Although the biggest portion of our work week for most of us, there is more to a creative freelance career than client work. Client work is what keeps the bills paid and your network active and relevant, but client work can also feel like just a job, sometimes lacking an element of fun or surprise. Personal work and side projects are a great way to add a bit of adventure to your portfolio and when you show you’re excited about these project, chances are clients will pick up this vibe and start hiring you based on your latest personal work.

After I made the change from promoting myself as a graphic designer to an all-illustration portfolio, I came up with a side project to keep creativity fresh and fun. It provided me with fresh work to promote in between client jobs and keeping me in even better control over the style and direction of my portfolio. Ideally, I also wanted the side project to give my network a boost and that’s how I ended up launching a coffee cup illustration trading project I called Drip For Drip (and as I’ve mentioned in this series’ intro, is now the name for my studio also). I invited illustrator friends to make an illustration for a takeaway coffee cup template I created, picking a colour palette and theme each two-cup edition. I then printed and photographed the templates as actual coffee cups including the plastic lid. Besides having a tangible end product, the project also offered a fun way to connect with people. The projects’ side effects were plenty: My clients hiring the illustrators that joined the coffee cup project, their clients hiring me. I’ve been hired to illustrate coffee cups for clients. I’ve done coffee cup doodle workshops. I’ve met people through curating a group show in coffee shops. The project was featured on blogs. And I’ve tried new techniques and tackled new subjects in the coffee cups series that I didn’t try for client work. When you put the hours in to really make something of a side project, it keeps on giving back in the long run. Of course, it is not a guarantee for success or exposure, so it’s best to focus on the creative aspect of a side project first, letting time decide whether the project’s a hit or not. …

We’ve worked on our professional focus. We’ve been talking to our existing network looking for opportunities to collaborate or we even landed a project in a rare reply to a cold email. That means we now actually have to get started on the work, not only the creative part but also — and even more importantly — the project management. From the initial contact or brief through rounds of feedback to wrapping up the final files. Some projects require only three emails back and forth, other times there’s a more finger-on-the-pulse type communication. …

The most frequently asked questions from starting freelancers have to do with making money, landing clients and finding new work. The various conversations I had on Twitter with fellow illustrators also came down to the same topic: How do you find clients, how do you break into a new market, how do you turn around a slow period? For most freelancers, it is the most challenging aspect of running a business and maddingly it’s not talked about a lot in college. …

Your portfolio is the most important tool in your marketing and promotion kit. In this day and age there is absolutely no excuse for not having a dedicated domain and a selection of work available for browsing. The costs of web hosting are very reasonably priced and ready to go portfolio templates have never been easier to use. If you don’t feel like spending half your work day hanging out on social media, the very least you should do in terms of promotion is to have a proper think about curating your best work on a place on the web that you have control over. Even if your portfolio runs on a third party system that you upload work to, make the effort of buying a domain name and forwarding your visitors to said portfolio. Carve a little niche on the web and be the proud owner. …

Freelancing in general is a very isolated job. Often, we work from home, we don’t have the social environment of co-workers, an office or commuting. We work at a computer screen all day, or at least a very large portion of our day is filled with digital tasks. If your work is focused on editorial illustration, like me, projects are too small to meet up over in person. The deadline is too tight for friendly phone calls (except maybe for a first job for a new client) which means a lot of these projects happen entirely via email. We like to be alone when we work, we like being sucked into the unique little worlds we’re creating, we like spending hours without distraction on the smallest details of our artwork. But at the same time, without the interaction of actual people, this job can start to feel robotic, empty, removed from yourself almost. …

This is the first of a blog series called Both Hands On The Pencil in which I am trying to make sense of freelancing. Prompted by fellow creatives asking for advice as much as a way to focus my own thoughts on my career, I was looking for a way to document what I think are key factors to a healthy freelance business. I took some time off last year to recharge and think about how to steer my work towards a more vision-driven practice and not merely sailing whatever waves freelance life happens to throw at me. …