graphic design, freelancing, illustration, advertising, web design

Freelancer Focus is a regular feature, where freelance designers are invited to answer a series of questions about themselves and freelancing. This week Verne Ho (pictured left) is the freelance designer in question. If you would like to take part please read my previous post. Any designer or illustrator can also take part in Design Case Studies.

1.Your name?
Verne Ho

2.Where are you are based (Country/Area)?
Toronto, Canada

3.What type of work do you do? (design for print, web, multimedia etc)
My expertise is in web and interactive design, but as a creative director of my agency I deal with all mediums of design.

4.How many years had you been working in the design industry before you went freelance?
0. What started as a personal hobby turned into a passion and has since turned into a career (how cliché, I know).

5.How long have you been freelancing?
4 years.

6.Why did you decide to go freelance?
I needed a creative outlet and I somehow knew a desk job wouldn’t cut it.

7.How did you market yourself (find design work/new clients) in the beginning - (online portfolio/brochure/direct mail/email/phone etc)?
I did a lot of pro-bono work for friends and colleagues. Eventually someone threw out the crazy idea of paying me.

8.How do you market yourself (find design work) now?
Viral marketing is my business’ best friend. I’ve (thankfully) never had to make an active effort to find new clients.

9.How did you decide what to charge? What was the process?
My first attempt to form a pricelist was based off of the advice of another young freelancer. From there, I continued to refine my business model, capabilities, and offerings over the years, and have adjusted my pricing appropriately along the way.

10.Do you work from home/have an office/work inhouse at design agencies?
I work at home as part of a creative marketing agency.

11.How do you organise your workload, do you work long hours?
Balancing a heavy workload like mine is definitely an art. Of the many things I do to keep myself in-check and on-time, using task lists is probably one of the most important. I make sure to keep a running tally of everything I need to accomplish on a day-to-day basis, and break each project down even further into mini tasks. Having these task lists synced with my BlackBerry helps to ensure that I’m on the ball even when I’m on the go.

When you run your own business, working the long hours is a must. The good thing is that you’re doing something you love, so long hours don’t really seem all that long.

12.How much holiday do you give yourself?
None. I consider my time away from a desk job doing something I love to be enough of a vacation! I do try to claim at least one or two days a week as being my own, but sometimes time away from work can be just as stressful as being buried in it.

13.How do you keep up to date with what is happening in the industry?
I subscribe to a healthy dose of blogs and news from about 25 different sources, which is actually less than some of my business partners. The themes of my subscriptions range between marketing, entrepreneurship, freelancing, design, and technology. To stay productive and keep my feeds organized, I’ve recently made the move to Netvibes as my collection outgrew my iGoogle page.

14.What about the business side of things, accounting, invoicing, bookkeeping, how do you manage it?
My trusty business partners are my saviours. A few of us stick to the creative work, while the others stick to the numbers. It’s a loving relationship.

15.What is the biggest piece of advice you would give to someone starting out freelancing?
Do it for the passion, and not for the money. If you stay focused on the former, the latter will follow.

16.Would you ever go back to fulltime work?
I never say “never”, so I’d say that it really depends on a lot of factors. Where I am in my life, what my business has grown to be, and the nature of the opportunity all play a role in my decision. If you were to ask me to go back today, I wouldn’t hesitate to answer “no”. Ask me again in 5 years though - I’d be interested in hearing my perspective then.

17.Any thing else you would like to add?
I have a lot of respect for individuals who have an eye for design and the business sense to apply it effectively in the context of marketing. It’s a rare breed, but a powerful one.

18.Where can we see some of your work (URL)?
You can read my antics over at www.creativebriefing.com, where you’ll also find links to my creative marketing agency. Leave me a note if you’re passing by!

A Guest Post by Jorge Goyco

Have you ever tried to name your rock band? How long did it take you to come up with the names of your kids? Your dog? Your company name? Your domain name?

Did you run it past anyone first?

Maybe it’s just me, but I think designing for yourself is one of the hardest things to do. I can design logos all day for other companies. In fact, I could probably come up with a decent logo for another design company, but when it comes to my own stuff, I’m mostly at a loss.

I’m thinking quite a bit about this lately because I’ve got to design a brochure for a convention I’m attending, and I don’t want to come across as ”expensive” or ”too flashy”, but ”casual” and ”affordable” and “easy” would be good for this group of potential clients.

I’m guessing it’s difficult to design for ourselves because we want to put our best foot forward. Our website or logo must be the coolest thing anyone has seen or else they might not use us. Right?

When I eventually get over myself and produce something for myself, I give it about a month and I’m wanting to change it.

That’s the other thing…finding time to design your own stuff. The moment you get a chance to update your online portfolio, you get a call from some magazine wanting you to design every ad and editorial in the book in a week, and you’re out of time.

The truth is, as of right now, I don’t even have a logo for my company, unless you call ”FuturaExtraBold” a logo.

So, what I’d like to know is: Do you go through the same process as you do with clients when designing something for yourself? You know, thumbnails, a few mock-ups, color changes, tweaks, etc. Are you as hard on yourself as your clients are? Do you have other designers look at your new designs before you launch them? Have you ever been hired by another designer to come up with something for their design company?

Maybe I should take my own advice:

1. Treat yourself like a client
Thumbnail, sketch and mock up several designs before you choose one. We do it for them, why shouldn’t we do it for ourselves.

2. Schedule your work as a project
If you schedule time to work on your own designs, just like you would a paying client, you’ll be more apt to finish it. Shouldn’t it take you only as long as it takes you to produce something for a paying client? MAybe it’s not a priority, but a couple hours a week won’t make you miss any deadlines.

3. Run it past other designers
All our designer friends have free advice and criticism for us. Sometimes you might have to wade through them trying to be polite and not hurt your feelings, but once you get past that, it’s gold. Their eyes are as critical of good design as you are. Take them out to lunch or something. This might even make them reevaluate their own design and update it, and maybe even ask you for advice. What better way can you think of to challenge ourselves to be great.

4. Put it away for a few days
Post it to a “dev” folder, hide it under job folders, whatever, but take your eyes off it for a few days, then when you look at it again, you might see something you missed or might want to change.

Hope this helps.

Jorge Goyco is a designer working out of his home in College Station, Texas. He’s been making clipping paths since Photoshop 2.0.1. He likes to make things that look really cool and write children’s stories. His online portfolio is www.goycodesign.com, and please have a look at his design/webmaster blog.

Sarah Talbot who owns a Cornish Design Company called DesignStudio has an innovative way to promote her design company through a cook book she has designed. I asked Sarah if she would consider an email interview for Graphic Design Blog and she kindly agreed. My thanks to Sarah for taking part.

1. Please could you tell us a little bit about you and your company and the type of design work that you do?
I run a graphic design company called DesignStudio, we typically work with small to medium sized businesses helping them to strengthen their ID within their marketplace. We build open and professional relationships with all of our clients, in light of this we are able to understand and pinpoint their needs, likes and dislikes which has led to producing the best possible design solutions to meet individual requirements, from a simple brochure or a much broader campaign.

2. The idea of creating a cookbook as your design company’s brochure is very unusual, what gave you the idea?
The recipe book has come from a very unique service that we offer our clients, we bake them their favourite cake and take it along to development meetings. So popular has this service become I decided to make it a feature of my new brochure.

3. Has cooking always been a passion of yours as well as design?
I love cooking, anything foody and I’m there. The fact that I now combine two of my passions in life is fantastic!

4. I understand that some of the recipes came from your existing clients, how did they respond to your unusual request for recipes?
They loved the idea, most of the recipes are mine, but some are from clients. Some of my suppliers have pages as well as initially they were upset that they weren’t in the book. It’s also a thank you to my clients for their support for my first 2 years in business.

5. How has your book been received by potential new clients?
Brilliant, people’s eyes light up when they see it. It has been described as ‘porn for foodies’. It’s great because, although at the end of the day I’m selling my business and looking for new clients my new brochure contains nothing about my company, no services, no features, nothing. People’s guards go up when you try and sell to them - this does exactly the opposite.

6. How do you plan on distributing the brochures, will they be used as a direct mail piece or handed out at meetings and events?
They are being handed out at networking events, they will be used as a direct piece of mail and followed up with cold calls. They will also be given to my existing clients to hand to possible referrals.

7. Have you any further plans for spin offs of the brochure ( e.g. recipe postcards as marketing material)?
Yes! I will be starting my own networking event by the end of the year. Called ‘afternoon tea with sarah’, this will be informal, invite only and instead of having a guest speaker we will have a guest baker who will cook their fav cake, with my help, live in the DesignStudio kitchen! I can’t wait…

8. Do you think you will do a follow up design cook book next year?
With out a doubt, I can see a whole series of books, maybe one day I’ll do a Delia style ‘all in one’.

9. Has the concept been successful in terms of generating new business, or increasing the profile of your design company ?
I have only had the book for a week, so too early to say as yet. But I think absolutely, it had already increased my profile, I have 2 live studio radio interviews this week I will be appearing within the Cornish press. And I think because the book so interrupts the traditional selling, I think it’s a certainty of not only generating new business but attracted exactly the types of companies that I’m looking to work with.

10. Have you ever done any other unusual marketing campaigns for your design company?
Not really for my company but I have sent out live penguin boxes containing clockwork penguins for one of my clients John Richards Shopfitters. http://www.penguinholiday.com hopefully should explain it!