A Beginners Guide to Freelance Design
Everything I learned last year working as a full-time, self-employed designer
Happy New Year! Im taking a break from my usual philosophical musings about contemporary design and art to discuss the real-life nuances behind being a self-sustaining designer in 2024.
I’m writing this guide- An Beginners Guide to Freelance Design -as a point of reference to the place I reside in my career. I just completed a year of full-time freelance designing, and to be transparent, I failed a lot. Running a business both alone and systematically is no easy feat, and I am grateful to have the opportunity to do so. I learned a lot, so I want to share some of the knowledge I’ve accumulated as an amateur on the way to becoming an expert in my field and in my craft.
I hope this can be of help to those of you who want to kickstart your creative career!
#1 How to Start
The question most designers face when deciding whether to start freelancing or not is how to start.
First thing’s first. Build a portfolio. When I first started, I worked on UI/UX passion projects or graphic design projects for my friends for free. Once you’ve worked on a couple project, publish your portfolio on some platform, the best being a personal website. If you want a more preliminary guide on design resources and what kind of projects to work on as a novice designer, check out this thread I made:
The next bit- attracting clients. It’s not a talent or skill issue, it’s a marketing one. Some designers network their way to clients- either through word of mouth or through an existing client base sourced from the studio, school or company they’re already affiliated with. Others use freelancing or design platforms such as Behance, Dribble, Adobe Portfolio, Fiverr etc to source clients. I got my start as a designer sharing my designs on social media- specifically Twitter and Instagram- and accumulating clients who wanted to work with me. This leads me to my second point:
#2 Maintaining a Social Media Presence
The necessity for a social media presence as an artist or designer is debatable, but the widespread consensus nowadays its that it’s practical to incorporate content creation into the daily artist to-do. As a matter of fact, creating as an artist is the only to really maintain your practice, so why not also share it? Share everything. Share your process, share your thought patterns, share the final goal. People love to look into the mind of an artist. Sharing your craft requires great vulnerability but creating a brand around your art is one of the best ways to attract and maintain clients.
#3 Client Acquisition (Outbound, Discovery and Retention)
Speaking of clients, navigating the client acquisition and retention pipeline is one of the things I had the most difficulty with this year and even, took for granted. Maintaining an active social media presence will usually help you source at least one -up to 3 or 5 if you have a “viral” post- client discovery call a month, but there’s no guarantee that those discovery calls will consequently land client contracts. The best way to gain new clients when starting out is to maintain come combination of outbound, inbound and referral based clients. For me personally, that looks like: posting consistently about design work on social media, sending out cold emails and cold DM’s to clients that you’re interested in working with specifying some value-add, and reaching out to friends, colleagues or older clients to see if they have anyone in mind. Diversifying your streams of client acquisition (and income) is the most practical and secure way to maintain this job full time.
#3a Cold Emailing and DMing
I’m not gonna explain how to write a cold email or cold DM in this section, but I wanted to touch on what to include when pitching yourself to prospective clients- advice given to me by my mentors.
The best advice I’ve gotten is to see what companies or startups in your preferred field of work are currently hiring and to evaluate their current branding, website or product. Then when pitching in your email, include some brief ideas you have on how to improve said chosen aspect. Include your portfolio of work and include some value-add, either in relation with past clients or with a personal project you feel pa3ssionate about. In my opinion, it’s okay to fudge some details here. The main bit is to hype yourself up as much as possible, but to keep your email straightforward, assertive and personal. At the end of the day, if you really wanna work with a brand or company, it’s important to for them to know why!
#3b Securing Clients
In the discovery call stage, it’s important to maintain confidence when securing a client deal. Confidence includes transparency. Make sure to ask tons of questions to your clients and get a feel for what they’re really looking for when evaluating whether you want to work with them or not. Be very clear in the first call about your pricing. Be transparent about the kind of work you can provide for them and in how much time you can actually get it done.
Something I really want to emphasize here is, *stop trying to be a good at everything.* I feel like nowadays, clients want a designer who can provide website design, product design, branding, logo, motion graphics, 3D design, web-development, interaction design, packaging design, etc etc. Holistically, it’s important as a freelance designer to have an arsenal of tools under your belt, however, it’s important to understand your niche and what you’re really good at.
I spent a lot of time last year trying to become a jack of all trades designer. Even though its fun to learn new software and pick up new tools, ultimately, it requires a lot of time and effort to do so, and it obstructs you from becoming an expert in the one thing you actually enjoy doing! In my case, I have no regrets because by trying out a bunch of new design niches, I was able to figure out where my strengths truly lie.
If your client is asking you for multiple things, consider outsourcing. This way you can charge more and provide consistent quality of work they’re looking for. For example, if your niche is logo design and they also want animated GTM graphics, consider outsourcing a motion designer to help you out. Some duo’s I think pair really well here are web-design & front-end, ui/ux & graphic, logo & brand, and brand & motion.
After your initial discovery call, it’s important to send a follow up email with a transparent, high-level timeline and pricing proposal so clients know exactly what they’re looking for. Mines usually include week to week deliverables split up in 2-4 week sprints, depending on project size. It’s all about communication, folks! Don’t take it too personally if a client partnership doesn’t work out. There’s a million moving parts in companies and resiliency comes with the job. Keep your head up and keep moving.
#3c Client Retention
This point has been mentioned a couple times but honest to god, the best way to get client referrals is to provide good quality to work in a timely manner. Good quality work means organized files and understanding the clients wants and needs. Some colleagues of mine go so far to keep a client portal/communication pathway/PM platform where clients can access their work at all times. Others are more hands off and handle all their business work through emails/twitter DM’s. I usually like to keep an organized Figma file (separate from my own working file) that shows all the important iterations of work that a client can look back at.
Most of the time, clients don’t actually know what they’re looking for. Usually, they want something similar to what they’ve already seen, but just a little different. They’re looking to you, as the designer, to provide clarity to their vision. It’s important to be confident and pitch your work to convince clients that this is what the company needs. Pitch your work well, provide high-level work and be systematic. This will land you client referrals in the future.
#4 Invoicing, Taxes and Business
Here I wanted to touch on all the business parts of running a business.
For a long time, I kept things really informal by accepting payment through Venmo or some sort of crypto currency. All business expenses related to my practice were charged to my personal credit card. I had no idea how to approach taxes and whether I wanted to launch an LLC or not. Until you meet with a financial advisor or decide to personalize your financial plan, here’s my recommended place to start:
Set up a trusted invoicing system. I like to use Stripe. There’s plenty of other ones available. Stripe, and most other invoicing platforms, take a portion of your payment in return of using their platform. Make sure to account for any fees and service taxes when creating your client payment plans.
Ask your clients to file a 1099. This will be helpful when filing for tax returns. If your client doesn’t ask you for a 1099, you’re still legally obligated to report the payment on your taxes. If the project is less than $500.00, I usually would not report it because you usually won’t get taxed on it.
Set up a separate checking account for business expenses. You can basically write off this entire account in your taxes and can include travel, food, other trivial expenses in it as well.
It is helpful to launch an LLC under an independent studio name. This will allow you to write off more taxes. Be weary of new tax laws surrounding LLC’s that will be implemented in this upcoming year.
TRACK ALL YOUR EXPENSES! This is huge, and very important when running a business. You should know where all your money is coming from and where it’s going.
Set money aside. It’s important to have at least 3-6 months of runway at all times. It’s ideal to make the same amount of money every month, but usually when you’re starting off, this wont be the case. Some months are great and you’ll make a lot of money. Other months are slow and you wont make any money. It’s important to save some of that money when you get it so that you don’t have to stress as much about money when you’re sourcing your next few clients. I spent most of my money on traveling when I wasn’t working, and I have no regrets doing so, but I wish I had some more financial leeway this year.
Ideally, try and maintain multiple streams of income. This can be done through sponsorships, brand deals, online courses, Patreon, an online artists shop, a part time job at a design studio, etc while maintaining multiple clients.
THIS NOT REAL FINANCIAL ADVICE. THIS IS ONLY MY OPINION.
For more, reference these YouTube videos:
#5 Business Models
There’s a lot of commotion in the design world regarding the best business model regarding freelance designing. I think when you’re first starting out, it’s best to offer a fixed price, a-la-carte menu of the services you provide. Further down the line, you can decide whether you want to move to a monthly design subscription- which works better for larger clients who need a designer on retainer to make small changes here and there but don’t have the bandwidth to hire a full time designer- or to another time of payment model.
Other popular models include pre-made brands, which are helpful for really early startups who don’t have the money for personalized branding or basic contracting, where the company you’re working for hires you for a fixed period of time. All have different tax benefits- do your research and choose which one is the best for you. Ideally, a combination of all these things is the best way to maintain multiple streams of income and keep a high revenue.
#6 PERSONAL TAKEAWAYS
I think at the end of the day, the toughest thing about working for yourself are all the mental hurdles that come along with it. This year, I learned about setting boundaries and resiliency, which were more important to running a successful business than business strategy itself.
You will have good and bad clients. You will have clients who won’t communicate with you or won’t pay you on time or who will be stingy with pricing. You will also have clients who give you feedback that might hurt your feelings or might not like your work. The best designers are the ones who don’t take failure too personally and are able to let go of perfectionism. I had a lot of trouble with this because I tend to take things too much to heart, but I am grateful I learned these lessons. Failure is good! Have the courage to be an amateur because those make the best experts.
Cheers,
Shravani