Burn your portfolio : stuff they don't teach you in design school, but should

Introduction : Burn your portfolio ... really?

Section 1. Human engineering : The big fat secret

The extra mile

Soak up advice

You are not your work

Be nice to everyone

Drama is for soap operas

No more flying solo

Gripes go up

The stress bucket

Two types of grandpas

Be a wall painter

Every position can be electrifying

Lead or be led

Half the victory

The value of downtime

I'm not a writer

Toot your own horn

Don't work in a vacuum

The graphic design megazord

Live as a team, die as a team

Everyone does something better than you

You are responsible for your own time

Section 2. Art smarts : OCD is an attitude

Polishing turds

Hairy moles

This is not verbatimville

Shock and awe

Art is meant to be framed

It is never to late for a better idea

Filler failures

A river runs through it

Comps or comprehensive?

Design like the wind

Type fast

How to eat an elephant

The Venus initiative

Process-a-palooza

Hiking your way to successful projects

Solving end-of-day rush

Why projects blow up

The lo-fi PDA

Bring out your dead

Shake the bushes or get bit

Red flags and extinguishers

Brainstorms are 90 percent bad ideas

The communal brain

Section 3. Two ears, one mouth : The ultimate email formula

Beware the red dot

Email black holes

Even the Lone Ranger had Tonto

Canned communication

Tin can phones

Vicious vernacular

An army of support

Friendly updates

Deadline ballet

Big brother

The domino effect

Avoid the W.W.W

Be afraid to click "send"

The tragedy of time zones. Section 4. Happy head honchos : Designers are from Mars, clients are from Venus

Let your client leave their mark

"Forgiveness" points

Let your client be the 800-pound gorilla

Do your genealogy

Never give your client homework

Assume that people are clueless

Long-term relationship value vs. single transaction profit

Oddities at the start mean oddities at the end

Don't be the desperate girlfriend

Stand in manure, smell like manure

Never fire a client?

"We decided to go another direction" means "you suck"

There are such things as stupid questions

You can't get mad at math

You have 65 seconds to land a job

How to ask for a raise without asking for a raise

Section 5. Mind your business : Do what you love; the money will follow

A business that looks orderly

Making cents of it all

How to calculate a burn rate

The fixed-bid pricing dartboard

Beware of line-item pricing

"No charge" doesn't mean "free"

How to flush out a budget

Twenty-piece chicken McNuggets

Nonprofits for non-profit

The code of fair practice

Contractual mumbo jumbo

"Etcetera" has no business in your business

You don't have to sign off on this

B.A.M. lists

One line that changed everything about collections

A business is an organism that wants to die

If I've got a dollar, you've got a dollar, but no partners

If you want to win the game, you have to know the score

There is no such thing as a "meet and greet"

How to make a capabilities presentation

Floods happen

Flexibility, not freedom

Never do undocumented work

Next worry date

Nickels and dimes are for lemonade stands

Only terrorists like hostage situations

Oh where, oh where has my $100k gone? Oh where, oh where can it be?

Don't do anything you can pay someone $10 per hour to do

"Skin in the game" usually means "free"

Three-month "lifetime" guarantee

"Being your own boss," whatever that means

How to bite the bullet