Insurance Basics

Insurance is protection against the occurrence of unlikely events You need standard protection against fire, theft and general liability for injury to third parties. In addition to that, you need liability coverage that relates directly to the professional services that you are selling. For you and your employees, you'll also want an excellent medical plan, life insurance and long-term disability coverage. This introductory article shares essential information about each of these insurance categories. It also includes a few tips about insuring a home office.

Exit Strategies for Owners

After establishing a successful design firm and managing it profitably for a number of years, you may begin to think about moving on to the next step in your career or to the next big thing in your life. This article discusses a number of exit strategies for owners and describes the overall process of valuing and selling a design firm.

Managing In-house Departments

In addition to producing high-quality creative work, in-house design managers face many political and operational challenges. These challenges can rang from understanding the evolving needs of the larger organization and the optimal mix of internal and external resources required to meet those needs to continually justifying the existence of the department. This article can help design managers navigate the corporate landscape and demonstrate their value.

Facilities Planning

It’s important for all designers to have a well-planned studio that’s clean, comfortable and efficient. Space planning becomes an especially important issue if your company is expanding or relocating. A great deal of thought (and, quite often, a lot of money) will go into finding the perfect-sized space, configuring it to facilitate your work, and adding the right creature comforts to make it fun and inspiring.

Agreements Between Designers and Vendors

When making project–related purchases, designers need to protect themselves and their clients by going through a careful purchasing process. In most instances, it's wise to put the details of the agreement with the vendor into writing. This article identifies some of the key issues involved and points you toward industry sources for additional information.

Ethics and Social Responsibility

In discussing ethics and design, there are at least three different levels for us to consider. The first has to do with professional behavior in daily business interactions. The next level deals with specific professional expertise needed in such areas as accessibility, usability, consumer safety and environmental practices. This leads us to the third level, which is about overall professional values—a broader framework of moral principles and obligations in life.

Spec Can Be Beaten

Understanding why clients ask for it is the first step to understanding the powerful alternatives to spec creative

Thriving Lean

This article examines the nine good things that come from lean times, as well as the three bad things. It continues by guiding you on leading employees through lean times, highlights the tactical errors that you might want to avoid, and concludes with three important keys to thriving when times are lean.

Design's Glass Ceiling

Designer's in corporate America face an issue of being misunderstood. Can this problem be overcome?

Common Struggles in Firms

Using a database of 280+ firms in 84 different metropolitan areas across North America, what are the three things that these principals struggle with the most? You might recognize yourself.

A Dozen Common Mistakes

The reason firms fail is not creativity, location, or the marketplace. It's management ability. Here are the most common 12 mistakes we see creative service firms make.

Managing Health and Safety in the Design Studio

Processes used in graphic and commercial art include computer graphics design, illustration, and photo processes, and paste up of mechanicals.

The Design Firm and Its Suppliers

In this age of ever-changing design, what applies to one kind of company may not fit another.

Good Advice for Bad Times

As everyone is painfully aware, the U.S. economy has slowed significantly in recent months. If you earn your living selling design services to corporate clients, you already know that many of them are cutting back existing budgets and delaying the start of new initiatives.