A Designer’s Guide to Pricing

Why You Should Use WordPress

Design FASTER: Seven tips to becoming a faster, more efficient graphic designer

How to Become a Faster Graphic Designer I wanted to talk about a subject that is very important to being a successful designer – speed. I’m talking about how fast you can produce designs for your client, boss or even…

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The Branding Process: 4 Steps to Success

Logo Design vs. Branding – what’s the difference?

Why do I hate my new logo?

Never fear, your Cleveland Logo design firm Go Media is here to explain!

Everyone knows what a logo is. It’s that shape companies use to represent their company; like Nike’s swoosh, McDonald’s golden arches (M) or Starbucks green mermaid. But what’s branding exactly? Branding is a more holistic perspective of how your customers experience your company. While a logo is only a small simple mark, a brand includes every single touch-point your customers have with your company.

Let’s use Nike as an example and consider the differences between a logo and a brand.

Typography Shortcuts: ‘Custom’ Type Treatments for the Lazy Designer

6 Questions to Consider When Rebranding Your Company

8 Secrets to Battling Burnout & Tools to Help You Kickstart your Day

An excerpt from Go Media President William Beachy’s book, Drawn to Business

Building a business requires massive amounts of focus and energy. It’s perfectly natural to have moments where you feel absolutely fried. You won’t feel motivated to lift a single finger. Finding ways to motivate yourself are key in business and in life. Here is a list of motivators I’ve used to keep myself productive:

On Developing a Dedicated Sales Team

One of the best part of our jobs here at Go Media is connecting with fellow creatives. Recently, Jeff Gapinski, Co-Founder and Creative Director at Huemor Design in Commack, New York, reached out us. Jeff had some great feedback about Drawn to Business, as well as some questions about developing a killer sales team.

We thought we’d share the exchange with all of you. Enjoy and please feel free to continue the conversation with us in the comments below!

How to Make (and Save) Money as a Graphic Designer

One question we get asked with great frequency is simple, yet profound: “How do I make money as a graphic designer?”

Jeff did a fantastic post about this very topic in September of 2012 called, “Side Income Strategies for Designers.” Check it out. Awesome, creative tips there.

We thought we’d take a different slant on the post this time, with wisdom coming from Go Media President William Beachy’s book, Drawn to Business. While Jeff went into side strategies, we’ll discuss strategies directly related to your growing business.

If you haven’t been introduced yet to the greatness that is Drawn to Business, it’s a nuts and bolts guide to how Bill built Go Media from the ground up. In it Bill outlines a 15 year journey, including years of struggle and growing pains, all bringing him to create the best agency in Cleveland web design, custom branding and print.

If you haven’t picked it up yet, what are you waiting for? It unlocks all the mysteries of our success.

Beating Busters: How to Identify and Avoid Bad Clients

Hi Go Media faithful! Bill here! I’m back to deliver another teaser article from my book, Drawn to Business. This week’s piece deals with one simple fact: in business, you’re going to get ripped off. Get used to the idea. Over time, luckily, you will learn how to spot what I like to call a busters, or bad clients. Here is a list of the different types of busters I’ve come across over the last 15 years in business. Hopefully my bad experiences will spare you the same headache. Look out for these guys!

How to Extract a Budget from your Client

Hi Go Media faithful! Bill here! I’m back to deliver another teaser article from my book, Drawn to Business. This week’s piece looks at how to extract a budget from your client. Ready? Here goes.

Extracting a Budget from your Client

It’s a commonly held belief that giving a vendor your budget upfront is a fool’s approach. Because of this, many clients will play dumb when you ask them for a budget. That’s fine. Don’t be a jerk. It’s still important to have a money conversation early on. You need to qualify your clients before you spend a minute working on a proposal for them. In those cases where a client doesn’t give me a budget, I’ll give them my ballpark pricing. This starts with me asking enough questions to get a general sense of their project. Then I might say something along the lines of: “OK, Bob, this sounds like a fairly typical website design: Homepage with slideshow, About, Services, Contact Us and the whole site to be responsive, correct? Great. Obviously, we’re going to need to get into the nitty-gritty details about your website in order for us to provide you with an accurate time and cost estimate. However, just so I can make sure our firm will be a good fit for you, my very rough estimation on a website like this will probably be somewhere between $15K and $30K. Does that sound reasonable to you? I just want to make sure we’re not wasting each other’s time.”

The Responsive Pricing System

Hi Go Media faithful! Bill here! I’m back to deliver another teaser article from my book, Drawn to Business. One of the most common questions I get from young designers who are either freelancing or starting a firm is “What should I charge for my design services?” So today we’ll cover The Responsive Pricing System, Go Media’s own system of pricing/billing. Here goes.

Drawn to Business: Customer Retention Insights

Drawn to Business: Writing Winning Design Proposals

Drawn to Business: Writing Winning Design Proposals

Sakai Vector Portrait

Hey Go Media faithful! Man, it feels like it’s been years since I’ve posted anything in the Zine. These days all my writing has been focused on my upcoming book Drawn to Business, Designed for Success. I think everyone is going to love the content. It’s all the nitty-gritty details about how we run our design firm, but I digress. This blog post is about a piece of art I created for last year’s WMC Fest. I had this crazy idea of illustrating a portrait of my friend Heather Sakai. I wanted to try and include all of her passions in one single image, from her Japanese heritage to her love of Hello Kitty. I thought it would make a fun subject for a tutorial. Though, I’ve been doing so much writing for my book, that I really didn’t want to write a tutorial. Instead, I thought it might be fun and interesting if I just showed you my process in a series of images. So, without further ado, here is my (nearly) wordless vector illustration tutorial.

Business Perspectives for Creative Leaders part 7 of 7

Business Perspectives for Creative Leaders part 6 of 7

Business Perspectives for Creative Leaders part 5 of 7

Business Perspectives for Creative Leaders part 4 of 7

Business Perspectives for Creative Leaders part 3 of 7

Business Perspectives for Creative Leaders part 2 of 7

Business Perspectives for Creative Leaders part 1 of 7

Weapons of Mass Creation Fest 3 – Ask A Pro