OverPR: the fictional beast of freelance graphic design or a real menace?

Sometimes even an impeccable portfolio and a great community can’t save you from a certain work crisis

You never know what a thoughtless scrolling through tweets can lead you to. In a search for some entertainment, you can stumble upon a nice thesis to brood over. Especially if you do it in bed, all ready to sleep when the mind is so susceptible to fundamental reflections about life (and shameful memories from the past as well).

However, this time we’ve taken one of such bright ideas further. All thanks to Meg Lewis and her twitter-confession about lack of work because she seems to appear extremely busy to even be bothered with offers.

Meg’s Dribbble has over 8000 followers while her Twitter and Instagram accounts are followed by thousands. This is what we can see from the outside, I’m sure Meg is very popular in many circles of the graphic design industry. So how come such a talented and well-known influencer with a remarkable portfolio doesn’t receive the expected attention? We took courage to call this mysterious phenomenon overPR — the condition of being left without work because of the fake busyness impression.

Facing facts

It’s more than unusual to observe the author with a huge base of followers, who experiences a lack of work. Armed with a decent amount of curiosity and a list of our favorite creators, we’ve organized a mini-survey to investigate this issue closer and find out if overPR is even a thing.

Inspired by such data, it was the turn for the particular authors to have their word. What was the most interesting thing to know, whether this “projects drought” is a relatable issue for a tangible amount of designers and freelancers? Truth be told, we’ve waited for quite a number of replies like “oh, I surely know how it feels” or at least “yeah, happened once or twice”. The reality has reshaped our expectations and I’m ready to present the results.

The drawback of the overPR is nothing to be scared of if you work in a company or a studio where the process of getting and offering work is smooth and well-managed by special staff responsible for it. As Sam Parrett from Set Sail Studios has put it:

It’s not something I experience I’m afraid, as I don’t operate as a custom design studio, but solely as a type foundry. I don’t take on any commissioned projects so customers don’t contact me for work.
— Sam Parrett, Set Sail Studios

Our inquiries made some of the authors think about the issue for the first time. For example, Anton Repponen wasn’t actually paying attention to such phenomena as overPR until we had contacted him about it:

Maybe people do think that I am busy and don’t reach out and I just never thought of it. Maybe they just don’t reach out for some other reasons, maybe they reach out with the same frequency but it’s not enough for some reason and you expect it to be more.
— Anton Repponen, Designer & Photographer

I was about to give up on this article due to lack of feedback and never rise this question up again. But all of a sudden Claudio Guglieri became the one, whose opinion really met our expectations:

This has definitely happened to me. The moment when someone sends u an email saying “I’m sure you are super busy…” and I’m not :) Not too sure how long has that lasted or any specifics, it just happens from time to time.
— Claudio Guglieri, Product Designer & Creative Director

Learning the lesson

Okay, the issue is pretty dubious as far as we can tell know but how to deal with it? As told by Claudio Guglieri himself:

The best way to get over the hump is to produce outputs and participate in convos / be active online, so the people reaching out to you have context, therefore a reason to do so.

Indeed, the part about being more active online is very close to what eventually happened with Meg Lewis. After her open-hearted tweet, other creators started spamming her with replies and requests to check out the direct messages.

It leads to a good moral of the story: there’s nothing shameful and scary in being exposed online by revealing your lack of work. And it doesn’t matter if you’re a popular creator with the portfolio of a great volume or a freelance designer full of talent and stamina on the carrier rise. Just break it to your audience and all misconceptions will go away while fascinating projects will fall into your creative hands.