Heart Internet Blog

Evie Milo is a self employed freelance web designer from her office at home in Kinghorn in Fife, Scotland. Trading under the name of Eskymo New Media Design, (Eskymo for short) Evie showcases her range of services, skills and work from her own little online igloo – namely www.my-igloo.net

We had a chat about how she got started, how she attracts new clients, how she finds inspiration for her design work as well as her favourite sites for getting involved in the web design community.

Could you provide a bit of information about yourself?
About 10 years ago I did a couple of 4 day courses in Dreamweaver and Flash and as I was unemployed at the time, managed to get onto a 6 month New Deal Programme which gave me access to training, a computer, the internet and also the opportunity to try and get a job placement at the end of it all. I worked my socks off learning everything I possibly could and made an animated flash portfolio which landed me a 3 month placement at a big design agency in Edinburgh and led to a full time position. I have since worked for other agencies part time, but eventually decided that I wanted to be my own boss and became a full time freelancer and I’ve not looked back since.

What type of work do you do?
Most of my clients are within the creative sector – artists, designers, photographers and I guess this has come about because of the fact that I have degrees in both photography and art and have always been surrounded by artists and creatives. Other work within my portfolio has come through word of mouth or chance meetings, or through companies finding me on Google – mostly individuals and small to medium businesses. I also do a lot of work for design agencies in Edinburgh and London who like to outsource either the design or the build part of a project and so I get to work on a lot of jobs for really high profile clients. So all in all I have a lot of variety in the work that I do.

The core of my work is web design / build and I work in Fireworks to create visuals and use Dreamweaver to hand code in XHTML, CSS and PHP. I also use Wordpress a lot now, as more and more clients are wanting blogs as well as websites. If a client requests a Content Management System, I get a programmer involved and have a couple of reliable folk I outsource to, but I am also expanding my own skill base on that front and so hope to be able to offer this service myself in the near future.

As well as web design, I also do flash animation and have recently been working with a Fife based illustrator who wanted to bring some of her painted characters to life. Other than exciting projects like that, animation usually takes the form of Christmas E-cards and in October / November I can often be heard to be humming or whistling Christmas carols and songs much to the annoyance of my partner. Christmas always comes early at Eskymo!

What are your most effective methods for attracting new clients?
I attract new clients through the work I’ve done and can honestly say that 95% of new clients come to me because I have been recommended to them. The only cold calling I have ever done is when I initially started out and the thought of it filled me with dread. So I devised a cunning plan and created a short animation entitled ‘Seeking Big Fish’ – you can view it on my website – I placed it in a password protected directory and sent out an illustrated postcard to the companies in Edinburgh I wanted to work with. After checking my website stats to see which of the companies had logged in – each had a different username – I phoned them up to talk business. They all liked my approach and some put my details on file and others became my first ever clients.

What key steps do you tend to follow from start to finish when approaching a new project ?
I have a ‘new client questionnaire’ that I get clients to fill out initially, which covers such things as:

- Whether they have a site already
- What they like / dislike about it
- Who they consider to be their competitors
- Have they got a domain / hosting sorted if they don’t already have a website
- What functionality they need

It gives me a good overview of what is required as well as informing me of their skills and abilities and the level of ‘hand holding’ and ‘jargon free speak’ required – some clients are more technically challenged than others and so you have to take the right approach from the start.

I then formulate from this questionnaire what I believe they need and create site maps, wireframes and ideas/visuals as well as putting together an estimate and suggested time scale for the project. I then have a meeting with the client where we go over every little detail and from that, I can then go back to the office and mock up the final layout for the project. Contracts are signed, design visuals approved, website build commences.

How do you find inspiration and/or motivation to do a job for a client whose industry you have no interest in or experience of?
I’ve had a few projects where I’ve had no understanding or sometimes no interest in the industry sector of particular clients, that’s why the new client questionnaire is so handy – I find out a bit more about them and also their competitors. I then spend some time online doing research into the industry and also have a good look at what their competitors are doing. From that I can get a good feel of what kind of website the client needs and then the design comes quite easily after that. I have my usual forms of inspiration for all the work that I do -

- I use scrapbooks a lot which are filled to the brim with images, typography, patterns, photography, colours that I find interesting – these are all cut out of magazines, newspapers, leaflets.
- Every year I create a new folder within my bookmarks to store links to all the sites I love – whether it’s because of the functionality or the design or the use of typography and I look at these a lot.
- I also find inspiration in film, videos, animations, music and art.

If I’m totally stuck for ideas or I’m having difficulty getting motivated I head down to the beach with the dog and go for a long walk – in fact I find this ‘time out’ so valuable that I take an hour off work every afternoon to do this! It helps keep me focused and motivated and has the added benefit of keeping me fit and getting me out of the house – it’s very easy to forget the outside world exists sometimes, especially if you’re very busy on a job – so a dog that demands to go out for walkies at 3pm everyday is essential for me as a freelancer.

For our customers who run small sites what advice would you give to them when they sit down to design or re-design their site?
To give me a call! Is that too cheeky for an answer?

Have you noticed any changes with the recent economic climate and if so, how have you had to adapt?
I’ve not noticed any change at all, if anything I’m busier. It was very quiet at the beginning of the year, but that’s quite normal. Then there was the usual rush of work before the end of the Tax year with a slight lull in April, but since then I’ve been really busy. So to be honest the so called ‘credit crunch’ hasn’t reached the shores of Eskymo yet.

With what you have learnt over the years, what would you do differently if you were starting out again?
Nothing. Maybe if I knew then what I know now I would’ve been a lot more confident at the start, but I’m happy with the way my business has grown over the years.

Do you have any favourite sites for getting involved with the design community?
One sure favourite is the Web Designer Forum set up by Ben Scott a few years ago. I was the 7th person to join it and the member numbers have grown and grown over the years. If I ever have a coding issue or experience IE rage [similar to road rage, but centred around Internet Explorer and makes you feel like throwing your laptop over a cliff], I head over to the WDF as I know I’m guaranteed a helping hand. It’s a great online community. I’m also a member of Creative Fife which is a local thing and they’re a great source too for networking, funding and information.

Are there any resources on the internet you use that you would recommend for beginners and advanced designers?
Ooh there are tons, but here is a condensed list of favourites in no particular order:

- Great resource for freelancers – http://www.freelanceswitch.com
- Subscribe to this for a month and do all the tutorials – http://www.lynda.com
- Secure and accessible PHP contact form – http://green-beast.com/blog/?page_id=71
- A great place to showcase your work and see work of others  – http://www.w3csites.com/
- A great resource of tons of CSS examples here – http://www.cssplay.co.uk/
- 53 CSS techniques you couldn’t live without – http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2007/01/19/53-css-techniques-you-couldnt-live-without/
- For the absolute beginner – http://www.csseasy.com/
- I hate lists and always come here for help - http://css.maxdesign.com.au/listamatic/
- Attach icons to anything – http://www.hunlock.com/blogs/Attach_icons_to_anything_with_CSS
- Clean up and optimise your CSS – http://www.cleancss.com/
- A good source of cheap stock images – http://www.dreamstime.com/
- A great resource of flash components – http://flashden.net/
- Great tutorials – http://www.gotoandlearn.com/
- Freelance contract template to help you create your own – http://www.webdesignerforum.co.uk/index.php?showtopic=3348

This entry was posted on Tuesday, June 16th, 2009 at 2:01 pm and is filed under Interviews. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.