My experience as a freelance UX UI designer
Questions I always get asked and the things I have learned.
1. How long have you been solo?
My experience as a freelance designer started back in 2010 where my situation changed from working full time in a creative agency and then being told that my job would be at risk due to changes that were being made within the company, ultimately meaning I would be made redundant in a matter of weeks. A natural reaction to this may of been to panic, but I felt a sense of freedom, the chance to explore what I wanted and to influence and engage with people or clients in the way that would make me really enjoy what I do.
2. What is your biggest challenge as a freelancer?
Getting clients
When you enter the freelance world you already know how to craft your skill as a designer but nobody really tells you how to become good at business and that’s probably because you don’t know what questions to ask when you start out. One of the biggest challenges I found right at the start was making connections with new companies, shamelessly cold calling, emailing and finding out who’s the best person to speak to and getting an online presence — getting clients is an art in itself and keeping hold of them is down to you.
Ways of working
One of my tips when working with clients is to keep good communication in the working hours that you want to be contacted. You have to be strict with your schedule and manage your own time to keep within a budget and maintain a work life balance, working on your own can be a challenge and extremely rewarding at the same time. Remember, you don’t have to be completely separated from your clients or colleagues that you may be collaborating with, get face to face on a video call — don’t be the faceless freelancer, especially if you’re doing a lot of remote work and are not available to be onsite.
Get face to face on a video call — don’t be the faceless freelancer, especially if you’re doing a lot of remote work and are not available to be onsite.
Payment
So, you do the work, everyone’s happy with the results and then you send an invoice over. I’ve had a few bad experiences in this department and you really have to use your instinct on this, how big is the company? Do they have an accounts department? Is it a startup with only a few people? My advice is to take some form of deposit to start with and do a small project initially to develop a relationship, that way you minimise risk. The other way you can set up a working relationship would be to ask for a contract or use a contract to bind an agreement, this helps formalise the business side of things. If it’s a day rate, agree when you send an invoice and when you’d expect to be paid, get the accounts department in the loop of your emails to make sure your invoice lands in the right place.
3. How secure do you feel being self employed?
People ask me this all of the time — how secure do you feel being self employed? What if the work dries up? Well, it takes a bit of time but if you know you have something that people will buy the work eventually comes to you — and that is a beautiful thing when it happens. As I mentioned at the start of this article I was in what I thought was a secure job, but then I was given 4 weeks notice before that full time job ended, that made me think — nothing is secure, you’re only as secure as what you have in the bank, with that mindset I felt confident exploring my own options as a freelancer.
If you know you have something that people will buy the work eventually comes to you — and that is a beautiful thing when it happens.
4. What’s the best thing about working for yourself?
Freedom to choose my work
You’ve been meaning to move on for sometime in that non creative role you realise that you hate, but moving on too soon within full time employment comes with negativity, people feel that they owe the company their time and if you’ve not been there long enough — you’re a failure and it doesn’t look good on the CV. As a freelancer your mindset changes, companies are now clients and you are your own boss. If you feel financially secure don’t be afraid to move on with what’s the best fit for you and your career, gain what experience you can and use it to embrace your next challenge.
Physical flexibility of work (location and time)
The flexibility of work has it’s advantages, it’s always good to change your environment and clients, be flexibly, keep fresh and always enjoy the freedom of life. I love short project work as it helps me think fast and on my feet, condense my thinking time and be razor sharp with thoughts and ideas. Working remotely means you can spend that extra time with the family at the end of the day rather then travelling, but also putting yourself out of your comfort zone and jumping on a train to attend a workshop on the other side of the country can feel extremely exciting too. It’s definitely healthy to change things up, feel nervous about what’s next, the fear of not knowing always makes me produce my best work keeping me hungry to learn more.
Being my own boss
There is something nice about being your own boss and making your own decisions. You can decide how and when you want to work, take holidays and charge what you think you’re worth. What I’d say is I like the fact that I’m not owned by an entity, I can make my own career and business led decisions. One of the other thoughts for me is that I don’t need to fall inside a hierarchy but rather operate as a consultant and advise appropriately using my experience.
Professional growth
No matter where you operate or how you decide to run your next project — you’re always learning even off people with less experience than you. I’m always open minded and love collaboration as everyone has valid points, opinions and ideas to share. As a freelance designer you are in charge of your professional growth, so if something isn’t working for you then change it, don’t complain, make it happen, if you’re happy in what you do then you’ll never have to work again and finance will be a bi-product of your happiness.
5. What experience have you had when finding clients?
Cold calls/pitches
I started doing this when I first started out to gain contacts and trying to get my name out there. One tip to be careful of is to protect yourself from doing free work. I produced some different creative concepts, pitched ideas and presented them all back onsite in the hope of landing a gig — only to be told that it was something that they wanted to progress in house. I quickly learned from this mistake and always charge for every piece of work I do, even if it’s a small piece of work that could lead to a wider project.
Word of mouth
This method of new work can lead to a more local type of business that a friend may know or potentially someone trying out a new idea. My advice here is to be careful about working with close friends or family as you don’t want things to become awkward if you run into disputes around output of work or payment.
Job boards and advertisements
I always keep a lookout on Indeed or other job boards just to keep an eye on the market, it’s not something to discount as I have landed some nice projects going through this medium. I would say keep all options open and always make sure you build up your profile on LinkedIn and ask for as many recommendations as possible.
Incoming from your website
Building your own website is absolutely crucial to help channel new enquiries that may not be available in your area. This is where you can build your brand and it can be used as a springboard for the type of work you want to go after. If potential clients land on your website they are ultimately buying from your experience, so if you speak about about design systems, or showcase animation you will more than likely get that type of work for your next project, if you didn’t particularly enjoy your last piece of work — it’s simple, don’t showcase it. Having a great portfolio is one thing, but getting exposure is another, make sure you get good rankings in Google and make yourself as visible as possible. One other tip is, install Hotjar so you can see how users are interacting with your site and understand where or how to make improvements.
6. How common is it that you end up over-serving your clients or working longer hours than you quoted or billed for?
I tend to keep to a strict process when engaging with fixed price work, I’ll give a quote and allow 2 iterations generally, I also advise we break large pieces of work down into stages, that way everything feels more manageable and the tendency for scope creep decreases. All of this comes down to communication and how you run things. The worst thing a designer can do is say ‘yes’ to everything even if they think it’s wrong as it’ll come full circle and you will get the blame when things go wrong. Apart from project work I do take on contracts which maybe onsite or remote, I do enjoy switching environments and challenges as it keeps me sharp in how I deliver my work.
7. What are you most concerned about for the future of self employment?
When you enter into freelancing one of the things you’re never sure about is the future and one skill to try and master is to not be concerned about it. If you are a worrier and can’t handle the ‘not knowing’ then you really have to question if being self employed is right for you. One thing to compare when running a freelance business is when a Director of company comes to the end of his or her career they may have an option to sell their company, cash in and retire. If you’re a freelancer what assets does your business hold to sell in the same scenario — just you and your laptop? This is where I thought hang on, I need to invest in something as well just doing freelancing, so I decided to buy a second property and think of that as an asset to use as an income or sell later on down the line, at some point in the future you’ll want to retire and it’s good to have some form of plan as early as possible.
Conclusion
The ‘unknown’ is exciting for me, it means you have a choice, you can go down a path and if it’s wrong then change it. The idea of freelance is ‘variety’ in terms of work, people, environments and experiences. Freelancing and entrepreneurship has its ups and downs, but as long as you keep at it, in the long run you’ll have complete control over your future, earnings and your happiness. Feel free to pop over to see some of my work, maybe drop me a message, I’d love to hear from you — https://www.richard-hill.org.uk 👍
