The Business Side of Creativity: The Complete Guide to Running a Small Graphic Design or Communications Business, Third Updated Edition

by Cameron S. Foote

Buy new: $35.00 $20.50 Buy used: $21.00

Editorial Reviews

The freelance designer's bible—a step-by-step guide to successful self-employment.

Hailed by one reviewer as the creative business "bible," and considered the authoritative book on the subject for over ten years, The Business Side of Creativity is back, updated and revised to include even more invaluable facts, tips, strategies, and advice for beginning creatives.

Every year the market for creative services expands-but the competition is increasing even faster. Today, success hinges not on talent alone, but on a thorough understanding of the business side of creativity.

The Business Side of Creativity is the most comprehensive business companion available to freelance graphic designers, art directors, illustrators, copywriters, and agency or design-shop principals. Cameron S. Foote, a successful entrepreneur and editor of the Creative Business newsletter, guides you step-by-step through the process of being successfully self-employed-from getting launched as a freelancer to running a multiperson shop to retiring comfortably, and everything in between. Sample business forms and documents to help put the information into practice are included in the appendixes, and are available for downloading online.

How should you organize? What should you charge? What marketing techniques yield the best returns? How do you know when it's right to expand? What are the most effective strategies for managing employees? How can you build salable equity? The Business Side of Creativity delves into these questions and hundreds more-and gives you practical, real-world answers and invaluable expert advice.

From launching yourself as a freelancer and managing a multi-person firm to marketing your services and retiring comfortably, this book is a one-stop resource for all creative service professionals on how to run a smooth, effective, and lucrative business. Useful forms and sample business plans are included. 25 illustrations.

Customer Reviews

A Good Creative Business Primer, 2008-12-20
by CMOS (Chicago, IL)

While this book is technically for those looking to start a graphic design or perhaps an advertising business, it also was helpful to me as I started a business in photography (and could help those in related fields like web design). The best thing about this book is that it is pretty thorough in the number of topics it covers, though it doesnt' cover any of them in great depth. There's nothing "authoritative" here per se, but there is a lot to think about and that's really this book's greatest strength is that it gives you a coherent, concise look at many of the more important business tasks and issues you'll be facing. So you'll have a better idea of what to expect, and be able to plan better and prepare better (yes more reading will be necessary for sure beyond this book) than you would have just jumping in blindly.

Great Book, BIG Help, 2008-11-02
by R. Brown

I feel that this book is very benificial to those trying to start a business. I showed this book to an entrepenuer and she even feels that this book gives REAL tips as to how to get your business going. The way the book is written it feels like you have your own personal advisor talking straight to you. I would recommend this to everyone.

Great book--very helpful, 2008-10-25
by Christa Lawrence (Mundelein, IL USA)

Having just started a graphic design business, I find this book incredibly helpful. It is detailed but still reader friendly. I did not know much about the business aspect of graphic design and this book helped get me the knowledge I needed quickly. My only criticism is the forms they use for examples are too small. They are difficult to read and I had to enlarge them on a copy machine.

Excellent book if re-directed to the right audience, 2008-08-04
by L. BEATTIE (in Asia)

The sub-title of this book is "The Complete Guide to RUNNING a Small Graphic Design or Communications Business" and as such I have given it a 2-star rating. If it was re-titled "The Complete Guide to STARTING a Small Graphic Design or Communications Business" then I would probably give it a 5-star rating for readers based in the USA and a 4-star for those elsewhere.

If you are in position where you are considering starting up your own business or going it alone as a freelancer then this book contains a lot of valuable information and good advice and I would highly recommend reading it before you go any further.

Those outside the USA should be aware that some sections of the book will not be relevant (for example those focusing on company registration procedures and tax issues) as they are based on US law and regulations -but there is still a lot of other good advice.

I would estimate that around 3/4ths of the book focuses on pre start-up and start-up issues so, if like me, you are currently running your own business then much of the content is already redundant and, while the remaining content is informative, this does limit the overall usefullness of the book.

Buy it, together with with "How to be a graphic artist without loosing your soul", 2008-07-10
by Hector Garcia Cruz (Puerto Rico)

I just received this book a couple of days ago and it has been the best book I bought rescently. I have only read the first three chapters and I don't seem to be able to drive my eyes off of it. It is clear, organized, straight to the point and well illustrated (good examples). Buy it, together with with "How to be a graphic artist without loosing your soul" by Adrian Shaughnessy and, if you apply the knowledge that these two acquired and dare to share with us, there's no way you should fail in your intent to build your own business in the creative field.

If you are a newby in design bussines or still studying, do yourself a favor, read this book before attemting anything else and you will be better directed in even the task of deciding if you really are going to be a graphic designer for the apropriate reasons or if you should really do something else. If you have been into this for some time already, you will still learn many things that you are still doing wrong and so on...

Listen, go and buy it... Period!