In this review, I’ll be talking about a design book I’ve recently finished reading (well, it was in fact several months ago, but I’ve been too busy to blog about it); Graphic Style: From Victorian to New Century. The book is in its 3rd edition and a collaboration between design critic Steven Heller, and illustrator Seymour Chwast.

I bought it about a year and a half ago after reading a recommendation in Computer Arts magazine but (as with every other book I buy) it took forever to get around to starting it… seeing as I buy books about 3 times faster than I actually read them.

Alas, I eventually got round to reading the book and thought it was even better than I expected.

What Graphic Style is About

The book covers art & design styles and movements from the Victorian era to the present day. Covering movements such as Art Nouveau, Constructivism, Art Deco, Swiss Style and even more recent movements such as street art and infographics.

There are over 700 images displayed throughout the book’s 280 pages which, together with information about each movement, give a good overview of the history of graphic design. This includes details of art & design icons throughout history such as Neville Brody and Josef Müller-Brockmann as well as what influence they had on design itself.

Sure the book doesn’t give every little detail about each movement and the designers within them, but it is by no means short.

Why I Was Excited About Reading it

When I first started the book I was really excited about sprucing up my design knowledge, I’ve never been massively familiar with all the big names in design and decided a while back that I should do a little revision so to speak. So it felt great to be covering what has actually happened in graphic design over the last couple hundred years or so.

Admittedly, I didn’t remain excited throughout the whole thing, despite my exciting start it wasn’t all that long before I got a little tired of reading up on / looking at design from the 19th century, such as the Victorian era. It was interesting at first, but I can only handle so much. Of course, that’s not to say I think any of it should have been left out. It needed to be in the book and I’m glad I took the time to read through it.

Modern

What I found especially interesting was getting to the Modernist sections including the Futurism and Constructivism movements. Looking at the work and reading about the designers for these periods blew my mind, I couldn’t comprehend how anyone could produce design work so ‘different’ as early as the early 1900′s.

After reading so much about the Victorian and Art Nouveau movements I was starting to get a little bored, but to then have such a sudden change in subject matter seemed really refreshing, where the designers of these movements were completely rejecting the ornamental styles of the likes of Art Nouveau and embracing the machine age through, at first controversial, methods such as abstract collages of letterforms, photomontages and the interesting technique of incorporating onomatopoeia into designs. It was interesting to discover how forward-thinking and ahead of their time these designers actually were.

Digital

My other favourite part of the book (probably my most favourite part of all in fact) was the introduction of digital. The book covers in detail what an impact the Macintosh had on the design industry from the 1980′s onwards.

This section of the book covers work from the likes of Neville Brody and David Carson, including the magazines FUSE and Ray Gun. The work around around this era of 80′s and, most notably, 90′s graphic design I find fascinating. Although some of it does look a little dated now (not in a bad way, in most cases), I find looking at these old, yet in a way quite recent techniques really captivating. The fact that designers could now experiment with different layouts and typography much more freely than before must have been very exciting for those working in the industry at the time.

Perhaps one reason I find looking at 90′s graphic design so fascinating is the fact I was born in 1986 and am therefore an official ’90s kid’. So I suppose most things from the 90′s generally blow my mind in a blast-from-the-past kind of way (I do, after all, occasionally get enthralled in watching 90′s TV adverts on YouTube… so many memories!).

Although I wasn’t particularly interested in graphic design during my earlier days as a 90′s kid, it does kind of bring back some rather vague memories of the kind of design work my older brother would show me at the time.

This section, more than any other, has inspired me to go about some further reading / research. I recently invested in FUSE 1-20 and am very excited to read it (when I’ll actually get around to it is another matter). I also plan on investing in some more books relating to graphic design in the 90′s and early days of digital.

Inspiration

Of course, I’ve been sure to pin a lot of the work I’ve seen throughout this book to my beloved Pinterest boards. This will serve as some great inspiration for some upcoming plans I have with regards to my career / life in design, despite some of the work on my boards being nigh on 100 years old.

All in all, Graphic Style is a very interesting read! If you’re passionate about graphic design, interested in reading more about its history or in need of sprucing up your design background knowledge, then this book is for you!

Here are my snaps from the Winter 2012 Manchester Graduate Show! Considering how short the intensive course is I can’t help but be surprised at how high the standard of the graduates’ design work is. I’d noticed this on their website before I’d been to the show itself, but the graduate show simply put any doubts to rest.

My assumption is that previous experience in design is needed before studying at the college to come out with a portfolio as strong as this. As I seriously doubt it would be possible otherwise.

The Work

As always, the quality of my photos aren’t the best! I unfortunately had to sacrifice a considerable number of shots as they didn’t turn out very well, but there are still a decent amount of pieces for you to drool over.

What are your thoughts on the graduates’ design work? Let me know in the comments!

Enjoy!

In case you missed it, be sure to check out Part 1 of this double whammy extravaganza where I summarise my freelance experience so far: Tips for Designers Going Freelance: Part 1 (My Story).

In this post, I’ll simply throw in a load of tips that I’ve picked up throughout my career. Including how to avoid getting burned, how to avoid isolation and how to stay organised!

So here we go…

Stay Motivated

The last thing you want as a freelancer is to lose interest in what you’re doing. It can sometimes be hard to stay motivated if you’re doing too much bread & butter work just to pay the bills.

Personal Projects

These are a great way to stay motivated as you can work on whatever you want! Currently I’m working on a free WordPress theme. I’m working on it for a few reasons, mostly as a portfolio enhancer and it’s also nice to design something where I can dictate the design completely.

I plan on designing more WordPress themes however I want to work on other projects in future, e.g. desktop wallpapers to give me a chance to flaunt my illustration skills… plus it would be a nice change from the norm.

You can even try and make some money from your personal projects, I plan on designing my own posters and selling them through redbubble.com. I’ve no idea if I’ll even make any money from it, but I’m mainly designing them for fun anyway.

Whatever creative field you may be in, there will be some kind of personal project you can work on to keep things interesting!

Outsource Work That You’re No Good at or Don’t Enjoy

Earlier in my freelance days I used to take on virtually any work that I could get my hands on. I used to find myself getting bogged down in way too much development work that was often beyond my skillset. This led to me working far too many stressful all nighters and I’m pretty sure a few miracles were involved in order for me to get a lot of them finished on time.

As mentioned in part 1 of my article, I don’t like getting bogged down in development work, which is why these days I often get in touch with one of my more developery freelance friends to see if they’d like to jump on board a job should it be necessary. That way I can focus on the work that I enjoy and do well.

So don’t try to juggle too many different skills and be sure to get specialists in other fields on board when they’re needed. Otherwise you may lose interest in freelancing by working on things that you’re no good at!

Avoid Isolation

Before I properly went freelance I used to spend a lot of time reading articles by freelance creatives on what it’s like working for yourself etc. I noticed a lot of them used to talk about the solitary effects of working from home. At first I thought working from home would be the best thing ever and completely discarded opinions of those who felt lonely or isolated when working from home.

It didn’t take long for me to then think that working from home on my own was HORRIBLE. I found myself constantly logged in to Facebook and Twitter just to have some connection to the outside world.

Shortly after moving to the big city, I soon realised there were remedies for this (which I previously didn’t properly know existed).

Co-working Spaces

These are a great way to have all of the advantages of a workplace whilst still working for yourself. I prefer to work from one that has a nice atmosphere, a radio and one that doesn’t have that whole suited & booted culture that you may find in a lot of other places that let you rent a desk or office space.

I work from the co-working space @Basecamp_3 (website link here). It has a great mix of creatives from various fields and is also surrounded by all kinds of creative agencies and musicians as well as a bar in the same building… all housed within Elevator Studios.

Co-working Events

Jelly co-working events are a great way for home-workers and the self employed to get out and meet new people. I don’t go as much as I used to since I started at a shared office, but I still like to show my face at the Liverpool one for at least an afternoon for most events.

Bear in mind Jellies go on all over the UK (well, all over the world apparently!). So use the above link to find one local to you.

See my post from last year about Jelly events for more info, it’s a little out of date now and at this time of writing the Manchester event appears to have ceased to exist (looking back, it wasn’t really worth including in the post as it lacked atmosphere!). I’m sure someone out there will organise a new Manchester Jelly at some point.

Be Organised

I use a variety of apps to help keep records of all things work related. Some of which are free, some I have to pay for… but they’re totally worth it and have saved my life on countless occasions. There are alternatives for most of these apps but to save me rambling I’ll simply talk only about the ones I use myself.

Project Management

Freshbooks

I never seem to stop worshipping these guys, I think my peers might even be starting to suspect I’m being paid off. I stay organised by using Freshbooks to manage invoices, quotes, client contact details, time tracking etc. It even sends out scary automatic reminders to those who are late paying invoices ;)

Evernote

Evernote helps me stay organised as I keep individual notes for each project I’m working on, rather than jotting it all down on a scrap piece of paper that will probably get misplaced. Also I use it to save useful logins such as FTP details. This saves me having to pester my clients for them should I need to make any changes to their website.

Basecamp

I’ve never actually used Basecamp for myself, however I’ve been invited to certain projects on there whilst working on subcontracted jobs, as some of the agencies I work for use it. I plan on signing up with an account soon however mainly so that I can go through my custom checklist before setting websites live. I currently use another service for my checklist however it seems to be letting me down far too much lately, hence me planning on signing up with Basecamp.

Data Backups

I am forever stressing to people the importance of this. Whether you’re freelance or not these apps are a must have! If you’re working for yourself and don’t take backups into consideration then it is simply a disaster waiting to happen.

Dropbox

I have my entire work’s folder stored on Dropbox. As soon as I hit ‘Save’, any updates are automatically synched with my Dropbox account online. Any changes made using one computer will then be downloaded automatically onto any other computer linked to the same Dropbox account. This means I can work on my iMac at my office share, then open up my MacBook at home and all of my day’s work is there without me having to do anything. I honestly can’t understand how anyone can work without it or one of it’s equivalents!

Time Machine

This is for Mac users only but I assume there are equivalents for Windows and Linux. I use this to backup everything onto my external hard drive (including everything that isn’t in my Dropbox folder, e.g. music etc). Backups are taken routinely without my having to do anything and I can easily revert files back to how they were months ago. It’s handy should I need to format my computer and gives me that extra piece of mind.

Moodboards

Moodboards are a great way to get a design on the right track before you’ve even started work on it. Simply put some snippets of designs together so that both you and your clients have a good idea of where the design should go in terms of colour, layout, typography, use of imagery etc.

Littlesnapper

I use Littlesnapper to store my offline collection of design inspiration. You can use tags and folders to categorise each snippet and it has some handy ‘snapping’ features such as ‘snap entire webpage’ etc. Currently there is no cloud functionality but you can mimic this by combining it with an app like Dropbox (I found it a little fiddly, possibly due to a bug in Littlesnapper at the time, but I managed it in the end).

Pinterest

Pinterest is also a great (online) app for moodboards. This is what I use to show moodboards to clients. Being a social network means it is a great way to share your moodboards with others too. I’m not sure it’s really necessary to use both this and Littlesnapper, I’ve mostly been using both but seem to be leaning more and more in favour of Pinterest as time goes on. Feel free to follow me!

Avoid Getting Burned

What you’ve all been waiting for I’m sure! I’ve had people / friends in the past asking me questions along the lines of; “What’s it like knowing that if your clients don’t pay you then there’s nothing you can do about it?”

I used to believe this myself but over the years I’ve found out several ways to avoid clients doing a runner without paying. In fact, it’s not even something I really worry about anymore.

Terms of Service

Before you start working for any client (whether it be for direct or sub-contracted work) make sure you get them to sign your service contract. I followed a great guide by Anna Debenham that offers useful advice on how to do this. As a rough guide, make sure you include the following:

• What your payment terms are (e.g. deposits, payment deadlines etc)
• What you will do if payment is not received (or ridiculously late for example)
• General pointers on how you work (e.g. concept designs based on brief, how many sets of revisions, what browsers to test in)
• Deadlines (the client has to stick to deadlines themselves in order for the job to be finished on time remember)

Small Claims Court

Here’s one little gem I didn’t even know existed until recently. I’m not sure how this would work outside the UK exactly, but for those based inside the UK you can simply take a client to the small claims court without the hassle of needing your own lawyer or solicitor. There are fees to pay (which vary depending on the amount of money you are trying to get off the client) but they’re nothing too much to worry about.

Just make sure to have records of all cost agreements with the client, such as emails for example. Never agree prices over the phone, unless you follow it up with an email (or a quote through Freshbooks for example) and get them to reply stating that they agree.

Not having records of agreeing prices with the client basically just means it’s your word against theirs and you are very unlikely to do well in court.

Threaten to Publicise the Work

One thing I mention in my T.O.S is that I reserve the right to publicise the work should I not receive payment in full within a specified amount of time.

I had this happen once in the past where a guy kept avoiding my emails after I’d designed concepts for his client’s website. The website was then built (by someone else, and not very well for that matter) and set live. I chased him for payment for months before eventually threatening to build the design into a WordPress theme myself and giving it away on my blog.

I then told him I would contact his client and inform them that their website template was available for anyone, including their competitors, to download and use as they wish.

Needless to say the guy shat himself and paid up asap.

So that’s one thing you can do, but it would probably be a million times less hassle to take them to the small claims court instead.

Intellectual Property

I’m no lawyer, but I’ve gathered some useful tips after attending a couple of free talks on IP. Well, one point in particular really.

You (and your client for that matter) might think that just because they have paid you for the work then that gives them the rights to use it however they like.

Wrong!

From what I’ve gathered, you own all of the rights to your work whether you’ve been paid or not, unless agreed otherwise in writing.

Chances are you won’t get any more work from a client if you go and publish the work wherever you feel like when they’ve politely asked you not to. But it’s worth keeping in mind nonetheless.

Maybe you’re so unhappy about having to pay small claims court fees that you win in court and then publish the work online, inform their client etc.

Something to do if you’re having a bad day perhaps! Of course you’d have to make sure none of this conflicted with any terms you’ve signed, such as an NDA.

Be Outgoing

Something to keep in mind for all freelancers! Especially those who work from home.

I like to attend various meetups, not to gain work exactly, but generally just to meet people, have a laugh etc.

I really don’t like suited & booted corporate networking events, maybe you do, but they’re not my style at all.

Instead, I prefer to attend more informal get-togethers that are on the more creative side. I like to meet other designers and creatives in other fields just out of interest. I’ve made a fair few friends this way in fact.

Not only that, but I’ve met people who have helped me out from time to time. These are mostly developers whose development skills exceed my own (I only work frontend after all). I’ve found design work in the past by working for developers too.

So get yourself out there, in a nutshell it’s a good way to skill swap… and have a laugh!

Where Do I Find These Meetups?

Try meetup.com, eventbrite, and follow whatever interests you on Twitter or Facebook! (surely you don’t need links for those last two?).

I’ve found that, from attending one or two different meetups, I hear about others just through word of mouth.

And remember, there’s no need to automatically treat fellow freelancers as rivals, I often class them as friends to share ideas with.

Don’t Cut Corners

And finally; a couple of (very simple) tips that so many creatives / freelancers seem to ignore:

• Proof read everything: website content, emails, texts, tweets (make sure your tone comes across as you mean to! You’ll be shocked at some of your own mistakes that you pick up on from time to time)
• Don’t rush things: don’t just slap together a website that ‘does the job’ or business cards that show people how to ‘get in touch’. Go the extra mile and make everything stand out, make everything look ultra cool and it will pay off in time

The End

There we have it! That’s pretty much everything I’ve figured out over my few years of freelancing. Although for all I know in a year or two from now I could have completely different views compared to what I do now. If I do, I’ll be sure to blog about it ;)

Let me know your thoughts in the comments?

I put this down mainly due to me not really picking the most suitable course at university combined with the fact that I spent a lot of my freelance career living in Ellesmere Port (which has far from a thriving creative community! So I felt really alone in what I did).

In part 2 of this article (which I’ll hopefully post a day or two after this one) I’ll simply throw a load of quick, random tips that I’ve picked up through my freelance journey. So keep your eyes peeled everyone! ;)

Why I’m Posting This

I occasionally get other creatives asking me how I went freelance, how I get freelance work etc so I thought I mightaswell just throw my whole freelance life’s story into this article and see if it’s of any use to anyone. This is a lot longer than my other articles as I prefer to keep them short and sweet, but I didn’t have much choice with this one sorry!

Hopefully this article will shed a bit of light on what the freelance life can involve for creatives and maybe those thinking of making the switch will pick up a few tips from it.

Of course, my advice may not apply to everybody so I’ll simply go through ‘my story’ and hope that it helps out creatives in a similar position to where I was a few years ago.

Stage 1: Industry Experience & Portfolio Building

I started off by working with a couple of web design agencies (a temp in 2008, then part time with a different agency in 2009) as I was coming to the end of my degree. So my 3rd year consisted of university, working two days a week with a web design agency as well as teaching myself more about web & graphic design and the odd little freelance project here and there (of course there was all the wild student partying thrown in there too which is beyond the scope of this article for obvious reasons).

Working within agencies gave me some valuable experience on how the industry worked. It made me realise how wrong I’d been doing things until then, mainly in terms of project management and the fact I was foolishly attempting to be an ‘Ace of All Trades’ as opposed to finding a niche.

The little freelance projects I was working on were for very little money as I had virtually nothing in my portfolio. The fact that I charged little money meant I found it easier to get work, plus it ensured that my clients wanted to see the projects through to the end rather than just back out halfway (as they sometimes do when you work for free! If you pick the wrong people that is…).

People used to say to me “You really need to be charging more than that! Don’t sell yourself short!”.

But I didn’t pay much attention to them. How was I supposed to charge decent money for a website when I had next to nothing in my portfolio? Not to mention I had hardly any industry experience. It made perfect sense to do work on the cheap (or for free) to build my portfolio.

Be Careful Though

Working for dirt-cheap prices can attract the wrong type of client. E.g. one who doesn’t value your opinion and the job could turn out to be a total monstrosity that you would never want in your portfolio. Fortunately for me this didn’t happen and each job seemed portfolio-worthy (looking back, this seems pretty miraculous). Just be careful about who you choose to work for should you carry out discounted / pro-bono work!

A Better Way

If you’re going to work for discounted rates (or for free) you might want to get in touch with some charities rather than businesses. At least this way your efforts are more likely to be going to a good cause, and you’re less likely to have any ruthless business folk trying to take advantage (although I’ve found some people who work for charities to come across as a little ruthless too, so you still need to be careful about who you choose).

One Thing I Should Probably Mention

At this point, these ‘freelance projects’ I’d been working on were for direct clients that I’d found through my ‘pretend design agency’ website that I was so proud of at the time. I’ll talk more about this a little later! So I’m not sure freelance is the best word to be using here, but you know what I mean.

Notice how corporate this website looks in comparison to the one you are reading from, it was really sales-orientated (urghh!).

Stage 2: Going Freelance Properly

January 2010 is when I properly went freelance, i.e. it was my full time job. I launched my new portfolio site (see below, a previous version of this very website) which I’d been slaving over for the previous few months and it was time to try out my new tactic… getting freelance work off design agencies and other freelancers.

I’d found that, due to my extremely poor sales skills (and my lack of interest in running an agency in general) it was really hard to find my own direct clients. Not only that, but I soon realised I didn’t even want to be good at selling design because I wanted to focus more on what I enjoy… doing design.

So I thought, “why not email hundreds of design / development agencies as well as other freelancers and see if they can pass any work on to me?”. This was when I realised domination of the universe was within my grasp.

How I Promoted Myself

Simple, I just Google’d local agencies and put together a spreadsheet of 200(ish) agency names and email addresses. Then I emailed over my CV and cover letter (much in the same way people would go about seeking employment) and explained how I was a freelancer looking to take on web projects.

Going by the total lack of success I’d previously had of trying to sell my services to direct clients, I really didn’t have my hopes up. Then I was in disbelief that from emailing the first 50 or so agencies I’d soon had replies off a few who were keen for me to pay them a visit to chat about working together.

A Few Meetings Lined Up

I say ‘meetings’ but I’ve found meeting with design agencies to be a lot like job interviews… only less formal. When I was first meeting with these agencies (nearly 3 years ago) I felt like I was having to pretend to be a freelancer because my whole experience of working for myself was just a handful of discounted jobs for direct clients. I’d never had any work outsourced to me by any agencies before.

So I found myself meeting design agencies where one guy might be like so:

• Agency Guy: “This is Matt, he’s a freelance web designer! Isn’t that right Matt?”.
• Me: “Ermm, yeaahh… that’s what I am!”

They actually went really well because the agencies were really impressed by the work in my portfolio and the meetings were just generally quite relaxed (as I mentioned they typically weren’t very formal).

Too Good to be True

It wasn’t long before I realised getting my freelance career to where I wanted it was going to take a significant amount of work.

I spent a great deal of my freelance career (too much in fact) working on projects that didn’t interest me for not very good money. I think this is just a part of starting out as a freelancer in general for a lot of people, everyone has to start somewhere after all. The exception to this would most likely be creatives who have several years of good quality industry experience already. But I didn’t have this, and I didn’t have the benefit of walking out of university with an impressive portfolio (because I didn’t choose the right course).

At first, it felt amazing (pretty unreal in fact) to be able to earn money without having an actual job where I would have to follow a regimented routine of hobbling to the bus stop at silly o’clock every morning in the pouring down rain.

Then after a few months I realised that I wasn’t happy putting existing, diabolically coded websites into CMS’ for a living (and I’m talkin’ Dreamweaver-inline-syles diabolically bad).

I am, after all, a designer at heart. So simply working on other peoples’ websites doesn’t interest me. Especially when they’ve been built originally by someone else who obviously didn’t know what they were doing.

And if I wasn’t doing that, I was finding all too often that I was building websites based on other peoples’ designs and not my own (it seems easy to get work that way).

I Was Also Still ‘Pretending’ to be an Agency

As well as freelancing, I was still working under my ‘pretend design agency’ website. I believed (at the time) that this was my ultimate goal, to run my own agency and take on only direct clients. For this reason I’d redesigned my business website to the one that you see below:

These days I can’t imagine anything worse than carrying on with this former alias of mine. I thought my website had to look really corporate and that all my clients had to be really corporate in order for me to earn a living. Later on I realised it didn’t have to be this way and that freelancing (under my whacky freelance website) was the way forward… at least for myself anyway.

Stage 3: Putting Things Right

I then spent the best part of two to two and a half years on a mission to:

1. Earn decent money
2. Take on more interesting jobs (those that involved more design work)

I can safely say it took too long to do this, but I found myself in the predicament of:

1. I didn’t want to risk scaring away my existing clients by upping my rates (by this point I had my own place and therefore bills to pay)
2. I needed to spruce up my website before I could look for more agencies to work for (I needed new agencies to kind of *test* my new rates on and see what they said)
3. Finding time to redesign my website was a struggle because I was too busy from working for lower rates (not as low as the uber-discounted jobs I was doing whilst working part time, but still too low for what I was doing)

Alas, I eventually got my website redesigned in May 2012 and that’s when things really started to take off. New agencies to work for (although I still work for some of the original ones too), increased rates and more design-oriented projects as opposed to regularly building other peoples’ designs.

Agencies Cut Out The Boring Bits

You might wonder why I’m such a fan of getting work off design agencies? I think the main reason is that it cuts out a lot of the boring bits that come with direct work (well, maybe you won’t find them boring, but I do). By this I mean the none-designy aspects such as going out and selling websites, chasing clients for content, teaching clients how to use the CMS you’ve set up for them etc. Agencies (mostly) take care of this for me which gives me more time to spend doing what I do well, design!

Also as I’ve mentioned earlier, I’m no salesman. I can sell myself and my skills to design agencies much in the same way I would if I were in a job interview. But I’m no good at (and have no interest in) going to events to sell websites or any of that sales jargon you may read about on the web; e.g. ‘upselling’, ‘sales techniques’, ‘cold calling’… urghh no thanks!

No More Pretending!

By this point I could happily take my ‘pretend design agency‘ website offline. No more horrible, fake, corporate, salesy website at last! It wasn’t me at all, I cringe when I look at it nowadays and I feel as though I’ve finally come full circle (at least my mindset has anyway, see the ‘What Next?’ section further down).

Not only that, but working under two separate alias’ didn’t feel good to me. Nor did working under two separate Twitter accounts. No one wanted to interact with my rarely-updated corporate Twitter page (and I don’t blame them). I much prefer to have my own personal / freelance Twitter page which showcases my skills as well as letting my personality shine through.

I Still Work With Direct Clients of Course

None of this is to say that I only work with agencies, I still love to work with direct clients. I only tend to work with direct clients when they crop up however, this is normally through word of mouth and occasionally through search engines. I don’t go out of my way to look for them.

I still like to work with direct clients because it often gives me more creative control over a project than what I would get when having design work outsourced to me. After all, nearly everything in my portfolio is for direct clients!

What Next?

I still feel as though I need to work at my career a lot more before I’m truly happy with it. I get a lot of people (mostly creatives fresh out of uni or college) who tell me they’re really jealous of my freelance lifestyle… but in reality I’m jealous of a lot of these people at the same time! Mainly because a lot of these creatives are:

1. Graduates of really cool courses from really cool universities (e.g. BA Graphic Design at LJMU or Salford University). Which has lead to them having really impressive portfolios straight out of university… this is far from what I had unfortunately as I didn’t put enough thought into what or where to study after my Art & Design college course (which is what helped me get started)
2. Working with really creative design agencies (even though it may be for free or minimum wage) and picking up tonnes of industry experience that way. You might wonder how I could possibly be jealous of those working for free or minimum wage, but it’s not all about money. Gaining experience at top-end creative agencies is something I never even thought to do in my earlier days as a designer (see the wrong course / Ellesmere Port thing earlier in this article) and I feel I would be much happier career-wise right now if I’d have done something like this as I probably wouldn’t have fell into that ‘corporate mindset’ that I was in a few years ago

My Plans

My plans for the near future are to branch out a little more. The vast majority of my work at the minute is designing and building custom WordPress themes as well as logo design.

I’d love to refine my portfolio a little so that I get more print-based and illustration work too. Web / digital will always by my speciality I imagine, but I’m not too keen on the idea of designing nothing but websites for the rest of my life!

A couple of agencies have said I should stick to what I’m good at, but I think they’ve got the wrong idea about me. I think some people think that, because I can code, that means I’m a developer. I never class myself as a developer however, I only work on the frontend and even then I’m only interested in working on frontend development if it’s been designed by myself.

I know of plenty of designers who design for both on and offline media so I don’t see what’s stopping me from doing the same. My plan to gain the experience I need to broaden my skillset is with some cool pro-bono projects!

(Edit: I’ve recently decided the best bet may be personal design & illustration projects followed by possibly studying at Shillington. Whatever I do, I’m sure you’ll eventually be able to find out through my blog.)

Your Thoughts / Experiences

Please let me know if you found anything useful in this article or if any of you have had any similar experiences. If you too are a freelancer, how does your ‘freelance story’ compare to mine? Similar? Different? Please let me know in the comments section!

Also don’t forget to keep tabs on my blog for part 2 of this article, my freelance tips! By the time you read this it will probably already be online in fact.

In other words, I’ll work for free on design projects fitting the below criteria that really catch my eye.

My goal at the minute (well, I’ve felt this way for at least a year now) is to alter my client base a little so that I work for more people based in the arts or designing to engage young people. I feel my portfolio already reflects this to some extent, but I wouldn’t mind adding to it a little more.

What Kind of Work am I Interested in?

I’m interested in projects that involve designing something along these lines:

• Logos / characters
• Brand identity (including stationery etc)
• Brochures / flyers
• CVs design / curriculum vitae design / résumé design
• Posters
• Illustrations
• Album artwork / record sleeves
• DVD covers
• *Possibly* websites / WordPress themes however these would be far more time consuming and I have plenty in my portfolio already. However I wouldn’t rule them out completely should the job appear to be super interesting ;)

Who Do I Want to Work For?

Good question! If you feel you fall into any of the following fields please give me a shout and I’ll see how (or if) I can help you out. If you’re based around the north west of England that would be ideal, but not compulsory:

• Youth charities / none-profits (doesn’t strictly have to be geared towards youth really, so feel free to give me a shout regardless)
• Musicians (electronic / hip-hop / rock / indie / DJs)
• Festival / event organisers (preferably music / arts-based)
• Gig organisers
• Art galleries
• Music venues
• Magazines / online magazines
• Freelance creatives
• Theatres
• Filmmakers
• Record labels
• Organisers of creative meetups
• Night clubs / bars

That’s as many as I can think of off the top of my head! Feel free to get in touch anyway if you feel I should work with you.

Restrictions

Just to let you know, I’m mainly interested in working with those who are fairly well established already. It’s not very likely (but not impossible) that I’ll want to work for free for someone who is virtually unknown in their field or if I believe you’re not very serious about working with me.

I’ll also need some kind of assurance that you’ll see the project through to the end and not back out half way. This may be in the form of a deposit which I could refund once the job is finished… but we can always discuss that!

I first heard about The Designers Republic back when I was a wee boy (around the age of 12 or something) when my brother (who is also a designer) pointed out the fact that they worked on PS1 game that we played at the time; Wipeout 2097, in the sense that they designed logos, fonts, various other in-game motifs as well the game’s cover and packaging.

Although I wasn’t really interested in graphic design at the time, I still thought what they did was really cool and that the Wipeout games wouldn’t have been anywhere near as interesting without tDR’s touch. In fact, one of the main reasons I didn’t bother buying any of the Wipeout games for the PS2 was down to the fact that tDR no longer played a part in any of the design work.

Anyway, times have changed since then. I no longer have the time or attention-span for console games and design is a passion for me, whereas when I was younger I just thought it was ‘alright to look at’.

Despite being fascinated by the work of tDR I’ve always found it incredibly hard to actually find any to look at, whether it be online or in print. Of course, there is their pho-ku.com website which just about gave me my tDR fix throughout my life as a designer.

Car Booty Affair Exhibition

When I heard about the exhibition I knew I would have to seize the opportunity as opposed to just missing out on the action like I have with other tDR events in the past. When I heard we could actually get out mitts on some of the items there I think I nearly fell into a coma out of sheer excitement.

And so I ventured over to the happy land of Sheffield around Halloween time in order to fulfill my destiny of seeing some of tDR’s work up close. Conveniently there was a house party going on the same night at a friend’s, and there were a couple of other creative spaces I thought of checking out while I was there (@MADENORTH and @S1Artspace)… it’s like it was meant to be!

When I arrived at ‘A Month of Sundays‘ gallery I headed upstairs to where the tDR exhibition was. I knew I was in the right gallery as I could hear the infamous soundtrack from various big-name electronic outfits for Wip3out gradually getting louder as I walked up the steps (the PS1 was a nice touch I must say!).

tDR was without a doubt the highlight of my design-tour of Sheffield although that’s unsurprising considering it was the main reason I went in the first place.

As much as I would have loved to have gone crazy and bought everything, I couldn’t quite afford to be spending £75 – £150 per poster… although they did look incredible! However I did manage to treat myself to a few goodies while I was there ;)

I also took a few snaps so that myself and those equally tDR-obsessed can drool over them for the rest of our lives! As you can see below, but please forgive my poor photography skills (the size and quality of the images really doesn’t do the work much justice!).

Feel free to leave feedback in the comments section! Did you pay the exhibition a visit? If so what did you think? Did you get your hands on any saucy tDR merchandise? Don’t hesitate to post even if it is just to declare your undying love for The Designers Republic.

]]> http://www.mattpealing.co.uk/tdr-car-booty-affair-exhibition-photos-of-my-visit/feed/ 2 http://www.mattpealing.co.uk/creative-liverpool-presents-creative-process-_creativelpool/ http://www.mattpealing.co.uk/creative-liverpool-presents-creative-process-_creativelpool/#comments Sat, 03 Nov 2012 13:18:40 +0000 Matt http://www.mattpealing.co.uk/?p=1002 One of the many creative shindigs I like to visit is Creative Liverpool that takes place on the first Thursday of each month at Elevator Bar in Liverpool. The events are like really casual networking for creatives, everyone meets up at the bar and has a natter to find out what it is people do career-wise (or just natter in general). Those who attend regularly tend to have a catch up on what each other has been up to or get to know the new faces.

It’s not your cliché suited & booted corporate networking event (otherwise I wouldn’t bother going) however those who attend are passionate about what they do and work in a wide variety of creative fields.

Don’t be put off if you’re not currently working as a creative however, the meetup is popular with students and even feel free to come down if you just want to learn more about working in creative fields.

December is the big one! ‘Creative Process’ on Thursday 6 December 2012, 18:30 to 23:30 at Elevator Bar. Not just drunken chatting but this time there will be guest speakers, the likes of:

• Brendan Dawes (@brendandawes): Digital Artist, Author, Maker, Designer
• Jake Smith (@jake74): Creative Director at JP74, Gamer, Typophile
• Dan Donald (@hereinthehive) : Developer at BBC Sport
• David Lloyd (@7streets): Writer, Journalist, Seven Streets
• Gary McGarvey (@screenadelica): Illustrator, Art Director, Screenadelica

Of course there will be all of the usual antics too. If you’re a creative based fairly local to Liverpool then I strongly suggest you come down!

Order yourself a ticket on Eventbrite here!

Also if you’re interested in attending a regular Creative Liverpool meetup, sign up to the Meetup group to get all of the latest updates.

PS: be sure to say hi to myself should you decide to go! I’ll probably be the one with a pint in each hand.

This work is from way before I started getting proper client work, when I used to play about with (Macromedia) Fireworks, Photoshop and *cough* Dreamweaver’s visual editor.

As mentioned in the title, this is a collection of work from 2005 – 2007, I would have been around 19 – 21 at the time. I was in college (or starting university) and was keen to develop my skills and build my portfolio.

Funnily enough, there are a few pieces that I am still fairly proud of e.g. Inspin Design 2.0, Apollyon and the Psytrance producer’s websites. These consisted of some fairly hefty Photoshop work and I’m still surprised at just how detailed they are… although in design terms, they are pretty bad! At the time, I was completely against taking “shortcuts” and painstakingly designed every little detail, silhouette and icon myself.

I’m also surprised at just how badly some of the content is written on my own sites (e.g. Inspin Design). Fortunately some of the content of these sites has been lost and I’ve had to replace it with Lorem Ipsum’s.

Okay here we go, brace yourselves! Some of you may even find a few of these familiar ;)

Inspin Design

My very first portfolio site! This never actually went online in the end (THANKFULLY). To think I actually thought this looked amazing at the time… this website is a crime against humanity!

Inspin Design 1.0

Eventually I saw sense and decided to do away with my original design and go with something a bit cooler. I therefore decided to try and imitate tDR‘s style of work (and failed). But I’m sure you’ll agree the result was about 99999999999 times better than the previous example.

Inspin Design 2.0

Oooh even better again perhaps? I slaved over all the fine details in this one, including some bodge-job Flash animations e.g. the fighter jet and F1 car (no idea what the meaning behind these was!).

Apollyon

A website I designed for my Final Major Project (I think that was what it was called anyway?) whilst studying Art & Design at West Cheshire College. It is in fact my friends’ band and they are still going strong!

Team Retro 2.0

This one was one of my favourites at the time (my college days in ’05 / ’06). Mainly out of comedy value more than anything, due to the ridiculous content on there. It was a site to showcase skate videos of me and a few friends at the time, as well as tonnes of other pointless stuff!

In fact now I’ve had another look at it, the vast majority of the content is ‘party related’ as opposed to ‘skate related’. At the time I thought the design was really forward-thinking, abstract, and generally out of this world… how wrong I was!

Psytrance Producer

My first ever client! Who I found through Myspace during my days struggling for money as a student. I found the work thanks to those ingenious friend-adding programs you could get… yes that’s right, I was a spammer! This guy produced psychedelic trance and the website used a bespoke CMS that I built in PHP so that he could upload his own images and audio tracks. When I say bespoke CMS, I mean a really… REALLY… *BAD*… bespoke CMS.

The insanely sloppy code would be enough to give any self-respecting PHP developer nightmares for the rest of their life… if not put them into a coma (or kill them).

In fairness, this website came with a crazy amount of Photoshop work also, all for a shockingly low price! I estimate this job worked out at approximately 0.04 pence per hour.

Hip-Hop Album Cover

Another of my beloved original Myspace clients, well I’m not sure ‘client’ is the right word to use, seeing as the guy did a runner without paying me! Fortunately he didn’t appear to use the album cover though. I suppose that’s what I get for working for people I found on Myspace, without thinking to get ANY money up front. Still, you learn from your mistakes!

Alas, in the 6 or so years that have passed since I designed this I have to say I’ve just about got over the loss of my none-existent £30. Correct… THIRTY pound! What on Earth was I thinking! Still, I was young, naive and desperate for portfolio enhancement…

RollNorth

Another website that fortunately never reached the Information Super Highway. This was to be a community for skaters, basically a social networking website where users could share media and post in forums and all that kind of thing. All built in my diabolical, bespoke CMS.

Modelling Agency

Another Myspace disaster! Thankfully, I did get *some* money with this one. But (like nearly every other website at the time) it thankfully did not see the light of day.

Oh and once again, this too featured my official jaw-droppingly-bad custom CMS.

Being a former Windows user, I am aware of how some colours are simply too subtle to be properly visible on some displays. I’ve always found it to be when running Windows on a laptop, I have no idea why, this is just my personal experience. I’ve even had the same problem when running Windows on my MacBook; certain shades are just not very distinct when viewing in Windows.

Then one day, I decided to seek out a magical shade of grey that could appear subtle on Mac displays yet still visible on the problematic Windows displays that I mentioned earlier.

Brace yourself people, as I am about to reveal the result of my quest!

• Magical shade of grey = #d4d4d4

To give you a better idea of what I’m getting at, have a browse of www.subtlepatterns.com. This is a great resource for (as it says on the tin) subtle patterns and I find you can quickly spruce up a design by using patterns such as this in the right way.

However, try viewing some of these patters on a Windows laptop and I’m sure you’ll find several that are barely even visible, if at all! I struggle to even view some of them on my MacBook, which is saying something.

Whilst the patterns on this site certainly look super sexy, if some of them are going to appear invisible to so many users then I don’t see much point in using them in a design.

If my designs were targeted purely to Mac users then fair enough, but they’re not, and I imagine this is the case with most other designers.

Other Opinions

What does everyone else out there do to tackle this problem? Perhaps some of you were born Mac users and are unaware of this issue? Maybe you couldn’t care less about Windows users? Or do you have your own magical shade of grey?

Let me know in the comments people :D

PS: sorry if the title of this article gave you much higher, saucier expectations

Check it out here! Also don’t forget to have a read of the other interesting interviews and articles! There are plenty :)