Starting a freelance design career

Posted 31 March 2007, by Aaron

Freelancing

Working for myself is a life-long goal of mine. There are lots of things that drive this ambition: I’m an independent person and enjoy making my own decisions in life; I don’t particularly enjoy the politics of corporate life; I relish constant challenges; and most importantly, I love money and dream of making myself filthy rich!

That said, my feet are firmly on this planet. It may be several years off, but a freelance design career is something I’m driving towards.

Over on NorthxEast I discovered this superb comprehensive guide to starting your freelance career. To summarise, the post covers:

What is freelancing?
Branding yourself
Where do you find work?
Quoting and estimating
Rebilling other services
How much is right?
Invoicing
Getting paid
Recognizing trouble clients
Scoping, delivery and time frames
Service, accessibility and saving the day
Expansion and becoming a full-fledged business

There is a wealth of valuable information to be taken from the article, whatever your experience. Make sure you check it out!

Are you already freelancing?

How important is experience within a design studio/agency? Does a studio background make you a better designer, and will clients insist on several years experience in a studio? Is it possible to freelance without any studio experience?

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Tags:Creative Industry, Freelancing

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4 fantastic comments

Hi. Thank you for this post…I went on to read The Comprehensive Guide to Freelancing and it was a very, very good article. I just wrote an article on Managing an Online Design Portfolio that goes into starting a portfolio when you don’t have any samples. This is a hard thing to do when you first start out freelancing, sooooo, I thought that this article might also be useful to your readers.

Tips on managing your online graphic design portfolio.

Thanks for your great blog.
Rachel

It is possible to freelance without studio experience. What you’ll need however is a killer portfolio, and sales skills.

In fact, if your sales skills are really exceptional then a half decent portfolio will do the trick.

My $0.02 for you.

Rachel - Thanks for your kind comments and thanks for bringing your article to my attention. Both your article and the comprehensive guide above make invaluable reading - I’ve bookmarked both links because I know I’ll be referring back to them.

David - That’s good to know. Whilst I’d like to work in a studio, the fact is I already earn quite a lot more than a junior designer does so to get in to the industry that way would involve a hefty pay cut. I’ve already done a couple of small freelance jobs, but I’m also considering looking at in-house design jobs.

Whichever way you decide to go, Aaron, best of luck with it.

Starting a freelance design career

Are you already freelancing?

4 fantastic comments

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