Freelancing: Lessons learned

Acquiring new skills and How Branding helped me

When I began freelancing, I thought that starting something is the hardest part. Because for me the first couple of years of freelancing was a one big struggle. Self-learning logo designing, constantly practicing, and finding clients took most of my days and nights. But once I started earning a fair monthly income and getting a continuous flow of clients, trying to maintain it was the hardest part.

This is the second in a series of articles about my freelancing career. My previous article was about, “How I became a Freelance Logo Designer”. In this article, I'm going to share the lessons I learned along the way, the new skills I had to self-learn to support logo designing and how I branded my work.

Lessons learned

After my very first logo, the next few logo design projects came from Behance, DeviantArt and Dribbble. They are not just platforms to showcase your work. They are design communities. Employers post job opportunities in these platforms and clients are looking for designers. At first I didn't have a website to display my work. So I updated my design community profiles daily with my latest work. In my opinion as a designer, it is a must. By doing so, my designs received a good exposure as well as honest feedback from fellow designers which helped me to improve my work. It is useful to maintain an active engagement on these platforms if you're looking to find work as well as to improve your skills.

Lesson #1 - Master your style

As any starting freelancer, at first I accepted all the logo design inquiries came my way. In a logo design project what could go wrong, right? Into my 5th or 6th project I realized that I need to focus on a specific logo style, because I didn't enjoy designing complex/illustrative/badge type logos (eg. Starbucks and Heineken). They are beautiful and I appreciate how all the elements are placed inside a small space while maintaining clarity. But it is not my design style. 

Accepting work that I didn't enjoy affected my work routine and other projects as well. To avoid that I had to find the types of logos which I enjoyed designing. For that I first had to study all the logo styles, trends and case studies of famous logos. Practicing various logo styles and trends helped me to realize I enjoyed designing simple and minimalist logos (eg. Apple, Nike). It was satisfying to create art which I'm good at than struggling to create something I'm not very good at. Finding my design style in return helped me to create my own brand. (I'll be writing about it later in this article).

Lesson #2 - Document everything

To date I had a handful of projects which I haven't gotten paid for, though my designs are in use. Among those, most were from the first year of my freelancing career. In my case it was mostly due to two main reasons: 1) lack of professional documentation and; 2) inability to accept PayPal payments. 

Professional documentation also plays a key role in successful project completion. In logo designing, documentation is involved from the beginning to end. Starting from the design questionnaire which gathers the client requirement to logo guidelines document included in the final files, I updated all my basic documentation with the necessary information, terms and conditions. Not only I added necessary terms and conditions I also followed them through. Still I was unable to accept PayPal payments due to restrictions in my country (Sri Lanka). But other than Payoneer(which I was already using), I also found that Skrill and Western Union could help me to accept payments. Later I accepted bank wires as well.

Lesson #3 - Acquire new skills

Being new to graphics design sector can be overwhelming. There are many design areas you could work in, if you learn the appropriate tools to use. One area that made me want to learn, other than logo designing was typography. If you're a logo designer you'll agree when I say that, knowing at least the basics of typography would be very useful in logo designing. 

Not only in logos, typography is used in many design areas. Packaging, Printing, Publishing, Typeface design, UI/UX and etc., there's typography everywhere. The more I worked on logos more I felt the need to study typography. I learned about the anatomy of typefaces, basics of typography, rules, type design etc. This helped me to recognize a good typeface from the rest. Most importantly I was able to create logos with custom made typefaces. Not just that, I was also able to (still continue to) create a collection of Verbicons.

Lesson #4 - Brand your work

In 2012 I decided to create an identity to represent me and my work. By this time I've found my design style to be simple and minimalist. So I wanted my logo to represent my work, design style and my brand promise to my clients. Based on my initial sketches I decided ideally it should be a monogram of “s” and “g” which needs to be connected and arranged uniquely (typography influences my design work hugely 😉).

The two letters are connected and intertwined resembling infinity symbol with a touch of femininity. The design needed to be aesthetically appealing while being unique as it was designed for a designer, me. It needed to be simple and clean which can relate to my design style. Creating my brand made it easy for me to reach the clients who are looking for simple and minimal logos and brand identities. Later on I launched my website aligned to suit my brand which also helped me to reach the target audience.

Since I started as a full-time freelancer I've questioned my own self many times, if I'm going to get through this freelance journey. There were times I was frustrated and wanted to look for a job. Being a mother of two boys, I had work to be done as a mother, house to be taken care of and above all I wanted to contribute to the family expenses. At times when I was not paid for the work I've done, I almost gave up. But there are many good perks to freelancing too. I could work from home, be with my kids and my work hours could be any time as I choose. So I kept trying and by the second year, I was happy that I started freelancing because I love designing. And it was satisfying to earn a living by doing what I love.

Freelancing can be more than a way of earning a monthly income. Similar to achieving many milestones in a job, one can achieve more as a freelancer. It all depends on how much effort you're willing to put and how easily you become satisfied.

In my next article I'll be writing about my achievements so far as a freelancer designer.

Happy freelancing!