The Design Doctor is The Design Trust’s trusted agony aunt, who helps with your design or crafts business questions and challenges.
We will try to answer as many questions as we can via our blog posts, but please note that we get many more emails than that we possibly can answer.
You can email your question to thedesigndoctor@thedesigntrust.co.uk Please describe your question in detail as this will definately help us to give you better advice. We will not enter into any correspondence, but will publish as many relevant business questions or dilemmas through blog posts.
Our Business Club members have the chance every month to win a free one hour coaching and advice session with Patricia van den Akker.
The answers are provided by Patricia van den Akker, Director of The Design Trust and our partners.
The Design Doctor is also published bi-monthly in a column in the Crafts Council’s Crafts Magazine from July/August 2012.
Read here the most recent advice of The Design Doctor:
planning & strategy
The Design Doctor: How to get clarity on what to do next? (published in Crafts Magazine Sept/Oct 2012)
The Design Doctor: How to make the most of Christmas (published in Crafts Magazine Nov/Dec 2012)
finance & money
The Design Doctor: Where can I get funding?
The Design Doctor: How to calculate my freelance design rate?
The Design Doctor: How do royalties work?
The Design Doctor: Can anyone give advice on Sale or Return?
marketing & sales
The Design Doctor: What are the best places to sell my craft & design online?
The Design Doctor: Where do I start with social media? (published in Crafts Magazine Jan/Feb 2013)
The Design Doctor: How to get started with marketing my crafts on a limited budget?
The Design Doctor: How to stop wasting time on Twiter & Facebook and make social media useful?
The Design Doctor: How to create an email invite or newsletter to stay in touch with my clients?
The Design Doctor: How can I do market research?
The Design Doctor: I launched … and nothing happened! How do I start selling my crafts?
The Design Doctor: How to get the perfect picture (published in Crafts Magazine Mar/Apr 2013)
The Design Doctor: How do I find a sales agent? (published in Crafts Magazine July/August 2012)
people & management
The Design Doctor: Help, a department store wants to place a bulk order, what do I do now?
The Design Doctor: How to write a design brief & quote?
The Design Doctor: I have a dispute with my art consultant.
legal
The Design Doctor: How to make terms & conditions for my graphic design business?
The Design Doctor: My retail client hasn’t paid me, what can I do?