2009 was interesting year for me professionally. After spending a few years as freelancers, I, along with my partner, decided to start our own design studio and marketing agency.
For me, this was born out of the frustration I felt from working alone as well as the quality of projects I was taking on as a freelancers. From our initial conversations, we knew that, with our combined talents, we could create something that would benefit not only ourselves personally, but anyone we decided to work with.
Well, after opening our “doors” in September 2009, it is time for us to look back at our first 4 months and start to establish concrete goals for ourselves in 2010.
Reduce the amount of freelancing work.
Taking on freelance projects in 2009 gave us much needed financial security but left us with what I perceived to be a catch 22.
As David and I began laying the foundations for pixel8, it was necessary for us to continue to take on small freelancing projects from time to time. This gave us much needed financial security but left us with what I perceived to be a catch 22. While this allowed for a continuation of capital inflow, as well as an opportunity to stay sharp, it also took valuable time away from focusing on our company. I tend to work 70-80 hours a week and it becomes detrimental to our brand if half of that time is spent working on anything other than pixel8.
In 2010, it has become imperative to remove the safety net and almost focus exclusively on pixel8. As frightening as this seems to me now, I know this is the only way to completely remove the freelancing title from my name and make the full segue to pixel8 being a design studio.
And trust me, I would love to be able to “rip this bandage off” immediately. But, realistically, I know that this is a gradual goal over the course of the next 12 months. For starters, I have already begun to only consider freelance projects from existing past clients. And this will be on a case by case basis. This will force David and I to spend the necessary time, energy and effort to find projects that benefit the company and not simply us personally.
Establish pixel8 as a company and not simply two freelancers.
David and I are now the co-owners of a company and have to deal with issues that were not pertinent to us as freelancers.
This goal goes hand in hand with the previous one. One of the bigger differences between being a freelancer and a company is the amount of administrative work involved. David and I are now the co-owners of a company and have to deal with issues that were not pertinent to us as freelancers: accountants and corporate taxes just to name two.
I will be the first to admit that this is not where my strengths lie. I prefer to sequester myself to the creative corner of our business, but no longer have that luxury. Beginning now, we have to spend the necessary time to establish how this business will run and eventually become a profitable entity. This will mean establishing quarterly budgets and projections (yawn!) as well as trademarking our brand. None of which I find to be particularly sexy, but imperative for our long term goals.
Take on more challenging and diverse projects.
The temptation, when starting a new company, is to take on every project that comes your way.
We conceived pixel8 as a place for small and start up businesses to come with their large ideas. We then take these large ideas and bring them to life whether on or offline. In 2010, I want us to take on more challenging projects that involve all aspects of the services we offer: from design to development to marketing.
The temptation, when starting a new company, is to take on every project that comes your way. But, if we are to achieve this particular goal, David and I will have to be more selective about the projects we take on; weighing the balances between our company’s gross projections against how the project builds our brand (can you see how the corporate side of my brain is starting to infringe on the creative side?). I believe this will become critical to establishing a multifarious portfolio for pixel8 which will benefit the brand as a whole in the long run.
Be more consistent with blogging.
More than improving our consistency, I want to expand on the topics we cover in the blog.
Our blog is more of an online journal of our thoughts, news, tutorials as well as anything we find inspirational. When we opened the doors on September 9, 2009, I set a personal goal for myself to post at least once a week. I fell well short of this goal in 2009 averaging less than 2 posts per month. Even worse than me is my partner, David (sorry, I have to call you out here). He has yet to write a single post though I know he has some great ideas brewing!
More than improving our consistency, I want to expand on the topics we cover in the blog. This area of the site was also meant to be a place for people to get to know the principle members of the studio, as well as interact with us. And though I enjoy writing design and web related tutorials, I like to think of myself as an individual whose interests run the gamut from sports to movies to music to social issues. This will be more reflected in what David and I write in 2010.
Write more guest blog posts.
This is more of an individual goal than one for pixel8. As I reduce the amount of tutorial related posts on our site, I want to start writing more guest blog posts for other design and development related blogs. I had the privilege of doing so for Little Box of Ideas in 2009 and have already delivered a couple of posts for the new design blog, Design Informer which will be published over the next couple of weeks.
This gives me the ability to share some of my knowledge as well as network with other designers and developers on a global basis. Obviously, pixel8 will benefit from the added exposure, but this goal is more for me to become an interactive part of the community.
Improve the usability experience of the pixel8 website.
Anyone who knows me is well aware that I am always looking to improve on my work. This becomes more evident in the work I’ve done on our website. In fact, though I would love to do so right now, I made a promise to myself that this version of our website will exist for a minimum of one year before I think about a redesign.
With that said, as I begin to focus on user experience as much as visual presentation, there are some upgrades I have already implemented since our launch in September 2009. This is most evident on our portfolio page. I intend on making more of these types of improvements over the course of this year as we continue to grow and I learn more about how our site is being used. I am hoping this will make the redesign process in the Fall of 2010 a bit more seamless.
Conclusion
It is imperative for any company to establish short and long term objectives to measure their success by. If we are able to meet these benchmarks over the course of 2010, I think this will set us up for some of our far reaching goals of finding office space and expanding the team. Right now, we are very excited about the new year with all of the possibilities at our fingertips. Stay tuned and we will keep you posted on our progress as the year goes on.
@Editha,
Thanks so much. I find that writing consistent blog posts will come down to proper time management. At the moment, I have to dedicate a certain day and time to get an idea out and into the blog. Only time will tell if I am successful with that method.
By the way, I’ve been a fan of your beautiful site (and work) since you launched it and look forward to reading more posts from you in the future.
Hi Erik,
What a great post! The best of lucks for this 2010 to pixel8, I hope that you and David can achieve every of those goals. It was interesting that just now I’m also thinking that one of my goals for this year is improve my English… that way I will be able to write good post easily and frequently. It’s been around a month and I really need to write my next blog post so I’m starting right now to not let my blog die. Take care and Happy New Year!!