Kathy and I are now officially graduates. We went back to campus a week ago for rehearsals, which basically meant a mediocre cookout and people telling us where we’d sit the next day. It felt too soon returning to campus after having a beautiful three days being at our new apartment and I definitely did not miss sleeping in the college dorms. As is usual with most of our trips, we did forget some things and I didn’t have dress shoes to go with my nice professional outfit (not that anyone saw it under our black robes). A late night run to Concord and I found some cheap $30 no-name replacements and Kath was able to grab some fancy sandals to solve her shoe dilemma as well.

The next morning we woke to the familiar college, this time without homework in mind but butterflies in our stomachs. The first meal of the day sucked; the college supplied a few varieties of muffins and bread but certainly no logger’s breakfast. In Wheeler Hall, we and the rest of the graduating class put our 4 years (or more) of education to use by figuring out how to wear the damn graduation attire. A square hat for a round head, a dangling mop in my face, a hood like a dragon’s tale, and a woman’s dress: who started this tradition?

The group gathered at the far end of the campus as the line moved through Colgate, onto the front field between masses of parents and cameras and finally to our seating. The BFA Graphic Design students happened to be in the last rows back away from the stage and nearest to the mob of overly excited family members, some of them practically fighting their way to the front for the money shot of their son or daughter. Luckily, mom and dad are always early so seating wasn’t too bad for them. The rest of my family soon followed and arrived in time to fend for seats. By chance, Kathy’s parents landed two empty chairs right next to dad.

The ceremony actually wasn’t too bad to bear, considering most graduations are very long and tiresome. The president gave a pretty nice speech, as this day was also his investiture, along with a few other professors and students (one went on and on about Inukshuks…), then it was diploma time. I remember Bob saying to me after, “You walked the right speed, a lot of other kids ran across the stage.” It felt pretty amazing getting that “little piece of paper.” It took a lot getting here and it’s finally sinking in that it’s over. After a mini photo shoot among parents and friends near the graduation tent, we hurriedly emptied the last remains of our rooms, checked out, and said goodbye to Colby-Sawyer College.

That Sunday was Mother’s Day and I gave mom her CSC blanket, one of the few buys I’ve enjoyed at the campus bookstore. Being the first day after graduation, it really felt like the start of a new crossroad. Ironically Bob and I spent most of the day hauling firewood with Dad, something we’ve done countless times in childhood years. I loved every minute of it. Having the three of us working outdoors on a warm summer day brought back a flood of memories for all of us. Bob and I traded off using the pulp hook and Dad gave us our turns running the chainsaw. Sherri (family dog and mascot) playfully leaped off every uncut log and splashed through a nearby puddle, her mouth in the water like a whale looking for plankton. Later, we talked with some neighbors building sprint cars and we even fired up Bob’s ’57 Chevy. It was a blast tearing up and down Red Hill Road, though the mouse I almost stepped on in the back seat looked a little dizzy.

January started off with 60 degree weather. Today’s temperature is in the negatives and there is a horizontal interstate of snow outside my window, cruising at thirty mph and piling up between one and two feet. You need ski goggles just to walk to the dining hall.

Classes are closed for the day so I’m working on homework inside rather than freezing my butt outside. I’ve been catching up on news feeds during food breaks and Cameron delivers yet another great article, concluding his full-time freelance lessons. Motivated by his findings, I decided to make a list of all the important lessons I’ve learned from the last couple years of freelancing.

Network. Tell people your ambitions, let them know you’re diving into freelance and would appreciate if they kept you in mind for future work. Tell your mom, your professors, friends, everyone. I’ve found the majority of my jobs comes from referrals. Past internships, clients, and web friends sometimes have too much work to handle or don’t possess the needed skills for a certain project and will offer you the opportunity. As many designers will attest, the work flow for web design is often up and down and rarely consistent. Be sure to return the favor to designers you have an established relationship with and forward any excess work when you get the chance.

Set up a blog. As I’ve stated in the past, one of the many benefits to a blog is the ability to display your knowledge in an informal, comfortable fashion. A resume, for example, is a generic, impersonal summary that contains limited information. A blog is often a regularly updated peek inside the methods of a business that may include the process for completed projects, current work focus, future goals, or other details that may describe their quality of work and subject command better than any resume or online portfolio.

A well put excerpt from one of Jonathon Snook’s freelance articles:

The blog has been my sales and marketing. I haven’t had to make sales calls or answer RFP’s or do pitches. People have either just come across the site or I’ve gotten work through referrals. If anybody asks if running a personal site like this can be worthwhile, let me be the first in line to say yes. I’m sure many of the freelancers out there would agree.

Learn the business! Understanding how to handle a client and their project is equally as important as finding the work. Learn how to effectively communicate with clients, deal with RFPs, assess the project scope, deliver an accurate estimate, find your appropriate work rate, contracts, invoicing, project management, etc.

Become a feed glutton. Working on your own is often most difficult simply because there is little, if any, human interaction throughout a work day. Without a company full of colleagues to bounce ideas and keep up-to-date on the latest news, it’s important stay in tune with the online web community. Find a good RSS aggregator and subscribe to all the top blogs and news sites related to your field.

Don’t just research. Contribute! On top of reading design blogs and books, contribute to the community by joining discussions, attending web conferences and gatherings, and sharing knowledge through your blog. This will also aid in networking and making connections that could expand your business. Active collaborating and sharing of ideas is largely reason why CSS has become what it is today.

Anticipate design slumps. When I used to play baseball, hitting or pitching slumps were common challenges during a season. The trick is finding a remedy that works for you. In my case, the problem was always over thinking and the cure was returning to the basics. The same applies to my design. When I’m stumped, I return to basic design principles such as the grid and typography. I ask myself simple questions like, “Who is this design targeting?” and, “What is the main goal of the site?” Other times I’m just burnt out from sitting inside for too long and need a good hike or drive. The best thing to do is think of something you enjoy that you absolutely cannot do wrong. As Travis put it:

…burnout is not a simple case of being exhausted. Rather, the ratio of gratification to perceived work input is what mostly accounts for the sensation of burnout.

Avoid the trap of CSS design galleries. How many are there now? That’s right: way too many! First off, if you’re a fan of CSS galleries, you can usually determine the good from the bad by the number of sites displayed. Some take pride in only displaying the crème de la crème while others push batches of daily additions whether they’re truly good designs or not. While the occasional gallery skim may help spark the imagination, be careful not to mimic trends or add meaningless elements to your designs because they looked cool on some other website.

Find what interests you. A good test is to ask yourself: if you were given enough money to live the rest of your life without financial concerns, what work would you still be doing? In 2005 I interned for Hatchling Studios, primarily a 3D animation studio with some very talented Flash and 3D creators. Learning the rates an ActionScript guru could command, I knew I had to be a Flash developer. After months of research and wearing the confused puppy dog face (head cocked sideways, ears half raised), I found myself lost in programming and missing front-end development. My RSS feeds were divided with exciting CSS bug fixes and daunting Flash tutorials. My web enthusiasm, production, and knowledge were stifled by a forced interest in Flash. Not long after starting my fall 2005 semester, I received my first real freelance project which involved some CSS work. An old flame was rekindled and I’ve been happily practicing design and web standards ever since.

Don’t promise the world. A common mistake of beginning freelancers is claiming to do it all. Chances are, you’re not an expert at everything, particularly at the start of your career. It is wise to offer only the services you are confident in, ensuring a) you’ll be able to handle the tasks, b) the client will be happy, and c) your reputation will benefit from a job well done. Seasoned designers with years of experience can probably get away with on-the-job learning, especially since the web changes so rapidly, but at the beginning stick with what you know already. If a project mainly requires your area of expertise but contains small technological elements you don’t know, consider outsourcing part of the work.

A friendly goodbye. Eventually, as your business grows, you’ll be moving on to bigger and better jobs. But what do you do with your smaller clients? Offer to find them a quality replacement designer to continue the work. This way you’re not abandoning clients and potentially harming your reputation, not to mention helping fellow web designers. In the end, the client doesn’t care who does the job, just as long as it gets done.

According to WDN:

As conference organizers, speakers and attendees, Dave, Derek, Maxine and John have long been aware that while a good conference can be an unbeatable benefit for your career, they are definitely out of the price range of those in our industry who might benefit most — students. We strongly believe that today’s students will have an important role in the future of the web.

30 conference seats will be set aside at $195 (CDN) each for qualifying students — regular cost is $895. Great deal and opportunity! To take advantage if you qualify, use the regular registration page and enter the following code to receive your special discount: WDNSCH.

Now if only the airlines could offer me a similar discount to get me out there!

With due respect and appreciation for the three internships I’ve completed so far, I believe the need to learn former practices in web design is less important than in most other career paths. However, there is still essential knowledge that only an internship can provide. Here are some of the pros and cons I’ve come to realize from my last few summers:

The Gravy:

• People skills. Learning effective communication and team work is necessary both in life and work. A determined, self-motivated individual could probably learn as much about web design from Google as they could at any internship, but discovering the value of personal interaction and cooperation can only be had in a group environment.
• The mechanics of business. There is no better place to learn how a business functions than a peek from inside.
• Alternative perspectives. An extra set of eyes is sometimes the best solution to solving a problem. Especially when first starting out, receiving feedback and having someone or a group of people to bounce ideas off of will rapidly speed up the learning process.
• Contacts. Like the old adage, “It’s not what you know, but who you know.” Assuming you show effort and are dedicated to your internship, you’re likely to gain a positive relationship with your employer and probably other businesses that he or she works with or speaks to. Word of mouth will often generate the majority of your work opportunities.
• Reputation. An internship allows you to build your portfolio and expand your learning in an environment that isn’t as demanding or expecting as your first full-time job. The percentage of being hired by the company you intern for is also very high and may lead to other employment options you would not have had or found elsewhere.

The Mauritius Dodo:

• Students are going straight from college, or even high school, to garage start-ups.
• With the rise of Web 2.0 came a slew of online resources and services, most of which are free to use. With the flourish of web communities and open-source tools like Ruby on Rails, it is becomingly increasingly easier to be a web designer. Whereas five years ago it would have taken thousands of dollars to create an application, today’s server fees and capable open-source tools have drastically reduced the cost of actualizing an idea.
• High quality web deisgn makes use of current standards and practices. The requirements to being a successful web designer are less reliant on past knowledge or experience than most traditional jobs. For example, a young entrepreneur would benefit more from a summer reading Dan Cederholm’s Bulletproof Web Design than an internship fiddling with the nested table layout of Company XYZ. While it would be good to know how to handle something like the bugs of IE 5.0, you’d be better off researching how to design for the next browser or mobile devices because that’s where the web is heading.
• Adding to the above, the idea of interning for free or with minimal compensation is a joke since it is often the company who would gain more from a fresh, current thinking intern than the other way around.

What are your thoughts or experiences? Where do you see web related internships 5 years from now?

I’ve been known to advocate the importance of using your natural talents to propel you through life. Our innate strengths are often what we use most, mainly because they are the things that come easy to us. Regardless, I haven’t duly credited drive, which is equally, if not more, necessary in succeeding (whether at work or in life). For example, I love to write and would consider it an area I’ve excelled at from an early age. However, if I’m given a college English assignment that has no interest to me, I won’t do very well at all. On the other hand, computers and technology have basically been non-existent to me growing up. I hardly touched a computer until I came to college and now web design has grown to be a large part of what I do.

Where there’s a will, there’s a way.

I‘ve had a lot of school work lately and plenty of long nights keeping on top of it all. When it comes to writing papers, here are some quick tips I’ve come to love:

1. Change the background color of your Word document (Format>Background>More Colors) from white to something less harsh on the eyes. I find a dull green or beige works well and retains good readability (mine right now is set to #cccc99). For extended periods of time in Word, it’s much less straining if you ditch the white.
2. Unfortunately, my computer speakers died the first week I returned to school this year. On the plus side, headphones are what I would recommend for helping drown out distractions from other kids, cars, or whatever your situation may include. Also, I find that I can type faster if I can’t hear the sound of the keys clacking (weird, huh?). The type of music is crucial, which I explain in further detail in a previous post about writing. Basically, pick songs that utilize more acoustic instruments than vocals. You don’t want to be processing what the band is singing about, but instead use their tunes to block outside noises.
3. Take small breaks. It’s like giving yourself mini awards. 40 minutes writing, 10 minutes for [fill in the blank]. Play games, watch tv, grab some food, whatever gets your mind off work. Cameron shares some great advice in one of his older entries about unplugging yourself when you get stuck for ideas.
4. If you need to reach a minimum number of pages, set the text size to 10pt and page zoom at around 150% before you start typing. When you’re a couple pages shy at the end and can’t think of anything else to write, it’ll be a nice surprise to switch back to 12pt and find out you’re done.

My 10 minutes are up, back to the grind…

I’ve actively been thinking about working freelance full-time, whether immediately after graduation or following a few years in the corporate world. Not knowing the decision I’ll make seven months from now, I felt it good to document some thoughts prior to taking the plunge in either direction.

Backtracking to earlier this summer, I had the fortunate opportunity of interning for Michael Yacavone of XeniumGroup. The work level was advanced and built off the assumption that my two previous internships and innumerable Googling nights had taught me something. Over the course of three months, I learned from a business perspective the pros and cons of being self-employed. I worked mainly from my dorm room on campus with minimal commute to Mike’s office in Hanover, NH. With a XeniumGroup-loaned MacBook, recently updated Windows machine, and fast internet, it was pretty cool to wake up and have all my resources in the same room.

By the end of (an always-too-short) summer, I had led the completion of 6+ websites, including research, design, and implementation of: information architecture, XHTML/CSS, accessibility, usability, search engine optimization. Each site was tested on over 54 browser/platform configurations and hand-coded with clean, W3C compliant markup. The grand hurrah to my internship was a trip to Rails Conf 2006 in Chicago, IL, all expenses paid. Thereafter, I practiced and played on small RoR applications.

The power of “No.”

To mollify the bills an unpaid internship can’t satisfy, I continued freelance work after hours and rarely declined project offers (1st mistake!). Work melded day into night and slowly invaded weekends until it wasn’t uncommon to be on the computer for weeks at a time (2nd mistake!). Approaching 350+ internship hours on top of managing my own clients, burnout abruptly set in.

Project management is essential, as is balancing work with life. It seems like a no-brainer, but the pure beauty of a well organized schedule is not apparent until you have more work than could possibly get done. Equally crucial is a thorough evaluation of each project opportunity rather than blindly accepting every work offer.

Advice for the upcoming student

Back at college, the school required all students who completed summer internships to present a summary of their work and what they had learned. Between preparing my PowerPoint and talking to some Graphic Design friends, I’ve assembled some tips (in no particular order):

Competition: Never think your work is good enough, no matter how talented you are. A good goal is to always try and have the “best” project in the class. This might sound cocky, but as long as you’re not rubbing it anyone’s face, it’s a helpful source of motivation. I grew tired of seeing mediocre students get praise so it made me work even harder to be recognized. Also, remember that even if you climb to the top of your class, there are students studying in schools across the globe. Never be satisfied; there’s always room for improvement.

Ask Questions: Surround yourself with intelligent individuals and share knowledge. Never be afraid to ask questions. Take advantage of speaking with professors and students since, after all, you’re paying to be at school. Make the most of your time. The people you know and positive connections you make in your school years will be invaluable when entering the job market.

Don’t follow the crowd: Grades are number one, but don’t forget to investigate subjects of interest outside of class as well. Your classmates are all learning the same exact material as you, so break away from the herd and discover your own talents. I can’t stress how beneficial this is. Not only will you be enhanced with new learning, but self-teaching is an important skill to have. The number one problem college grads and interns have is keeping busy. When they’ve finished one project, they are unsure of what to do next and sit idle. Employers and supervisors don’t want to baby-sit so learning to be self-sufficient is vital and surprisingly hard for a lot of people. Probably because they’re used to having assignments handed to them rather than analyzing what needs to be done.

I earned my Hatchling internship partly because I had some 3-D renders on my portfolio site that I did with Cinema 4D, a program I was playing with for the sheer fun of it. When you discover your own areas of interest, two things will happen: one, you’ll learn a lot about the subject because it is one you enjoy, otherwise you wouldn’t have picked it, and two, chances are it’ll be something you’re already good at. Most people like doing the things that come natural to them, not what is difficult. Identify both your strong and weak points, improve the areas you struggle in, and use your natural talent as a springboard.

When I came to school freshman year, I looked at college like a job. Have fun, date, do whatever, but don’t forget that what you come out with after four (or more) years is what you’ll be offering your first employer. Today is all about specializing and having brains over brawn. The more you teach yourself, the more you cram in your head, the closer you’ll get to a $100k job instead of $30k. Life isn’t all about money, but unfortunately, it’s a major factor in how well we live. Family is everything for me and the ultimate achievement, in my view, will be one day having my own (touching, I know). But the truth is, my wife and kids aren’t going to live in a cardboard box, so money does play an important role.

Online portfolio: Your own little corner on the web, a place you can direct potential employers to look over work examples, resume, or other significant information. Without online presence, your work appears less credible, as if to say, “My portfolio wasn’t good enough to have its own website.” For those short on time (and/or patience) for web design, I would highly recommend taking a look at Carbonmade.

Back to my opening query, is it better to dive into creating your own business, or join the corporate scene and then branch off? If you’re in the same predicament, Andy Budd, Jonathon Snook, and Cameron Moll have some insightful reads. How this last year at school unfolds will most likely be the deciding factor for me.

Each year, Colby-Sawyer College has what it is called, “Mountain Day.” Usually within the first few weeks of school, the event date is unknown to students and the majority of faculty. At approximately 10am on mountain day, school bells ring and classes are cancelled. Vans soon arrive to transport students to the local Mt. Kearsarge for hiking, food, and outdoor activities. Being seniors, Kath and I thought it fitting to instead drive to Mt. Washington this year and take advantage of the gorgeous afternoon. More images from the voyage are on Flickr.

It’s senior year. My room is a single the size of a double with space for way more crap than the Jeep could haul. Maybe next weekend I’ll grab the mountain bike and sneak in a few more rides before snow flies.

The freshman boys across the hall play their girly music all day, all night, and with the door open (quite annoying). It’s funny: when I turn up some Metal at room-shaking levels, their door magically closes and all is quiet again. Huh. They’re an odd bunch, very independent and surprisingly happy not making new friends during their first year of college.

Classes are good. There’s always the inevitable schedule conflicts and mad dash for supplies, but all is ironed out after a couple weeks. Photography is awesome so far and Visuals and Publications give me my dose of computer use. Modern Art History is one I could do without, but my BFA requirements say otherwise. Here’s a glimpse at a project I Photoshopped for Visuals. Burn, Dodge, and Smudge tools own.

I keep finding myself saying, “Yeah, that’s something I’d like to do next year at school.” Graduating hasn’t totally sunk in yet, I think because of the fact that finalizing sixteen consecutive years of schooling will be a major break in routine. One thing I won’t miss is setting up the room knowing it all comes back out in a matter of months. Working for money instead of grades, that too is a day I cannot wait for. Other than that, it’s good to be back with the computer set up and fast net. A lot happens in a year; I’ll do my best to keep this blog updated.

I played around with creating some HDR photos last week but didn’t get a chance to upload them until now. Still have lots to learn, cool technology though.

(Click either image for more examples at Flickr)