The Secret To Freelancing – FOLLOW DIRECTIONS!
A young digital Illustrator e-mailed me after seeing a post of mine on a business networking site. He asked, “After reading your profile, I would love to hear anything else you have to offer regarding the inside of the industry!”
Credit: Mykl Roventine on Flickr
I wrote back, “Yikes! That would take ten minutes, at least. Not much I can say without breaking non-disclosures with my clients. What did you have in mind?”
He replied back, “Well, being on the other side of the table as an Art Director, what did you look for in freelance creatives? Anything you can impart would be appreciated. Thanks!”
I thought about the answer. What really got me interested in using new talent?
“Mostly talent and a certain style I can see applied to product,” I wrote. “There are many great artists I just couldn’t use because their work didn’t lend itself to the design direction or demographics.
As for dealing with creatives, there were those I found and approached, those who approached me and those who did everything they could to annoy and insult me.
The key, if I had to draw a conclusion, is to have great promotional pieces, stay in contact with those who buy art, have patience and persistence and, most of all, don’t screw up a project. I can’t tell you how many people screwed themselves out of the chance to break into the place I was working because they went nuts. Don’t get overexcited, don’t smell of desperation and don’t take a rejection personally and act as if it IS personal.
Top Freelance Jobs from Job Board – Week 5, May
Looking for a new client? The FreelanceSwitch job board is a great resource of freelance gigs and opportunities. These opportunities are in various fields, from development to writing to design, and come from a wide range of potential clients. The job board is hand-moderated by dedicated staff and volunteers from the freelance community.
Each week, we’ll feature a selection of the best job opportunities posted for the week. This week, we’re featuring jobs in Logo Design, User Interface Design, Magneto Development and more!
To apply for any of these jobs, simply pick up a FreelanceSwitch membership for an affordable $7 a month. See something you like? Join now!
Linkswitch #70, Personal Branding, Motivational Quotes, Coffee Shops
How to Pick the Right Colors for Your (Personal) Brand
As a freelancer, your business image isn’t just a reflection of your work, it’s a statement of your personal identity. With every project you complete, a portion of your personal design beliefs, creative insights and unique identity is woven into the results. These ties should be reflected in the freelance identity portrayed to your clients.
35 Great Inspirations & Apps for Your Facebook Page
Facebook pages are a great way to foster user engagement and promote a brand. Over time, Facebook has added a lot of features to make business pages more functional and feature rich. Lot of brands are building cool and extremely interactive business pages on top of the world’s largest social network. One has to see at least a few of these designs to get a good idea how powerful Facebook pages can be.
Better Image Management With WordPress
With the advent of sophisticated and user-friendly content management systems like WordPress, textual content has become increasingly easier to manage. The architecture of these systems aims to deliver a well-formed code foundation; this means that if you are a good writer, then your content will be just as awesome as the structure and quality of the code that runs it.
3 Steps to Igniting Your Design Planning Process
Credit: elenathewise on Photodune
More than once, I’ve made the mistake of diving head first into a project, full of enthusiasm and brimming with ideas. After a quick consult with what seems to be an agreeable and understanding client, I’m already half a dozen logo concepts down in Illustrator and adjusting kerning and leading in InDesign to suit the brilliant brochure design that has materialized at the front of my mind. All seems well in my creative world.
I’ve found out the hard way, that sometimes the creative process does not always go to plan. Unplanned adjustments, small client misunderstandings, added extras slid in here and there, long response times and unworkable files and information create a huge, foreboding cloud in what was just a week ago a sunny sky.
I’ve created a three-step checklist to prepare myself for projects, which I hope will be of use to my fellow creative who make a habit of diving into the deep end.
The Difference Between Coworking Spaces and Coffee Shops
Freelancers wind up working everywhere: I’ve done my work at coffee shops, coworking spaces and even truck stops in in the middle of nowhere. But there are some big differences between using a general public space and an area built from the ground up for working.
Coworking spaces are becoming more common, especially in big cities. As a rule, they’re worth considering when you’re in need of a place to work. But working from a coworking space isn’t quite the same as working from a coffee shop, if you’re in the habit of moving your laptop to wherever your favorite barista is working this week.
Freelancer Pro Interview: Fuel Your Freelancing with Past Connections
Not everyone dreams of freelancing. Christine Hofmann-Bourque, a freelance writer from Boston, was just hoping to work at a national magazine — and she did for some time. But when her spouse decided on a career that would require him to relocate, Christine put her creative talents to work as a freelancer. She also decided to leverage connections from her full-time days to help her thrive as a freelancer.
You are now working as a freelance journalist contributing to many premier publications — a career many aspiring and existing writers covet. What was the key to getting where you are? Did putting time in as a full-time employee help to open doors?
When I first set my sights on a career in journalism, my end goal wasn’t to be a freelance writer — it was to work on staff at a national magazine. I got a great job at Meredith Corporation, a big publisher based in Iowa, and eventually moved into the features editor position at Country Home, a fantastic interior design magazine. I loved the staff, I loved the magazine, and I loved the whole creative process of putting a magazine together from start to finish. To this day, few things make me happier than seeing a new magazine in my mailbox! But after the 9/11 terrorist attacks, my husband felt a call to serve in our military. So when he signed away his life to Uncle Sam, I decided to become a freelancer so I could continue to work no matter where he is stationed.
Corbett Barr Interview
Site: Corbettbarr.com
As creative freelancers many of us have the unique working situation were we can pick up move about, relocate, travel and work from just about anywhere — well at least if you set yourself up for that flexibility. Corbett Barr blogs extensively on this subject of location independence, and in this interview discusses how he has grown his blog ThinkTraffic into a full time business as well. There are some great insights in this interview for those of you looking to add an additional revenue stream to your freelance income through blogging, or for those of you interested in the freedom of working from anywhere.
Don’t Just Create…Create Opportunity!
Credit: elenathewise on Photodune
I’ve been thinking a lot about creativity lately, primarily because I am immersed in Julia Cameron’s book, The Sound of Paper. In it, she details her struggles and triumphs with creativity, emphasizing how seasons change physically–as well as in our creative lives.
That’s led me to realize that creativity is more than our ability to devise a winning slogan or a visually appealing website. Our creative businesses are also about what we create for ourselves. Meaning, you can put all of your energy into producing whatever it is that you’re good at–websites, print collateral, etc. But what opportunities do you create for yourself? Are you working on a book detailing your expertise? Are you getting the word out about your professional aptitude? Are you generating new clients?
Being a creative is not just about the artistic deliverables we physically create. It’s about opening doors–and you have to do that for yourself when you’re in business for yourself–no one else will do it for you. If you don’t, you risk growing stale. No one will know about your business. It won’t grow. And it certainly won’t prosper. Sure, there are off seasons when you’re focused on work. But how are you going forward?
Top Freelance Jobs from Job Board – Week 4, May
Looking for a new client? The FreelanceSwitch job board is a great resource of freelance gigs and opportunities. These opportunities are in various fields, from development to writing to design, and come from a wide range of potential clients. The job board is hand-moderated by dedicated staff and volunteers from the freelance community.
Each week, we’ll feature a selection of the best job opportunities posted for the week. This week, we’re featuring jobs in Web Design, Flash Dev, Copy Writing and more!
To apply for any of these jobs, simply pick up a FreelanceSwitch membership for an affordable $7 a month. See something you like? Join now!
Linkswitch #69, Bookmarklets, Time Management, Brand Ambassadors
The secret power of bookmarklets
Bookmarklets are special links that users can add to their browser’s favorites. These special links include code (i.e. not just a target URL), and they trigger various kinds of useful functionality, allowing you to modify and extend any web page.
15 Photoshop Tutorials for Designing Advertisements
The design of an advertisement can have a huge impact on the level of success of the ad campaign. Being able to design attractive and effective advertisements will lead to better results for you and your clients. In this post we’ll showcase 15 tutorials that will lead you through the process of designing an ad in Photoshop. Most of the tutorials are for designing poster/flyer type ads.
5 Time Management Tips for Freelancers
Do you find that you’re constantly up against the clock? Is managing your work / life balance an ongoing battle? Freelancers frequently find the main barrier to developing and growing their client base is their own time. William Penn, businessman and philosopher said “Time is what we want most, but what we use worst,” few of us would argue with this sentiment.
