I recently had the pleasure of meeting Dean Rieck.

You might have run across Dean from articles in DM News, Inside Direct Mail or any number of other publications he’s been in.

As a copywriter, Dean, and people like him, are partners with us as we work to create successful marketing material for our clients.

So I read with interest his Open Letter to Direct Mail Designers.

One thing that stood out to me was this comment:

I’m not trying to win awards. I don’t care whether people are impressed. My only concern is helping the client increase profits. I sincerely hope that is your concern as well.

And hopefully that’s your goal. The best award you can “win” is a happy client who keeps coming back to you because you’re helping him make money.

I’ve told this story before, but if you’re new here… One of my first clients years ago needed a cover for his special report. I got way too fancy with Photoshop. In an e-mail back to me, the client said, “My wife hates it.”

His wife was right. It wasn’t good. The second version was a winner, but I was still embarrassed.

To this day, I cringe when I think about it. But that’s part of the rookie learning experience.

However, there’s no harm in learning from what other more experienced people have learned. So read what Dean has to say and take it to heart.

Your clients don’t really care that you’re a whiz with Photoshop or that you’re Adobe Certified in InDesign. That’s great if you are. But if you can’t apply that to successful direct mail pieces, your client isn’t going to be impressed.

Unimpressed clients hire someone else.

My bank is in a small town as is more-often-than-not pretty quiet and empty when I go in. Today was a such a day.

As I was filling out my deposit slip, is was impossible not to overhear the bank manager at her desk talking to one of her workers. I got the sense it was an employee review. (And if so, it really should have been done out of earshot of customers and the other workers. But then I wouldn’t have this story to tell you.)

The manager was telling the worker that managers want employees that are proactive, not reactive. Managers don’t want to have to micro-manage their staff. And if this worker wanted to get anywhere in her career, she was going to have to be more proactive.

I really wish I could have sat in on that whole conversation because I’m fascinated by the process people use to try to motivate others if they’re under-performing.

So, what does this have to do with you as a designer? Plenty.

One of the reasons clients keep giving me projects is because I’m more than a designer. You can find designers anywhere online these days… and you can pay them next to nothing if you’re willing to look around and take some risks.

But when you’re able to go beyond design… that’s when you find yourself with a full schedule.

A client gave me a testimonial this week and part of it read:

I appreciate your attention to detail, friendly exchange, and willingness to work with creative solutions to the little hiccups that come now and then.

It’s that last part I want you to focus on. When “hiccups” occurred during this project, I didn’t simply throw it back to the client and say, “Well… what do you want to do here?”

Instead, I either put a potential solution in the layout for the client to see, or outlined possible solutions in an e-mail if that was more appropriate.

That’s a part of being proactive… seeing a problem and coming up with a solution.

Reactive designers may not even be aware there is a problem until it’s pointed out by the client. Or, they know there’s a problem but dump it in the client’s lap without any solutions.

That type of designer isn’t as highly valued as the proactive one.

Part of your job as a designer is to solve problems and make your client’s life easier. Dumping problems back in their lap without possible solutions does not make their life easier.

Maybe you could compare that to an auto-mechanic who says, “Yeah… there is definitely a problem with your brakes. Any idea how I should fix it?” Uh… no… that’s why I hired you. You’re the expert!

Another area where you can be proactive is in recommending other marketing vehicles to clients.

For example, a client hires to design a postcard that ask prospect to visit a website for more information. Does the client have a free bonus for those folks that might encourage a better response? Have they created a special landing page for that postcard promotion so they can easily track results?

These questions don’t even necessarily require more design work… it’s simply you helping the client to think things through or consider ideas they might not have come up with on their own.

Proactive leads to a busier schedule. Reactive leads to more free time than you probably want to have in your freelance career.

When I started in design, my knowledge of fonts (or typefaces, if you prefer) didn’t extend much further than Times and Arial.

Now, my work is primarily all about fonts in terms of choosing the right ones and using them properly.

But I ran across something the other day that I wish I had when I started. It’s a nice PDF of font combinations that work well together, especially in subhead/body copy usage.

It is just one person’s opinion, but if you’re starting out and totally lost, one person’s opinion is a big help.

From the list on the BonFX site, I favor the Myriad/Minion combo. I also use Myriad/Garamond a lot. Like any designer, I actually use a number of combos, but those two work really well for the types of projects I do.

A bit of an explanation is in order before I get into today’s topic.

I’m not famous by any stretch of the imagination. But for various reasons, my name is known a bit related to AWAI and their Graphic Design Success program. I’ll tell you why in just a moment.

Because my name is out there in connection with the GDS program, I get contacted a lot by people who are considering buying the program. When I was just starting out, it was no problem to answer questions about my journey to where I am now because I had the time.

For anyone who knows me, I’m not very good with short answers. My feeling is that if someone is sincerely asking for my help, I want to give them all the information I have. Thus, e-mails from me could be very long as I took a lot of time to address all the issues someone would ask me about.

Again, that was no problem when my schedule wasn’t filled with projects. But that’s not the case these days. My schedule is packed, so I can’t get as involved in things like forums or e-mail conversations where I’m addressing the same questions over and over again.

That’s one of the main reasons for this blog… to share when I can based on my schedule and hopefully reach a lot of people all at once. It’s also why I wrote a book about going freelance… to address the same questions I was getting month after month.

That leads us to today’s topic. One of the top questions I get asked is whether AWAI’s Graphic Design Success program is worth the money. I’m going to lay it all out here, then when I get asked the question in the future (or when someone is doing a search related to the GDS program) I can send them here.

Full Disclosure: I’m now connected to AWAI in a variety of ways. I’m an affiliate for the GDS program, I do layout work for them, I’m on their Wall of Fame, I’m listed on their Meet The Pros site for the program, I’ve helped with a little bit of the content of the updated GDS program, I’ve been a teacher at their Bootcamps, etc.

You’ll either read all that and think I’m as biased as anyone can be, which is a bad thing in your mind. Or that I probably have more useful knowledge about the program than lots of other people, which is a good thing. If you think I’m biased, fair enough. I completely respect that.

OK, time to get into it. (See? Look how much I’ve written just as a setup for this topic. Brevity: It’s just not my gift.)

As many of you know, my plan was not to be a graphic designer. It was the writer’s life for me. I outlined all that in the book. But I thought I might make more money as a copywriter who also had some design skills to offer.

I already knew of AWAI because I owned their copywriting program. Because of that, I knew they also sold a graphic design program. So a few years back when a potential job came up that needed both design and copy, I bought the Graphic Design Success program to learn about a topic I knew nothing about. I was fine when it came to writing, but totally clueless about direct market design.

I love to learn new things, so the GDS program was a lot of fun for me. Just about every page was teaching me something new. And when I’m into something new, I really try to throw myself into it. For example, the same day I ordered the GDS program, I made a trip to the bookstore to buy whatever books and magazines might be relevant.

On that note, here’s one of those questions I get: Is there anything out there cheaper than the GDS program that I can buy to learn about direct market design?

Well, when it comes to things that teach “direct market design”, it’s pretty thin. I’ve lost count of the number of clients who have said something like, “I need someone who understands direct market design. I’m tired of getting burned by designers who can do all sorts of fancy stuff, but don’t understand direct marketing.” So it’s certainly a specific skill-set and direct market clients know it.

In this case, I was probably lucky to know nothing about design because all the knowledge I was gaining from the GDS programs was just related to direct market design. In other words, I didn’t have to “un-learn” the types of things they teach in college design programs. It’s all good stuff, just not terribly relevant to direct marketing.

No doubt there are other resources out there, but I haven’t run across much. And it is something I look for. There is a wonderful, out-of-print book called Designing Direct Mail That Sells. And there are good books that cover basics like setting up a grid. But an indepth look at direct mail design principles? A bit of an untapped market if you ask me.

There are books covering advertising, but they’re more of what we call the “Madison Avenue” type of advertising. It’s the type of stuff that is harder to track results for (something direct marketers hate) and seemingly designed more to get awards for the ad agency than actually making sales. That last point may be a bit harsh, but that’s just my opinion.

So I’m not saying there’s nothing else out there that covers this specific topic. I’m just saying there’s not much that I’ve run across or that covers things so thoroughly.

Another “sub-question” is this: Does the program teach you how to use the software direct market designers use? Not really. Nor could it if you stop and think about it. Some DM designers focus in different areas such as print, illustration, website design, etc.

So consider all the software one might use: InDesign, QuarkXPress, Photoshop, Illustrator, Dreamweaver, Expressions, Flash, CorelDraw, Painter, Publisher. And then there are programs no longer made, but still on plenty of hard-drives and valid tools for DM designers: Adobe GoLive, MS FrontPage, Freehand and many more.

No program could cover every possible title someone might have. And if it did, you’d need a forklift to move the binder around.

(Quick Note: You don’t need to learn every piece of software out there. I don’t want you thinking you have to be an expert in everything. You don’t.)

My suggestion to people in this case is to get a subscription to Lynda.com. It’s not cheap, but for one price you get access to every program they cover and they cover a lot!

Here’s another question I get: I have some design background, so is the program just going to teach me things I already know? Sorry, but I have no idea. Even if I had the time to hear about what you know, I wouldn’t know how well you know it. Know what I mean? (But you can solve that dilemma on your own. I’ll mention how in a minute.)

For a short time, I taught a continuing education class on copywriting at a local college. You teach the same content to a room full of people and some are going to take away more than others. So, for example, perhaps you did take a course on design, but I have no idea how much of that you really have a good grasp on.

Finally, when people tell me they’re hesitant to buy the program because of the cost, I remind them that AWAI offers a 30-day, money-back guarantee. So you buy it, look through it, and if it isn’t for you ask for your money back. I know getting a refund for anything can be a little inconvenient, but if you’re not willing to exert some effort to get started in a new career, maybe you need to reassess whether you’re ready for a new career.

Starting a new career is a challenge. I’ve worked hard to get where I am now. I didn’t just buy the program and wait for something to happen. I soaked up everything I could from it while at the same time picking up information from any other source I stumbled across. Then, I applied that knowledge to what clients need. But at least with the GDS program, I had a solid foundation to build upon.

Notice how I italicized ‘applied’ in that last paragraph. I can’t tell you how many people I’ve talked to who read everything in sight, but never apply it. They confuse information gathering with true progress. Part of making progress is gathering information. But if you never apply it, what’s the point?

There’s a popular saying: “Knowledge is Power”. But that’s wrong. Some will say the use of knowledge is power. That’s wrong, too. It’s the use of accurate knowledge that’s power. Of course, that doesn’t work as nicely as a pithy saying. And in our case, power should probably be restated as career advancement.

In other words, you could buy the GDS program (or something else) and read it from beginning to end. But if you don’t apply it, it’s not going to do you any good.

I know I’ve sounded like a shill for the program. But here’s the bottom line for me: The program got me started on the right foot and changed my life for the better. Simple as that. I’m writing this in the comfort of my own home-studio, living where I want to be living, working on projects that I enjoy, not projects that some boss tells me I have to do. I set my own schedule and while I have those moments where I’m working long hours, it really is my choice to do that.

I have bad days where it seems things aren’t going right, but they’re few and far between.

I’ll end with my favorite quote from a freelancer in Daniel Pink’s book Free Agent Nation:

“Working when, where, how much, under what conditions and for whom I want.”

As they say, That’s the life for me!

(Now, for your own good, get up and stretch your legs a bit.)

I’ve grown to dislike the phrase “thinking outside the box.” When I was at Microsoft, that phrase was tossed around constantly, especially when it came to the type of people we wanted to hire. (“Mike, when you’re interviewing people for our team, make sure they can think outside the box.”) Like any over-used phrase, hearing it over and over begins to annoy you after a while and it loses it’s impact.

But the phrase popped back into my head recently as I was reading an article about creativity. The article made reference to that classic 9 Dots puzzle which literally forces you to think outside the box to find the solution.

Like most people, I’ve known the solution to that puzzle for a long time. But for whatever reason, the article I was reading, along with the puzzle it referenced and the discussion about “thinking outside the box”, hit me in a fresh way.

As designers (or copywriters) it seems a luxury to have any decent amount of time to really think through a new project before digging into it. Most clients, especially in the direct market arena, need it yesterday.

But I’ve been making an extra effort to come up with at least one “outside the box” idea for a project. It doesn’t mean I’ll use any of the ideas I come up with. I just want to enforce the habit of thinking of possibly off-the-wall ideas for each project I do.

Let me give you a simple example. I’ve been working on some sales letters for various clients. On a recent one, I tried to think of something different to do. The first thought was to lay out the sales letter horizontally. In other words, instead of a traditional 8.5 x 11 inch sales letter layout, why not make it 11 x 8.5 inches?

Well, here’s why not: It’s a rotten idea!! And it didn’t take more than a second to figure that out. But that’s OK. The exercise is to come up with ideas. Some will work, some won’t.

If you’ve ever been a part of a group brainstorming session, you understand the goal. Everyone tosses out any idea that comes to mind without filtering it for fear that other people will think it’s a dumb idea. Smart brainstormers know that a bad idea can be just the nudge that someone else in the group needs to mold it into a better idea.

As a freelancer typically working alone, you’ll need to not only come up with some “dumb” ideas, but also be the one to take the time to shape them into something that will work.

While the idea of a landscape layout sales letter wasn’t good, the idea could work for something like an annual report. In fact, as I investigated it a bit, there are quite a number of annual reports that have been done in landscape mode.

So my idea wasn’t going to fly for the sales letter, but it was an idea worth filing away for another type of project. The point here is to get yourself into the habit of coming up with at least one new idea (if not more) for your projects no matter how much of a rush you’re in. Then see how it might work into current or future projects.

Slowly but surely, I’m working Adobe CS4 into my workflow. I think I’ve mentioned before that for CS3 users, I don’t necessarily view CS4 as a “must have” upgrade. Certainly there are lots of useful new features, but if your finances are tight, I wouldn’t break the bank to get it.

That said, there are some new things in CS4 that designers will find valuable. One such feature is Share My Screen. This works in conjunction with Adobe’s ConnectNow feature which you can read all about here.

In a nutshell, you can go into a CS4 application, such as InDesign, and choose File | Share My Screen. This connects you to the ConnectNow site and provides you with a URL to give to other people so, via their browser, they can see what’s on your screen.

I did a quick test on my own, sharing my main monitor while watching what was happening in a browser window on my second monitor. (And I was happily surprised to see the ConnectNow app was aware I had two monitors and asked me which one I wanted to share.)

The whole thing was pretty slick. Whatever I was doing on my main monitor was showing up in the browser window.

There are actually a number of services for screen sharing, so it’s not like Adobe has come up with an original idea. But for us designers who spend most of our time in Adobe products, being able to launch this feature straight from the CS4 apps is convenient (and free, at least at this moment).

And while I didn’t confirm this myself, from what I read on one of Adobe’s blogs, the URL that ConnectNow provides to you to give to other people is always the same based on your Adobe account name. (And Adobe accounts are free.)

I probably don’t need to tell you how you could use this feature, but what the heck… you’re here now, right?

There have been times where I’ve been creating a simple website for a client and it gets to be a mild pain making changes, then uploading them for the client to see in a browser. Or zipping the files to e-mail so they could see the complete site offline. Far easier to share out your screen and collaborate with client live if time is tight.

Or maybe you’re wanting input from a number of people at once. There’s nothing worse than getting conflicting feedback from everyone involved and having to somehow incorporate everyone’s vision into the design. Perhaps it would be easier to get everyone together online and let them agree on changes while you incorporate them right there on the spot as they’re watching. If everyone thinks blue would be a better color than green, you could change it and they could all decide for themselves right on the spot.

Heck, even sharing out your screen with another designer can be useful if you’re trying to show them something that would take far too long to explain in an e-mail.

Again, it’s not that there’s anything new going on here with screen sharing. It’s just nice that the feature is so easy to use within the programs I’m already using every day.

Before today’s Quick Tip, a quick note about my last post on chamber networking events and why they’re a waste of your time. I’ll talk more indepth on this in the future, but for now I’ll just say how interesting it was to see who was hitting this site.

Boeing hit the site in under 48 hours. (You’ll recall I mentioned Boeing on how they’re probably pretty smart about how they network… a lesson we could all learn.) Then there was a chamber in MN. No doubt they’re wanting to publish my thoughts in the next issue of their newsletter.

What I’ll be talking about in the near future is tracking visits to your site and why you should be doing it.

OK, on to today’s topic…

Some years ago, when CDs were becoming popular, I really wanted to buy an import CD from the U.K. But it was a bit pricey for a high school kid on a tight budget. My mom said, “Don’t worry… it will be there when you have the money.”

Turns out, she was wrong. The CD went out of print and didn’t become available again for another decade or so. Suddenly, I had the money, but the CD wasn’t available. (And this was pre-Internet, so finding it used somewhere in the world wasn’t an easy option.)

I’ve relived that experience in my business when trying to find information on a website I bookmarked only to find that information is gone. Don’t buy into the myth that once something is on the Internet, it never goes away.

If you’re anything like me, you buzz around the Internet, finding great information for your business, and then bookmark it for later. More often than not, that works fine. But Murphy’s Law says the bit of information you want most is the bit that someone is going to remove.

I solved this by making PDFs of sites that have great information I may want to refer to later.

In Adobe Acrobat, this is really simple and there are multiple ways to do accomplish it. Here’s how I do it:

1. Copy the URL of the site you’re wanting to save.

2. In Acrobat, go to File | Create PDF | From Web Page (I’m using Acrobat 8 Professional)

3. Paste the URL in the URL field and click Create. I don’t bother with any other settings beyond the default, but feel free to play around with it.

4. Once the PDF is create it, save it with a descriptive filename and place it in a folder that you have easy access to.

This has solved a couple of problems. The most important is “disappearing information” I talked about earlier. The second is an out-of-control list of bookmarks.

So my suggestion is to either take my steps, or come up with your own, and start archiving some of this information yourself so you can find it when you need it.

I’ve had a strange experience happen to me a couple of times regarding corrupted files that were sent by clients.

By putting on my Sherlock Holmes hat, I came up with what I think is the solution, but I still can’t be sure I’m 100% correct.

But knowing this solution may save you, and the people you’re working with, a lot of grief.

I was working on a lift note for a sales letter package. The lift note was going to be written by a third party and include their logo (and EPS file) and the author’s signature (a TIF file).

The third party sent the files to my client and the client forwarded the files over to me, all via e-mail.

The trouble was, I couldn’t open the files. Illustrator griped that the files weren’t in a format it could read. I know Illustrator can read EPS and TIF files, so something was up. I tried opening the files in Photoshop as well, but no luck.

Well, it’s not impossible for files to get corrupted, so I contacted my client to report back to the third party that there was a problem so we could get a resend.

On the resend, again through my client, the third party said they were using Illustrator CS3 which is what I use. They said the files were fine on their end. But again, I got the same error messages when opening the files.

I started to think of workarounds… maybe they could send the files in their native Illustrator format (an AI file) or maybe send them as JPGs or PDFs just to see if those would work.

But then I had a “lightbulb over the head” moment. I asked my client to ask the third party to e-mail the files directly to me so my client wouldn’t have to forward them.

The third party did just that and the files opened on my end without a hitch.

So what was the difference?

When I got the forwarded files from my client, there were three files… the two graphic files plus a text file from some sort of automated virus checker. The text file simply said the files had been scanned and there were no problems.

But when I got the files directly from the third party, there was no anti-virus text message.

My theory is that my client had some sort of anti-virus software on their e-mail server. The third party sends an e-mail with attachments, the client’s e-mail server scans those files, then passes them on to my contact.

Had my contact saved the attachments, then started a new e-mail to me and reattached the saved files, I think we would have been fine.

Yet somehow, the process of forwarding that e-mail after the attachments had been scanned corrupted them so that I wasn’t able to open them.

It’s just a theory on my part, but I had something similar happen a long time back where there seemed to be some corruption when files were forwarded. At that time, I didn’t consider any type of anti-virus software getting in the way.

I tell you this story just in case you run into something similar. Maybe that will save you some grief and lots of back-and-forth with your client. (And this type of thing usually happens when you’re right up against a deadline.)

Note: I suspect that between an extremely heavy workload and the holidays, this will be my last post of 2008. If that’s the case, next year’s first post will be both my 100th and the second anniversary of this blog. I’ve got something in mind for that post and I’ll tell you now that your local Chamber of Commerce isn’t going to like it. It’s a topic I’ve touched on before in other places, but I’m going to expand on it in this space where I can rattle on without anyone editing me.

A couple of months ago, I was reading a note by InDesign guru David Blatner. He was raving about a portable, dual-sided sheetfed scanner he was using.

While I have a single-sided flatbed scanner, it’s a pain to have to manually put things down one page at a time. Thus, I wasn’t using it that often.

So I’ve always been on the lookout for a good sheetfed option. There are tons of multi-function devices that do scanning, copying and faxing, but I didn’t care to go that route. I don’t need another bulky item for my work space.

So after the glowing review by David and the supporting glowing reviews by the folks at Amazon.com, I took a chance and bought the scanner David was talking about.

Wow! Really… Wow!

(I’ve put both the Mac and PC versions of the scanner in my Amazon Store in the Hardware category.

For someone using a huge flatbed all these years, moving to a simple sheetfed that only measures about 11 inches wide by 5 inches deep completely changed how I manage my swipe file.

First, a word on swipe files. Quoting Clayton Makepeace’s Direct Response Glossary (which you should bookmark), a swipe file is, “A collection of successful promotions, ads and sales letters you use to get ideas from.”

Every successful copywriter and designer I’ve met has a swipe file. So naturally, I started building mine long ago. (One of the shortcuts to success is to see what the successful people in your field are doing and do it, too.)

But what you find with a swipe file is that all those promotions take up space. It’s not long before you can have a file cabinet overflowing with this stuff. And if you’re a little sloppy about how you categorize the material, things get hard to find to the point where your swipe file is useless to you. You’re simply not going to use it often if you have trouble finding what you’re looking for.

Digitizing your swipe file helps to solve that. Mind you, I still keep some hard-copy material. And some of the larger size promotions are almost impossible to scan with a sheetfed.

But the majority of my swipe file is now digitized and can fit on a single DVD for backup purposes.

Now I want to go beyond telling you that I have a digital swipe file. I want to tell you exactly how I manage all the information.

1. On my hard drive, I created categories for various types of marketing material. I currently have 40 categories including obvious ones like sales letters, magalogs and envelopes to less obvious categories like tables of content, lift notes and subscription cards. I’m pretty much scanning anything that a designer might need to design because you never know what a client might need you to do.

2. With the scanner I’m using (and most scanners for that matter), the result is automatically created as a PDF, color or B/W depending on the setting you choose.

3. If there is some personal information on the material I’m scanning, like my name and address, I’ll open the PDF in Acrobat and use the Redaction function to remove it. If you don’t own Acrobat, no problem… you can use a marker to cover up the information before you scan. (Or, maybe you don’t care if the info is there.)

4. The PDF is given a file name starting with a code (like SL for sales letter) and the name of the product or company that the material is talking about. From there, it’s placed into the appropriate folder on my hard drive.

5. When I want to do a quick scan of my swipe file, I use Adobe Bridge. You can use something else but the key is that you want to use something that will show you an actual thumbnail of the material, not just the generic Adobe PDF icon. For example, if you were looking at a folder full of photographs, you’d want to see thumbnails of the actual photos, not some generic JPEG icon. By using something like Bridge, it makes it very easy for me to zero in on what I’m looking for.

And that’s basically it. By making it so easy to see categories of my swipe file at a glance, I’m much more likely to use my swipe file. And more importantly, I’m much more likely to find what I need quickly.

A side benefit to having a scanner so easy to use (it doesn’t have to “warm up” like my flatbed, so it’s ready when I’m ready) is that I digitized important articles and tutorials in all the magazines that were piling up on my shelves.

Here’s a perfect example…

I’ve been a subscriber to Photoshop User Magazine for a number of years. Each issue has great tutorials and tips. But after a few years, there’s no way you’re going to remember where a specific tutorial is if you can even remember about a tutorial you saw a couple of years ago anyway.

And, frankly, do you really need to save all the content in each magazine you get? Do you think you’ll want to re-read product reviews for things that aren’t even available any more? Unlikely.

So what I did was go through each magazine and pull out only the things worth keeping, mainly the tutorials and tips. Then, I can scan them and put them in folders on my hard-drive with descriptive file names that make it clear what the article/tutorial is about.

When you tear out only the articles worth saving long-term and compare it to what parts of the magazine you don’t really need to save, you’ll be amazed at the space you free up in your studio. I was awestruck by the pile “to be scanned” versus the pile “to be recycled.”

So that’s how I manage that aspect of my business. That scanner is one of the best purchases I’ve ever made for my business. If it broke down, I’d immediately buy a new one without giving it a second thought. If you have a swipe file that isn’t digitized, you might want to consider finding a scanner that works best for your needs, and then start scanning.

This idea comes under the category of, “I wish someone had recommended this to me earlier.” So if you’re at the “earlier” part of your career, I’m recommending it now.

Normally, when I’m doing a cover design for a book or special report, my intention is to come up with about three different designs for the client to choose from. Sometimes the covers are radically different from each other. Other times the client has been pretty clear what he’s looking for, so the cover options will be slight variations of each other.

After a number of jobs like this, you’re left with a lot of unused ideas that the client rejected. Of course, rejection of an idea doesn’t mean the idea was bad, even if the client said something to the effect of, “Yuck!”.

It didn’t take too many jobs before I had lots of left-over ideas. If I had been smarter, I would have organized these rejected ideas. But it actually took a couple of years before it dawned on me that I could probably save time if I kept all the rejected designs in one file to pull from when necessary.

So let’s say you design a cover for an eBook and give the client three very different options. The client picks a favorite and that leaves you with two unused covers.

If you’re comfortable with the client, try to probe why they liked one and not the others. In some cases there might not be any logical reason, but there’s a chance that you might be able to fix something in the rejected covers so they stand a better chance of being chosen by another client in the future.

Now, take those rejected covers and place them in a new file in your layout program whether it’s InDesign, QuarkXPress or Microsoft Publisher. I call my file “Cover Ideas.”

Every time you have rejected cover ideas, copy and paste the layouts into your “Cover Ideas” file. The next time you need a cover design, start first in your “ideas” file to see if something there is either a perfect fit, or could be a perfect fit with a little modification.

I’ve had a number of instances where a rejected design by one client was a design that put another client over the moon with happiness that I had “nailed it.” Go figure.

Believe me, it might not seem worthwhile now if you’ve only got a couple of jobs under your belt, but I’ve been doing layout for a few years now and even in that short amount of time you quickly build up a lot of rejected designs.

Trying to pull these ideas from individual files scattered across your hard-drive is a pain. When you’re in a hurry to put together a layout, you’re going to be thrilled that you can look in just one place for ideas that might just be the perfect fit.

Here’s another piece of advice… don’t go too nuts with presenting a lot of cover ideas to clients. There were times early on when I was on a roll and ended up with about 8 or 9 ideas to present to the client. That probably wasn’t a good idea, but it’s a common mistake for beginners. You’re almost desperate to ensure the client has something that they’ll like, so you throw in everything you can come up with. But, in most cases I believe you’ll find that clients don’t want that many to choose from.

I think an ideal number is 3 or 4… maybe 5 if you really feel you have solid ideas.

By the way, there are times when a client says, “Yuck!”, or something close to it, and they’re actually right… the design is bad. One of my earliest jobs was designing a cover for an individual’s eBook. Being the ultimate design rookie, I designed a cover that probably incorporated just about every Photoshop filter available.

I sent it off to the client and a short time later got an e-mail back that simply said, “My wife hates it.” That was it… end of e-mail. To cut a long story short, the second version of the cover, after I asked better questions about what the client wanted, was a winner. (Remember, the copy is the star in direct market mail. Don’t let your design overwhelm the copy.)

And the fact was, the client’s wife was right. The initial design was one that should have been hated by all who dared lay eyes on it. But that’s part of the process as you’re just starting off… you’ll design some clunkers. Don’t get too down about it. Learn where you went wrong and keep moving forward. You will get better at it.