This news has already been announced, but we are sufficiently humbled and honored enough to talk about it in this space too. We’re excited to mention that our work for AIGA Chicago and Unisource on the AIGA Voices piece has been chosen as an FPO Award winner! The FPO Awards are an outgrowth of the design and production blog, FPO, run by Armin Vit and Bryony Gomez-Palacio of UnderConsideration. FPO and the rest of the “blog family” created by UnderConsideration have been favorites of ours for many years. We’re thrilled to be chosen in this year’s FPO Awards, and look forward to seeing all of the other winners in the upcoming printed book.

Last week I had the privilege of moderating the panel discussion at the premiere event in our AIGA Los Angeles Blueprint series. We brought four of LA’s finest independent designers to NextSpace in Culver City, CA for a two-hour discussion on the business of freelancing.

While freelance designers love to talk about their creative work, they’re often less fond of talking about their businesses. Such “boring” topics as accounting, taxes, legal issues, business strategy and client relations are often considered necessary evils, reflected by their time spent in the conversational spotlight.

And that’s no good.

We at AIGA think nuts-and-bolts business information is vital to any self-employed designer, so we created the business-focused Blueprint series to find out if the rest of the self-employed design community does too.

Turns out they do: The event was sold out, and we practically had to kick attendees out the door after it ended, they had so many questions for our panel.

Speaking of the panel, I can’t say enough good things about this talented and experienced group, and I’m honored to call them my friends.

• Petrula Vrontikis founder of Vrontikis Design Office, an Art Center professor and AIGA Fellow
• Heather Parlato founder of Parlato Design Studio, a boutique design agency
• Spencer Cross, founder of TokyoFarm and Kernspiracy
• Mark LeRoy, the founder of Escape Hatch, a luxury travel company, and silverECHO, a brand strategy, marketing and design agency.

The discussion was lively and thoughtful, stocked with behind-the-curtain, practical insights and suggestions. We could have easily talked another hour or two, and barely scraped the surface of both the topic, and the panel’s collective knowledge on it.

Above: AIGA Los Angeles Blueprint: Freelance panelists from left to right: Jason Adam (moderator), Mark LeRoy, Heather Parlato, Spencer Cross, Petrula Vrontikis.

Among my favorite insights for freelancers:

You’re a business owner, not a designer. On average, all four panelists spend about 30% of their time designing. The rest is spent running their business, or in business development.

Titles are important. Not one of our panelists refer to themselves as a “freelancer,” opting instead for terms like solo-practice (or in Mark’s case, Contract Marketing Director), which offer elevated positioning.

Where you decide to work is a personal decision. The panel was split on working alone from a home office, or working from a co-working space or shared office. Heather recently gave a shared office space a go, but found it too distracting. The consensus was this is a very personal choice. For those opting to work at home, Spencer suggests dogs.

Freelancing allows you to keep a larger portion of your earned money. For those considering making the leap to freelancing full-time, and concerned about financing the jump, Heather suggested that one can expect to pay significantly less in taxes as a freelancer than she did as a full-time employee.

Flat fees vs. billing hourly. Our entire panel typically bills projects on a flat-fee basis, vs. billing hourly, with a few small exceptions, such as revisions or production work.

Effective positioning and communication helps attract the right kinds of clients. Mark suggests using analogies: “I sell Mercedes’. If you want a Ford, this might not be a good fit.”

“Work directly with the client” except when… Petrula explained: If you have a very specialized skill, such as an illustration style, etc., you can command a premium fee for your work, and it may be beneficial to subcontract through other agencies. Just ask lots of questions and make sure you can use it in your portfolio.

Staffing Agencies are great in a pinch, but watch the strings. If you’re going to work with a staffing agency, read the whole contract. They likely have strict non-compete clauses included.

And we covered that in about 10 minutes. This is one smart group, and I can’t wait to get them together again.

Here at Hexanine, we’re also committed to elevating design as a professional craft through a focus on design thinking and brand strategy. We feel strongly that the more our clients utlize us as strategic consultants, the more value we can bring to the table — and their organizations.

Many thanks to AIGA LA Event Programming Chair René Quintanilla, and event producers Janette Jackson and Jenn de la Fuente for producing the event, and to all of our AIGA Los Angeles volunteers for their hard work as well. If you’d like to learn more about AIGA Los Angeles, visit our spiffy new website.

Finally, a huge shout out to Paul Dimalanta who provided the fantastic pictures.

We had the great opportunity to work with the Chicago chapter of AIGA, the professional association for design. This set of pieces served both as art prints, and also marketing pieces for AIGA Chicago. Take a look for more details on the project.

This time, we’re featuring the work of Matt Whiting, with his redesign of the Criterion identity. Matt attends Chicago Portfolio School, and one of Tim’s students in Brand Standards Manuals. His clever, conceptually-sharp Criterion logo and brand book demand a second look. Nice job, Matt.

Last week AIGA Los Angeles hosted The Group Typeface Experiment at TypeCon2010: Babel here in LA. During an unscripted hour of collaborative design, attendees were given the opportunity to create a typeface on the spot using nothing but square and triangle stickers.

I had the pleasure of concepting the event, and the honor of helping produce it, along with numerous other intrepid AIGA LA members including the incredi-awesome Heather Parlato, whose design blog is regular reading here at Hexanine.

We were pretty pleased with the results, revealed here in the video above, filmed and produced on-the-spot by our friends at i am 8-bit (we’re looking at you Taylor Ragsdale). Watch away!