Inside Freelance Design

Issue #72
March 13, 2008

Welcome to Inside Freelance Design (IFD), your free, bi-weekly e-letter from American Writers & Artists Inc. Every other week, you can receive this special alert with secrets, tips, and insights from AWAI's graphic design pros to help you improve your skills and reach your goal of becoming a professional graphic designer in the fastest time possible.

IN THIS ISSUE:

3 Expert Tips to Jumpstart Your Design Career
Quick Tip: Tip: Free Desktop Publishing Program for Mac and PC
EXTRA! EXTRA! News and Job Opportunities

3 Tips to Jumpstart Your Design Career
By Mike Klassen

Beginning freelancers spend a lot of time overanalyzing and worrying about a lot of things. Top on the list is “where to find clients.” And this fretting takes up time that should be given over to taking specific action.

When I started, my head was spinning with all the tasks on my to-do list. I often wished I knew a seasoned designer who could help me put things in perspective.

Now that I have clients and quite a few layouts under my belt, I’m going to get you pointed in the right direction.

Let’s look at three questions to ask yourself to get your career rolling.

1. Who’s producing the type of work I want to do?

Let’s say your passion is fundraising. Google, your local phone book, and other resources have thousands of addresses of organizations fitting your “fundraising client” profile.

Even better is to take advantage of the Who’s Mailing What! Archive. http://www.awaionline.com/whosmailing/. With the Archive, you can do a search for fundraising mailers. You can even get a look at some of their actual mailings. This allows you to see if the quality of your work matches what various companies are sending out.

The Archive doesn’t provide contact information for every company in their database. But you’ll at least have the name of the organizations doing the mailings and can do your own research for their websites and contact information in Google.

When I searched for fundraising mailers in the Archive, I generated a list of over 2,800 mailings!

2. Do I have the skills to produce quality work for clients?

One reason you want to know what your ideal clients are mailing is to see if you fit their needs. I’ve often told the story of going to my first direct-marketing job fair. I had a portfolio. But when I saw the type of work the job fair vendors were producing, it was clear I didn’t have all the skills I’d need to work for them.

Was I depressed? On the contrary, I was thrilled. I now knew exactly what these companies needed and had a clear idea of where my skill-set needed to be.

So how do you improve your skills? First, go through the entire Design Success program and do all the exercises. Then search for websites offering free tutorials in the design software of your choice. Sign up for a service like Lynda.com that provides online video training.

The iTunes store offers free podcasts (video and audio) in InDesign, Photoshop, and other Adobe products. And you don’t need an iPod to play the podcasts. They play on your computer.

You can also buy books on your design software. The Visual QuickStart Guides from Peach Pit Press, for example, are specifically for beginners.

And, of course, you should take advantage of AWAI seminars, trainings, and other resources. AWAI knows all about the niche you’re going to use to build your design career – direct marketing. Take advantage of their free tips and tools at www.thedesignerslife.com.

Here’s another suggestion. Copywriters are often told that one way to get a feel for great copy is to write out great sales letters by hand. The designer’s equivalent is to recreate great designs.

Take a well-designed piece you get in the mail and copy it as best you can, matching fonts, colors, and everything else in the mailing. Since you won’t have the same graphics, use placeholders. It’s okay to use fake text, but format it exactly as in the mailing. The more you do this, the better you’ll get with your design tools. And you’ll start to notice very similar patterns in the way successful direct-mail pieces are laid out.

3. How will companies know I’m available?

Being a talented designer doesn’t mean much if no one knows you’re out there. Your career will take off a lot faster if you do some active self-marketing.

Active self-marketing means contacting potential clients instead of passively waiting for them to find you. Putting up a website and hoping people will find you through Google is passive self-marketing. Calling potential clients and talking about their needs and how you can take care of them is active self-marketing.

You probably don’t like cold-calling, but if you’re serious about success, you’re going to have to do some things that are a little out of your comfort zone. But let me give you a few other options:

Send postcards to your target clients. (As I said above, a good place to find them is in the Who’s Mailing What! Archive @ http://www.awaionline.com/whosmailing/. But don’t stop there. Turn this into a really active self-marketing effort by making follow-up phone calls.

Go to local networking events. There’s more to networking than attending Chamber of Commerce meetings, so check your local paper for other possibilities. A friend of mine landed business at a meeting between Canadian and American businessmen who were discussing cross-border trade issues. She was the only writer/designer in the room.

Cold-calling, postcard mailings, and networking are three effective success strategies for beginning designers. Give them a try.

* * * * * * * * Advertisement * * * * * * * *

Attention Graphic Designers

Access over 10,000 controls in nearly 200 categories with the world’s largest swipe file, Who's Mailing What! Archive. It’s available online and provides full-color scanned copies of successful promotions! A valuable tool for designers who want get ahead of the competition and keep up with the latest trends in dm-design.

To learn more about the Archive, and exclusive AWAI member access, click here: http://www.awaionline.com/whosmailing/

Quick Tip: Free Layout Design Software
By Will Newman

QuarkXPress and InDesign are industry standards for designing layouts. Their flexibility and power make them indispensable tools for the experienced designer.

But both are expensive… very expensive. And when you’re starting out, you have few other choices. You can create very good printed documents with Microsoft Publisher or Word. But you can send usable files to clients only if you can convert your documents into PDF files.

If you can’t do that, you’re stuck. Or are you?

Turns out that Scribus Open Source Desktop Publishing software lets you make multipage designs similar to those done with Quark or InDesign. Scribus lets you export designs as PDFs, and it shouldn’t be a problem to send those files to clients or print houses.

And the best part is that Scribus is free. Admittedly, its interface isn’t as sharp looking as Quark or InDesign. And it does not approach the power of either of those two layout programs. But it will work just fine until you make enough money as a designer to afford one of the top two.

Scribus is available in both Mac and PC flavors, although the Mac version doesn’t work on OSX 10.5. We’ve tested it on Windows XP but not on Vista.

When you install Scribus, you’ll be prompted to download something called “ghostscript.” This is a legitimate program. We tested it and Scribus for viruses and other malware. Both came up clean. However, whenever you download any file from the Internet, be sure to scan it with your anti-virus program.

Your starting point for downloading Scribus is http://www.scribus.net/. Try it out!

* * * * * * * * Advertisement * * * * * * * *

Last year, Donna Doyle made $156,250 working just 5 hours a day from her beautiful home at the Jersey Shore. Her home-based business is on track to hit over $200,000 in gross billings during the next few months.

Learn about this lucrative business that can be run from anywhere in the world you choose to live: http://www.thedesignerslife.com/ifd/dtm/

EXTRA! EXTRA! News and Job Opportunities

FREELANCE GRAPHIC DESIGNER NEEDED IN PHILADELPHIA: Price Communications helps its clients develop and perfect their brand. They need a talented graphic designer on a freelance basis. To apply, visit their site: http://www.pricecom.com/new/job_contact.asp. Send your application to the attention of Kevin Sweeney. Include your resume, a link to your portfolio, and a schedule of your fees.
INTERNATIONAL WINE IMPORTER SEEKS SKILLED GRAPHIC DESIGNER – IMMEDIATE OPENING: TGIC imports in Woodland Hills, CA is looking for a designer to join their marketing team. You’ll develop designs for market materials, brochures, point-of-sale pieces, and more. A bachelor or associate degree in design gives you an advantage. You must know the Adobe Creative Suite, as well as basic HTML. Send your cover letter, resume, and salary requirements, along with a link to your portfolio, to Lweeks@tgicimporters.com and Ckitch@tgicimporters.com. Put GRAPHIC DESIGNER in the subject line.
MULTIMEDIA DESIGNER SOUGHT FOR POSITION IN ORANGE COUNTY, CA: Creative Focus Staffing is looking to place a designer who has one to two years of experience with a growing company in Orange County, CA. You’ll work on a variety of projects in a variety of media. You should be comfortable leading a project, and ready to work on multiple projects at any given time. Send your resume, PDF samples, and salary requirements to careers@creativestaff.com.

COMING NEXT ISSUE:

Profit for All: Working Together Successfully as a Team
Quick Tip: Add Pizzazz With Rounded Rectangles

* ABOUT INSIDE FREELANCE DESIGN *

Inside Freelance Design is a FREE bi-weekly newsletter from American Writers & Artists Inc., available to AWAI members and friends.

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Issue #72 March 13, 2008