Wikipedia defines illusion as:

“A distortion of the senses, revealing how the brain normally organizes and interprets sensory stimulation. While illusions distort reality, they are generally shared by most people.”

Illusion tricked our brain and eyes when seeing something that is not really there or something that is not really happening.

Benefits of Photos with Illusions: Exercise and Entertainment

It exercises our minds.

Optical illusions make our minds sharper for it makes us think on what can be on that picture or how could that happened. Optical illusions improve our analytical thinking and it also stimulates our right brain. This is good for most people, for seldom we see left-brainers.

It gives entertainment to viewers.

I always find myself caught up with the entertainment that these illusions give. These give enjoyment to viewers when thinking on what could that happen or what you see on the picture.

Optical Illusion

I consider optical illusion as an art. It amazes me how forms, lines, colors, and brightness or contrast are put together to form one illusion that deceives our optical mechanism or gives us those sleepless nights thinking on what could possibly be on that picture. But did you know that before optical illusions are manually created by men, it is already happening naturally? Yes, it does. Not only nature uses illusions, even military is using this as one of their tactics.

Optical Illusions in Nature

Optical illusions come naturally. For animals, they use illusions to survive where they put their bodies in camouflage so their predators or enemies won’t see them easily.

I have here some pictures to show you how animal camouflage works.

See how the lion blended in the African grasses? Lions does this when they hunt another animal for food.

There is a walking stick that is leaned under the grass. Have you noticed it?

A stingray that hides itself in the sand.

Mirage is a good example of natural optical illusion. See the picture below.

Mirage Over East China Shore

Mists rising on the shore created an in-depth image of a city, with modern tall buildings, wide city streets including cars as well as crowds of people all clearly visible. The city of Penglai had been soaked by two days of rain before the rare weather phenomenon occurred. In Penglai, on the tip of Shandong Peninsula, many mirages have been recorded throughout the history. Because of that city is also known as a dwelling place of the gods.

Optical Illusion Used by Military

A good tactic military thought of is to use colors to blend with the nature foliage.

Image by: Jean Francois

Now, let me present to you optical illusion photos that are created by men. Be amazed and have fun!

Take a look at this photo. What do you see? A rabbit or a duck?

How about this one? Can you figure out on what is in the picture?

Are you giving up already? To find out the answer, click here.

Try looking at this Jesus’ photo for 15–30 seconds. After that, take a look at a wall while blinking your eye. What did you see?

The original image forms a giant bird.

When you put it upside down, the picture would be a guy catching a big fish.

Here is a picture of an island that when turned upside down, you will see a crater.

Island

Crater

Look at this picture, count the faces you will see.

What do you see? A letter E or just black lines?

SUV Illusion

Try measuring the SUVs and be amazed that their sizes are the same but appears to be different.

Camels in the Night Illusion

The palm trees appear to be a camel-shaped.

Black Dots

Try counting the black dots you may found below.

Lucky Clover

See how the circles move?

Double Picture Illusion

Did you see a couple in an intimate position? According to research, when children are the ones seeing this they see dolphins not the intimate couples for they still do not have experience or memory regarding the affair.

Elephant Leg Illusion

Can you count the number of legs this elephant has? Is it four? How about five, six? Or seven maybe? Hmm…

Spiral Illusion

You are seeing a spiral, right? Actually, what includes on the picture are circles put together. And that creates the spiral.

Anamorphic Illusions

Photographers, painters and designers are now using anamorphosis to give attraction to their photographs. Mostly, they use pencils to draw or other drawing tools to create such photo.

Wikipedia defines Anamorphosis as:

A distorted projection or perspective requiring the viewer to use special devices or occupy a specific vantage point to reconstitute the image. “Ana – morphosis” comes from the Greek words meaning “formed again.”

Anamorphosis is commonly used in road markings where they put wordings and arrows in a position where drivers can easily read and understand them. Take a look this example, even you are still far you will still see the arrow and words. And as you are getting near of it, they become bigger and more readable.

Take a look at the examples below. Note that these are not edited or modified using a photo editor software.

Julian Beever is a famous creator of anamorphic illusion photos. Below are his great works of 3D anamorphic illusion photos.

Sidewalk Drawing

This is an example of an anamorphic illusion created by Julian Beever. This sidewalk drawing was drawn in a special distortion in order to create an impression of 3 dimensions when seen from one particular viewpoint.

Breakfast

An anamorphic photo illusion drawn in a large size of paper.

Portable Computer

Another photo illusion in anamorphosis. A laptop drawn on the floor of The Strand, London.

Christmas

A floor painting where Santa Clause is caught by policemen going inside a chimney.

To find out more anamorphic illusion drawings of Julian Beever, click here.

Lava Burst

The photo you see below belongs to Edgar Muller’s pavement art.

A lava burst was drawn on a street way. Very realistic.

3D Cars Pavement Art

A chalk drawing of a cracked floor where a car fell and flattened and damaged another car.

Can You Believe These Are Flat?

All of these are drawn in 3D using a pencil.

Happy Kettles

Notice the face of the kettles? Those are just reflections of the stove. Cool, isn’t? One technique to take a anamorphic photo is to get its perfect angle to make it look good, and this one is a best example.

Seeing two lighters? The right one is drawn and the left one is real.

BONUS: Dual-Meaning Typography

With the name itself, a dual-meaning typography offers a double meaning. This is one way where designers put an art in communicating to viewers. Combining art and communication is one great way to achieve your purpose of communication. These kinds of typography are funny and it really makes you think on what can be the double meanings of such.

To be tricked then impressed, I have here photos that will represent dual-meaning typography that I am telling you.

A mirror reflection with the word, teach and learn in the reverse side of it.

One reason that I enjoy photo illusions is the  Try to guess the two words on each row.

Did you guess that the word is BEHAVE or BELIEVE? Actually, the word is believe where the missing letters form the word, LIE. And those two words are somewhat related, right?

What do you understand written on the Green colored lines? The figure formed on the white lines is a hint.

I like this one. A mind once opened never closes/loses. Be open-minded.

Sources: Best Optical Illusion Websites

Want more optical illusion photos? You may browse some on these websites below.

1. Mighty Optical Illusions

A website that is all about optical illusions. You can also submit your own photos of optical illusions on this website.

2. Eyetricks

You can find optical illusions and also different mind-teasing games and photos on this site.

3. OptIllusions

A website where you can find lots of photos of optical illusions grouped into different categories for your convenience in searching.

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The next step is not so simple.  Finding the right content and figuring out exactly what the people talking about you need and want is critical to PR success today. Content analysis is a traditional PR skill, but data mining is not.  Building social graphs has not been part of our PR practice.

I don’t know about you, but I have not studied math since high school. Most PR people I know are much more right brain than left brain oriented. It’s the nature of our work.

But as ReadWriteWeb (RWW) said:

“People need to develop habits of thinking about this stuff. They need someone to explain it to them. They need to develop an easy-to-use vocabulary set for understanding data mining and social graphs and communicating about it. Right now ‘social network analysis’ just doesn’t trip off the average person’s tongue.”

The online conversations are a constant stream of content – a fire hose of data. What you need are the actionable insights.

• Who talks about you?
• Who talks about your competitors?
• What do they say?
• Is it positive or negative?
• Who are they connected to?
• What communities do they belong to?
• What does their social graph look like?
• What kind of content do they share, and with whom?

95% of new media (social media Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter) users expect companies or brands to have a presence on those sites. 89% expect those companies to interact with them in those social spaces. (Cone Research)

Less than 30% are doing so. (SNCR, UMass 2010 Adoption Surveys)

Engaging with people online requires that you know who they are, where they gather, who they talk to, how they feel about you and your products, and what kind of information or content they’re looking for and might be motivated to share with others in their social sphere.

And once you know that you can respond appropriately.

It might not be simple, but I agree with RWW – this is something we need to think about, talk about and start to include in our PR strategy.

Originally published at The Proactive Report

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What did your customer remember after using your product? Will they share their memories with others? Designing great products for people means ensuring three kinds of memorable moments to happen.

Do your users remember your product or service? What do they think of when they do? How long are those memories of your product or service going to last? Are these people likely to remain as loyal customers?

These questions of user memory matter as much as questions of user experience. The goal is to build long-term relationships with people who love your product, yet product designers spend a disproportionate amount of time focusing on fleeting moments of present experience without considering which ones will have the greatest impact that stands the test of time.

When you consider that most of your users will remember just a few moments from their initial experience with a product, you can see the scale of the opportunity for focusing on the craft of designing and engineering for memorable moments. These memories determine how users think about the products they’ve used, what they’ll tell other people about those products, and how they’ll recall the products in the future when thinking about using the products again. Let’s take a closer look at how people remember.

Right Brain is Right Now

Meet a user’s right brain. It’s the brain that interacts with a product right now, and again now, and once again just now. The right brain is actively experiencing the present moment, taking in all sorts of sensory input together, moving through the product in moments that last for one, two, or three seconds each. It thinks in pictures and acts on intuition and drives moment-by-moment decisions.

A whole host of tools such as eye tracking, heuristic evaluation, and direct observation let product designers watch the right-brain user in action and find rich insights that help smooth user movement through the product experiences.

The right brain is a crucial part in creating memorable moments. The peak experiences of the right brain will travel over to left brain through a right-to-left handoff. The left brain will organize these peak experiences into a potential memory.

Left Brain Takes the Leftovers

Here’s a user’s left brain. It’s taking the handoff from right brain one item at a time, nice and neat. It approaches things methodically, is all about the past and the future, and loves arranging things into patterns. It thinks in words and rationalizes the decisions the right brain wants to make.

The tool chest of UX design mostly focuses on analytical means of helping the left side of the brain do what it wants (information architecture, design patterns, analytics, etc.). But we tend to neglect the left brain’s craving for memorable moments.

The remembering left brain holds onto memorable transitions and peak moments. It’s heavily influenced by the way things end. Behavioral economist Daniel Kahnmann argues that endings are one very important element we don’t attend to nearly enough. They can ruin an entire experience or save a bad experience by adding a positive spin to the end.

Turn Experience Into Memory

Kahnmann’s work, and research in the field and behavioral economics generally, show that there are three kinds of experience capable of turning the immediate, present experience (experience-in-the-moment) into a potent memory. These three types of experience provide a framework for the design and engineering of more memorable products.

1. Transitions

Giving users one sensation and then transitioning to another causes them to experience change. Providing a visceral effect that signals one thing ending and another beginning you help natural left- and right-brain triggers to fire and a memory to form.

Face Time on iPhone: That initial call transition to the high quality video of the person on the other side is extremely memorable. This is something you’ll be mentioning to your coworkers the next day.

Google Maps: Remember the first time you entered your address into Google Maps and clicked “Street View”? That transition from a 2D map to a 3D video like image of your house is forever ingrained in your mind now.

Photoshop: Think back to the very first time you Photoshoped yourself into a funny picture. Remember the transition from the original to the photoshoped image? People remember this moment so well that “photoshop” is now used as a verb in ordinary day to day conversations.

TurboTax: Remember how you put some numbers into a form and saw your tax return from the government jump up and go from red to green? That transition is how you remember this product.

Each of these interactions was memorable and reinforced the core value of each product. When was the last time you considered how specific changes and transitions in your product impact what people remember about it?

2. ‘Wow’ Moments

Thinking about ‘wow’ moments forces you to acknowledge that very little of what you create for a user will ever be remembered. They will, however, remember the peak experiences they have and refer back to them to sum up their feelings about your product. At the end of the day, when you strip away all the detail, what are the ‘wow’ moments you’ve left your users with?

Zappos: Ever order shoes at 6pm on Zappos.com thinking it’ll take at least three days to get them and then actually get them the next day? Wow! Imaging how many people you’d tell about that experience.

Wii Controller: Remember the first time you played baseball on Nintendo Wii? How hard did you swing the controller? How many people did you tell about it? This is what you think about when try to remember the Wii.

TiVO: Remember fast forwarding through commercials for the first time on TiVO? Remember recording TV shows when you were away? How many times did you tell others about that?

Apple: Ever shake your iPod nano and notice that is changed to the next song in queue? Wow! You just unlocked a new feature. This makes you wonder what else this thing does which you don’t know about. Each of these gives a user a story-worthy moment they are likely to pass along to friends and family and readily remember when deciding whether to return.

3. Endings

It’s so easy to close a browser tab or window that we rarely think of the very last impression we leave users with once they’re done with our site. But endings can be remarkable or disastrous. They can put a positive spin on an otherwise negative experience or take a good experience and ruin the whole thing.

Good ending: You setup a nice visual goal in Mint.com and end your session knowing that it’s there and you can measure your progress against it. Later on when you meet your goal you get a nice “You have met your goal!” email with a great visual. You will surely remember these moments.

Bad ending: You setup a nice visual goal in Mint.com and never see any confirmations. It’s hard to check your progress. You never get any confirmation that you have fulfilled your goal.

Good ending: You buy your airline ticket on Delta’s website and get the itinerary right on your smartphone.

Bad ending: You are ready to buy your airline ticket on Delta’s website. You fill out all the details and in the middle of the transaction you get a “Forbidden 404″ error. You now don’t know whether you were charged or not. You’re lost.

Good ending: You ask a question on Yahoo! Answers, get quick answers and select the best answer as winner. At the end you are happy to get the information you needed.

Bad ending: After one week of asking your question on Yahoo! Answers you get very open-ended responses that don’t answer your question. You probably won’t be coming back to the site again.

About the author(s)

Jeremy is a partner & design lead at ZURB. He spends his time setting up problems that people care about and then solving them in ways that work for businesses and delight customers.

Dmitry is the Marketing lead at ZURB, a 12-year old design consultancy with 100 start-ups under its belt. He spends his time helping ZURB achieve its quest for world domination one day at a time.

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There are sweeping generalizations and stereotypes for each of us, some true, some not. What follows is some insight (albeit slightly tongue-in-cheek) into what makes us tick in the hopes of creating- or furthering- a symbiotic relationship between writers and designers.

Give feedback to us as you’d like it to be given to you

This kind of goes along with the whole “do unto others” saying that gets thrown around a lot. Feeback is great…everyone needs it. And like designers, most of us are not overly-sensitive. But throwing something back to us with a huffy “yaaa…NO” doesn’t get either of us anywhere. And it makes you look like a jerk. So if you’re the point-of-contact with the client and have the clearest idea about what they want copy-wise, steer us in the right direction…with a smile.

We aren’t basing characters on you for our “All-American Novel” (all of the time)

Ha! This is my favorite one because I’ve been asked this a number of times. So many times, in fact, that when I came across a “Be careful or you’ll end up in my novel!” t-shirt I had to pick it up. The truth is, like you, we draw much of our inspiration from everyday life. So if we happen across you, and you happen to be a colorful character (whether positive or not), your “type” may crop up in a future piece. Have no fear, though. Names and identifying characteristics will be changed to protect the innocent-and the guilty.

We appreciate flexibility

This one can be a bit tricky. We know your work is pretty labor-intensive at times and involves many moving pieces. But you sometimes change things after the fact, right? It’s the same with us. There are times when we write something and once you put it into the design, it just doesn’t feel or sound right to us anymore and we want to tweak it. As long as we’re not over-doing it, please grin and bear it.

We don’t know HTML and chances are we don’t have Photoshop so everything we do that is picture or graphics related is in a (yikes!) Microsoft program

Maybe some writers do and I would love a lesson! I consider myself to be pretty proficient in blogging platforms but I’m mighty thankful that the “kitchen sink” dashboard exists because if it didn’t there wouldn’t be anything but miles and miles of 12pt Times New Roman text. In fact, I was once asked to submit something in HTML and I copy and pasted it into WordPress, formatted it as needed, clicked to the “HTML” tab on the dashboard and then copy and pasted that back into a Word doc. I’m sure I was the laughing stock of their office for a long time.

Give us specific space limitations

It helps to know ahead of time how much room we have to work with. Don’t just say “you have 4 inches for text.” Give us an idea of the number of lines based on the font and the size of everything. That makes a big difference.

Politely listen to any “look” related ideas we may have. We will do the same.

Do we expect you to incorporate everything we suggest? Of course not…you’re the expert. We acknowledge that in most cases we have no idea the amount of time and work that goes into something that looks fairly straight forward to us. But we’re not morons either and we’ve been around the block a few times (be careful with that one!) so we’ve seen our share of designs. We may surprise you and actually have an artistically, feasible idea!

We aren’t as different as you may think. We’re both artists…we just create with words.

We appreciate and recognize your talent. That is all I will say about that one.

Conclusion

Whew! I hope I cleared the air! Did anything I’ve written above surprise you? Maybe or maybe not. What it comes down to is that we’re both working towards the same goal: to make the world look –and sound- better, one project at a time.

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I am a big fan of Frank Gehry , but not only because of the unusual shapes and remarkable work, but also because of the concept and behind each project, and this building in Cleveland shows that, it plays with our eyes and minds.

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Cleveland Clinic for brain health treatment in Las Vegas is Gehry’s last finished project. The building has certainly his signature all over it, either by material or by mild forms in movement, a mark of his architecture. Together these extravagant forms create a composition with clean and simple shapes, representing the two sides of the brain (the classic left-side and the creative right-side). These two forms seem to be connected and at the same time being affected, as the shift in thinking we have all the time.

Besides that all the space is terrific, the photos show the customization of each room, the connection of the shapes and the contrast of vibrant colors in some internal sites, in short, a great inspiration for architecture!

photo © etslee

photo © etslee

photo © etslee

photo © isaac brekken

photo © etslee

photo © etslee

photo © etslee

“The unobstructed, informal movement that the design promotes from one wing to another suggests the way we use our brains every day, flowing from left-brain to right-brain thinking and back again without noticing the difference.” – Christopher Hawthorne, LA Times

photo © etslee

photo © etslee

photo © etslee

photo © etslee

photo © etslee

photo © isaac brekken

More images of Gehry’s Cleveland Clinic at etslee’s flickr photostream.

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Close-up photography provides exclusive opportunities to make creative and impressive photographs. This type of photography also referred to as Macro Photography. With macro photography, small and complex features that are impossible to tell apart from a distance are displayed with vivid detail.

In this inspirational post, we’ve collected black and white macro photographs taken with various Cameras, if you enjoyed any of the photographs showcased, please visit the photographer and leave them a comment!

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Right-brain versus left-brain or designers versus accountants, both refer to two different ways of viewing the world. I call them Crunchers (as in ‘number crunchers’) and Creatives and there’s a healthy tension among these two camps in almost all organizations, but what about the influence they each have on the growth of a company?

We’ve seen companies like 37signals burst onto the scene in the last few years with a great appreciation for design and user experience. Both supported by their preachings of simplicity which has launched a mentality of “less is more” in designing apps and has made a convincing argument that design is key to growing your business. We’ve also seen Apple’s focus on design skyrocket the company into a leader in technology. We see this happening around us but for some reason there are companies that continue to downplay design and its importance in impacting the bottom line. The companies that are ignoring this haven’t built a culture that understands the power of design and realizes its real impact on business and my guess would be that these companies are filled with Crunchers.

So let’s look at Crunchers and Creatives. Both understand the importance of revenue but approach its generation a bit differently. Crunchers tend to develop a laser-like focus on the goal of acquiring revenue and make a b-line for it without paying close enough attention to user experience. Examples of this would include aggressive sales tactics in order to “close the sale”, bending the truth in their messaging in order to attract more customers, or selling customers products or services they don’t need. They can get a little too aggressive with closing the deal. I believe that this effort is needed to makeup for a lack of clear differentiation of their product in the marketplace which could be achieved due in large part through great design and a focus on user experience.

When strong design and focus on user experience is non-existent or weak, marketing must work that much harder to compensate for these shortcomings. When design and user experience are strong it removes a burden from marketing by making the benefits of using the product clearer and empowers users to share their experience via word-of-mouth and through social media. In short, if your product is easy to use and empowers users, they will share their experience with others. When this happens marketing can simply play a supporting role and doesn’t need to work twice as hard in convincing prospective customers on why they should use your product over a competitor’s.

The Big Picture and How These Elements Work Together

The diagram below illustrates Design & User Experience, Marketing, and a solid Business/Revenue Model working together to generate revenue and growth for your company. You can also see what happens when you have two out of the three working for you.

Marketing Must Overcompensate for a Lack of Quality and Focus on Design & User Experience

We can see what generally happens when there’s a lack of quality and focus on design and user experience. Marketing must work harder to tout the benefits and competitive edge over similar products.

A Greater Focus on Design & User Experience can Relieve the Burden Placed on Marketing

By focusing on the quality of design and user experience and improving it, marketing dollars can be spent much more efficiently and work to support a product that has a clear competitive edge through ease of use and quality of design. In addition, making the product easier to use can reduce the amount of effort and resources needed to support it, which can lower costs and increase your return on investment.

Creatives tend to do a great job of focusing on the customer’s experience and also attracting the right customers. If they can do these things well there can be a clear differentiation among their competitors and customers will be easier to support. Creatives also realize that by focusing on the customer and their experience customers will trust you, pay you (and perhaps even pay a premium), and continue using your product leading to a higher lifetime value.

However, there needs to be a balance between these two approaches. Creatives must remember that there’s a difference between building a product and building a business. An extreme example of this is Twitter. I love Twitter, but they have yet to develop a business and revenue model around their product. That’s not to say that it won’t become a revenue generating machine, but it’s currently lacking the model. Building a product will serve your customers, but you must develop a business model around the product in order for it to be sustainable and serve your customers, you and your team, and thrive. If Creatives can do that successfully and team it with great design and user experience, and support it with targeted marketing, the sky is the limit for their business.

Crunchers on the other hand must realize that not everything can be individually and directly tied to a return on investment and it’s the small things that collectively contribute to a customer’s experience with your product and brand. In addition, don’t treat design as an afterthought. Design is king. Design is the reason Apple is a success, design is the reason you chose your car over others, design is the reason you chose the clothes you are wearing, design is the reason you chose one app over another- you get the idea. My point is that EVERY SINGLE THING YOU TOUCH WAS DESIGNED. Do not downplay its importance in generating revenue and growth for your business and its impact on customer retention.

On that note, one of the greatest things we’re witnessing are creative agencies building businesses. They are taking the talents they have provided clients and developing apps for the rest of us that solve the problems they, and/or their clients, are experiencing. I love seeing this. Who better to launch an app than a company who has all the tools to build it and an in-depth understanding of what users are looking for based on their experience working with clients. As a result, we’re seeing well-designed apps that solve real problems all while inspiring us to better serve our users through great design.

Whether a company is lead by a Cruncher or Creative a culture should exist that emphasizes design and user experience and a realization that without them, innovation, differentiation among competitors, and solid growth cannot and will not happen. If you’re a Creative and leading a company be sure to include a Cruncher on the team for balance and healthy tension and leverage what they do well like financials, forecasting and planning and if you’re a Cruncher leading an organization it’s time to embrace design and user experience, spread it through your organization and realize that nothing can have a greater impact on your bottom line.

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Freelance Contracts: Do’s And Don’ts (via @smashingmag) -

In the world of freelancing, the entrepreneur has to take on a number of tasks for themselves that would normally be handled by a separate department at a bigger company. Most of these tasks are not part of the creative processes that freelance workers are used to, but rather are more tedious, left-brain paperwork. Right-brain creatives often shudder at the thought of these forays into linear domains. Such detail-ridden tasks would strain any freelancer who wears multiple hats, but they must be completed.

One such task is contracts. Drafting a contract that covers you, and doesn’t just enumerate information, is more than important: it is a must. Freelancers do not have the benefit of a legal department dedicated to protecting their interests with a watertight contract. Nevertheless, a freelancer’s contract must be comprehensive, concise and clear. It should outline the scope of the job, scheduling demands, the expectations of both parties and more.

In this post, we’ll help you identify the information that should be included in your contract and make sure you have a concrete agreement that leaves little chance of things getting out of hand… as can sometimes happen to those of us in the freelancing crowd.

These do’s and don’ts will hopefully remove a lot of the headache and guesswork that comes with drafting a contract. By understanding the rationale behind various contractual elements, you will be able to better customize your contracts to fit the specific job you have been hired for.

The Basics

Include the basic information, obviously. The “who” and the “what” of the project. Who is contracting you to do what kind of work? This is standard stuff included in every contract that defines the job as a whole. While this information is probably well known by both parties, put it in the contract anyway so that everyone is on the same page about their roles and responsibilities. Because it is such basic information, freelancers often overlook how important this section is for establishing the framework of the project.

Do’s and Don’ts

K.I.S.S. Keep It Simple, Simon (your name may not be Simon, but it is nicer than the traditional “S” in the phrase.) Do be sure to clarify your role in the project from start to finish and exactly what it entails, so that the client doesn’t try to put a hat on your head that you do not want to wear (for example, trying to make you switch from designing to providing tech support once the project has launched).

You know who you are and what your strengths are; don’t leave room for the client to change your role in the project for their convenience. Be specific about what roles you are and are not willing to play.

Time Frame

This simply establishes the time that the project will take and the duration that the contract covers. Sometimes a freelancer has to leave time open after a project’s completion to help integrate the product into the client’s existing media stream. But not always. Determining that time frame at the beginning and formalizing it in the terms and conditions of the contract will ensure you are not taken advantage of.

Do’s and Don’ts

Many people do not like deadlines, and some freelancers are no different. Whether you love or hate them, including deadlines in your contracts is important. Don’t overlook this detail simply because of the pressure it may bring. Give yourself enough time to properly complete your tasks, while keeping the client’s timetable in mind.

Being vague about how much time the contract covers will give your client room to find things for you to improve after the project has launched. Also, do be sure to include time frames on when the client needs to respond to your submissions with their questions and concerns, so that you are not endlessly strung along waiting to hear back on how to proceed.

Delivery Details

Putting this in the contract further clarifies expectations at the outset. The client knows up front what the final product will be and how you will be delivering it to them. This frees you from having to guess later on things like what file types they can access, and it gives the client peace of mind knowing that you are both on the same page.

It also gives you an indication of the depth of the client’s knowledge in this area of work and how well they will be able to work with the product once you hand it over. And being able to anticipate the client’s need for assistance in accessing and integrating your product will help you formulate other parts of the contract.

Do’s and Don’ts

Once again, keep it simple. Once you’ve assessed the client’s needs, don’t send them more files or file types than are needed to satisfy the project’s requirements. Don’t try to impress them with a ZIP file full of extras that show how professional you are. This will overwhelm clients who are not design-savvy and encourages needless pestering. Keeping it simple will move your client happily along their way, not only giving you peace of mind from a job well done but freeing you from future distractions as you move on to your next client.

The Financials

For most design work, billing by the job, rather than by the hour, is easier for everyone. You may have already come to an agreement on financial matters, but include them in the contract anyway for good measure. Just because you have an understanding about payment, the client could always conveniently “forget” the amount or change the terms.

Do’s and Don’ts

Agree on an initial deposit (whatever seems fair) before doing any work, to protect both parties if either wants to back out. Make sure the client understands that this deposit protects them as well by committing you to the project and keeping you from being sidetracked by other clients. Also include a Cancellation Clause in the financial section of the contract. This isn’t Santa’s less famous brother; it actually protects you, the freelancer, in case your client backs out by stating the financial obligations of both parties should the project terminate before completion.

Revisions And Alterations

You can also protect yourself by including a clause that states how many alterations and revisions to the product are covered by the fee. You can set the pricing for changes requested by the client that go beyond the number specified in the contract, thus preventing the client from abusing their privilege.

Be clear that this is not a commentary on either party; by including this, you are not implying that the client will be hard to please or that you will need multiple attempts to get it right. It simply recognizes that we sometimes need time to fully process something before making a decision and that we should have the freedom to change our minds about whether an idea works or not once we actually see it in action.

Do’s and Don’ts

Remember that professionalism should win out at all times, so don’t let this part of the contract be any different. Yes, it can be aggravating how some clients come back to you over and over with requests as a result of every whim that moves them, but do be reasonable. Don’t punish all of your clients because of one that burned you in the past. And don’t let pride keep you from accommodating a modest amount of revision by the client, even if they don’t suit your taste. After all, the design may be yours, but they are paying you to create it for them.

The Fine Print And Bottom Line

In the end, make sure the contract is professional and clear throughout, and be as detailed as possible in defining the roles of both parties in the project.

Further Resources

Here are some further articles and related resources:

• Terms and Conditions for Design Contracts
  An extremely helpful post by Shel Perkins that seeks to inform designers about the terminology and general conditions of contracts.
• Web Design Contracts – The How and Why’s of Contracts
  This is another post full of great information that talks about the reasons why designers need to use contracts.
• What goes into a good web design contract?
  It is a question that every designer should ask themselves at one time or another, and this fabulously informative post from Idea15 answers that question.
• Using freelance graphic design contracts
  An article by David Airey dealing with the whys and hows of using freelance design contracts.
• Business of Design Online Forms
  The Business of Design Online offers a number of useful forms free for download and use.
• Freelance Contracts
  A great contract template which makes it easy for freelancers to fill in their own information.
• Logo Design Contract of Agreement
  This is an actual contract drawn up by Logo Designer, Joni Solis, and is a good example to look at when you start drawing up a contract of your own.
• Work for Hire Agreement
  A form necessary to ensure copyright transfer and protect your creative firm when you outsource work to other freelancers. Guaranteeing that you will retain all rights to the work.
• Freelance Design Contracts & Templates
  A fantastic resource full of free downloadable design contracts and alterable templates for easy customization.
• AIGA Standard Form of Agreement for Design Services
  This agreement allows you to create customized terms and conditions for different types of design engagements.

About the Author

Rob Bowen is a talented author and graphic designer, celebrated podcaster and poet, who is now the co-editor and imaginative co-contributor of Fuel Your Creativity. With a background in most areas of the arts, Rob works from a creative wellspring that shows no sign of running dry.

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© Robert Bowen for Smashing Magazine, 2009. |
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