Top 5 Challenges of Designing for Overseas Clients

Well, I’ve given you the list of benefits and I know you’ve been waiting for baited breath for the list of Top 5 Challenges of Designing for Overseas Clients. Here they are:

1. The time difference: Serving the US market from Sydney means starting my workday at 6am so I can catch the last hour of New York’s work day. Enough said.
2. Fluctuating exchange rate: Dealing with a fluctuating exchange rate is a bit like trying to negotiate your way through a fun house, with the walls constantly moving and the floors dropping out from under you… especially when the exchange rate fluctuates the ugly way. I’m looking at you, insanely-high Australian dollar.
3. Gaining new clients: It’s a tough sell, convincing a potential client to work with a designer based so far away. And we designers generally don’t enjoy selling ourselves in the first place, do we?
4. Staying involved from afar: I find I need to work twice as hard as stateside designers in order to not drop off the industry radar. This means business travel, subscribing to every industry newsletter I can find (MediaBistro, Publishers Weekly, Publishers Lunch, who am I forgetting?), and keeping on top of the industry changes from half a world away. On top of actually designing the books, of course.
5. International payments: Here’s a fun little gem… it takes some US checks (or cheques, if you aren’t American) up to 8 weeks to clear. This, of course, is after the time it takes to actually issue the check and the postal service of 2 countries to deliver it.

Now after saying all this, I think the benefits are important outweigh the challenges. Of course, I may not be so eager to admit this at 6am…