Author: Matt McCue / Source: Adobe 99U
The competition is only getting stronger. Here’s how to get noticed and snag clients in an increasingly noisy environment.
There’s never been a better time for enterprising creatives to turn their passions and side hustles into a career. This is especially true for would-be graphic designers, as new and intuitive software becomes commonplace and the ability to share work with your network via social media have made marketing a portfolio as easy as pushing a button.
But as the field becomes more accessible, how do individual designers and firms get their work seen and, more importantly, commissioned, at a time when freelance marketplaces such as Upwork, Fiverr and 99Designs have thousands of designers competing for work? We reached out a handful of entrepreneurial graphic designers to learn how they command attention and snag clients.
“When I was living in Beirut the design scene was relatively small, so I would often get clients through word of mouth and friends of friends. This wasn’t the case when I moved to the US. It was obviously harder for me to attract clients as I didn’t know anyone, so I had to do what every designer dreads doing—updating my (then expired) website and putting a proper online portfolio together. I also tried posting more of my work on Instagram (and fewer pictures of my roommate’s dog), but that didn’t last. What actually helped was shamelessly emailing people I was interested in working with directly, asking to meet or grab a cup of coffee. This is how I started working with Eye on Design. It gets easier—one job often leads to another. My advice would be to reach out directly to people you’d like to work with and see what happens. Care about the work that you do but, at the same time, don’t take your designer-self too seriously. And don’t be shy about money.”
“When I first moved to New York, work came slowly and it was difficult, but the longer I was here, and the more I worked at agencies and with clients, the wider my network grew. The opportunities began to flow in. Professionals move around a lot, so if you can show people you’re a solid worker and not a total jerk, you can be sure your name will come up wherever they go.
“Selling clever design, nuanced thinking, and positive human experience—that becomes a freelancer’s greatest assets. We like to think we (graphic designers) are unique, but similar crowdsourcing trends are happening across the board, with apps and companies offering cheap-to-free alternatives for everything from guided meditation to dubious medical diagnosis. Consumers are accustomed to cost-efficient options, but the reality is that these alternatives only provide for fundamental, rudimentary needs—Band-Aid solutions, you could say. The adage says ‘You get what you pay for,’ and that’s absolutely true.”
“Highlight your uniqueness—this is the only answer. Digital design is fun, quick, requires no investment. It is a volatile medium which takes no space, meaning it’s the top profession of our times—everyone who can use a computer and has an eye for aesthetics can claim to be a designer. We had a mad dream: in a sea of countless designers, in the age of easy access to design tools, we would go against the current and work as an image experimentation lab, favoring quality over quantity, decoration over pragmatism and wisdom over false advertising. We started launching image collections with themes from the zeitgeist and aesthetics from the future, with the idea that these cutting-edge experiments would attract us the best clients, brands, and companies in the top echelon of their practice. Without realizing, it turned out to be the best business plan.”
4. Don’t overlook the power of stickers.
Kenzo Minami, whose clients include Mercedes-Benz, Microsoft, Kidrobot, Raf Simons, VH1, Ace Hotel
“I think the most effective tool for promotion, and to connect with clients, might be shifting back to physical and analog promotional items, like stickers, posters, stationery, as well as your physical self—just showing up. You also cannot underestimate the power of social media. When everyone is connected, and we all equally have a medium to express ourselves and release our work, it’s easy to imagine that the media is oversaturated and everyone is numb to “just another piece of cool artwork,” but we are circling back to…
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