Graphic Design Freelancing Tips: A New World of Design for Beginners
Graphic design is a hard industry to get into. It's like the Wild West out here. Many jobs seek designers with 5+ years of experience as entry-level designers. Many people who are interested in design don’t know the best way to get experience. So how do you get some extra experience in graphic design? Well, that's where the amazing field of freelancing comes into play. So let's learn some tips for freelancing graphic design.
But What is Freelancing and What do You do?
Freelancing is a unique type of working, it can encompass a wide range of fields for good reason. FlexJobs says that a freelancer is:
“A person who is self-employed, often working for multiple clients at one time and earning income per project.”
Freelancers tend to work based on their schedule, allowing them to control their payments, and contracts, and work between themselves and the client. These clients can be big corporations to your everyday person. And as a designer, freelancing is one of the common ways that a designer can earn a living. Colorlib says that 90% of graphic designers have done some freelancing in their lives.
The biggest benefit of freelancing is its work though. You have complete control of what you want to work on. Wanna make a packaging design only? Done, you can do that as a freelancer. Maybe you’re open to any design, if so, then that's perfectly fine too. It's no shock many designers practice freelancing. But what can you do to help yourself when freelancing?
5 Tips to Try to Help with Design Freelancing!
1. Learn software for the field you’d like to work in.
Although this tip doesn’t seem like much, I would recommend looking for platforms that would be beneficial to the design you wish to go into, as there are so many different fields to go into. Here are some programs I’d recommend.
General Graphic Design: Adobe Products
Visual graphics/motion graphics: 3D programs like Blender and VFX programs like Maya
UX/Web-Design: Sketch and Figma
2. Networking
Networking is critical to gaining clients. According to Apollotechnical, LinkedIn found that 80% of professionals find networking with other professionals beneficial to their career success. As a freelancer, networking helps you gain experience gain potential clients, and become friends with fellow designers. There are multiple ways of networking, including going to design-related events, client experience, or reaching potential people whose service you may provide.
3. Collect your work (portfolio)
Another part of freelancing is collecting your workload into a PDF or a portfolio. This way, future clients or commissioners can see the work you have created. It also helps as storage for your work to see how far you have come as a creator!
4. Know your branding and goals
Perhaps also obvious, but still important to know. Understanding your branding and goals helps benefit both you and the client in the long run. Branding benefits you because it shows you know who you are as a freelance designer and what you hope to gain out of the work. Knowing your goals meanwhile helps the client figure out if you can be able to help. If the goals cannot match with the client, then either make minor changes or don’t work with them (completely okay, sometimes goals don’t meet).
5. Post your work if you can!
Lastly, post any work you can! By utilizing social media platforms for example, you are able to reach a wide range of audiences and spread your work. And this work can be anything! If it's personal, great! It's more your style and themes! If it's a client, then that's great too! Just make sure you have permission to post, as sometimes, a client may wish to keep the work private.
Thank you for reading!
