for that elusive bit of code – keep this CSS cheat sheet on your phone. Both the iPhone and Android versions are $0.99, and HTML, JavaScript and PHP versions are also available from the same developer.

iPhone: CSS Cheat Sheat for iPhone

Android: CSS Cheat Sheet for Android

This guest post is by Jonathan Brealey, the director and co-founder of Heart Internet, a webhosting company.

Advertise here with BSA

Advertise here with BSA

Building a successful website is no small task, especially if you’re going into business – it takes time, effort and dedication, from working out your business plan and unique selling point (USP) through to designing and managing your website and optimizing it for search engine rankings.

So with all the effort you’re putting into your site, why restrict yourself to just one language market?

If you decide to just stick with a single language for your web presence, you’re cutting out a huge number of potential customers from the 1.8bn people currently online around the world. If English is your language of choice, then your native-speaking web audience will account for less than a third of all web surfers (internetworldstats).

Going multilingual with your web presence is especially crucial for online businesses, since research shows that 85% of consumers – even multilingual consumers – will not buy from a website unless they can read about the product in their own native language (Common Sense Advisory).

So how exactly do you go from being a monolingual website with one target market, to being a world-conquering behemoth with virtual branches in countries around the world?

Localizing your approach

The one golden rule is that you have to ‘think local’. This means deciding which countries are going to have a gap in their e-commerce market for your product, and then developing individual local web sites for each market, written in their language, designed for their aesthetic preferences and marketed towards their culture.

For starters, it’s important to have individual top level domains (TLDs) or subdomains for each local site, with their location set to the target country in Google Webmaster Tools.

This is for two reasons – for increased credibility with your customers in each country, and more importantly for your SEO, as Google looks to return relevant local content for local searchers.

Aesthetic preferences

Different cultures have different expectations in terms of what they like in a website – just take a look at the differences between Coca Cola’s Japanese site and their Swedish site, or McDonald’s UK site and their Indian site.

Essentially, you need a design framework that is consistent in its branding but flexible enough to change between local sites. Also, think carefully about your color scheme – colors can mean very different things between cultures, as this graph shows.

Be sure to take into account different navigation requirements between left-to-right and right-to-left languages – using a horizontal navigation system and symmetrical design should solve this.

Lastly, using CSS as your design tool will keep your content separate from your design for easy language changes, and using Unicode UTF-8 as your character encoder will make it easy to switch scripts between 90 different languages.

Content designed for the audience

Naturally, you’ll need your localized sites to be translated into the language – or even languages – of their target countries; no good building a site for China and then having all your copy in English.

More important than just translating the text, though, is making sure that your copy is written with its intended audience in mind, by a native speaker of the language with some experience of writing marketing copy. For instance, while an irreverent tone in your copy will go down well in the UK, the exact opposite is true for Germany.

Also, getting a language professional to either write, or translate and check, your copy will protect you from any embarrassing linguistic gaffes, like the time Coca Cola launched in China and had its brand name translated as ‘Ke-Ke-Ken-La’, not realising until after they’d printed thousands of signs that, depending on the dialect, their new brand name meant either ‘bite the wax tadpole’ or ‘female horse stuffed with wax’.

It’s not only linguistic missteps that can get you into trouble, either – not having a local’s understanding of the culture can also cause problems, such as when Pepsi was sued in 2004 by the Indian city of Hyderabad over a TV advert which saw the Indian cricket team celebrating a win while being served Pepsi by a young Indian boy – the city (somewhat reasonably) claimed the advert glorified child labour.

Tailored marketing

When it comes to your SEO, the most important things to know are to target the most popular search engine for each market – for instance Yandex for Russia rather than Google – and to never translate your keywords.

Direct translations are often not the most popular search terms – keywords are not really ‘words’, as such, but rather the phrased expression of a desire – as such, each language market will have its own particular way to describe such a desire. This may be a slang phrase, a term in the local language or phrases adopted from English or another language.

The only way to be sure that you have the right keywords is to research which keywords are used the most in each market with a keyword tool like Google’s, or if possible get an in-country SEO expert to assist.

By putting yourself into the shoes of the web users in each of your target foreign markets, you stand a much better chance of beating the local competition and growing from a local phenomenon into a globally successful business.

About the author

Christian Arno is the founder and Managing Director of global translation agency and localization specialists Lingo24. Launched in 2001, Lingo24 now has over 120 employees spanning four continents and clients in over sixty countries. In the past twelve months, they have translated over thirty million words for businesses in every industry sector and their projected turnover for 2010 is €7.3m. Contact Lingo24 with a translation request mentioning DesignM.ag before 30 October 2010 and you’ll get a 10% discount on your first order.

Advertise here with BSA

Advertise here with BSA

Inkd has offered to give away a free one year subscription to its entire print design library. That includes 50 template downloads per month and access to new content added during your subscription period (a $399 value)! To enter, just follow @inkdtweet on twitter and tweet this post with the hashtag #Inkddmagcontest. We’ll announce the winners next Wednesday-so be sure to tweet away!

About Inkd

Inkd is a true buy and sell marketplace for design templates created for talented independent professional designers from across the web. Inkd offers easy to use brochure templates, business card templates, newsletter templates, logos, and even online printing. Whether you need a quick and affordable creative solution for your business, a jump start on a creative project, or anything in between – Inkd has you covered.

Inkd just released their all new PowerPoint templates and Keynote templates. These presentation designs come in styles suited to any type of presentation from general business to health and nutrition or environmental causes. Just like every Inkd template, they are easily customizable, so the style you like can fit any need! Give a presentation that’s sure to wow your audience with Inkd’s designs!

Advertise here with BSA

Advertise here with BSA

Disclosure: This is a paid review, if you wish to purchase a paid review for your website (I have a 90% turn down ratio so if I turn you down don’t take it personally) contact us. All links in this post have been “nofollowed”.

Last month I was contacted by a gentleman from logomyway. He was interested in getting his site reviewed. At first I thought the idea sounded rather humorous because I knew how well a review of a site like 99designs would go over with the DesignM.ag crowd. So I wrote back and let this guy know that I would be happy to do a review but that I could not promise it would turn out positive.

For those new to the designing game the issue of whether or not spec work is evil has been a hot topic in the last couple of years. Because of sites like the ones mentioned above designers have felt slighted. For example, if you as a designer entered a design contest on a site like the ones mentioned above you would have the opportunity to compete for a few hundred dollars. The unfortunate thing is that only one designer wins. So the business owner or person launching the contest is offering a prize and gets to see hundreds of concepts but ultimately has to choose only one winner and therefore, pay for only one concept.

So for the record, our position at DesignM.ag is the same as it has always been. Spec work sites are not increasing the number of quality work. They are contributing to a problem that is blurring the lines between good and bad design work. If you want to see examples of the type of work we are discussing visit logomyway’s logo contest page.

Ultimately the decision to do this review was because of the a marketplace that was brought to my attention. Logomyway has introduced a new concept that allows designers to make money on their designs. It works much like a traditional e-commerce site. You can shop logos, select one, and then checkout. Then, the designer will integrate your company name into the concept. I’ve added a couple of sample designs from the marketplace below.

In a field that is as saturated as design I see the need for designers to have the ability to get their name out there. The marketplace gives designers an opportunity to put their design work on the table without everyone knowing what concepts are winning and losing. I do not, however, see this as a long term place for designers. I think that many businesses would be happy with the quality they would receive from something like this. Businesses that have a lot of brand equity will not be getting their new logo design done through a contest or marketplace. Your logo, web design, business card, etc says more about you than you think. As businesses grow they realize this. At the end of the day your brand is what you have.

I attached a video from a presentation a couple of years ago at South by Southwest Interactive. I encourage you to consider where you stand on this issue as a designer. I would like to know what the DesignM.ag community thinks about spec work. Have any of you ever made money from one of these contest sites? Can you make a living from spec work? Share your thoughts.

Advertise here with BSA