One very important question you must be thinking is how does graphic designers make money? Well, here are for me the 3 main ways a graphic designer work.

1. Â Work as a Freelance

When working as a freelance a graphic designer will have to do everything. Â This means that usually you are working solo. But in order to success and make money some key aspects are necessary.

• Have a professional website. Nowadays you can create very simply a nice website using wordpress templates. You can create a brand around your name or you can create a specific name.
• Expose yourself in different graphic design communities according to what is your focus. I come back again to the logo example, if you want to do logos, publish your work in communities related to logo design.
• Create a network. In order to succeed as a freelancer, contacts are the key elements of your business. For the first customers you work for, create success stories & publish them on your website. Having good references will help you get more customers. If you don’t have any connections, some very popular sites like 99designs.com & upwork.com can provide a startup point, but be careful, don’t think that you will have a stable income from these sites, its very difficult to become popular here. I will be writing specific posts on how I use these sites.

Pros

• You are your own boss.
• It pushes you to learn new things.
• Once you have some regular customers, income can be interesting.
• You can select the work you want to do.
• Freedom to decide when you work… No 9 to 5 office hours.

Cons

• The beginnings can be difficult because you need to create your network.
• Income might not be stable.
• Very saturated market, it’s difficult to get noticed.
• It’s difficult as an independent freelancer to work for big companies as they usually prefer to work with graphic design agencies. (Perhaps the trick is to market yourself as an agency :=) )
• You will need business knowledge to market yourself & track all expenses.

2. Work in a studio / graphic design agency.

When working in a studio or graphic design agency, the context is very different. Usually agencies are specialized in a particular domain, they have regular customers, and you will be part of a small team of graphic designers. Your role & activities are well defined and each team member will have specific tasks.

Pros

• You have a regular/stable income.
• You will learn a lot from the people working with you.

Cons

• Not so flexible in terms of working hours. (this will depend on the agency / country).
• Usually you will have specific tasks to accomplish
• It will be difficult to grow (in terms of carrer position) and if you do so, you probably end up managing people and not doing graphic design (which can also be a very nice work if that is your goal).

3. Work for a big company.

Here the situation is similar to working for a studio in the sense that you will not working solo, you will be part of a team… a big team. Multinational companies usually have a group of graphic designers that are part of the marketing / communication department. Inside a multinational company there are several activities in which graphic designers are involved:

• Company visual identity
• Product Branding
• Product Brochures (Pictures, brochures layout, etc)
• 2D / 3D Animations
• Web design
• Software User Interfaces. (icons, logos… etc)

Pros

• Internal customers from around the world.
• Income is stable but usually also with bonus according to the company results.
• You will learn a lot by having multicultural relationships.
• You can potentially switch to different activities.

Cons

• Internal administrative workflows to create documents must be respected.
• Long decision process.
• Not so flexible in terms of working hours.
• Usually you will have specific tasks to accomplish (objective oriented)
• Sometimes you are really tracked on how much time you are spending for each project (this can potentially translate to pressure for some people).

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Conclusion.

It doesn’t matter if you are the solo type or of you prefer to work for a multinational company, there is work for graphic designers everywhere. The only thing that matter for me is that you chose whatever you think it’s best for you, and maybe … why not giving yourself the opportunity to test all these work environments? In any case, if you are smart enough, from every experience you will have, you will be able to make your own list of pros & cons to take the right decision on how you want to make money! In my case I have been working with graphic designers on multinational companies for more than 10 years, but my objective is to become a freelancer.

See you in the next post! If you like the article, please share it!
Leave a comment if you found this post interesting and let me know if you have other pros/cons for each type of work environment!

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