Production knowledge is key!

To be a successful freelancer you have to know your production values up, down, left right and upside down.

I got a call last night to do a logo... here's how it went.

Him: Hi, saw your logos, love them, I want a quote.
Me: Sure thing, tell me about your company and the name for your logo.

Him: I don't need you to design the logo for me, I'm an artist. I already designed it in pencil. I just need you to clean it up for me.
Me: Will you ever want to reproduce your logo on a T-Shirt or printed on a give-away item like an umbrella?

Him: Yea.
Me: Well, I will have to redraw your logo in a vector format, because T-Shirt houses and promotional houses do silk screening and to do that they need vector art and not pixel based bit mapped art.

Him: What?
Me: If I get a scan of your logo it's like a photo... bit mapped. Another designer might do what you want. BUT THAT'S NOT WHAT YOU NEED.
To give you a quote, I would need to see if your logo is simple or complicated to redraw.

Him: I just wanted a quote, not a graphic design lesson.
Me: You don't want to pay twice to do your logo. I want to help you by doing it the right way the first time at a fair and reasonable cost.

Him: click.

Well... as you just read, I didn't get the job.

But other times I do get the job because after I talk with people for a while they know that I know what I'm doing and that in the long run it's less expensive for them to have their project done correctly the first time around.

Bottom line... if you don't know much about print production, find out who will be printing the project and ask questions. Web design and Flash animations... I'll cover that another time.