Making Thousands as a Teenage Designer
So I began my journey as a designer roughly five years ago. I was a 14-year-old school kid interested in making music, creating short films and taking photos, so my creativity was very much flowing already. Looking into the design/illustration world just seemed like a logical step to see how I could apply my creative thinking and express my ideas in a new way.
My interest in design, and particularly illustration, bloomed through my fixation with the program Adobe Illustrator more than anything else (I owned a torrented version of Illustrator, which I hadn’t paid for because I was a kid with no money. I was naughty. Sorry. Of course I now pay for the full Adobe Creative Cloud subscription). Simply learning how that program could make things look a certain way and figuring out what the hundreds of tools and buttons did was thrilling. Nerdy, I know, but I would come home from school each day and look up Adobe Illustrator tutorials on YouTube to teach me how to use a specific tool or how to achieve a certain illustrative style. Will Paterson & Chris Spooner were particularly helpful with their excellent tutorials. Each time I followed a tutorial I would end up with a design or an illustration, which I would save to my hard drive whether I thought it was good or not. I was unknowingly starting to build a portfolio of work.
Through my school years I would tell people I didn’t watch much TV (I do like a good Netflix series, but I was never one to just sit down in front of the TV and watch whatever show was on). Most people would seem pretty shocked and ask ‘what do you do then?’ I found it quite hard to answer that question. My general reply would be ‘I don’t really know. I guess I‘m on my computer a lot’. Only now I’m looking back do I realise that I spent the majority of my time (other than being in school, doing homework and seeing my friends) designing and learning about design. I find it pretty cool that I was almost subconsciously training myself in the theory and skills of design. It’s just what I enjoyed. I enjoyed a lot of things, but I always found it hard to stick at one thing for a long period of time. After a few months of being gripped by design and the endless possibilities it offered, I knew this wasn’t just going to be something I’d lose interest in over time.
It got to a point where I had created a good amount of what I thought was decent(ish) looking design and illustration work, but it was all sitting unseen on my hard drive, so I decided to start a Tumblr blog and I posted various pieces I had designed on there. It was a quick and easy way to show people the kind of work I was creating. Having a website of any kind is really useful, whether it’s a full portfolio website or just a simple blog of work, so you at least have something to show if anyone asks! As time went on more and more friends and family saw the stuff I was creating. I wasn’t making any money from designing at this point, but at least people were beginning to hear that I was interested in this design thing.
I started to do free design jobs for friends and family members, and I was happy to work for no money at that time as it gave me opportunities to design for a purpose. My skills steadily grew with each job I did. Then I began getting the odd £10 for this and £15 for that. It was sparse to start with, but I was excited to be making any money at all from doing the thing I loved! I eventually moved away from using the Tumblr blog as my portfolio and used some of the money I had earned designing to pay for a proper portfolio website. The work I displayed on there slowly evolved from solely work I had made for fun into a mixture of personal projects and paid design pieces.
A perk of having creative brothers is that you get to meet a lot of their creative friends. I went to a portfolio review/creative meet up that my older brother helped organise, and there I met a guy who owned a design and branding agency in the city. I quickly showed him my stuff and he invited me for a proper sit down portfolio review at his office. We arranged a time and I went along. Although it was rather scary it was really worthwhile having a professional designer look at my work and give me feedback. The input you get from someone who really knows what they’re talking about is invaluable. From this meeting he invited me to do a week-long internship at his agency. The week I spent there was the first proper glimpse I got of how a design career would feel. I had a really great time and the experience helped me out further down the line.
Rather luckily the creative department of my church The Belfrey was growing in size and skill at the same time I was developing my own creative skills. I began to work quite closely with them, mostly for free, producing a variety of material from flyers to videos to logos. The Youth ministry at the church, which I was part of, was also growing and the team were in need of a lot of different creative services. This gave me a fantastic opportunity to keep developing my skills and to get my work seen by hundreds of people, whilst earning the odd bit of pocket money on the side! Churches are a brilliant way to make connections and chat to people who may need creative work. A lot of the clients I work with today come to my attention through the church.
By the time I turned 18 I was earning enough money from freelance work to no longer need a part-time job whilst studying at Sixth Form. Over the couple of years prior, the design jobs that I was getting had gradually morphed from paying me £10 and £15 to £100 and £150. It felt pretty good being able to sit in my pyjamas, at my computer, on a Saturday morning whilst my friends were out working in shops and cafés! I also began branching out a little beyond just design work and landed a few paid film and photography jobs (both of which I was still doing as hobbies anyway). As I came towards the end of my time at Sixth Form I had to make the choice of whether to go to university or not. I looked at many creative degrees and design-related courses around the country, but none of them seemed quite right for me. Whilst working with the creative department at The Belfrey I heard about the part-time, year-long internship scheme the church ran. I could spend a year working in that creative department whilst learning more about the Christian faith. It sounded really interesting to me. I told my Sixth Form tutors about it and eventually decided to apply for the internship rather than university. I went for an interview, was accepted, and after a great summer break I started the internship.
I’m now in the last few months of the internship at The Belfrey, but when I first started there I didn’t feel I had quite enough freelance work coming in to support me financially. The internship is unpaid, but the church offers rent-free accommodation for the year. Therefore my bills aren’t huge but I still need enough money to feed and clothe myself! So I started looking for design jobs in York. I applied for a part-time design job at a startup called RotaCloud. With no design-related qualifications (other than a GCSE in Graphic Design) and somewhat limited design experience, I was unconfident I would even get an interview. Surprisingly I did get an interview, and I got the job! My time with RotaCloud was amazing. I got to use my skills to create blog illustrations, user guides, logos, t-shirts and all sorts of other really cool stuff. I learnt a lot whilst I was there. But at the same time as working there I began to get more and more freelance work coming in. It eventually got to the point where I had to turn down client jobs as I didn’t have enough time to work at RotaCloud, The Belfrey and keep a freelance business going all at once. So I made the decision to leave RotaCloud, as I felt that freelance work was more suited to me than working for a company. It was a sad move but definitely the right one.
Since leaving RotaCloud my income has come from freelance work alone. I’ve delved into the world of motion graphics, and a large chunk of my time is now spent on motion graphics and animation work. Business is constantly improving and I’m planning on freelancing full time after the internship ends this summer! Going to university may be an option for the future, if necessary, however I’d like to grow my freelance business as much as I can and see where that takes me.
Some top tips I’ve picked up along the way:
Stay organised
Whether you have lots of client work on your plate or you’re just getting started, staying organised is crucial. It saves you lots of time and many headaches in the long run. Keep track of your files, your emails, your finances, your deadlines. Put systems in place that mean you can easily find exactly what you need within a few clicks (look at tools such as Trello and Google Drive/Docs/Sheets).
Start with your friends and family
The best people to offer your creative services to when you’re first starting out are your friends and family. Approaching outsider individuals and businesses can sometimes work, but there is no pre-existing relationship there, making it very hard to build trust. The advantage of starting with your inner circle is that they already know and trust you. Ask around and you’re bound to find a handful of people close to you who are in need of a logo, website or flyer and are willing to pay you to help them out. With patience you will develop more and more connections and the work will slowly build up.
Be ambitious
It is so easy to convince ourselves that we aren’t quite skilled enough or we haven’t got the right experience when an exciting client comes along or a big job opportunity arises, because we’re scared that we won’t be able to deliver what is required of us if we somehow do get the job. We can comfortably get into a rhythm of settling for the same sort of work at the same sort of pay because it’s easy, but this means you’ll never progress and build your business beyond a certain point. Always be shooting slightly higher than you’re comfortable with and your skills and capabilities will grow as you start to land higher paid and more exciting jobs.
Hopefully I’ve given a bit of an insight into what it’s like to build the foundations of a freelance design business as a teenager with no formal training or qualifications. I’ve picked up so much over these five years, but I know I still have an abundance yet to learn. I’m very excited to see where the next five years will take me!
