How should nervous, frugal, business owners and creative managers spend money over the next three weeks? This month I’ve found myself in a couple odd year-end planning conversations with clients.
One owner of a large design firm which did very well in 2008 told me her CPA is pressing them to spend some of their pre-tax profits before December ends. A manager of an in-house creative departments has remaining funds in his 2008 budget, and wants to know what purchases will have the greatest impact for their team over the coming year.
Both are justifiably wary about today’s economy, and nervous about what budgets are going to look like next year.
Here is our list of frugal ways you might spend end-of-year dollars, while preparing your company for potentially lean times ahead.
As the economy tightens, we’ve seen a lot of design firms expressing a stronger interest in how to improve their studio’s online marketing efforts. Of particular interest, we hear a lot of designers asking how to help their web site (or their client sites) rank better in Google search results.
Our email tip subscribers will notice the look of our email newsletter changed a lot this week. We’re trying out a new 2-column format, as well as testing a switch over to 
As we head into the shortened Thanksgiving week, we’d like to offer our traditional holiday papercraft project. This delectable roast turkey was found on a Japanese site. We’ve bundled the templates into a single easy-to-download PDF:
