Designer seeks job.

August 17, 2005 2:41 AM

How can a graphic designer make a living in a market with limited opportunities?

I'm currently a freelancer with more than adequate skills for web, print and multimedia design, a decent portfolio and a good understanding of marketing - but I'm not earning enough to pay the bills. I'm quite anxious to become an employee for a company who needs someone in-house, but those types of companies are few and far between in my area.

I'm looking for slightly left of center ideas that I may not have thought of for landing a job with a company who had previously never considered having a designer/marketing guy on staff.

posted by anonymous to work & money (3 comments total)

Where do you live? Some areas simply don't have that huge of a need for trained (or talented) designers.

The most obvious course of action would be to put together a self-promotion piece to mail to local businesses/potential clients. Couple this with a nice website.

Unfortunately, unless you live in a healthy, major market, finding design work can be a very frustrating thing. Many potential clients these days simply don't see the difference good design can make. Plus, they often just don't want to spend the money on professional services. I have actually run across instances where clients would rather have their secretary put something together in Word, rather than pay to have a piece designed for them. True.
posted by Thorzdad at 6:23 AM on August 17, 2005

Or scenarios where you show a client something professional, and they disparage it as something their 10-year old could have done in Word. Design is a hard sell sometimes, and a full-time designer is going to be a hard sell for most small companies. I imagine you'd have the most success targeting certain kinds of publishing and advertising businesses.

You may want to see if you can get remote work -- both seeking out your own clients over the internet, or working for companies who take freelancers. I work for a company that regularly uses freelancers to do logos. Email me if you're interested.
posted by weston at 8:27 AM on August 17, 2005

Why don't you try the direct mail? It sounds like you're not making enough money with your freelance gigs and that probably means that you also have capacity / bandwidth to make the promo piece and the matching web property. I guess the question is what, exactly, to sell:

- in house all-around-creative guy

- freelance one-off project

- 1-day-per-week / 5-days-per-month in-between type thing.

I think that the first is going to be a very hard sell. Especially considering that you're specifically wanting to market to companies who think they have no need for design. I think that the second is do-able, and might bring in some business, but isn't necessarily a long term fix (though working for someone once increases your chances of working for them by a factor of, like, bajillion). The third possibility is the most interesting, and I guess it's another way to skin the cat.

I'd suggest working up a list of things that you could be put to work on during your 1 day per week. I'd stay very concrete in the mailing: business cards, letterhead, new logo, design guidelines / styleguide (if you think the audience would know what the heck this is), powerpoint template, catalog design, brochure, website tweaks, website promotional flash movie, etc. I'd stay away from analysis, big branding, and other high-falutin' (at least in their eyes) stuff. Then the question is pricing. I don't know what to say, but I'd suggest aiming kinda low -- like the price of 1 project for 1 day of time (even if you'd be afraid of getting it done in only 8 hours)... So if a business card / letter head / envelope design would cost somebody $1000, then going down to $200 per day seems about right to me. But I think that many businesses would balk at this, so I'd suggest $99 / day, which would be $400 / month. I guess thinking of it in terms of small businesses and how they spend their money is the right way to go (instead of thinking about how small your hourly rate gets). I assume that small businesses get accountants, and plumbers, and stuff, so your price should be in line with that.

Hope this helps! Good luck.
posted by zpousman at 10:58 AM on August 17, 2005