Well that sounds quite convincing, just ordered some from CRC, let's see how they go.

WGA

I think the jack of all trades is a very fair tag 😉

But I am a one man (at the moment) freelance operation and take what projects I can.

Did I also include exhibition designer, builder and driver of the white van?

I need to focus people.

WGA

Second on the typesetting errors, I see them everywhere, certainly feels like an affliction.

I came to designing late in life and showed little interest in art at school, I was "discovered" when working with graphic designers on projects and found that the roughs I did were as good if not better than the stuff they came up with. From there I started working with web designers and found the same, then more graphic people and picked things up from there over about ten years.

My actual background is in marketing so I act as a hybrid account handler / marketeer/ bod that can design a bit.

Oh yes, I also write copy too…

I is a crazy mixed up kid me.

Most design can be adapted to work on screen or on paper as long as the designer and the client understand that compromises have to be made – especially true if you want to build a an accessibility compliant website.

I agree, but we find more and more at the design stage we are developing ideas that will work across multiple media, for example a project that we are just finishing is for new packaging that has an on pack promotion to a microsite as well as point of sale display materials the design has to work across all these. I did the design work for all the elements, but not necessarily all the "mechanical" bits like writing code and pre-press. 😉

The design for print and design for web is an interesting debate.

I have a brief that I am working on at the moment that is primarily for print but requires the designs to be suitable for online campaigns also, in fact thinking about it a lot of our designs are primarily for print but also end up being developed for on line campaigns.

I think it is most interesting that as graphic designers we can't agree specifically what a graphic designer is or how you become one 😉

20% eh? You don't come cheap 😉

How about a whole load of trail karma?

Good vibes going your way 😀

WGA

Wow that was easy!

Animated gif made and the client loves it.

Thanks guys

WGA

Just found out some more info, the ads on the site it is for are all animated gifs, so that sounds like the way to go.

Thanks guys, that just saved me a frustrating afternoon pratting around with Flash.

WGA

Agree Mastiles you can tell by looking, the ad sequence I have in mind is like the Evans one (gif), nice and simple.

WGA

Ah so it seems that CRC and JE James are Flash, the rest are animated gifs.

I may go down the gif route as I know Photoshop well, Flash will be a steep learning curve.

Are the ads on Singletrack Flash or animated gifs?

Thanks, the gif thing looks easy, but as Mastiles said I think Flash would look slicker.

I am happy to do it myself as it is a skill I would like to acquire, i just wanted to make sure that this is the right way before I spend a couple of hours teaching myself how to do it.

WGA

We probably come across a couple of raves a year in our local woods – they are generally very friendly, although they don't make much sense when they talk to you!

At 8.30 in the morning they are playing chill out music and picking up rubbish, I think the sight of half a dozen bikers must look quite surreal to them.

Thanks for the replies:

Vanilla83, I may well be in touch, we are still at the design stage so once we have worked these up I would be interested in a cost indication once you have seen what we would like.

Karl33to: Good point, will bear that in mind as us designers can be quite "precious" on some elements. 😉

I had a 91 BMW 3 series convertible (320) which I sold a couple of years ago.

I ran it up to 135,000 miles with no major problems, no rust to speak of, the only thing I can think of that I had to replace was an exhaust.

I have also run an E36 3 series (320) up to 185,000 miles and an E34 5 series (520) to 185,000, they really will run a long time if you look after them and all sold at that mileage and are probably still going.

Both the E34 & E36 head gaskets failed at around 150,000 miles which is a £2,000 rebuild, but other than that it is just servicing and the usual tyres, pads and disks as they wear out.

I bought some shirts that had an embroidered logo a few years ago.

IIRC I sent the logo as a .jpg file and the file was converted to a format that the embroidering machine could interpret. There was a one off cost for this of around £35 and then this was stitched onto the garment that you choose.

Hats vary in quality so you can go cheap or expensive, probably about £10 per hat plus your set up charge would be about right, a small local company to you would probably do a small run quite happliy

wetgrassagain, either you are well off or you don't do 600 miles/week otherwise you would be a little concerned about your mpg

Quite right, I am not particularly well off but only drive on average 10,000 miles a year – I work from home so am not really bothered about mpg.

But I feel better for coming out – I ride bikes AND drive a BMW. I know many of you are BMWphobic on here and your remarks about driving skills sometimes bring a tear to my eye, but dammit it is time to stand up and be up front about my dirty secret, my parents know and whilst disappointed they understand – they said I was always a little different, perhaps less sensitive than the average and too keen to push to the front of queues but hey, I can live with that.

I know many of you on here like Skodas and diesel cars but surely a little variety is OK in today's cosmopolitan society?

The BMW has leather seats…

In fact I am going to drive it in a minute – with the aircon on.

Just because I can!

I am a bad person, especially sitting on seats made of dead cow.

Yeah, thought so… plus I ride an On One 456 😀

AND I am driving to the trails tomorrow in a 4×4, is there no hope for me?

Wow, I get 25mpg from my LandRover Discovery and 20mpg from my BMW 530i, does this make me a bad person?

If I can just drag everyone out of memory lane 😉 Back to the original post then, I am looking to buy high end I macs with 24" screens running CS4.

I will also need a Mac book for visiting clients, any recomendations as to which one to go for?

It would be used for showing pdfs and a little bit of tweaking of designs in InDesign.

Mr.S. good point, what you describe is one way to do it.

The world of press ready pdf's has probably made us a bit lazy, but as Mastiles said we all work much faster now and for us it is about getting the best quality job through, as quickly as possible at a competitive price.

I still use pens and coloured pencils for the initial layout though 😉

Yikes,

I step out for five minutes and now look what has happened 😕

Once I have designed it it goes to repro and they do all that rip stuff and (very) occasionally ask me to resubmit files if they have problems, but this is very rare.

Take the point about the monitor, but as a designer the imac screen is a quantum leap forward from what I was using 10 years ago!

That's what I figured, we do a tiny bit of video editing which to be fair the i-macs struggled with.

It is just whenever I go to another studio I see wall to wall mac pros, so it is just mac envy on my part then 😉

I deal with a range of nationalities on a regular basis, this week Malaysian, Chinese and German.

I have worked for French, American and Iraqi companies, I have especially learnt to never, ever use English phrases like "run of the mill", "it gets my goat", "hard cheese" etc. as having to explain what it means is like pulling teeth at times.

Well it gets worse…

I have just checked the last batch of invoices (unpaid) and 3 out of 5 are invoiced not as the agreed price out of three they are £380 more than agreed.

Also he has invoiced me with my company name incorrectly.

This is becoming a major ball ache as I now have to trawl through all the paperwork with a fine tooth comb.

No purchase order or firm official quote with any terms and conditions. No signed agreement or contract.

I don’t want it to go legal of course, I plan to try and negotiate, but if it does (go legal), do I have a leg to stand on?

No contract, between us, just a verbal agreement.

He has supplied goods to me on credit and wants paying, I am of course reluctant to do this – is it right to withhold payment until it is resolved?

It seems that he has got greedy / desperate and has seen me as a bit of a soft/ easy touch.

WGA

All fair points, it is my job to make sure I get the best price, I accept that.

The thing that complicates this is the service he provides is as a broker to get me the best price for goods supplied. We were working in “partnership” – he does the legwork in getting quotes, I can get on with what I do.

For 18mths this worked well, I got comparison quotes and he was the best price. My mistake is that I stopped getting the comparison quotes until now.It now appears that he was creaming off 60+% for himself on the last 12 or so jobs.

I think it is going to get messy.

WGA

“sounds like they may have hacked your mail server”

I take it this is a bad thing?

WGA

Sorry wrong forum

Ah, Maidstone too far away.

We are a group of about twelve that ride around Canterbury / Whitstable.

http://www.boghogs.co.uk

Good luck

WGA

Which part of Kent?

WGA

Quote
Catalans – always keen to distance themselves from their Castillian neighbours – have adoped a donkey silhouette in response.

I wondered about the donkey silhouette, I have also seen a witch silhouette any ideas?

To keep in with the Catalans when staying down there I have the yellow and red oval on the back of my car – you can’t be too careful.

WGA

The black bull silhouette is a Spanish symbol.

I have driven to Spain 6 or 7 times and bought one to stick on the back of the car on the first trip, but kind of grew out of it.

I think it is meant to show you have a Spanish connection, although it does not stop Spanish drivers tailgating you or carving you up you when they see your English plates. They seem to forget that you navigated halfway across Europe to get to their flea bitten seaside town.

WGA

In response to the questions above this was 7 yrs ago so it has probably changed – sorry if I got you all excited.
Back then it was unusual to take an allowance but it was a very tax efficient way to run a car at the time.
I used to fill in the space on the tax return to claim for expenses and continue on a separate sheet with additional details.
From memory there were two ways of calculating – a flat rate per mile or a total up of the expenses you incurred.
There was a leaflet that showed you the two methods of calculating I just used to use the one that came to the most.
Long and short of it was I used to get a £7k car allowance and get the PAYE I had paid back at the end of the year in a nice cheque from the Revenue – there was none of that emissions malarkey back then, it was considered honourable to belt up and down the M6 every day!

WGA

I had a car allowance at my previous job, they specified that the car must have four doors and be no more than three years old, other than that it was up to you.
I paid PAYE on the monthly allowance and then claimed that back on my tax return at the end of the year. Make sure you keep all the paperwork, even old MOTS, the Inland Revenue checked me out twice and wanted to see everything to verify the mileage.
I ran a BMW 5 series and ended up with 180,000 miles on the clock and just put it through the auction at the end of its life.
The only advantage I could see was that I got to choose – the company would put me in a brand new Mondeo or I could go out and buy a 3yr old Beemer and be “king” of the company car park! It was not a money making scheme – the servicing costs were eye watering.

WGA

I look after a small mountain bike website for local riders http://www.boghogs.co.uk

We decided to put some pay per click ads on just to cover the hosting bill and expenses. We make around $15 a month and get around 3,000 hits per month to the main site and the associated blog. You need BIG traffic to generate any real cash and the hourly rate you put into generating the initial traffic will make you cry.

We also sell a few shirts, which brings in a few quid, but again it is only pocket money.

WGA

I am a freelance designer also and I get asked to do the occasional website, actually it is becoming more common as more people see the work I have done.

Cost wise I charge between £1,000 and £2,000 for a smallish site, but I generally do all the design work, copy and coding myself so that is quite cheap.

As a comparison I used to do some design work for a fancy web agency and they would not touch anything below £7k, so there is a broad range of pricing, if they are NHS I doubt they are expecting a cheap job, a good way is to ask them what their budget is and say what you can do for that.

Generally speaking websites are not as profitable as design work as they take a long time and the hourly rate sucks if you calculate it out and as stated above the scope always creeps – people seem to think that “just getting it to do that” should only take a couple of clicks and five mins of your time.. But in these days you take what you can get.

Like the look of the website your good lady has put together, clean and crisp looking – nice.

WGA

Without being the prophet of doom, winning a small claim is one thing – getting the money is another. If the guy shows the courts that he can only pay £1 per week, that is all he will have to pay and there is not much you can do about it.

Sending the bailiffs in is only an option if he defaults on a CCJ and then it is a matter for the court to decide, not you.

Before you go to court you have to show that you made reasonable efforts to collect the debt, including accepting payment in installments.

Not having anything in writing is not going to help your case either.

As the post above said if he has no money/ assets you are unlikely to get it back.

If on the other hand he has some assets and is bothered about his credit rating then court action or the threat of it could be very effective.

Sorry, I know you wanted positive posts, but I doubt the people offering well meaning advice above have had much experience of chasing slippery feckers through the courts and the expense and frustration it inevitably generates.

Probably the best thing to do is to find out about his current financial circumstances and decide if it is worth pursuing him or not.

WGA