How to get started in graphics design?

[skirklan]

Finding WORK

This might be delving too much into 'tricks of the trade' that most would be more inclined to keep secret but, do any of you have any suggestions concerning finding work?

The secret to having a lot of work is making a lot of contacts. The dreaded cold call is key. Set time aside each week, no matter how much or how little work you have, and email, telephone or show your portfolio to complete and utter strangers. How can you break down your aversion to this? Design is, after all, a solitary pursuit. The secret is to remind yourself that you're not selling widgets; what you do is unique, specific to you (your style) and a valuable service your potential client will probably need but will be unable to find unless you make the call. Present yourself as a new spice for his spice rack, so to speak. I've got 2 chapters on this: Capturing Repeat Customers and Identifying and Targetting Your Market Online.

Afterall, variety is the spice of life. I can't resist a good cliche.
Good luck,

 

[freeny]

I have been in the graphics field for almost 13 years and when I saw this thread pop up in the forums I was like, "Oh great here we go again, someone wants to be an artist" and everyone is going to say a bunch of crap like "Follow your dreams" and "go to art school". I must say this thread has certainly been the oppostite. This is probably the most accurate set of statements I have found on this subject. Some brutally honest and some more on the lines of what I expected.

The truth is that I dont know your skills or your work. I dont know if you can draw for s**t or not. my suggestion is to take from this thread what you want, try it for a year or so. If its not working out and you arent having any success then you might not have what it takes and you should take the hint. This field is BRUTALLY COMPETATIVE! If your driven, keep trying. just dont get down on yourself if you fail. everyone is good at somthing. perhaps you are a genious brain surgeon and just dont know it yet. Heck, maybe I'm a genious brain surgeon and I just dont get it yet???

 

[eclipse]

I guess I'm lucky

Yes, that's probably true... some brutal honesty would go down well in this field. However, some designers take a few years to shake out their skills and shake off the junk.

I'm just starting, in between kids home on Australian summer school holidays, and various other responsibilities, I'm meant to be learning Quark. Why? My wife is the designer.

I have the luxury of being her "young apprentice" (too much Star Wars lately.) So even if I suck, I can just be a "Mac Monkey" one day and help our little firm earn some extra money. And I tell you, that would be a nice break after the rubbish we've been through the last few years with Leukaemia and all.

 

[freeny]

And I tell you, that would be a nice break after the rubbish we've been through the last few years with Leukaemia and all.

DUDE! Good luck with that....

What type do you have?

I'm now wishing you a complete recovery.

 

[eclipse]

Hey, I wish it had been mine!
It was far, far worse, it was my 5 year old son's!
But he seems to have full remission and a great prognosis.

http://members.ozemail.com.au/~toobusy/index.htm

I guess all I was saying is that there have been a few distractions!

But I really hope to get my head around Quark and at least help my wife with some of the typesetting. Also, I've got a left of field approach to life and a creative side with word associations... and quite often help my wife brainstorm a new concept. But she's the visual genius!

see http://www.lanksheardesign.com for masterpieces by the master, my wife.
But the website interactivity is my fault.

 

[ATD]

The secret to having a lot of work is making a lot of contacts. The dreaded cold call is key. Set time aside each week, no matter how much or how little work you have, and email, telephone or show your portfolio to complete and utter strangers. How can you break down your aversion to this? Design is, after all, a solitary pursuit. The secret is to remind yourself that you're not selling widgets; what you do is unique, specific to you (your style) and a valuable service your potential client will probably need but will be unable to find unless you make the call. Present yourself as a new spice for his spice rack, so to speak. I've got 2 chapters on this: Capturing Repeat Customers and Identifying and Targetting Your Market Online.

Afterall, variety is the spice of life. I can't resist a good cliche.
Good luck,

Yes, but I have a slightly different take on this. I spend very little if any time doing cold calls. Instead I look to a few clients that have a endless volume of new product that needs advertising. While I don't cold call much anymore I do service these clients no matter how insane the request is. Last week I did 5, back to back, 18 hours days on a project to hit a deadline. You do have to deliver high quality work on time, if you do, they will come back.

I tend to shy away from start up companies because I find I get stuck in the same trap over and over again. They have no money, they don't understand what they are asking for and you end up eating a lot of hours due to their lack of understanding on what they agreed to (like the ones who are calling you every half an hour to change something but don't feel that these are revisions even after they signed off on the design phase a long time ago). Then once you have made these clients happy they don't need you anymore and you are back to cold calling again. A few of them go under and you get stuck with unpaid invoices.

Yes, the trick is to get to that point. You will have to do a lot of cold calls and networking at first. What I'm suggesting is to also spend time positioning your long term goals and move in that direction. Given experience, contacts, strong portfolio and a vision of your long term goals you can start spending less time chasing work and more time creating it.

 

[ATD]

Hey, I wish it had been mine!
It was far, far worse, it was my 5 year old son's!
But he seems to have full remission and a great prognosis.

I'm a dad and I could only imagine how that feels. I wish you and your family good health. My wife has been in bad health for many years (7) but she is finally getting better.

 

[eclipse]

We do quality work and our clients just keep coming back.
Also, being in church work... we find that our clients are organically subdividing and starting up new ministries which need their own logo, newsletter, posters etc... so we keep getting more clients from the subdivision of existing clients.

But I agree that cold calling can suck. New clients then have to be "educated" to the design process...
* what is a reasonable expectation,
* no you can't make a correction after it's gone to print
* no your typo is not my responsibility
* we accept stuff in this format but not that format, yadda yadda
* we don't usually have clients sit with us when we work, because we expect an adequate enough brief for us to submit 3 or 4 ideas to them via email
* we charge X amount per job, and don't really quote on a per hour basis
* we don't work weekends after our boy nearly died last year, and value family time... SO DON'T CALL 10 PM SUNDAY NIGHT EXPECTING SOMETHING MONDAY MORNING!!!
(That was a client we DUMPED they became so annoying!)

Has anyone had to dump clients before? What were the reasons?
How many clients have you dumped?

We far prefer regular clients and strong client relationships. We go to the end of year Christmas party of the main client, Matthias Media, who provides about 40% of our work.

 

[eclipse]

Thanks all for expressions of sympathy.
There is nothing that can drive you as manic as seeing your innocent child in pain.

.... I was about to go into detail of that pain, but realized it's probably not appropriate. We are discussing starting in design here. Sorry for the sidetrack.

Anyway, he's home, he's due to stop his 2 year chemo course on Australia day in January next year, and so we are counting down the weeks until he's finally free of chemo.

And I am counting down the weeks until both my kids head back to school & preschool, and I can start my design training again.

 

[ATD]

SO DON'T CALL 10 PM SUNDAY NIGHT EXPECTING SOMETHING MONDAY MORNING!!!

I do weekend work all the time and charge accordingly. I get many calls on late Friday for work due Monday morning. I understand in your case, you do have to draw a line. Full agreement on everything else.

 

[eclipse]

Cool. Each to his own.
My wife was burning out, and life & death matters make parental regret syndrome kick in. EG: "I should have spent more time with him... why do I work so hard...?" (Ummm, because we wanted this nice home and we are massively over-mortgaged and Chevron have just basically confirmed "peak oil" — the end of cheap oil.)

 

[ATD]

Cool. Each to his own.
My wife was burning out, and life & death matters make parental regret syndrome kick in. EG: "I should have spent more time with him... why do I work so hard...?" (Ummm, because we wanted this nice home and we are massively over-mortgaged and Chevron have just basically confirmed "peak oil" — the end of cheap oil.)

Last year 2/3 of my income went to medical bills. My only choice was to work my ass off to keep from getting swallowed alive. I do understand where you are coming from in a small sense, it's a hell of a balancing act between family and work. Sorry to get so off topic.

 

[technicolor]

go to school for it
if you already have some sort of natural ability to visually problem solve
im sick of photoshop hacks posing as graphic designers tho

 

[Sam/B]

Hey, I wish it had been mine!
It was far, far worse, it was my 5 year old son's!
But he seems to have full remission and a great prognosis.

http://members.ozemail.com.au/~toobusy/index.htm

I guess all I was saying is that there have been a few distractions!

But I really hope to get my head around Quark and at least help my wife with some of the typesetting. Also, I've got a left of field approach to life and a creative side with word associations... and quite often help my wife brainstorm a new concept. But she's the visual genius!

see http://www.lanksheardesign.com for masterpieces by the master, my wife.
But the website interactivity is my fault.

eclipse you have some really nice examples in that pdf file on the website if you can get those up on the website as html that will help advertise yourself and your wife much better. I'm sure theirs an export as html feature in acrobat somewhere if not it would be pretty easy to start a web project in quark import the pages into that for a very basic website. Or even just take screenshots of the pages in that pdf upload all of those. Anything to get out of having to download a pdf file. If you can aswell I would suggest having all your content and layout centred in the page (on the website I mean). That's a good way to design something that looks semi-professional in on every monitor res.

I'm not sure how much I could contribute to the original question but one quote that's stuck with mr in which i've found I can apply to a lot of things I do (which include working on and building my motorbikes and my paintings) is this

"creativity is allowing yourself to make mistakes, art is knowing which ones to keep"

I think this coulld probaby apply quite nicely to some of the things mentioned in this thread in regard to starting out and learning about design. Really good thread by the way, i've read it word for word.

Take care
sam

 

[eclipse]

Thanks for that. I'm currently learning Quark (with kids home from school and the "Silly Season" and all — Merry Christmas and Happy New Year to you all), but one day a major website upgrade is coming!

Also, did you check out my eclipsenow.org site? It's VERY messy (don't look at the code or you will cry, I don't use code I use GoLive and constant re-editing has made a mess of the code apparently) but even though my headlines are not quite right and some type is not consistent throughout, just the nice photoshop montage for the Masthead Banner across the top makes it really kick! A simple Masthead can add a lot to a site!