These days, it is possible to freelance in just about everything. There are freelance photographers, videographers, and of course, writers and graphic designers. Graphic design was one of the first industries to be popular in the freelance industry.
Graphic designers are creative people with a very specific and in-demand set of skills. Graphic designers are contracted for a wide array of things such as designing a logo for a company, organizing letterhead, or sometimes even making animation for a video.
Graphic design is extremely in demand in today’s world. With more and more of our world turning electronic, companies and individuals are shifting their business model to focus on the internet for business. Website design is not something everyone has a skill for, so businesses or website designers may turn to graphic designers for help with some aspects of it.
Why are so many Graphic Designers Freelancers?
The freelance industry is almost perfect for graphic designers. Given the nature of their work, one company may not have an endless amount of work for them, unless they work at an agency. Companies tend to only need a graphic designer for a handful of tasks, and once that is done there may not be enough work.
The freelance market gives graphic designers the capability to take on as much work as they can find and have time for. This means the earning potential as a freelancer is huge, and if graphic designers are good enough at marketing themselves and finding gigs, they could have full-time work from freelancing. There are so many sites like Freelancer.com, Fiverr.com, Upwork.com, Internshala.com are all gig sites where freelancers can find work from various clients.
The gig economy is growing as a whole in every area, not just for graphic designers. Since the start of the pandemic, the gig economy has exploded. For a variety of reasons, people have decided they are done with their nine to fives and are transitioning to full-time gig work.
This is not a trend that is expected to end when the pandemic does (whenever that is), but it is likely going to continue to trend upwards. As the gig economy continues to grow, so will the resources at hand to successfully grow yourself as a business.
How Does a Graphic Designer Start Working as a Freelancer?
It can be difficult and intimidating to start freelancing as a graphic designer. Luckily, the gig economy is growing and entry into the freelance world has never been so easy. Though there are so many websites such as Upwork and Fiverr, it can still be hard to find enough business to turn to freelance full-time. Becoming a successful freelancer takes time, patience, and a lot of dedication. There are three stages that are extremely important in sustaining your scalable freelance graphic design business.
- Creating your brand and portfolio
- Maintaining your business by establishing regular clients and solidifying your online presence
- Scaling your business through experimentation and reach clients
1. Creating your brand and portfolio
Creating a stellar portfolio is important for freelancers in every industry, but this is especially true for graphic designers. Because the work graphic designers produce are visual pieces of art, they require a lot of attention to detail and designers have to match the idea their client has pretty close to perfect.
Before you become a full-time freelancer, you need to get some experience so then you have a portfolio to show potential clients. Clients want to hire someone who knows what they are doing. Showing potential clients the portfolio of your work is crucial to show them you are capable of taking on their projects and completing them successfully. There are a lot of options for portfolio creation online, which should not be too difficult for graphic designers to figure out.
Creating your brand is something that might be easy and obvious, but for some, it may be very difficult. There is not a successful freelance graphic designer out there that can do every single design they are asked to do. Graphic designers who know their specialty, whether that is bright colors, abstract design, intricate patterns, or anything else, are more successful in their fields.
This is a graphic designers’ brand. When you show clients your portfolio, it should come across to them as something similar to what they want, so they can be confident that you can do it. If you can do more than one design style successfully, it is a great idea to separate these in your portfolio so you can showcase something close to what that client is looking for.
2. Maintaining Your Business
Having strong customer service skills is essential to creating a successful freelance career. You need to be capable and confident in reaching out to potential clients. You have to be polite and driven to land new clients.
One of the hardest parts of freelancing is sustaining it. That may sound like an unfortunate truth, but it is absolutely essential. To sustain a freelance career, you need consistent clients. This is one of the most essential ways of staying successful.
The more long-term clients you have, the less time you’ll have to spend finding work and the more time you can spend working. When you work with the same clients over and over again, you also understand what they are looking for and you can more easily meet their expectations.
Another essential way to sustain your freelance career is to stay up to date on new sites for freelancers. Platforms like Behance or Dribbble allow you to create essentially a social media profile on an app made for designers. This can find your business and keep you up to date on new practices or websites that fellow freelancers are using.
3. Scaling Your Freelance Graphic Design Career
When you first start out as a freelance graphic designer, you probably won’t have your dream clients, and that is alright. In fact, it is better that you wait to reach out to a dream client. You want to have a solid profile and testimonials from previous clients. This will give you a leg up and help you get bigger and better clients.
As you get more clients, get more years under your belt, and create an impressive portfolio, you will be able to land more clients. If you are having trouble finding bigger clients and need to up your game to further scale your business, it may be a great idea to enroll in some courses to elevate your skills and make you a more impressive candidate.
How to Land New Clients
The most important thing to do before you reach out to big clients is to make sure that your online portfolio is stellar. You want to impress potential clients not only with your work but also with the presentation of your portfolio. This is important for all freelancers, especially graphic designers. You want to show that you are capable of impressive graphic design in more ways than just your design projects.
When you have created a substantial portfolio with impressive attention to detail, you can then begin submitting applications to jobs.
Like traditional jobs, you’ll want to write cover letters and tailor each to address the specific traits and skills the job requires. You want to make it clear that you are the person for the job, and that requires a bit of redundancy in applications at times.
How to Manage Your Freelance Career
Though it would be nice to manage a successful graphic design freelance career by solely focusing on your design work, that is not how it works. To make it successfully in the freelancing field, you have to have or have the ability to develop a wide range of other skills. You have to be able to manage yourself and your business. This is something that a lot of freelancers have trouble with.
Many people do not realize how much goes into managing a business, even if you are your only employee. You have to keep track of invoices, banking information, networking, and technological progression. Some of these tasks require time, and others require a lot of money.
Graphic design requires the use of digital programs such as Adobe InDesign and other technology like a dependable computer and a printer. Unfortunately, these programs and technologies require money.
Administrative tasks like managing your time and invoicing clients when work is completed can take up a huge amount of time, and for some people, this is miserable work. Being your own boss is extremely difficult for some, so freelancers need to learn how to balance their time between actual time spent working, time spent completing administrative tasks, and time spent on career scaling and development.
Skills Helpful to a Freelance Graphic Design Career
As we stated above, there is so much more that goes into freelancing than completing your graphic design work. Skills like effective time management, effective customer service, and technological capabilities are extremely important. Here are some of the most important skills in freelancing and a quick summary of how to achieve these skills.
- Project Management
When you are a freelancer, you will likely be working on more than one project at one time. This means you have to keep track of various projects at once. You should always keep clients updated on the progress of the project and adhere to any agreed-upon deadlines.
Instead of memorizing every detail about when you are getting a project done and to whom, it can be crucial to keep detailed records of deadlines and milestones you need to hit to stay on track with multiple projects. You can do this by keeping an old-fashioned calendar, or by using a project management website. There are so many out there to choose from. There are some that cater towards projects with many people working on it so they can stay updated on other people’s tasks, or there are ones designed for freelancers, so you can stay on top of your own projects.
- UX/UI Design
UX and UI design stand for user experience design and user interface design and it is getting increasingly more important and in-demand. Apparently, statistical data shows that as many as 90% of consumers will stop using an app because it has poor UX, and 88% won’t return due to a poor user experience. This is important for freelance graphic designers because UX/UI design is an essential aspect of any company’s marketing and strategy today. Plus, UX/UI is an extremely transferable skill, if you ever want to focus your career on that instead of graphic design as a whole.
- Get Familiar with Design Software
Once you are familiar with the elementary aspects of graphic design, you may want to build up your repertoire of design software. The more you can confidently use, the more you can offer potential clients. There are so many different design software out there, but generally, Adobe Creative Suite is a necessity for graphic designers. If you have mastered this and you want to learn more skills, you may want to take a visual design course and learn about graphic design from some highly respected professionals.
- Communication Skills
One of the most important skills a freelancer can develop is communication skills. Whether you are being transparent about meeting deadlines and setting clear expectations or clearing up a mishap, you need to be able to communicate any issues and conditions to your new and long-time clients. One of the hardest things to navigate as a freelancer is fighting the urge to over-promise when it is probable that you will underdeliver. Of course, everyone wants to say yes to everything a client asks for them, but a lot of times it is not possible without a few compromises and negotiations. You need to be able to communicate with your clients transparently, so you do not set expectations too high for yourself.
M Accelerator Founders Cohort
The M Accelerator Founders Cohort is a place for graphic designers to learn how to turn themselves into businesses. Our clients learn how to build a brand, market themselves and their services, and develop a network of clients.
We love to share our knowledge about business modeling and strategies. With our help through the Founders Cohort, we will help you scale your freelance business into something you will be happy with.
Our cohort-based startup program for creative entrepreneurs teaches business strategies through coaching sessions with incredible mentors and an impressive network of high-performing founders.
