Well, I’ve finally done it. I doodled a panda, and I placed it on my site. It was bound to happen; I already have panda avatars on most sites, pandas on my printer, a panda on my keyring, I even turned my calendar to the one month that has a panda. And don’t even get me started on the pandas that populate the desktops of my iMac and my Macbook. If anything, however, at least I was able to just sit and have some fun with gradients and the other goodies in Illustrator.

And now I have this. A small experiment I did while procrastinating further updates to my site’s scheme and layout, and while searching for ideas for what to do with the site footer, which I wanted to redo. On an unrelated note, however, I do have something I’ve been pondering.

I am considering making public some of the designs I have worked on over the last few months that have, for one reason or another, fallen through. For example, one project for a non-profit organization fell through because the cause was lost – the park they wanted to “save” ended up not needing to be destroyed anyway due to the government’s inability to fund the demolition. So, that was one rather nice design I had to set aside. Others have been set aside due to budgeting issues; issues with the client not wishing to pay, or their own business failing.

It has shown me how much the economy has absolutely crashed over the last few months if even my paltry fee of a few hundred can’t be met by a client, and it’s disheartening. It’s not only hurting me, but is the tail end result of other people being hurt at the same time. Granted, I do take some money up front – I do this to protect myself and keep all of my work safe so that it is not a waste of time and money – but I can’t demand full price up front, as that’s just not how things are done.

I’m not sure what further measures can be taken to protect a freelance business, other than the creation of contracts and demanding part of the projected cost upfront, and paying back anything that did not accumulate as a cost. I’m also noticing that technology is going up in price again; RAM sticks are selling for much more than they did in the past, while I see fewer and fewer people looking for designers such as me.

But, I have hope. I think that as long as a person keeps working hard, they will benefit – and that’s exactly what I aim to do.