I’m trying to stick to Freelance Advice on Mondays- we’re in graduation season, that time of year when art school seniors are prepping for their final show, final portfolio reviews and depending on the school advice on how to get hired.
The worst advice I ever heard was at Massachusetts College of Art and Design in Boston— the head of the illustration department was addressing the graduates and she said words to the effect of “expect to keep your table waiting jobs for sometime while you look for freelance work.”
Yikes.
Four years of art school, a new degree and your only words of encouragement are “keep salting those fries”?
True, as you enter the freelance realm you might have to take some work that might not be ideal for a little while but if you’re a senior in art school and you’re only NOW starting to look for work and make contacts you got a pretty poor education.
Ideally you should start prepping for your career by finding work midway through your Junior year. Connections with editors, connections with art directors. If you’re a Junior reading this you should feel a little panicked because you’re about two months behind, if you’re a Senior you’re in real trouble but all is not lost.
If you DO have to keep that job as a host at a steakhouse or a grocery clerk or whatever here are a couple of rules (and if I was on your faculty I would have given you these instructions sometime around your Sophomore year);
Work only part time hours, even if you can work more don’t be lured by the money, you need time to work on your art. It goes without saying that you also must COMMIT to spending that extra time on your art, portfolio and samples. During the school year you should get used to surviving on a base pay of 20 hours a week— this gives you at least another 20 hours a week to work on art and 20 hours of class time. Get used to 60 hour weeks, that will be your life for sometime.
I hate to mention taking time off because too many students take that to mean much more than I intend, but you should take one full day off a week and you can split that with one morning off, one evening off, one afternoon off if that fits better with your schedule. Am I saying work all the time? If you want to be successful I absolutely do.
Now again, if you’re a sophomore and you’re getting this advice from me I’m also going to teach you how to budget— put away as much as you can of your pay for post senior year 1— more in a minute. Learning how to budget is going to go a long way towards helping you achieve Freelance goals.
As a balance to that, learn how to live well below your means. Set an entertainment budget which is no more than 10% of your take-home pay. Let’s do some simple math— let’s say you get a job that pays you $15/hour working second shift at Cumberland Farms— your gross pay is going to be $300 after taxes your take-home pay is going to be around $240 that means if you’re planning on going out with friends on Friday you have $24 to spend— stay within that. If you went out with them already this week and you spent $18 you have $6 left, maybe you can get some noodles. Or, you can take that $6 and roll it into next week where you’ll have $30 to spend. It’s not easy making hard decisions like skipping something that sounds like fun, but you need to invest in your Freelance Life so you can make all this work.
Let’s say you’re able to save 30% of your paycheck for post senior year 1; if you started doing this in your Sophomore year and you work year round you’re saving $72/week x 52 weeks= $3,744 annually— over the course of three years (Sophomore, Junior and Senior) you’ll be at that graduation ceremony with $11,232 in the bank. Not a fortune but enough to help you get off the ground right at graduation. Enough that maybe you don’t have to keep that job salting fries while trying to launch your freelance career.
So what about seniors now facing the world?
Time to get to work— while you are looking for gigs you should be spending your down time…
Build your website— register your DOT com name and use Wix if you’re broke or Squarespace if you can afford it and get your site up and running. You can go the Facebook or Deviantart route to really save money but if you want to attract good sized clients they’ll be more responsive if you have a real website.
Create a sample list— gather as many contacts as you can, LINKEDiN is a good resource, so are company websites. Start compiling a master list of who the power people are— people who can hire you.
Attend a trade show— even if its virtual. You need to get yourself out there and get your work known.
Resist the temptation to work for “exposure” but if you do, stick with non-profits like The Boys and Girls Club or UNICEF. A publisher who doesn’t want to pay his employees is not a worthy cause, a real non-profit is.
Don’t Undervalue your work. Please don’t make me tell you the story of how the moronic artist I knew took a job and didn’t wait for the client to tell them it was a $1200 gig, and blurted out they would do it for $100. That gig never bounced back to real money and that moron cost a lot of artists a living wage.
Under Promise and Over Deliver. I use a simple method of figuring out how long something is going to take me. Ideally I work Tuesday thru Friday and take Saturdays - Monday off. That’s a happy schedule for me. I work four ten hour days. If a job coming in looks like it will take me four weeks I quote six weeks, by building in that extra time I can have some breathing room and build in unforeseen trouble like bad work days, power outages, sick time, etc. Then if I end up bringing the project in at four weeks the client will be thrilled.
Back to #5 use the same method to calculate your rate— let’s say you’re figuring on making $30 an hour when you’re starting out— that’s not great pay but it’s okay, but are you going to be paid for second and third drafts, revisions, changes, etc? Nothing worse than redoing something. Maybe $40 an hour would be better.
As you make revisions, save the previous one. I cannot count how many times I’ve finished a piece and someone asks for a color change, then another, then finally it ends up with “actually can we go back to the first one?”. If you save revisions it’s s simple matter of pulling out the previous file. I use a simple method; say the file is named CLIENT— the first draft sent over is CLIENT 01, the second CLIENT 02 and so on. If there are changes to the art from a draft it becomes a B— so a second draft with art changes would be CLIENT 02B. Now in my files I’ll have CLIENT 01, CLIENT 02 and CLIENT 02B should I ever need them.
Keep the communications line open. Nobody likes bad news. They don’t like getting it and they don’t like giving it, but if you’re running behind and you’re going to need more time let the client know as soon as you know— and that doesn’t mean on the day the project is due. Just a simple email or phone call will usually result in no trouble. If it continuously happens you’ll have to rethink how you estimate how much time you need.
Don’t be afraid to turn work down if it doesn’t feel right. We call it flags. Sometimes its the project itself. Sometimes its the client. Sometimes we can’t explain it but something is off. Turn it down. Work will come. The few times I’ve gone against instinct and taken a gig was because of panic, and a better job came right behind it and I struggled through the one that I knew I shouldn’t have taken in the first place.
Learn how to schedule your time; I have a good friend who is addicted to video games. He’ll have three weeks to do a project and spend two playing a video game. The final work looks rushed and his stress level goes through the roof. Treat Freelance like a real job. Schedule your work time and be honest about the amount of time you’re putting in.
Don’t panic. Control your stress. Stay on deadlines, keep yourself sane and you’ll get through this.