On: Attracting the work you want (by doing what you love)

I could start talking about how much happier your life is when you work on something you love. Your mornings are brighter, at night you look forward to the next day, you’re free to create the life that accommodates you and serves you the best. I could talk about this for hours (probably not), but instead I can offer you my thoughts on this in a more objective way.

Have you ever heard the expression “you are what you eat”? Well, you are what you work on, kind of. When you’re a creative person your work speaks more about you than the music you listen to, your outfit or your hobbies. When you work on your own creative project (that being your freelance business, design studio, print shop, etc) the work you publish is a public declaration to the world about what you are like and what you want to be.

“The work you put out there is the work you’ll attract”

I personally didin’t believe in this statment, untill I noticed it is actually true. Here at Born Co. we focus on doing branding; since the very conception of the project we were sure this is what we wanted to do for a living. We see that our favorite studios like Fuzzco, Anagrama, Futura and Twin Forrest, all focus mostly on branding and print design, so “if they can do it why can’t we?”. This doesn’t mean we can’t design a website or advertising material, this means we get the best out of ourselves when doing branding. We get our full potential going and we feel more comfortable when taking risks.

Recently I’ve noticed that most of the incoming work is for branding projects, whether its from recommendations or people that was looking for something similar to what we’ve done before. The thing is that now the prospects can see what we’re capable of doing for their project, because we’ve updated our portfolio to showcase what we’re best at.

The “problem” with most designers, studios and agencies is that they want to be a universal tool box. They want to be developers, community managers, advertisers, artists, brand designers, UI designers and more. Now, don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying that’s bad for your creative career; it’s just a different approach to achieve your goals. And let me be clear with this: specializing in a creative field doesn’t mean you can’t create great work outside from that. It just means that people will contact you when they need you to do what you’re best at and what you like the most. And sometimes we also are a universal tool box when needed, we just don’t advertise ourselves as it.

Sure that can be a problem if you can’t achieve the right flow of incoming work to pay the bills, but it’s a risk you have to consider and it’s a bold decision that you have to stand by if you want to make it work.

It’s not as easy as you think and it’s a process that takes some time, but you get to be proud of the work you publish, and there’s nothing like having a client tell you that they contacted you because they like the work you do.

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On a totally different note: I just finished the book “Creative Truth” by Brad Weaver and I totally recommend it! 10/10 would read again.

Keep tuned for more stories and thoughts from the Born Co. team. www.madebyborn.co