Brandon is a Freelance Graphic Designer and Production Artist

Type of business?

My self-employed business. I brand/market myself under the name Brangeta Design Group because there are thousands of Brandon Browns in the US.

What's Brandon's title? Graphic Designer?

I classify myself as a graphic designer for simplicity. I have also been called an art director, graphics artist, web designer, and production artist. Graphic designer is a good, generic title that describes the majority of my work.

Where does Brandon work?

Out of my home office in Dallas, TX. I live in a house in Far North Dallas, just south of Plano. I do work for clients all over the United States and have been doing so since 2006.

Who does Brandon work with?

I'm open to working with most anyone, but my ideal clients are medium size businesses that don't have the budget (or need) for a full-time designer as an employee. Several of my clients are large businesses and corporations, while others are small businesses and organizations. Some of my clients have in-house marketing departments but outsource work to me because they prefer my style for certain projects. Others lack their own graphic or web designers and have me handle the majority of their needs. Non-profits like me because I sometimes offer them reduced design rates if I agree with their cause.

What software programs does Brandon use?

I use Photoshop, Illustrator, and InDesign. They are the industry standard programs for graphic design. For programming websites, I use Dreamweaver to assist in programming, it makes programming much faster and proof-reads my code for errors. It's another industry standard program.

Does Brandon specialize in anything?

I want everything I design to match your brand's voice, coloring, and perception in the minds of your customers. I enjoy handling my clients' entire design needs. Whether they be weekly direct mail pieces, daily updates to their websites, or designing their annual marketing brochures, monthly advertisements, or branding for a new product or division. By handling all of my clients' branding and marketing design needs, I can ensure a consistent look and feel for everything they use to promote their businesses. I really love to have clients who come back to me with dependable repeat business consistently.

The Client-Designer Relationship is Simple

How do your clients classify you?

I'm not an employee of any of my clients. I am an independent contractor AKA freelancer. All of my work is done freelance via contract(s). The tax and paperwork burden is very, very light compared to the alternative--hiring a full-time employee. A 1099-MISC and you're done. No contributions to my social security... no providing me insurance benefits... nothing. Simple. You put down a deposit to work from on new projects and you pay me the remaining balance when I invoice you.

How do your clients work with you?

My clients generally email me the text and images they want used on a design and I create the design to fit their specifications. If it's a fixed price project, I limit the number of revisions. If I'm working at an hourly rate, revisions are unlimited and I keep designing until my clients are completely satisfied. If a project takes 1 hour to make the client happy, it takes 1 hour. If it takes 20 hours, it takes 20 hours.

How much input do you like from clients? How involved do they need to be with the design?

I enjoy being micromanaged and like to have a lot of communication with my clients (primarily by email). But for clients that just want to trust my judgment, I can design without the micromanaging. On fixed price projects, you're limited to how much micromanaging you can do; on hourly projects, there's no limit. No matter how involved you are, I always want approval of designs and changes before I consider a project finished and I always want to have something to start with before I ever start designing. I have to see what you like and have in mind, and I generally do not write the text for your projects.

Do you restrict what clients may do with your work?

Of course. All professional designers do. Anything I design for a specific purpose is to be used only for that specific purpose. Another person is not supposed to reconfigure, edit, update, change, etc. any graphics or anything else I design without my written permission (unless modification by a third party is specified as part of our contract).

Company logos I design are always yours to modify and adapt.

Payments For Design Work

How do you charge clients?

I do all of my design and programming work under contract. Fixed price jobs are always a separate contract for each project or group of projects, and are normally reserved for small business clients or my first project for a larger business. My hourly rate contracts are becoming more and more common and are written in a way that you may request work throughout the year at the rate specified in the contract.

For fixed price projects, I generally require 1/2 of the total amount due when the contract is signed and before work begins. For hourly rate projects, I require a deposit to work from before work begins. Payment is almost always required in full before I send clients the final, approved files.

How much do you charge?

My rates and prices are normal to the design industry and consistent with other self-employed designers in the United States. For most hourly rate projects, my rate is $50 an hour, but it varies up or down depending on a number of factors. I have some sample dollar amounts on the pricing page within "Services" in the main navigation of the website that can give you an idea for budgeting purposes.

If you want to know how much I would charge to do your project(s), just let me know the details by email and I can let you know. Every project and client is different.

The Type of Design Work Brandon Does

What do you do?

To generalize: if it doesn't move, I can design it. I design graphics like logos, printed materials like brochures, websites, packaging like clothing hangtags, ads that go in magazines or other forms of print, and certain automotive related products from scratch. I can start from scratch or recreate past designs or revise current designs.

For print, I can take your project idea all the way to completion, or simply send you final file(s) to get printed by your chosen printing company.

For online/web, I can take your project idea all the way to completion if it only requires front-end programming, or simply send you final design file(s) to get programmed by your chosen programmer.

What do you normally do?

I specialize in completely custom, one-of-a-kind designs. I design everything from scratch specifically for you based on what you tell me and show me. This is the key difference between a professional designer and the alternatives. I listen to you and make your dreams come true.

For example, a new client tells me they need a website designed. I interview the client about their business and customers, and ask what sort of content will be on the site and if they have any examples of sites they like. Sometimes they send me a rough sketch of what they envision in their head, other times they send me a few links to sites they want their website similar to. I start with a clean slate--a blank piece of paper--a blank Photoshop document. I create the website based on the client's specifications and the content they send me. The client gets to see it and approve it every step of the way.

When I say I'm a designer. I mean it. When other "designers" say they are designers, sometimes they are really assemblers. I'm not an assembler using templates and putting something together for you. I'm literally creating what you desire from scratch, taking it from start to finish.

Take a look at my website you're on right now. I created every single thing in Photoshop or Illustrator. No premade buttons... no background I found via Google... no restrictions on what I could do or not do... If you want something that is seriously one of a kind and specific to your business, that's something I offer that you often cannot find outside of hiring an employee.

What do you not do?

There's a few things I have no experience or interest in creating: Flash websites, anything that's animated, graphs and charts, anything 3D. Specific to websites, I only do frontend programming. In other words, I don't program websites similar to ebay, amazon, or facebook that people can log into or sell things on. I can design websites with online stores and other applications, but you'll need to locate your own freelance programmer or web developer who specializes in that sort of programming. Websites are a bit like houses, it's not easy for one man to build an entire house.