As a designer it’s frequent that companies contract me to do design work, especially for websites.  Often they either don’t have a staff designer or need something in a style they know I can execute well.  I love to design and so I take on these gigs cheerfully, unfortunately there is a downside to this way of working.  Please keep in mind that I love my clients and I’m writing this, not to vent, but as a cautionary tale for other budding designers.

When you’re the contractor on a project the client belongs to the company who has contracted you.  That seems pretty straight forward right?  So it’s no surprise that the company maintains communication with the client whom you are ultimately doing the work for.  Sometimes this can work or even be good if communication flows to you properly.  The company may filter communication allowing you to focus on the design portion of the project. On the other hand it’s frequent that the company who contracted you waters down the communication from the client. Design by nature is a holistic process. The designer therefore needs every and all details, no matter how fine, to craft a proper visual interpretation of the clients’ needs.  When you put someone in between the designer and the client thing gets lost, almost without exception.

Here’s a real-life example I experienced recently:

Me: Do you have a creative brief from the client?

Company:  No, it’s pretty straight-forward, just hit these 3 points, XXX.

Comp is designed and sent to client.

Client:  Hmm, this isn’t anything like what we discussed with the rep.

Another potential issue is presentation.  The client is likely not an expert on design.  You are.  The client also may not be the intended market for the piece you’ve designed.  They may not understand it.  It’s vital that the designer present his or her own work and be able to field questions and defend the decisions that produced the design(s) being discussed.  I’ve been blessed to work with good clients and so this has been less of an issue for me personally but it’s one that plagues many organizations.

Lastly, execution often suffers. It doesn’t matter how fantastic your developer is.  Chances are when they hand the code off the first time things just won’t be perfect.  Design is all about the details and developers operate in a world of function.  They simply don’t see it.  When you’re a hired gun you don’t have the power to tell the developer to fix this and that.  It will often hit the public eye with missing elements, the wrong font and poorly spaced elements here and there.  Personally I find this demoralizing.  You’ve labored over a design with little direction, gotten it past the approval stage only for it to be produced in a sub-standard fashion.  Now not only did you make a small amount of money on the project but you can’t use it in your portfolio because the execution was sloppy.

When it’s your project, or you at least are on the team, you have the ability to push back on the developer or go in and fix it yourself.  And likely you’ll be the one doing the maintenance so you can ensure the design isn’t wrecked down the road.

Last but not least is the client relationship.  You may have done work for a hundred different companies but since you were the contractor, they don’t know who you are.  When your client moves on, so do the contacts.

When you’re a freelance designer contract work is a necessary evil.  Despite the pitfalls I still do it and will likely continue to take on contract projects for some time.  Arm yourself with as much knowledge as you can, insert yourself into the conversation and push back in the name of quality whenever possible.

I cancelled my Typepad account today and made the move over to Wordpress. I was initially attracted to the idea of using a hosted service for my new blog since it would mean one less detail for me to deal with but I quickly discovered that Typepad just wasn’t for me. The simple act of adding a header with navigation was going to be pushing the limits of customization within their system and that was a huge red flag. As a designer/developer I’ve come to expect a certain level of control and my new best friend Wordpress is giving me just that. There’s something very comforting about being able to change anything an everything not to mention the increased speed of uploading these changes. If you’ve every used hosted CMS apps like NING you know there’s typically a few second delay when uploading changes - I bit longer than your typical ftp. The minor annoyance is exacerbated by having to then navigate a link or three to get back to your CSS file.