Freelance Contacts

There are many benefits to freelancing as a graphic designer, one being that you are able to experience many more different sectors of the industry. You are able to choose your own work hours, you can set your own wages, you can choose who you work for. It holds many benefits, but the downfall is that you are generally the only one to hold responsibility for getting clients, payment and the correct legal forms to clients. 

The pros to this are that you are your own boss. 

The cons to this though, are that YOU are your own boss. 

To add on to that freedom, you may not be able to accumulate any clientele for a while if there were any economical/ seasonal issues, there is no guarantee of pay. For example, many people over Christmas aren’t looking for work as that’s the most personally expensive time of the year. Of course, this does depend on who your clientele targets are as well as in what type of work you produce. 

That being said, it’s not as far off from stability as you may think from a studio, although I do appreciate in England there are more protective laws for workers in companies. Nevertheless, if you were someone working high up in a graphic design sector, you may be the first to be made redundant if anything happens to the company's funds and the market. TikTok had to do release workers many times due to the relations with the Chinese government not getting on too well with the west, much the design department had to be made redundant, despite having high pay due to the success of the company.  

My point is that no one is completely safe. 

If you do want to try your hand in being a freelancing graphic designer (which could also help and land jobs for yourself in a studio anyway if you decide later to). It is best to find and join a union that could help you in creating contracts for clients to sign to ensure your finical safety and time. Unions such as ‘The Graphics Union’ or ‘Artists’ Union England’, there are many different ones depending on the sector of work you want to specialise in.  

Also maintaining a professional boundary is important, as said in the previous blog with Allen and Wojcicki. Making sure the clients work together with you to receive the best possible outcome from a project.