Burn Your Portfolio: Stuff they don't teach you in design school, but should

It takes more than just a design school education and a killer portfolio to succeed in a creative career. Burn Your Portfolio teaches the real-world practices, professional do's and don'ts, and unwritten rules of business that most designers, photographers, web designers, copy writers, programmers, and architects only learn after putting in years of experience on the job.

Michael Janda, owner of the Utah-based design firm Riser, uses humor to dispense nugget after nugget of hard-won advice collected over the last decade from the personal successes and failures he has faced running his own agency. In this surprisingly funny, but incredibly practical advice guide, Janda's advice on teamwork and collaboration, relationship building, managing clients, bidding work, production processes, and more will resonate with creative professionals of all stripes.

Michael Janda has been in most positions on the graphic design world org chart over his 16-year career. He has served as production artist, designer, freelancer, and creative director (including a few years as senior creative director over two of Fox’s Internet divisions). Since 2002, Janda has owned and operated his own agency, Riser, which boasts such high-profile clients as NBC, ABC, Fox, Google, National Geographic, Warner Bros., and Disney.

Behave Yourself

1. The Big Fat Secret 
2. The Extra Mile 
3. You Are Not Your Work 
4. Be Nice to Everyone 
5. Drama is for Soap Operas
6. No More Flying Solo
7. Gripes Go Up 
8. Do What You Love; the Money Will Follow
9. The Stress Bucket
10. Two Types of Grandpas
11. Soak Up Advice 
12. Be A Wall Painter
13. Every Position Can Be Electrifying
14. Lead or Be Led
15. Half the Victory 
16. The Value of Downtime 
17. I’m Not a Writer 
18. Toot Your Own Horn 
19. Don’t Work in a Vacuum 
20. The Graphic Design Megazord 
21. Live as a Team, Die as a Team
22. Everyone Does Something Better Than You
23. You Are Responsible For Your Own Time
    

1. O.C.D. is an Attribute 
2. Polishing Turds 
3. Hairy Moles 
4. This is Not Verbatim-ville
5. Shock and Awe 
6. Art is Meant to be Framed 
7. It is Never Too Late for a Better Idea 
8. Lorem Ipsum 
9. A River Runs Through It 
10. Comps? or Compositions? 
11. Design Like the Wind 
12. Typing Speed is an Accurate Gauge of Production Speed 
13. How to Eat an Elephant 
14. The Venus Initiative 
15. Project Management Process-a-palooza 
16. Define Your Production Methodology 
17. Hiking Your Way to Successful Projects 
18. Management Strategies to Alleviate the End of Day Rush 
19. Why Projects Blow Up 
20. The Lo-Fi PDA 
21. Bring Out Your Dead 
22. Shake the Bushes or Get Bit 
23. Red Flags and Extinguishers 
24. Brainstorms are 90% Bad Ideas 
25. The Communal Brain 
    

1. The Ultimate Email Formula 
2. Beware the Red Dot 
3. Email Black Holes 
4. Even The Lone Ranger Had Tonto 
5. Canned Communication 
6. Tin Can Phones 
7. Vicious Vernacular 
8. An Army of Support 
9. Friendly Updates 
10. Deadline Ballet 
11. Someone is Always Listening 
12. Chain Reactions 
13. Avoid the W.W.W. 
14. Be Afraid to Click “Send” 
15. The Tragedy of Time Zones 
    

1. Designers are from Mars, Clients are from Venus 
2. Let Your Client Leave Their Mark 
3. “Forgiveness” Points 
4. Let Your Client Be the 800 lb. Gorilla 
5. Do Your Genealogy 
6. Never Give Your Client Homework 
7. Assume that People are Idiots 
8. A Long Term Relationship Typically Has More Value Than the Profit in a Single Transaction 
9. Oddities at the Start Mean Oddities at the End 
10. Don't Be the Desperate Girlfriend 
11. Stand in Manure, Smell Like Manure 
12. Never Fire a Client? 
13. “We Decided to Go Another Direction” Means “You Suck” 
14. There Are Such Things as Stupid Questions 
    

1. A Business That Looks Orderly 
2. Making Cents of it All 
3. How to Calculate a Burn Rate 
4. The Fixed Bid Pricing Dartboard 
5. Beware of Line Item Pricing 
6. “No Charge” Doesn’t Mean “Free” 
7. How to Flush Out a Budget 
8. 20 Piece Chicken McNuggets 
9. Non-Profits for Non-Profit 
10. The Code of Fair Practice 
11. Contractual Mumbo Jumbo 
12. “Etcetera” Has No Business In Your Business 
13. You Don’t Have To Sign Off On This 
14. B.A.M. Lists 
15. One Line That Changed Everything About Collections 
16. A Business is an Organism that Wants to Die 
17. If I’ve Got a Dollar, You’ve Got a Dollar, But No Partners 
18. If You Want To Win The Game, You Have to Know The Score 
19. There Is No Such Thing As A “Meet and Greet” 
20. How to Make a Capabilities Presentation 
21. Floods Happen 
22. “Flexibility” Not “Freedom” 
23. Never Do Undocumented Work 
24. Next Worry Date 
25. Nickels and Dimes Are For Lemonade Stands 
26. Only Terrorists Like Hostage Situations 
27. Oh where, oh where has my $100k gone? Oh where, oh where can it be? 
28. Don’t Do Anything You can Pay Someone $10/hour To Do 
29. “Skin in the Game” Usually Means “Free” 
30. How To Bite The Bullet 
31. Three-Month “Lifetime” Guarantee 
32. “Being Your Own Boss,” Whatever That Means 
33. You Have 65 Seconds to Land a Job 
34. How to Ask for a Raise Without Asking for a Raise 
    

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