1. Know Your Skills and Resources
Although opportunities to exercise your creativity are limitless, the flip side is that everybody in this business says they can do it all, especially printers. They don’t want to be left out of the game, but unless they plan to refer the work to someone who can do it, or subcontract the work out, they are stepping into the black hole of unfulfilled promises. If you say you can produce a particular piece when you know there’s no way, you may just find yourself accountable when the project fails. Remember, a client with a bad experience is a client who won’t call again.
If you have the courage, an endless variety of projects awaits you.
Here’s a story about one time I quite naively overstepped my own know-how. When I was still in art school, I accepted an illustration job for a small ad agency. The assignment was to create a pen-and-ink drawing of a man’s hand holding a hammer. How hard could that be? But when I was in high school, boys took “shop” (woodworking or mechanics) and girls took home economics, which didn’t cover the proper way to hold a hammer. After I dropped off the finished art I got an angry call from the art director — and justifiably so. He couldn’t use my perfectly executed illustration on a business card for his client, a professional carpenter, “unless the latest thing is holding a hammer like a spatula.”
As this story shows, it pays to do a little research before you start a job. Even before you start freelancing, sit down and carefully examine your experience and capabilities. What is your education? Does your experience in the field fill in for the gaps in your formal education? Have you mastered communication skills that allow you to present your work in a professional manner, or would it be smarter for you to market yourself in places that don’t require personal presentations? Decide on your strengths and your limitations before you promote yourself to other people for hire.
Managers and owners who rely on your skills are putting their reputations on the line. If you sell yourself as something you’re not, you risk your reputation and theirs if you fail to deliver. Before you start marketing your skills, take time to make a detailed evaluation of exactly what those skills are. Have a clear picture of your abilities and build the promotion of your skills from the hard facts. If you frequently use hyperbole or slide into “creative writing” rather easily, it might be prudent to ask one of your professional peers to do an objective evaluation of your skills.
Honest representation of your skills will reveal your integrity and keep you out of trouble, as the following story illustrates. As the art director on an annual report for a major client, I knew all the tricks we employed for a particular photo shoot. The truth is, we had to invent a few new tricks to corral the subject of the shoot, protective gear. Made out of rubber, it just wouldn’t stay put, bouncing around every time someone took a breath. I had to use all kinds of tape and florist’s goop to get the rubber bits to stay in place long enough for the photographer to work.
I showed this annual report to a prospective client and was asked some very pointed questions about it. I was puzzled by her intense curiosity about this particular piece. She explained, “Another person was just in here with this in his portfolio, but he couldn’t answer any of my technical questions, whereas you have.” It turns out a production trainee from the print shop handling the job was also pitching the client and grabbed a few finished pieces from his company’s sample drawer. Unfortunately, he had only been a trainee for a month and knew very little about actual production and nothing about art direction. By all means aspire to greatness, but don’t mislead people unless you have an extra $50,000 to reprint a botched job. And don’t ever sink to showing someone else’s work as your own.
2. Welcome Variety and Challenge the Competition
Now that you know what you can do, what do you enjoy? Remember all those times when the good jobs went to your superiors and you got the leftovers? Freelancing lets you pick and choose the type of assignment you want in good times. In bad times, when the pickings are slim, you’ll be surprised how much you enjoy putting together a car parts catalog. There’s no joy in not being able to make the mortgage payment, but it’s easy to enjoy thinking of ways to spend your profit while you move little pieces of line art to match the right copy block.
Bread-and-butter work is not exciting or glamorous — it doesn’t give you an opportunity to try out all those cool effects in Photoshop. When the posh stuff with the unlimited budget that makes a splashy portfolio piece comes along, make the most of it. Keep in mind that every job that crosses your desktop won’t be a portfolio piece. Don’t stick up your nose at drudge work, because the money spends the same, and as a freelancer, the object is to make money. This is only one of the ways things have changed since you became self-employed.
We would all like to spend our time designing beautiful things, but remember the fishbowl? The general rule is the big fish go after the big jobs. You will find yourself competing with some pretty big fish for the better work and, in hard times, even for small contracts. (I discuss how to protect your business and maintain control of jobs in Chapter 4.) Don’t be intimidated if you find yourself competing against a big studio. You may know their reputation, but a reputation may be the result of something completely different than raw talent and ability, as the following story illustrates.
One designer I met while freelancing worked at the number one design studio in a major metropolitan area. This studio was considered primo, and everybody wanted to work in their 40th-floor atrium office uptown. When I met this designer to show him my portfolio and update him on my recent projects, he told me he really admired the originality of my work and my great sense of aesthetics. A little incredulous, I countered with, “Well, your work is pretty good, too.” “Really it isn’t,” he said.
He opened the bottom drawer of his filing cabinet and showed me a collection of other people’s brochures he had stashed over the years, all neatly filed and labeled according to type and industry. He told me he kept everything attractive he came across in case he needed something to copy. Here he was, occupying the top design spot in the city and he didn’t have an original thought in his head. What he had was a potpourri of all the best design work in the market to pick and choose from at will. As I came to know from working with him, when he started a new project, he would pull someone else’s design work from his reference file and reproduce it right down to the font, paper stock, and color scheme.
The moral of this story is that you should not be intimidated by the big names who market in your area. Fight a good fight when you meet the competition. I can’t say it enough: The world is your oyster when your work is good. When you feel intimidated, remember there are plenty of pseudo designers and plagiarizing writers in the fishbowl with you who are not eager to identify themselves.
3. Leverage Your Freelance Advantage
Your advantage as a freelancer is multifaceted. Agencies and studios rarely involve their principals in day-to-day design projects, which can mean only their main clients get their attention. One company hired a well-known Madison Avenue advertising agency to handle their $500,000 advertising campaign. The company’s managing partner kept calling the agency for a status report on campaign progress. His calls were rarely returned the same day, and when they were, it was by a junior copywriter. His budget was relatively small compared to the agency’s other clients, and his work got the attention of only junior staff, who were delegated to handle it so everybody else could concentrate on the really important clients such as Mercedes and Pepsi.
A meduim or small company always benefits by hiring freelancers because the client becomes the center of attention.
What’s