The Working Life

[thatkidokay]

Lately, I dream of a bustling freelance design operation

-Graphics

-Fashion

-Branding

-Overall Creative Genius

Working from anywhere in the world I might be, travelling on a client's dime, producing interesting work for interesting people.

Anyone made this happen for themselves? What does it take?

[Gabriel]

hello

i'm starting that kind of thing with a friend/associate (graphic design, proto-branding, identity, art direction, interactive design) and this is what i've learnt so far:

1. the first thing you need is clients, or at least one solid client, without that you don't have anything;

2. there are lots and lots of design agencies & freelances that don't have any culture or ideas but just know the right people.

[kiteless]

it really depresses me that there are so many dreams of financial & personal independence based on a career as a subcontractor in the least profitable consulting industry of them all. to make the situation even worse, literally thousands of aspiring art directions and graphic designers are graduating every year adding to the huge surplus of "workers". i'm somewhat sickened by hordes of students, and sometimes even senior well-merited people, that rules of basic economics -- necessities like clients, don't apply to creative industry as long as you got helmut lang jeans, weird web site and you've made a couple of record sleeve. art for art's sake? guilty as charged.

[b]

I agree with you kiteless.....

Good luck to ya (the dude that wants to set up shop). Just make sure you don't give up your daytime job in the business's infancy.

I'm just B

[eric2019]

I have the same problem in my field - there are X amount of photographers and X amount of companies/magazines/designers using photographers. Every year there are hundreds of new photographers on the scene - LA has two photography school pumping out newbies every semester.

The problem is anybody can be a photographer from the actor who does photography on the side to the designer who does photography on the side. I can't tell you how many times I get "Oh, you're a photographer ? So what is your day job ? " .....uh..there is no ... day .... job - this is all I do... last time I had a client ask me question, I just look blankly at her and said "Huh ? What do you mean day job ? "

It doesn't help that in a strange way photography is killing itself with dayrates and "copyright free" photography and just really bad contracts that newbies signed just to get their foot in the door and in the process shooting him/herself in the foot.

Of course this clears the field but at the same time fees haven't changed much in 20 years if you can believe it....

sorry for my rant but a life of a photographer ain't what it's all crack up to be....

e

Oh, if you want to hear more tired phrases/cliches spoken in the photography industry, click to this forum :

http://www.pdngallery.com/cgi-bin/ubb/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic;f=1;t=002015

What's buggin' my ears now :

Telefon Tel Aviv - Map of What is Worthless

Klute - Fear of People

Sidestepper - 3 am : In Beats We Trust

KLF - White Room

[kiteless]

we're not going to turn this into the forum section of adage.com... but i know what you mean eric. photographers are in a position even worse than graphic designers. for example, some of the best photographers in the world got the boot in paris on the day when conde nast bought vogue and sacked them all. and i'm starting to get fed up with young idealists who try to book an appointment to show their portfolio just because they just did one small editorial with dazed & confused...

[gsep]

ouch! feelin da pain. gotta say i completely agree with all of u even though i guess i represent the plethora of students spewing out of insitutions worldwide thinking that they're gonna take over the world and get rich.....haha , i ain't that stupid! i've done some study before, marketing, law, n other boring shit and did a design course to re-engage my brain from the depths of hideous corporate bordom....then to realise that u don't get paid to do what u like (at least few do, and even fewer in melbourne) so i figure #@$! it, get whore money from the coprorates (and charge them thru the arse) and spend that on doing what i like...having fun and really being creative. so.... enough shit, go for corporate throats and have them pay 4 ur fun! big-ups and good luck...

[gsep]

i just realised i forgot the most important part to my advice......the idea is that u make cash to do what u liike doing and that one day they are one in the same thing.....if not you've still had fun and done what u want (give or take a little coproate whoring) the hard part is drawing the the line between the two ....

[Gabriel]

Quote: you got helmut lang jeans, weird web site and you've made a couple of record sleeve.

shit

that's totally me

would it be okay if i got the helmut lang buttons hammered down to nothing, like the girl in Pattern Recognition?

[kiteless]

Quote: would it be okay if i got the helmut lang buttons hammered down to nothing, like the girl in Pattern Recognition?

I remember Peter Saville said something similar at the Design Museum talk last winter; You go around Clerkenwell wearing Helmut Jeans thinking you're dandy until you see a horde of wankers with same jeans with paint stains on them as well as the same hair cut. Then you go: "Oh, this looks really, really bad".

"Making obscure references to pubertal sci-fi movies" -- is it really an excuse? or do i have to put it down as another requisite or was it just self evident?

[steph]

My helmut lang jeans have buttons that are pretty much unrecognisable, and no paint stains. The reason I like them so much is that they don't have any distinguishing marks (and they're a little older than Pattern Recognition) though this is arguably a distinguishing mark in and of itself....