Joshua Talbot

In the 9 years that I’ve been a designer I’ve never had a business card. The general thought was that once a person inputs your contact info into their computer/phone/address book the card becomes useless. And also a little annoying. Like “what the heck am I suppose to do with this thing now?”. So with that in mind I’ve created the indispensable business card. I’m pretty sure if you had to you could also eat it for the small amount of nutrients it carries. Now if only it could double as a jet pack!

And as the budding business owner I think this also offers a good opportunity to talk about marketing. For most of the small to medium sized clients/companies I work with marketing is something that’s easily put on the back burner or just not handled well. Advertising, Website & any visual assets have typically been piecemealed together over the coarse of a few years. This is obviously never intentional. Business usually gets in the way of Business. What I do for them is help create a strong, singular visual identity that can be offered to the public. The choice of fonts, images & colors used can all work to unify the voice of a business.

So what is MY identity? What is it that makes Joshua Talbot Design distinct? There are a million designers out there. A lot of them very talented. So what sets me apart? The brainstorming has begun. More on this later. I need to get back to work!

I’ve been in business for myself for two weeks now. My original intent was to blog at least once (if not twice) a week to document this new journey. But as you know, finding the time to create articulate, coherent posts isn’t always easy. So let’s start there. Time.

Right out of the gate I was aware that time management was going to be key. We all know people running their own business. And a consistent thread always seems to be issues with time. Either poorly spent or just not enough of it. And with billable hours being my bread & butter it’s not something I can afford to be lax about. I want the time I spend on a project to be focused & productive. And being right brained only means I’m easily distracted by anything shinny.

So a few things that have helped thus far:

1. Rescue Time
A very slick web application that will track the types of work/tasks you’re doing and give you hourly updates. You can also set goals, view time spent by category and even see what sites you spend the most time on. And sign up for a single user is free. Rescue Time.

2. Scheduling
This sounds like a no brainer. But not always so easy to do. The first thing i did was by a planner (I’m in the no iphone camp at the moment). Moleskin has a very cool, cheap weekly planner that gives you room to write notes next to the day’s events as well as a line list of days in the month (shown in the image above). I’ll write more about project specific scheduling in another post.

3. Expectation
Not all my time is spent designing. Accounting, marketing & client relations are just a few of the things that can easily take up the majority of a day. This is one of the reasons I’ve resisted going into business for myself in the past. And still the reality of it was a shock. It’s easy to feel like I haven’t accomplished something If I’m not working the design portion of my business. So it becomes vital for me to map out my expectations for each week/day. With out this I’m a ship lost at sea.

So I’m hoping to get more in depth on these topics and other. More to come!