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The animations goes like this: "Make me a website for free since we are friends. It will look good in your portfolio." The author of this animated gif file is lost on me. Colabtees.com appears to be the original poster, but they are no more it seems, and whoever posted this file failed to embed any copyright.

But the scenario isn't any less common. It's happened to me dozens of times. This car salesman realizes that he needs a website, so he tries to milk his friend into doing it with the incentive of tremendous exposure. That way everybody wins. Right? The rest of the animation goes like this: the web designer tells the car salesman to give him a car for free, and he'll tell everyone where he got it from. "Think of the exposure!" I could really use a new car. Maybe I'll try that!

In a perfect world, after the web designer objurgates the car salesman with a snappy analogy, the salesman sees the error of his ways and signs a lucrative work-for-hire contract and everyone wins.

Being a web designer means having your website compared to the website of your friend's fifth-grade child. It's ugly, uses Times New Roman, was probably made as a class project and looks exactly the same in the eyes of your friend as in your online portfolio. While you spend your time learning standards and optimizations, everyone else is discovering how to upload cat photos on MySpace. To them, it's the same thing. There is a learning curve that we, as designers, need to help our potential clients overcome.

Just as general computer knowledge among the average consumer is higher than it use to be (but still doesn't stop friends from asking for computer help whenever their Windows machine fails to print email), it's up to us to bring them up to speed.

Have pride in what you do. The first step is to stop calling yourself a developer, or UI developer, or web architect. Stop it. Let's stop hiding behind other people's titles and just admit it. We are web designers. We're the ones who make with the pretty buttons. We make sites look good; like cake, and they all want cake.

I happen to develop websites that connect to databases, and I suppose that makes me a developer, but I'm not an expert in PHP or MySQL. I know just enough code to get me into trouble and sometimes out of it. I'm a webmaster on some sites, because I'm acquainted well enough to maintain them until the client hires a monkey to to do it for me. But those are just hats I wear for the tasks required. All those hats aside, I'm still a web designer and I'm proud of it!

Starting out right. Starting out as a web designer means not having any clients. Some designers starting out will have graduated from art school with a portfolio of class projects to showcase, but customers are looking for examples that show success stories. How have you met past clients' needs? Do you have examples of small brochure sites, simple logo designs, rich template packages? Are you versatile enough to get the next gig no matter how simple or complicated it may be? Basically, no. But neither are a lot of others just starting out as well. However, grabbing a job for free isn't the answer, or even necessarily needed. In the meantime, you are your own client.

Going back to the scenario of the animation, you're the web designer and your friend is the car salesman. If you take a free job, that means you're now accessible for doing other free work for him -- or his buddies. You've given your friend permission to assume that he can ask for more favors. And he will. You're not just building a website, no. This isn't like getting asked to help him move to a new apartment, or smuggle drugs across the border. You know, something that takes a weekend. You're taking on a long term project.

Instead of mister "I'm too good to pay for any of this" car salesman just getting a home page with a simple description, and maybe an Olin Mills portrait he gave you to scan in, he now wants a photo gallery of the cars that he sells (which change every week). Who do you think he's going to ask to set up his email list? If only you had spec'd out his requirements, estimated the cost of building a dynamic gallery that anyone can maintain and gave a deadline for delivery.

Instead, you're stuck being bitter about the time you've committed to his site when you could have been marketing yourself towards paying clients, and he's left feeling slimy about asking for more free work. But then again, slimy works well with car salesmen.

Get exposure. This doesn't necessarily mean getting attention, either. Customers looking for a web designer aren't going to google car salesmen. You would be more effective making a great homepage for yourself than taking on a free job. Your portfolio, while small and lacking clients, needs to relate to customers in a way they identify with. Your style might be very specific and only apply to certain customers, and if your site shows the best version of that style, then it will be make a stronger impressions. You might lack flash skills, but your site is extremely organized and googles well. This should be the focus on your branding -- your craft, your style. Of course, you might very well be really into making car sites, so go with that.

The customer is always wrong. Well sometimes they're wrong, other times they're simply incorrect. That really isn't fair to say, but be prepared when taking free/cheap jobs that you're going to make some bad, bad, ugly, bad websites. I'm talking about generic guy in business suit on phone and full of synergy stock photo with drop shadow text and drop down menus bad. Think Cinema Blend or My Comic Shop[dot com]. Do you really want to be responsible for that? That isn't to say the free clients are exclusive to bad design choices. On the contrary, there is an ample supply of bush league palettes out there for you to create for dull and boring clients (with money).

One site I made for a client was for a product called The Ear Thing. Sounds promising, "What's that thing in your ear?" "Thank you!" Anyway, my client wanted their entire website to have a glossy shiny look; back when Apple redesigned their site with the "aqua" look. Everyone was doing it. The client loved that look, but the site was so saccharine and bubbly it took away from the actual product. It looked like a giant coat of earwax covered the screen. I ended up not putting my name on that one.

The trick is to guess their needs over what they say they need. A client might come to you and say, "Design the moon!", and you overshoot that goal by actually designing the moon! A new website doesn't always mean a new personal acumen in design. Accurately stating the client's goals visually is its own craft. It's tough when they want something flashy, but their version might be totally different than your version.

Do it for free anyway. This whole article is about not doing free work, but maybe you should. Let's not drag your car salesman friend back into this again. He's been kicked around enough. Getting involved with non-profit groups (actual legitimate groups), 501(c)(3) and charitable organizations is a great way to not only build a better portfolio, it also gets you involved with a noble cause. Many non-profits are looking for volunteers who are experts in their fields that can contribute services such as web design. Just because they use the term "non-profit" doesn't mean no money. Many groups and organizations budget for website costs.

Whether starting out from scratch or working with a decade's worth of experience, all web designers are on equal footing in a lot of areas. New standards are established every few months in order to make user experience more compelling. First javascript and flash, now ajax and widgets make it extremely difficult to stay on top. It's no wonder we're so threatened by those pesky fifth-graders. Take on jobs that are worthwhile in the long term, and remind your pushy radio host car salesmen friend what it is that you do for a living.

Chris Williams writes for PopSyndicate and occasionally calls himself a User Interface Aesthetistician.

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