Rise to the Top – Your Ace Guide to Promote Your Design Career

By Kathleen Burns , Aug 5 2014
Promote Your Design Career

Featured Image: Unplash/Chetan Menaria

Stop dreaming of the design projects you want to work and find out who you can work for now.

The digital age has made presenting a designer’s creative capabilities easier than ever before by getting rid of the huge physical portfolio. Now, designers have personal websites to showcase a more complete scope of their work. However, freelance graphic designers are a dime a dozen and you have competition facing you from all corners of the globe! The only way you’ll catch a client’s attention is to be part-business owner and marketing machine.

What far too many designers fail to appreciate is that a freelance career is for experienced professionals only.

If you want your business to survive, you must present yourself in a professional manner and speak with authority. Don’t race for attention right away, but decide for yourself when it is the right moment to jump into a freelance practice. Take into account how prepared you are regarding the practical factors to running a business.

 

By the end of this guide, you’ll be able to answer the following:

What is the design industry missing or what will you do different than the majority of designers?

What do you want to do in the design industry?

What places can you share your work? How will people find me?

The key to success is organization before promotion

key to success
Image Source: picquery.com

What do you expect to accomplish in the next 3 months, 6 months, and year? Be realistic. Don’t expect clients to flock to you if you lack business goals. A solid business strategy plan will organize your marketing efforts and set you apart from the less experienced designers.

Research is essential before you start marketing your work.

Define Your Vision – What do you want to happen?

Use Ideas to Drive Action – What works for your short term and long term goals?

Be Accountable – Keep track of what you’re doing to find out if it is working or not.

Before you flaunt your design skills it’s important that you understand exactly what you have to offer that is different from everyone else.

A freelance design career is a business

If you’re business fails, you are the reason.

You are the owner of a new start-up business; you are the marketing director, public relations, and business manager of your career. To make money and gather a clientele, it’s your job is to make clients find you and want you to work for them.

Your job is to log every aspect of the business, including:

– Day-to-day finances
– Budgeting
– Taxes & Licenses
– Communications
– Proposal estimation and calculations
– Writing contracts & documents (proposal, terms & conditions, approval documents, etc…)
– Project management
– Invoicing
– File archiving, backups/recovery
– Hardware, software, and fonts licenses
– Marketing and self-promotion

However, we’re not going to go into every aspect of what is involved to run your business. This guide concentrates on the last aspect of your freelance design career – marketing and self-promotion.

The harsh truth is, no one will contact you out of the blue or randomly find your portfolio and ask you to work for them. The only way to bring attention to what you do is if you take the time to promote, network, and engage with the design community.

You need to know your industry inside and out. People can tell if you’re pretending, so you must educate yourself before you speak up. Read plenty of industry articles and books, and take in the advice that other freelance designers have put out there to help you get started on your strategy.

A (Proven) Freelancer’s Guide to Growing Your Business

How to market yourself as a freelance designer

5 Tips to Actively Market Your Freelance Business

Self-Promotion for Freelance Designers – How to Frugally Market Your Business

Back to the promotion basics – the business card

importance of business cards
Image Source: Pinterest.com

Regardless of the all technology in everyday life, there is still a need for a business card.

– Your clients expect a physical card

– A creative business card is another showcase of your work

– They are relatively cheap to produce

Business cards today come in all shapes and sizes, and with the multitude of printing resources out there, it’s cheaper than ever to produce. There is no excuse to not have one.

Designers thrive on creativity. Use your business cards as an opportunity to display personality and individuality! If you’re not sure how to do that, review the following articles for tips and tricks to make your business card stand out.

Keep Your Business Cards from Becoming Trash

How to make great freelance business cards

10 Tips in Designing Effective Business Cards

How to Design the Perfect Business Card

Build industry authority with social media

Multilevel Marketing
Image Source: iStock/pressureUA

Get involved with the design community by using social media and design forums, be sure to comment on other designers work, and take the time to talk about industry news. Think of social media as a way to build your authority about the design community.

The top design professionals are seen as a trusted resource and are constantly involved in conversations and debates, and because of their social media efforts, their works are shared, critiqued, and praised. You should use social media as a way to meet industry influencers to discuss important issues, ask them to critique your portfolio, read their blogs to gain advice, and gather referrals.

Social media is a great resource for boosting your career, but it’s also the modern way to contact potential clients. Designers from all over the world use the internet and social media to contact clients that they would have never met in person.

Use social media to get design work: 25 pro tips

The Importance of Social Media for Graphic Designers

5 Ways Designers Can Get the Most From Social Media

Only show your best work in your portfolio

A portfolio attests to your work, accomplishments, and skills, and documents the breadth and depth of your ability and experience. It rounds out your design skills, making you more attractive to clients and potential employers and increasing your chances of being hired.

The bulk of the portfolio should be dedicated to showcasing your work, so pick your pieces carefully! Be selective: not all your work will be relevant to each employer. Professional designers will build their own website to show off their work. It will take time to organize your website, including buying a domain, hosting, creating your web design or importing an existing design, and uploading all of your work.

However, if you want to skip all the work of creating a portfolio website and go straight to showing off what you have to offer, here’s a few portfolio websites to do the heavy lifting for you:

Dunked

Dunked

Tumblr

Tumblr

Dribbble

Dribbble

Squarespace

Squarespace

Unifolio

Unifolio

Prosite

Prosite

Coroflot

coroflot

Behance

Behance

deviantart

Deviantart

If you are a beginning your freelance career, these sites are a great tool to help get your work out there and get you your first clients.

Building a portfolio site is a smart step to build your authority and put you above the less experienced designers. You will spend most of your time tweaking your portfolio to suit your needs and will update it often.

Well-designed portfolios MUST:

– Tell people who the designer is and what they’re about.

– It’s not all about the designer. It tells people what the designer can do for them.

– Makes their contact details prominent and easily accessible.

– Work is presented in a clear and easy to understand manner.

– Doesn’t make customers struggle to find their way around the site.

Check out these additional tips about portfolio design and what you can do to improve your traffic.

7 Ways to Create a Stunning Graphic Designer Resume

Creating A Successful Online Portfolio

Design Resume Skills & Portfolio Tips

5 Tips for Creating the Perfect Web Design Portfolio

Should your portfolio have a blog?

The short answer – yes! You can’t work as a freelance designer without a portfolio, and the blog will help bring attention to your portfolio and provide new content for your website (which brings more attention from search engines). Your blog’s job is to showcase your knowledge about design, the design industry, and your opinions about recent events.

Blogging is smart because it gives you an open forum to show your personality to your customers. Remember, you are judged by your work and if you are easy to work with. Customers love designers who are willing to speak up and can explain themselves or answer questions.

If you haven’t created your own website, make a blog and link it to your preferred portfolio website. There are several tools that you can use to build a blog and several of them are extremely easy to use.

Free web platforms such as WordPress, Joomla and Drupal can be customized to act as your point of contact, blog, digital portfolio, even an online store where you can sell your work directly.

8 Blog Design Tips to Make Sure People Stop to Read Your Content

16 Top Tips from Blogging Experts for Beginners

39 Blogging Tips From the Pros
How to Create a Website for Your Portfolio

You have what you need to get started

Business Race
Image Source: iStock/Tashi-Delek

Designers are gaining exposure far and wide by starting their careers with a solid background in marketing and business management. By working on your business plan and focusing on your goals, concentrating on your networking and building your authority, you will soon see the results of your efforts.

While a freelance career can be both rewarding and fulfilling, the trick is to not misstep as you start down that road. Treating your career as a business right from the start will keep you on the path towards success.

If you’re still feeling a little lost, or not sure who are the successful designers in your niche, you should follow these designers. Not only is their work impressive, but they have a steady source of clients from social media, their portfolio websites, and local businesses.

Top 25 Designer Portfolios to Follow in 2014

40 brilliant design portfolios to inspire you

20 Multilingual Typography Designers You Should Know!

99 Creative Logo Designs for Inspiration

12 Graphic Designers Specializing in Fashion and Recreation Industry!

11 resources for website design inspiration

13 Fabulous Book Cover Designers from USA

If you feel that we’ve missed some vital information in this guide or want to add to what we said here, please comment below with your suggestions. We would love to hear your feedback!

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Kathleen is a New Jersey blogger with an interest in brand design and a passion for graphic design, illustration, and social media. She loves to deliver inspiration to others to give them the means to achieve their branding and design goals.

 

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