How 7 years of being a freelance designer shaped my life
In the days of encountering people quitting their jobs and stepping on their own path, I’ve decided to shad the light on freelance life. Is it worth it? How is it to be “free”? And essentially, is there any freedom at all in the myriad of clients and sleepless nights?
I still have this crystal clear picture in my head of the first day of my freelance journey. It was back in 2011, — the last month before getting my bachelor degree in finance, a shitty apartment you rent when you’re a student, an old dinner table and super uncomfortable chair, with a more painful laptop that seemed to run any task for ages, and almost zero knowledge of design and how to be a freelancer. Back then I didn’t know that my life was going to change drastically by two new domains. Thanks to Ludmila Shevchenko ’s recent bold move — quitting design studio and joining freelance folks — I got inspired to reflect on my path and ponder the impact freelance had made on me as a person and as a professional.
Professional path
There are four main pillars of my professional design path as a designer.
1. From level zero to zillion
I learned hell a lot my way through all these years. Basically, it happened thanks to the variety of different projects I’ve been working on — from a kids book promo page to a financial website. Some of those projects were successful, some not that much. However, all of them shared the same thing in common — they push me out of my tiny designer’s box and let me upgrade a skillset from project to project.
At early stages of freelancing, I was struggling with illustrations badly. It seemed nothing would help me to master this craft and I’ll be using free icon sets forever.
Loosing such competitive advantage is not acceptable in the competitive freelance market when you directly or indirectly fight for the client with other folks.
I really didn’t want to lose. Hence, this led me to the obvious conclusion — to add a bit of custom illustrative work to every new project so I could upgrade my new skill gradually till the moment it felt robust and solid.
Illustration wasn’t the only one on the list. There were other domains — app design, responsive design, email design, photography, copywriting, HTML/CSS, business communication and marketing. These are few I can recall now but certainly there were more, maybe, less prominent ones in the process but they went through the same pattern — from a zero knowledge to a solid level of expertise.
How does this work for an employee? Usually acquiring new skills are caused by a decision to switch the workplace or to get a promotion. It rarely happens step by step unless you plan to quit job A for job B from the first day working at A. Poor A.
The job swings happens once six month or once a year, which means there is no improvement done on extra competence in between. Instead, I find myself digging in something new every single month. Especially when there is a prospective offer of the project that excites so much from all the perspectives but the level of skills doesn’t fit to succeed landing it. In this case, I always try to fill the gap of the missing skill for the future.
If I ever encounter such chance again I’ll be ready to take it.
2. Jack of all trades
All this leads to another fact about freelance. Successful freelancers usually wear multiple hats at once. For some, it’s a matter of choice, for someone, it’s a necessity to keep their ship sailing. For me, it’s a combination of both. It’s very close to the job description for a startup where they need a pal that can be in handy not only in a specific role but also at the intersection of others. Whether it’s good or bad it’s up to each individual to decide. But it’s definitely close to freelance reality.
There are lots of folks that focus on one craft only and they are real rockstars. It’s very true for illustrators, calligraphers, photographers etc. Everyone harnessing a single trade is focused on one limited area of their craft. For those who are into apps, websites and other interfaces, there is another story. Since the object of the work is so complex and compound itself, it’s only a matter of time when you start exploring other domains different from the visual design of those interfaces, called UI.
The reason is that the complexity requires an understanding of business objectives (you need a bit of knowledge in economics here), users’ needs (here’s where psychology comes in), technological possibilities and limits (welcome basics at least of HTML/CSS), communication principles (copywriting will come on rescue on handling the interface microcopy) and the list goes on. I understood this on early stages of my freelance journey when I wasn’t able to articulate my design decisions, thus, the communication with clients were suffering from that. Obviously someone may say that specialization is a better way to go. However, it’s not my case. Because, for me, speciality limits one’s understanding and perception on both a professional and personal levels.
How does this work for an employee? In the realm of companies, each employee is a piece of a puzzle and he/she should have a certain notch and tab to fit in. Those notches and tabs are the skills required for the role in the company. It’s unlikely someone decides to ruin the whole picture selecting the one piece and starting to develop a new “tab” in it. I heard a lot from people about their past job that they felt stuck and there was no way for self-development.
Another side of the coin is that there is a chance to ask a teammate who specializes in the certain field, but are you going to ask the same thing all over again rather than train your own mental muscle? 🤔
3. Learning it the hard way
It’s still uncertain whether it depends on my personality or it’s really working, but learning staff hard way is more efficient and here’s why. Through all these years I found knowledge gained through trial-and-error and a lot of efforts were the most long-lasting. They didn’t fade away with the short-term memory. Right now I’m going to say a very unpopular statement. Be ready…
Once the privilege to ask someone for help is abused helping transforms into handout.
As it happens with real poverty just charity doesn’t really help that much. Maybe for a particular moment person feels a satisfaction but once charity food or money is over, poverty still stays there. Poverty is gone only when people gain a tool to bring home the bacon. The same works for a freelancer. If you don’t have a buddy right next to you to ask how to handle stuff in Sketch/Figma and you need to read an article or two and follow the instruction, maybe that’s not that bad. On contrary, you get more than just a solution, you acquire a power to handle such situation in the future by yourself. Such a gift requires efforts to solidify the result in the brain cells. That doesn’t mean I’m against asking for help. Absolutely not. It means 👇
Asking for help is best to be deliberate and in the right moment.
At first, I regretted not having that fellow-designer by my side to guide me to the “stars”. But when time passed I realized that was a trial I went through successfully — strong and confident in what I know and empowered to acquire even more knowledge.
How does this work for an employee? There is a variety of ways how the learning process works inside the company. What I’ve already understood all of them are about other people — mentors. A company encourages to seek counselor inside or if needed to invite outside the company. For me, mentoring is still a controversial thing that I need to figure out for myself because I don’t believe it’s a one-size-fits-all solution in terms of effective learning as well as learning in groups. No matter whether it’s a freelancer or an employee it’s good to try out different learning approaches to define the best to one’s personal taste.
4. Embracing opportunities
With all the efforts put into one’s growth there comes a time when the investment pays off. It happened to me multiple times — exciting project offers, job interview invitations, and design event invites. There always has been a prerequisite— being vocal to the world.
When freelancing you need to ensure a steady pipeline of projects to keep your life going and the bills being paid. This is why it’s vital to make yourself noticeable which involves showcasing own design work, expressing opinion and participating in professional discussions. Because you never know when the opportunity shows up.
To achieve that, a freelancer has almost an ultimate freedom to share what they believe is good for promoting themselves on design platforms and social media. Surely, contract boundaries can be involved but again freelancer is the one to decide to agree on such contracts or not.
I’m lucky enough to follow this advice to build own brand as early as possible. During the freelance years, I’ve tried different platforms to be active on — the ones that are still popular now, like Dribbble and Behance, and the ones that already gone. Such diversification taught me to analyze the audience and define content that might be appealing to communities I’m addressing to and still being myself. After all those experiences and experiments, I can say exactly what works for me and what doesn’t. That knowledge now helps me rather be prepared for opportunities than being caught off guard as it was before.
How does this work for an employee? Not all companies accept the fact their employees are publicly active and working it out for a personal brand. It happens mostly because of the fear of having that person leave. This ends well neither for the company nor for the designer — relationships lost, proactive person gone, and team is missing a player. It’s good to see a trend of teams letting their members shine bright and be free to decide or not to opt on any new offers.
And how all these — the worries about opportunities, education, and upgrading as a designer — impacts one’s personality, let see 👇
Personal path
From the early beginning personal and professional have been completely interlaced in my life and it’s not a surprise that everything that happened to me as a freelancer had a huge impact on me as a person. All those challenges and moments of elevation allowed me to gain independence, ensure growth, uprise maturity, and encourage self-determination as an individual.
I chose independence over freedom deliberately because I believe all people are free per se these days. However, they could be dependent on someone or something. It’s a matter of choice whether someone is going to grand responsibility for own life to someone else or not. Independence is not that easy, by the way. You need to worry about lots of things that wouldn’t be your concern when you are having a job where it’s only about your particular position and that’s it. Some may say companies are clearing up our mind so we could burst more creativity into work life. I would say it’s loosing a part of control. It’s not good or bad, it’s just the way it is. Probably, understanding this is also a part of getting me more mature through seeing the process out of the system. Being in some sort of an outsider helps better understand self and be more objective about self-determination since there is a limited circle who can influence your personality.
This reflection on the seven-year journey brings me to the conclusion that being a freelancer is not a random outcome for me. Despite all the job offers I’ve been receiving through these years, I’m still here — an independent designer with ambitions to become an independent maker. Whether I’m going to recommend this path someone else? I don’t know. As I tell to my clients:
Everything depends on requirements.
Is that person willing to invest time and efforts in fields that were out his/her control before? What a person would like to achieve in the result? What are the personal reasons to do this? Answers to these questions will define whether freelance is the best choice or not.
What do you think? Are you a freelancer? Newbie or a long member of this club? What your journey looks like? Let’s have a talk and share what has been stored there for some time.
