Designer Justin Mezzell: Finding balance for creativity, family and success

Justin Mezzell is a designer living and working in Orlando, Florida. He is art director for Code School, an online learning site that helps people learn how to code. He’s also a sought-after designer and illustrator, having worked with clients like Facebook, Twitter and Google, along with magazines like Wired, Fast Company, ESPN and Fortune. He also helped make this.

Justin manages to juggle a busy work schedule with personal projects and freelance work, all while working to be a good husband and a dad to two little ones— a daily balancing act he usually seems to manage quite well. I recently spoke with him via email to find out how he’s tried to cultivate that balance in his life, how he views his commitment to professional and personal commitments and what drives him in his day-to-day work.

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.

Don’t Make Squiggliepoo: Trade Show Marketing Ideas with the Experts from Jakprints

Design Firm How-To: Writing Your Company Story

How Being a Latchkey Kid Translates to Entrepreneurism

Entrepreneur is one of those sexy buzzwords. Mark Cuban embraces it, Richard Branson lives it, and individuals all over the globe struggle every day put their own unique stamp on the world. Being an entrepreneur is both exhilarating and sometimes,…

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The Graphic Designer’s Pricing Guide Tool Kit by Go Media is Here

It’s Time to Get Paid What You’re Worth. You in? Our Graphic Designer’s Pricing Guide Tool Kit is chock-full of resources to show you what we’ve learned about pricing and billing since opening our now million dollar company over a decade ago. For $25,…

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The Power of WordPress – Why We Believe in it, Why You Should, too

How to Build a Stand-Out Brand: Whys and Ways to Stand Out

6 Questions to Consider When Rebranding Your Company

How to Hire a Web Design Firm: Ask These Questions Before You Invest

When hiring a web development firm, we here at Cleveland creative agency Go Media are firm believers in looking before you leap. Make the right decision and your financial investment will pay dividends for the long term. This is one serious decision! Knowing that, you’ve got some serious questions to ask to potential firms. Ask this list of exhaustive questions and you can feel confident about your decision.

And of course, all consulting for a new website is free when you come to Go Media, so feel free to start your new search with us!

Networking Tips: Secrets to Networking Success

“The richest people in the world look for and build networks, everyone else looks for work.” – Robert Kiyosaki

Networking is without a doubt one of the most important efforts to get your name out there and grow your business. Like the old adage says, “it’s not what you know, it’s who you know”. Whether you’re a freelancer working out of a house or working in an established company, getting out there and meeting folks can do wonders.

As Go Media’s Account Manager, networking is an important part my job. In fact, each member of the sales team has a minimum number of networking hours to hit each month. We recognize the value of getting out there and spreading the Go Media word. Sure, there are days where the last thing I want to do after a full day at the office is go and mingle with strangers for hours, but I look forward to networking most of the time!

Often times, the hardest part is finding and getting yourself to the events. It can be uncomfortable to walk up to people you don’t know and start a conversation, but the potential outcome can be worth the 30 seconds of awkwardness.

The Number One Myth of Hiring (& How You Can Overcome It)

Hey Go Media Faithful! Here’s another excerpt from my book, Drawn to Business, about the number one myth I’ve found in the hiring process. For more of my insights and actual tools to help you start your own million dollar company, pick up the book as well as its supplemental materials, now available on the Arsenal.

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 Get Your Apparel Line into Retail Stores

Designed your own original and unique t-shirt, printed and branded your work, ready to launch? Now you’re ready for the big time.

For a lot of brands, the holy grail of going big-time is getting into well-known retail shops. There’s certainly an appeal to being able to go into your local mall and see your brand on the racks. “How do I get my clothing line into stores,” you ask? Here are some general tips for breaking into retail, straight from Go Media Partner Jeff Finley’s book, Thread’s Not Dead: The Designer’s Guide to the Apparel Industry.

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.

Build An Engaged Social Media Following Now: Tips for Designers

Entrepreneur and Marketing Connoisseur Kumar Arora knows social media like the back of his hand. Fellow Clevelander and start-up wonder for ventures including Rogue Eyewear, iLTHY, Black Rose Entertainment Management Group and ICTech Ltd., Arora has an impressive history in the field. A few things in Arora’s backpocket? Developing campaigns for Coca-cola, Verizon, Redbull, Live Nation, Puma as well as starting on grassroots and viral campaigns for performers like Machine Gun Kelly, Jay Sean, DJ E-V. He is no stranger to growing communities at a rapid-fire rate.

Arora has a few suggestions for designers, like himself, who yearn to gain a following too. In an age of #followme and #tagforlikes though, he reminds, “developing a community that cares is always better than having a group of people who don’t engage.”

Not only buying “likes” bad practice, but will also get you nowhere fast.

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 Create a Winning Email Marketing Campaign

Email marketing is a great way to blast your brand to the millions of fans following your every move. But like anything else, there is an art to creating the perfect campaign that will not only be worth reading, but worth opening in the first place.

We asked our friend Fabio Carneiro, over at Mailchimp, to share with us some words of wisdom on this very topic. Read on for Fabio’s 7 tips to creating an email marketing campaign that matters.

How to Launch your Freelance Business: 9 Simple Tips

So, you’ve been fantasizing about taking the big leap in the freelance world. Maybe the three days at Weapons of Mass Creation Fest was just the little push over the edge you needed. Maybe the current job market looks so grim, that making it on your own seems like the best solution. Or is it that you just cannot stand living to create something you don’t believe in one minute longer?

You’re not alone. We chatted a bit with freelance designer Dan Stiles, known for his vibrant, bold and bright screen-print art prints and rock music posters honoring such acts as The Decemberists, Death Cab for Cutie, Ray Lamontagne and Sonic Youth, about his decision to dive in head first. Rena Tom, of Makeshift Society in San Francisco (a sweet co-working space and clubhouse for creative freelancers), also contributed. And lastly, we drew some gems of knowledge from both our experience here at Go Media and Bill Beachy’s book, Drawn to Business.

We Asked, You Answered: My Biggest Challenge Running a Design Business

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.”

Why a Custom Website is so Expensive (Part 2 of 2)

In short, because it takes a lot of time. More time than most outsiders can imagine. But why?

Web 1.0

Go Media’s founders started building custom websites in the 90’s. In those days, a typical website was comprised of the standard Home, About, Services & Contact. This is commonly referred to as a brochure site. It was often static html and rarely changed in a year. There was very little thought going into SEO. There were rarely contact forms. It might have had five graphic images, total. Publicizing your email address was considered perfectly safe. Javascript, on the other hand, was feared by the industry.

Why a Custom Website is so Expensive (Part 1 of 2)

In short, because it takes a lot of time. More time than most outsiders can imagine. But why?

Web 1.0

Go Media’s founders started building custom websites in the 90’s. In those days, a typical website was comprised of the standard Home, About, Services & Contact. This is commonly referred to as a brochure site. It was often static html and rarely changed in a year. There was very little thought going into SEO. There were rarely contact forms. It might have had five graphic images, total. Publicizing your email address was considered perfectly safe. Javascript, on the other hand, was feared by the industry.