Like its name, being a freelance designer can be freeing. Working on projects you care about; determining your own schedule; being your own boss; that really is the dream. But while becoming a freelance graphic designer is no easy task, it’s completely worth the effort.
If you’re ready to join thousands of creatives to become a freelance graphic designer, keep reading. This article will focus on becoming a freelance graphic designer—with an emphasis on the freelance business side of things.
Let’s start!
- Find clients
If you want to learn how to become a freelance graphic designer who actually stays in business, then the absolute most important task at hand is getting your first clients.
Why? If you don’t have clients, you don’t have a business. And if you don’t have a business, you haven’t become a freelance graphic designer. It’s just a hobby for you. Getting your first freelance graphic design clients will give you confidence, momentum, and traction from which you can become a freelance designer more quickly.
There are a number of ways a freelance graphic designer can find their first clients. Of course, we’d recommend Rtist, one of the biggest creative talent communities in Malaysia that matches you with clients. You can build up your portfolio, match up with potential clients and offer your services.
Another way is to tap into your personal network, and strategically think through friends or relatives you have that might know someone who has a need for freelance graphic designer. Connect with them using a customized, personalized email and you’ll be surprised.
- Build Your Brand
Once you’ve got a few client leads under your belt, you can start to think about the other elements of how to become a freelance graphic designer. First up, is to think through how you’ll brand and name yourself. This is important to tackle fairly early on because, for most freelance graphic designers, word of mouth proves extremely important.
Many freelancers debate whether you should use your own name or a business name. If your goal in becoming a freelance graphic designer is to stay in a one-person business forever, then use your own name as the company name. But if you ever want to grow your freelance business to be bigger than just you, you may want to consider coming up with a name for your design business.
- Build Your Portfolio
If you’re serious about learning how to become a freelance graphic designer, you should start to build a portfolio that highlights only your best work and encourages visitors to hire you. Having a portfolio is basically your ticket to closing jobs, as clients would like to at least see what you have done previously before choosing you. You don’t have to have anything too fancy; simply showcase your past works for other clients and soon you’ll see people contacting you.
Plus, with Rtist, you’re able to store all your portfolios and showcase them to your clients in an easy one-stop location.
- Over-deliver for your first clients
The next critical step on your journey to learn how to become a freelance graphic designer is to make your current clients very happy. It doesn’t matter if you found your first clients through your personal network or through freelancing websites, in either case each client represents an opportunity for more work.
How? Well, you can over-deliver on your work for your first few clients.
If you do a good job the first time (more than good, really) your client is far more likely to hire you a second time. You might even be able to convert your one-time client into regular, recurring revenue. Plus, it also impacts the likelihood of getting referrals from that client in the future.
- Handling the paperwork
Learning how to become a freelance graphic designer isn’t just about getting clients and doing the creative work, though. As a freelance designer, you’ll also need to run your design business. That means learning how to write an invoice, sending proposals to your clients, working with contracts at times, and lots more.
While you can do the bare minimum (Google Docs or similar) when first getting started, you can also opt for some freelancer invoicing software that you can use to make it easier to handle all your paperwork.
- Don’t get too picky with jobs (at first)
There may be some advice that tells you that as a freelance designer you should never compromise and always be picky about the kinds of clients you take on. However, this piece of advice is only good if you’ve been freelancing for years. If you’re just getting started, this can literally mean the premature end of your career.
Picking up whatever opportunities are given to you at the start will give you confidence, a bit of cash, and a good foothold on which you can become a freelance graphic designer. If you turn down too many freelance design jobs all because they don’t pay enough, or because you don’t like the kind of projects they send you, you risk cutting yourself off long before you ever actually become a freelance designer.
The advice that we have is that you should never compromise your morals. But understand that if you’re new, the market isn’t ready to pay you expert rates. If you don’t have many samples or testimonials, the market isn’t ready to hire you on the spot.
- Collect payments on-time
The sad truth of becoming a freelance graphic designer is that if you don’t get paid, you won’t last long. So one mission-critical task when learning how to become a freelance graphic designer is to collect your payments on-time.
At first, it can feel a bit embarrassing or awkward to ask for payment from your clients. But it shouldn’t be either. Getting paid is just part of doing business. Down the road, once you’ve become a freelance designer that’s well-established, you may want to consider applying small discounts for paying invoices early or penalties for paying invoices late.
Conclusion
It won’t happen overnight. It won’t be easier than staying at your day job. But if you want to become a freelance designer, we hope our article has helped you out a bit on how you can do it.
Are you new to freelancing or considering going full-time? Reach out to us by joining our Rtist Creative Club on Facebook. If you’re still not sure where to start your freelancing journey, why not check out Rtist? We have one of the biggest creative talent communities in Malaysia that matches you with your clients.
