I am not a professional designer, I only play one occasionally on the internet. I have taken some formal design training, I did used to live with a very talented professional designer, and I do have some very talented friends who are in fact professional designers, but I myself, am not a professional designer. I am however, someone who can distinguish good design from bad (or at least I think I can), and feel like I can recognize technical mistakes, sloppiness, and just those simple things that can set a real quality designer apart from the wannabees.

Why does this matter you ask? Well, recently I was tasked with finding a designer to do some long term contract work for the new company I am part of, and I reluctantly posted the position on Craigslist, knowing that I would get a deluge of responses, most of which would be unqualified at best. The hope when posting on Craigslist is that you get two or three passable respondents, and if you are lucky, one that is hire-able.

When looking for a designer via a classified ad, I always try to pre-filter the applicants by asking for a very specific and reasonable set of items in the response. The thinking is that if someone cannot follow this very simple bit of direction, there is no way that they can possibly be counted on to follow more complex direction relating to the projects that we would ultimately have them working on. This is exactly what I included in the ad, verbatim.

To be considered for this position, please send a resume, several relevant work samples (a URL to a portfolio is best), your desired hourly rate, your availability, and a little information on who you are. Inquiries that are missing any of these pieces will be discarded and not considered.

Not surprisingly at all, roughly 50% of the responses were missing at least three of the things I had asked for. Some even wrote single sentence replies, saying “I would like to be considered for this position.” and included no resume, portfolio, work samples, or anything else beyond that one phrase. Honestly.

Luckily, there are SOME people that were talented and able to follow simple directions, which was encouraging. However, here is some advice for you designers out there that are trying to make it in the freelance game. It’s a tough gig, and you need to be always scrapping for work. Remember that there are a lot of you out there, and you are going to be competing tooth and nail for every posting on Craigslist, with at least 75 other people, so you need to stand out. And sadly, standing out in many cases, may only mean doing the minimum of what is expected of you during the ad-reply process. That being said, here are some things to keep in mind if you are looking for, and applying for, freelance work.

• Read the posting and respond properly. I know this sounds horribly basic, but somehow this is the single most irritating and common offense that I have seen each and every time I do this. If a hiring manager asks for specific items in the ad, and you flatly ignore them and send a response that is missing pieces, you will be filtered out immediately. Screwing this one up shows a complete disinterest in the details and an inability to follow simple instructions. Very bad.
• Get your own URL. A top level domain costs $8, so ditch the geocities account and get a domain. I know this sounds a bit pretentious to say that those designers using freebie ISP URLs are no good, but having your own domain, given the non-prohibitive cost, can really go a long ways in making you seem more professional. Again, attention to detail and going the extra mile here is very important. Having your own .com is simple and cheap, not doing it is just….well…cheap. So get a URL and use it.
• Make sure the URL works. I can’t tell you how many times I get portfolio URLs that don’t work, go to error pages, or go someplace where I need to dig for the work samples. I understand that sites go down every now and again, but broken URL’s, and out of date pages with missing information are quick deletes in my book. Spend the time to make a specific page on your site and use it to store easy to find and nicely laid out work samples, and make sure it is in a place that is always up to date and working. And for the love of god, don’t bother sending a URL that you KNOW is broken, qualifying it by saying “my site is still under construction, but here it is anyways”. Honestly, use your head.
• Write a genuine and custom response to the posting. I am not looking for a 500 word essay on how much you love the idea of this job, but I am looking for some evidence that you actually are reading these job postings and not just firing off 50 stock responses per day to every ad with the word “graphic” or “designer” in it. If I am looking for a web graphics person, I don’t need three paragraphs on how “sick” your 3-D animation skills are, or other babble that is completely irrelevant and unrelated to my need. Oh, and if you are doing the copy/paste responses, please make sure to remove references to the other jobs you are applying to with the same email BEFORE sending it to me.
• Know the market. Maybe in 1995 you could command $125 an hour for some basic HTML work, but that’s not the case now. Sending me a quote of $95/hour for graphic design work, along with your AOL website is a joke. I completely understand that good design costs money, but don’t price yourself out of the game by not having a clue what the going rates are.

  I am sure there are some more things I will add to this list in the next week or so, but those are the biggies. Violate these tenets, and you may as well get comfortable with the idea of finding a real job, because freelance design isn’t for you.

  Oh, and I guess this is also relevant. When it comes to judging a designer’s work, I typically know within a minute or two whether or not someone has the skills to do the job. These are the immediate things I look for (once you have gotten past the above items of course):

• Strong use of typography. If you use Papyrus font on restaurant menus and Microsoft stock fonts for everything else, that is a very very bad sign. There are millions of free fonts out there, and the proper use of typography can really show that you know your stuff. Mailing it in on the font side though, is a deal breaker in my eyes.
• Properly used filters and effects. No need for gradients, drop shadows, pattern overlays, glows, and every other Photoshop filter on every graphic you have ever done. There is a time and place for filters and effects, and you should know when those times are and where those places are.
• Right image formats at the right times. Know the difference between gifs, jpegs, and pngs and know when to use them.
• Good basic design sense and understanding of balance, alignment, and color. Again, basic stuff I know, but somehow a lot of awful design work comes my way that just has no place in any professional designer’s portfolio.
• Understanding and following of current design trends and styles. Design (especially for the web) is a very fluid thing, and though obviously subjective, it is constantly evolving and moving…so if all of your samples have old stock imagery and lots of antiquated elements, you probably won’t make the grade.

And that’s that. If other designers and/or those that are tasked with hiring designers want to weigh in, the comments are open.

Even though the Patriots steamrolled through the season, this game worried me. Any time you go up against a team that has nothing to lose, it is dangerous. Just like the Patriots in 2001, and the Red Sox in both 2004 and 2007, no one gave the Giants a chance, and as such, it took all of the pressure off. I felt tense from the kickoff, the Pats looked tense from the kickoff, and it just never felt comfortable the entire game.

But this 3rd and 5 play…this was the one that sealed it. Well before Plaxico Burress caught that floating pass to truly seal it, this play was the dagger.

Hats off to the Giants though, they played one hell of a game and deserved this one.

Police say he was drinking a Pabst Blue Ribbon about 11 a.m. while attempting to direct traffic as he helped an elderly woman cross the street. He was also seen dancing in the road and playing air guitar, said Officer Michael McCarthy, a Boston Police Department spokesman. Mr. Butch bragged to police that he hadn’t bathed in a year, said McCarthy.

From then on, I definitely took extra notice of him each time I was over in that area and appreciated what he brought to what was already one of my favorite enclaves in the city.

Mr Butch passed away this past week, and thought I can’t claim to have been anything more than a casual observer of the man, I will miss seeing him patrolling the intersection of Harvard and Comm, and as a result, the city will be a bit less interesting.

According to the Bureau of Transportation Statistics, the worst flight in existence for delays, is US Air Flight 1543 (Boston to Charlotte) which is late 100% of the time, with the average delay being 53 minutes.

I for one have had delays 100% of the time on EVERY flight I have EVER taken with US Air, some nearly missing me crucial connections, so this is not surprising. However, since Charlotte is their hub, through which most US Air connections are made, it may be wise when flying US Air out of Boston, to build in some extra time to catch that connector.

Arrival at Unit, May 08, 2007, 8:52 am, BRIGHTON, MA 02135

As I read this, the tracking indicated that the item was delivered to the “unit”, which I believed to be my apartment unit, at 8:52 AM this morning. I was confused, since I was AT my “unit” at 8:52 this morning, and no package was delivered. I was mad.

As it turns out, “unit” in this case means local post office, not “unit” as in apartment “unit”. Probably could use a better bit of wording here to avoid confusion…like say

Arrival at LOCAL POSTAL BRANCH, May 08, 2007, 8:52 am, BRIGHTON, MA 02135

I don’t know…just a thought.

A bit less violent, but equally random, a nice beat down in JP by some neighborhood thugs.

Per victim, the suspect approached him, demanded money of him and stated that he had a gun. The victim told the suspect that he had no money at which time the suspect started yelling demanding money, and assaulting the victim by punching him repeatedly. The victim, during the assault, tried to get away when the suspect pulled out a knife and started swinging at the victim. The victim was stabbed several times during the assault before the suspect fled.
More here.

And for those lovers of daytime violence that happens in the nice part of town, how about a random mid-day stabbing on Comm Ave?

Officers spoke to witnesses and determined that the suspect approached and attacked the victim while he was sitting on a park bench after exclaiming, “This is what you get for disrespecting me!” Per witnesses, the suspect placed the knife back in his pocket after stabbing the victim and walked away heading toward Copley Square on Dartmouth Street.More here.

Personally I never have felt unsafe here, but it is weekends like this that remind me that Boston is not isolated from the rest of the world’s large cities when it comes to crime.

This is completely retarded, don’t buy these unless you are an ass. That’s all.

It is not.

Of course, it is hailed as a MySpace killer but isn’t everything these days?

With all of these new “social networks” you need to ask “What is the differentiator?” or “What can I get with [Virb] that I don’t already have someplace else?”. The answer appears to be nothing at all. In fact, take a look at a snippet from Virb.com’s “about us” page.

Virb is a community website that combines social interaction with music and entertainment exploration. It’s a great way to keep in touch and meet people with similar interests. Use Virb to discover music, videos, cool companies and organizations… then share what you find with your friends.

Sound familiar? Of course it does. It is every single social network’s “about us” page ever.

I think I am just hitting the wall here, and suffering from network overload. As I do my best to unsubscribe from every useless email newsletter I am on, and every RSS feed I don’t read regularly, I am resisting the knee-jerk reactionary move that is signing up for every friggin social network that comes across my desk – and there are a lot of them.

Read Techcrunch or Mashable for just a few days and your head will be spinning when you realize how many inane networks pop up every day, each more useless and uncreative than the last. There is NO creativity here anymore. These sites and these companies are just rubber stamping the same network concept that has been done 10,000 times over already and trying to sell advertising through it in uncreative ways. Its over saturation of the same crap. Its just hard to care anymore.

And if this over saturation of ACTUAL sites wasn’t enough, enter Ning.com, which basically takes the barrier to entry in creating your own network and obliterates it all together with it’s turnkey network tools. Want to create a network for people in south east Idaho that collect buffalo nickels? Go ahead, ning is for you.

I can see value in *some* of these networks if they satisfy a specific enough niche to be interesting, and appeal to a broad enough audience to be active, or if they have some killer app that we haven’t seen before…but Virb (and many many others) appear to do none of the above.

As a result of this complete negligence, the side streets here are complete chaos. The roads are treacherously narrow (more narrow than usual) with solid ice down the middle and slim sets of clear spots for tires on either side of said ice. And then there is the parking situation. Not only have 30% of the available street parking spots disappeared as a result of the snow and ice, but the lack of plowing and salting has created 6 inch ridges of ice that lock the parallel parked cars into place along the curb. To get out (if you can), you need to free your wheels from the ice, and then try and smash over a solid cement-like ridge to get into the road. Given the low ground clearance of most cars, this proves to be an extraordinarily difficult task, and many cars end up half in their spot and half in the street, spinning wheels suspended above the nearest patch of pavement. And again, that’s if you can even get out. Walking around the streets here, it is a chorus of spinning wheels, as dozens of cars helplessly try to extricate themselves. I personally helped to push two cars out yesterday, and gave up on another which has sat stuck in place since the 14th (4 days), unable to get over the ice wall that holds it in place.

Even with my all-wheel drive, things have been dangerous around here. Every time I come and go from my apartment, it is a white knuckle adventure, and my car and those cars around me are at risk.

The City of Boston and those plow contractors that were out on the night of the storm (which literally were riding around with their plows up during the height of the storm) should be ashamed of themselves, and at the very least, there should be some free tow services offered to the legions of stuck people that are only stuck because of the city’s lack of street clearing.

If this was our first “major” storm of the season, shouldn’t we have an ass-pant-load of snow removal budget surplus to…ya know…clean up the snow?