When I talk to people who are thinking about setting up shop, graphic design and otherwise, this is the question I’m asked most often. My answer is three places:
Word of Mouth. As far as I’m concerned, this is the best way to get new clients. When someone has heard good things about you from a source that they trust, your job of selling yourself and your services is 80% easier. They’re not looking for reasons to hire you, they’re looking to see what you can do for them. It may sounds like the same thing, but it’s not. When someone comes in cold, there’s a credibility hurdle you have to get over — who am I and why should you trust me? When a word of mouth client comes in, the trust is basically established. So and so recommended you, and I trust them, so I’ll trust you.
Of course, this is the hardest way to get clients at first, because it’s a catch 22. You have to have clients to get other clients by word of mouth. It also serves as a good reminder that the design world is small and your reputation will start to spread. Make sure it’s a good one.
Networking. There are countless groups to join: your local Chamber of Commerce, Design Groups (like the AIGA, GAG, or SPD), Networking Groups (like BNI), user groups (Hidden-Tech is a local group) and clubs (The Ad Club of Western Massachusetts is another local organization). Depending on your availability, the list can be endless. But here’s the secret: once you join, you have to get involved. It’s not going to be good enough to show up at a meeting or event once in a while. Volunteer. Get to know the officers of the group. Make yourself indispensable. It may take a while to start seeing results, but they will almost certainly come.
Advertising. This is important, but the returns are much fewer than in the other two options I’ve mentioned. When I get a potential client through word of mouth or networking, I end up getting the job 7 or 8 times out of 10. When someone contacts me because they’ve seen an ad of mine or found me on the web, it’s more like 2 or 3 out of 10. Why? The person who comes through an ad is typically just starting the process of hiring a designer. They’re looking at other companies, comparing prices and services, and figuring out what they want. There’s nothing wrong with any of that, of course. But the person who knows you (or knows someone who knows you) is usually ready to go, and have basically already made the decision to use you, or have significantly narrowed the field by the time you speak to them. Advertising is important, but if you rely on it to account for more than 50% of your business, you’re going to spend a lot of time in interviews and writing proposals that never turn into paying jobs.
Do you have any secret weapons to find new clients? What works for you?
Like many designers, I am a sucker for a good magazine. I read all sorts, but design magazines, when done well, really ring my bell. That’s why I was very excited to get a complimentary copy of FPO Magazine in the mail two days ago. And that’s their first good idea — the magazine really was free. Not “free with subscription, cancel if you don’t like it.” Not “free with the purchase of 11 other issues.” Free free. They’re giving me a chance to check it out, no obligations, no need to cancel. I don’t know how I got on their mailing list, but score.
Inside, there was quite a bit to like. My favorite articles were the short and dirty ones. “Snark Attack” (evaluating the questionable design of Cosmopolitan), “Retouchy Subject” (which chose the month’s most heavily retouched cover photo), and The White Stuff: Disguising a Mess (design tips). I also really liked two longer articles a lot: Health & Unhappiness: Why a Daring Redesign Went Bad (the inside story on Health’s redesign) and SOS: Too Much Space (more design tips).
So will I subscribe? I’m still on the fence. I definitely enjoyed my free issue, but I suffer from over-subscriptionitis. I already receive more magazines in a month then I have time to read, and at $55/year I’m not sure I’ll be able to spend enough time with FPO for it to make sense to spend that much money on FPO. I’ll keep you posted.
Or why it’s great to have a client who appreciates you.
One of my projects that recently came to printed fruition is the children’s book I’m Lucy: A Day in the Life of a Young Bonobo. This self-published book was a real labor of love for all involved: writer, photographer, editor and backer. That can sometimes be intimidating for a designer — when the people involved in the project hold it close to their hearts, there can be a lot at stake.
Fortunately for me, the client and all of the people I worked with on this project were fantastic. That’s not to say that it was complete smooth sailing, though. I had a vision for the book, and I had to sell it. This book is a collection of photographs of a Bonobo family and what I wanted to do was have each page be a different vibrant color. I worked up the comp and sent it around. Some of the people on the project loved it on sight. Others, not so much. When working with a group, it’s a good idea to know who in the group has the final say, but ideally, you want everyone to be happy with the design you create. That didn’t seem like it was going to happen in this situation, but I really believed in the design for the book and was able to convince the decision maker that if she took a chance, everyone would be happy in the end.
Phew. The book is out, and here are the comments from all involved:
It is absolutely beautiful, and the few people I’ve so far had the chance to show it to are really blown away. Thanks SO much for all the input of your creative juices that transformed this into a work of art. — The backer
I got my book yesterday, (Actually have two). It is totally gorgeous. I really love it. I wasn’t happy about the colors at first, and I was clearly wrong. Thank you for having the extraordinary brain that can put together something as beautiful as this book! This morning I was visiting the Child Care Center that I am on the board of, and was showing the book around. One of the teachers started reading it to the three year olds who were having a snack. They children started pointing and giggling at the pictures. Quite a sight for me.
So thank you, thank you. — The photographer
The books have arrived and they are more beautiful than I ever even
imagined. Your design and layout are perfect, the cover is perfect,
all the corrections to the photos are perfect — really I could go on
and on.
Thank you thank you thank you. — The writer
So beyond the obvious back patting I’m doing to myself, what’s to learn from this? First of all, that this won’t always happen. Sometimes you just can’t convince a client that you’re right. Sometimes you have to put aside your design ego, let go of “the perfect design” and do what the client wants you to. But it doesn’t hurt to remind the person who hired you why they hired you. That your experience and expertise are worth listening to. And when you find the client who’s willing to listen and take a chance, that’s where you can find the intersection between doing work you love and work that the client loves. It makes it all worthwhile.
Go to BonoboKids.org to find out more about Bonobo monkeys and to buy the book. Proceeds from the book are donated to charities dedicated to saving the Bonobos and saving the world.
There are some web sites that I couldn’t live (or at least work) without. I visit them multiple times in a week and they make my life much, much easier. I’ll share.
identifont.com My secret is out: Every time someone calls or emails me asking for the name of a font he’s seen (and BJ, I mean you), I go to Identifont and answer the series of questions they ask. Seven times out of ten, I find what I’m looking for (two times out of ten I know the font on sight, and the last time out of ten I try What The Font, below).
I also use Identifont to help me pick fonts for new projects (an unheralded task that the site does amazingly well). If I’m designing a logo and I know I’m looking for a serif face with a capital J that hangs below the baseline and a tilted bar on the lower case e, I choose those options and let Identifont narrow the field for me.
I also find that answering the font questions helps sharpen my eye for type. There are infinite variations of letterforms, and where I may not usually notice the shape of the lower case k junction, Identifont makes me see it.
What the Font Another great font identifying resource. This is my second line of defense (first line if I have a really great jpg or gif of the type I’m trying to figure out). I have no idea how this site works, and I don’t care. It’s totally helpful and often amazing.
Why am I spending so much time identifying fonts? 1) I’m working on a project for a company that already has an established look or identity and I want to follow their style guidelines, but no one knows what fonts were used in previous designs and 2) I’ve seen a font that is beautiful and I want to add it to my font arsenal. How geeky is that last sentence? But I stand by it.
pdfonline.com I often get files from clients that I can’t open (for example, a Publisher file and Microsoft doesn’t make Publisher for the Mac), or I can open them, but I don’t have the fonts so they display incorrectly. PDF Online is a free online application that converts MS Word, PowerPoint, Publisher, Excel, HTML, text, JPEG, GIF, TIFF, BMP, PNG, EMF, and WMF files into a PDF file and emails it to you. Easy, fast and free. Totally fabulous.
Basecamp We started using this online project management software a few months ago and now I wonder how we got along without it. Is there anything more satisfying than making a to do list, and then checking items off of it? We upload files, make lists, write messages and set milestones, and we can access our account anytime, anywhere, from any computer (of course it’s password protected). They offer a fully functional free account, but if you need more than what the free account offers (we do), there are different plans available.
I’ve shown you mine. Are there any online resources that you’d recommend?
Note: I asked several of my clients, colleagues, and friends who work in fields related to design if they’d be interested writing for my blog. This is the first of a series of guest posts. Elizasmom is my good friend, chocolate winner, fantastic client, and wonderful freelance writer. I’m thrilled to be posting her thoughts. — Leslie
Hello! I am not a designer, but I was smart enough to hire LT to do the work for me, which means that I have excellent taste. Also, her expertise is rubbing off on me and the font I am using to type this up in Word right now is kerned ALL WRONG.
See: Big Designer words: I haz dem! Obviously, I am qualified to post here.
To get to the point, I thought it might be instructive to write about an experience I had with young designers at Big Nameless Institution Where I Work (henceforth: BNIWIW).
My department at BNIWIW is one that interacts with the community by presenting performances which are advertised in part by posters. We’ve come by the poster designs in a variety of ways, professional and un-, with predictably uneven results.
Several years ago, casting about for a good, low-budget way to handle this problem, I found a graphic design professor who was interested in giving his students real world experience and who agreed to incorporate into his curriculum the creation of 4 of our posters.
About 7 weeks before each event, I visited the class with members of the creative team assembling our performance. I supplied the graphic designers with information about the nuts and bolts — deadlines, text, logo information. Meanwhile, the creative team described the performance, including any helpful visual cues.
About 3 or 4 weeks later, we came back to the class, where each student presented his or her work. Then, we took all the posters back with us, spread them out on the floor and walked back and forth, gradually eliminating the weaker contenders until we had decided on the best one. To help the designers learn from the process, I sent the class an evaluation explaining why we chose the design we did and what its best points were, as well as what we liked about some of the other strong designs.
Although each performance was different, there were patterns to the process, the first being that beginning designers who were short on inspiration tended toward the alarmingly literal. If asked to illustrate, say, The Name of the Rose, they would have come back at us with a red flower wearing a “Hello, My Name Is: ___” sticker. OK, bad example — that would be funny and I would think about using that poster. But you get the idea. In my armchair psychologist’s opinion, this has to do with not yet trusting one’s creative impulses enough, or not yet knowing it well enough to trust it, perhaps.
I also have to lay the blame partly at our feet. In many cases, the creative team members were still learning, both about their craft and about how to express what they do to others outside the field — without boxing the graphic designers in. The most skillful of our creative teams elicited the most envelope-pushing entries.
There were always a few designers whose work was surer, bolder. One student, asked to illustrate a presentation whose subject matter included angels, cropped in close on a pair of feet, floating, and then added a single delicate, soft, pink feather just below them. Understated, witty, gorgeous.
Another woman listened to the presenters of that same piece and made a conceptual leap based on our descriptions of an important visual element of the performance — red cables — and a key theme — interconnectedness. Using slim, clear plastic tubing and water with red food coloring, she created an art installation that evoked variously a web, blood, an IV stand and a Jackson Pollock work, then photographed it and handed us a darkly gorgeous piece of art. Our winner.
Brilliant as that piece was, its original version illustrated another common quirk of the new designers: They tended to get so caught up in the visual elements of their design that they neglected the text, wedging it into weird little corners, making poor font choices (SAND!), and worst of all, introducing errors into the text.
To the very end of the year, I was unable to convince some of them that a poster about a performance should not have the ticket information in 12-point font.
In the case of the designer I mentioned above, she had actually heard me on the size thing, but her text was riddled with typos and was plunked over the most interesting part of the photo. There were other posters that had text with fewer errors, but this image was so right for us that we had to try and make it work.
I emailed her with our concerns and offered as guidance that she think about stacking her text into an interestingly-shaped chunk of negative space, but that we had to have a corrected poster within 48 hours or we would go to option B.
I had it on my desk, immaculately typed and perfectly arranged, in 12, and that turned out to be the third thing element I noticed during this collaboration. The best posters were always by a student who had bothered to come to class (instead of leaving it with their teacher), who had made an engaged presentation, and once her/his design was chosen, was prompt and thorough about whatever changes we wanted to make to the final piece.
It was a brilliant experience — 13 posters to choose from! What a luxury! And some of them were smashingly good. Like, write-down-her-name-because-she’ll-be-famous-in-the-industry-someday-good.
