© 2008 Independent Studios
Sep
29
I’ve touched on it before, but there are some great resources out there for finding freelance work.
So, without further adieu, I give you another list of sites with jobs for freelance graphic designers:
37Signals: Cool listings - not a lot of them, but they pay pretty well. The competition is stiff, but that keeps the quality [...]
Sep
28
Well, Friday again - and I’m going a little different route. I normally talk in code and software and pixels and DPI, but today - let’s talk art. Shall we?
With a minor degree in illustration and art history, I am a bit of an art buff. As a freelance designer, I’ve found that the most [...]
Sep
26
Sometimes, getting information out of a client can be a little like pulling teeth. Generally, they’re not sure what they’re looking for, and they havn’t thought the project out fully. You have to do a little hand-holding as a freelance designer, and picking a client’s brain can be frustrating.
When you set out to design a [...]
Sep
25
There are so many ways to promote yourself as a freelance designer.
Advertising, both online and in analog, is great - but it can get expensive. A simple newspaper ad can run you $1200. That’s a lot of logo work.
Link exchanges, are - at best a crap shoot. You never really know how effective they [...]
Sep
24
I’ve had plenty of folks ask me what it takes to start a freelance design business - and I’ve seen all sorts of tips and pages and responses about that question.
“Get 2 years of salary in the bank before you start.” Yeah. That’s easy to do, right?
“Build your client base before you leave your full [...]
Sep
24
I’m really not a huge fan of building websites. I do like designing them - but the building can be a bit of a drag. Over the years, I’ve figured out how to design around the limitations of browsers and users, but it’s a fine art (not literally,) and it can be very tedious.
I also [...]
Sep
22
It’s been a horribly busy week for me, with a business partner flying in from Seattle and pulling all-nighters to complete a few projects. Many Red Bulls and pots of coffee later, and my kidneys are screaming at me and my head is swimming with tiredness. But, we have a great product nearly ready to [...]
Sep
19
I’ve found that a lot of freelancers out there (myself included) have fallen into a trap of working too hard to make too little. Some of that goes back panic (read a little on that in an older post) and some of that goes to picking the wrong clients.
But the fact remains that if you [...]
Sep
18
I’m in the process of setting up a free blogging community built specifically for freelance designers. It’ll be a simple WordPress-style setup, and it’ll be fully searchable and tied into a HUGE community of artists. Free blogs and websites (set up as subdomains) and a lot of great features that will help us all have [...]
Sep
17
I love to loathe Microsoft, so any way that I can stick it to ‘em, I take…
But, at the same time, you’ve got to admit that they make rather ubiquitous software, and as a freelance designer, I have to keep copies of everything that clients and potential clients might use. Don’t ask me about Publisher [...]