Increase your rates and make more money? Easy.

Land a job at a sweet design firm? Cake.

Get more referrals and clients? No problem.

Convert more visitors into customers? Done.

You’d be surprised how far a little extra design can take you. When I was in college, I freelanced on the side, earning a little extra cash to buy books and food. (I clearly had my priorities in order.)

When I started, I was often paid below minimum wage. I had no experience and just wanted to get by. Everything about my interactions was second-rate. My resume looked awful, my invoices used templates, and my proposals were ugly.

After about a year and a half, I realized that the only thing keeping me from charging more was the perceived value I offered potential clients.

They saw me as an amateur because all my materials were amateurish.

I’m just some random guy from Memphis, Tennessee. I come from a family with a long history in the military. I was supposed to be a mathematician or scientist. I went to school for Cognitive Science, not design.

If anyone was supposed to quit on design, it’s me.

I was struggling to learn design. I was getting paid next-to-nothing. And I was nervous about my future.

…and that’s when everything changed.

A few months later, I landed my first multi-thousand-dollar design contract. A few months after that, an even larger contract. The next thing I knew, I was getting paid more than $125 per hour doing design work. All in a matter of months.

So what changed?

Why was I making $4.33/hour one summer and $100/hour months later?

It’s simple.

I learned typography.