Gathering up the courage to strike out on your own? It can be scary deciding to become a freelancer, so we asked our design teachers around the world to share their best piece of advice for new freelancers.
Colin Christie
You know your work is good, otherwise they wouldn’t ask for an interview. You know you’ve got the skills, or you wouldn’t have the portfolio to shop around. You know you’ve got the troubleshooting and the enthusiasm necessary for doing a kickass job. But what gets you the gig and what gets you asked back and what gets you recommended deeper into other people’s networks is you.
Be you.
Be the kind of person your colleagues want to be around for 14 hours a day through a busy period, with whom they want to share design blog posts, argue about music, walk to the sandwich shop and hear stories about boring family weekends. The kind of person with whom they want to find themselves in crunchy situations with clients and safely navigate their way out again.
That’s the kind of person who is a successful freelancer. You.
Keep connected—it’s so incredibly important. It can be easy to accidentally fall into a depressing mental vortex where you’re convinced all your design work is crap if you’re all alone in your bedroom making design 24/7.
Having people around that you can bounce ideas off of means that they can offer both encouragement, constructive criticism, or even just spark off an idea.
Try and find a cheap share-studio space with other designers. Find someone you respect and has experience, and ask them if they could be your mentor. Even just having a quick Skype-sesh with another designer is great to get feedback or brainstorm ideas when you’re stuck.
Make sure that you trust the person you talk with, and make sure you’re willing to give back too, when they need you. Keep the love going both ways, keep talking, keep getting involved, and avoid that mental vortex.
Be a pro from the off! Set up your business properly, get legal, create a payment structure and terms of business —all available online in some form. This will ensure you command your clients’ respect and leave you free to do the best work you can safe in the knowledge you will be paid. I always recommend splitting the fee 30% upfront, 30% on sign off of a chosen direction and 40% on delivery of final designs / artwork / pushing a site live.
Make sure you charge your worth!
Those clients who don’t want to pay their way are usually the trickiest to work with and should be approached with caution—especially in the early days of going it alone!
Making the decision to go freelance or set up your own business can be daunting. Sailing away from the safe harbour of permanent employment may seem like a risky choice, but in fact I think it’s an option that many of us creative types find incredibly empowering.
Working for other people brings with it certain rewards—getting paid regularly, for example—but it can also remove us from taking full responsibility for our projects. You can always blame someone else when it doesn’t turn out perfectly. Instead, if you work for yourself, you must nurture relationships with your clients, take responsibility for estimating and invoicing projects, take full ownership of the creative process from start to finish—to me these are the most fundamental and fulfilling elements of working as a designer.
So, maybe you should start your own venture, and see where it takes you. One thing of which I am certain, you will have empowering experiences which you won’t gain through staying in that safe job.
I think that the major challenge for freelancers doesn’t lie with creative matters, but with account management, client liaison and generating new business. These things are highly important to create a successful business, and sometimes they’re skills that don’t come easily to creatives.
I would advise young graphic designers to get a job in agency or studio to learn how the industry works and to see how the business side of design is run. If you take the business side seriously and enjoy it as much as the design side of things, then go for it.
1. Know your value. If a client’s budget is less than your quote don’t lower your fees without the client lowering the deliverables.
2. Have mates. Freelancing can be lonely. Get out of the studio and talk to people. Better still share a space with other creatives.
3. Money talks. Get used to dealing with and talking about money. It can be an uncomfortable subject but a whole lot of pain will be saved by having the confidence to discuss money when required.
Featured illustration by Enza Lettieri.
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