A few days ago, I listed the four of the lessons I learned from a recent small freelance project that took over my life. Today, you get the rest of the info — and hopefully a laugh or two at my expense, as well.

So without further ado? Here are the basics that I so happily ignored, and paid the price for.

Gather Your Tools: All of them.

It’s one of the basics of work flow advice, and one I consistently fail to implement (unless, of course, it means shopping for said tools). I’d rather jump right into the creative stuff, than waste time gathering tools that I might not need. When you’re as disorganized as I am, that gathering tools stuff can take a lot of time! (and it takes a lot more time when you have to stop working to find them)

Since this particular project was so simple, I didn’t need to find my copy of DreamWeaver. I didn’t need to track down a CSS editor. It was a small simple job, and I could just jump right in, start with a free template, and code it all by hand. Um. Erm. Alrighty then!

As the project grew, I realized I would have saved a lot of trouble by using the right editing software, but by then, I would have had to start from scratch to effectively use them. Oops.

Nail Down The Details: Get all the needed info FIRST.

I’ve run into this problem on nearly every design job I’ve done: clients almost never know exactly what they want or need, but they like my style. A typical conversation on logo design, for instance, goes like this.

“Hey, can you do me a graphic for the front of my petstore webpage? Something with fish in it.”
“Sure. What size do you need? What kind of fish? Any particular colors?”
“Oh, it doesn’t matter. Whatever you think is best.”

So I design six variations, with a photos of goldfish as the base. They love it, except they’d like to make a few small changes.

1. They were hoping for purple
2. Can I change the size so they can put it on a business card and a billboard.
3. They don’t sell goldfish.

I wind up putting significant time in on something that serves only to help them figure out what they *don’t* want, and now I’m stuck with the basic design which they like, but which was based around the photos of the goldfish. I’m unlikely to find substitute photos of whatever kind of fish they do sell, and the design is not at all resize-able, and.. purple? The purple I can do.

The solution? Put more time in on finding out what they want. Trick them into it if I have to. They may insist that anything I pick is ok, but in the end, it won’t be — and my sloppy eagerness to just dive in will wind up wasting a lot of my time.

Another part of the solution is to make an advance agreement about basic charges, allowed changes, and additional fees for producing a whole new set of design roughs.

Finish Up Neatly: Put things away.

I’m generally pretty good about the final presentation of the project to the client, handing it over in a neat package, with notes on anything they need to keep in mind about it.

I’m not so good with putting my own stuff away. Right now, for instance, I have 8 folders, 12 images and 3 zip files scattered across my desktop from this last project. I also have desktop folders from the last 4 projects cluttering up my desktop. Deleting them is usually a bad idea, but there’s no reason they cant be off in a subfolder somewhere.

So I’ll go do that now…. right after I finish this post up neatly.

---

MindTWEAK: Uber-creativity doesn’t compensate for the work habits of a finger-painting kindergartner. Slow down, make a plan, and you’ll be able to handle more projects with less stress.

---