Whenever I start learning a something new, the following phrase comes to my mind… I wish someone had told me how to do this before… So here are the things I wish someone had told me before I started learning graphic design…

1. The road to success will be long

It’s not going to be easy, and especially at the beginning it’s going to be hard. Skill building takes time, and you need to start by the fundamentals, which sometimes it’s not the most exciting part. You might be thinking you will start directly to work on Photoshop, Indesign, Illustrator or any other SW, but you will realize that color theory and other basics aspects are theory learning. Then, little by little you will start gaining experience and things will become more & more interesting. But have in mind that you will be investing (a lot) of your time & probably money to get where you want to be… as you know: Rome wasn’t built in a day.

2. You must be Customer Oriented.

We usually say that customer comes first, and it’s also true for your customers, but be careful, customer is NOT always right. You need to learn how to work with difficult people because they will ask you always for additional changes, so you need to be able to position yourself to say NO, or to charge extra for additional work. That is why in my eBook I make a lot of emphasis to define a clear scope of work. So that you & your customer agree beforehand on what are the deliverables he expect. Ask him as many questions as you need in order to be able to clarify all your doubts before start working or making a quotation.

3. PRICE yourself wisely

I will probably do a specific post in the future about how to price yourself and the different ways to do it, but the main message I want to give you is that you should price yourself according to the value you can provide to your customer. Obviously this is too abstract, but the important thing is that you don’t lower your price just to get some jobs. It’s important that your customer pay for the value you are providing. Once I read the following Chinese proverb that has stood with me for everything that is related to pricing:
Â

4. Have a professional portfolio

Also a very hot topic, how I should build my portfolio? We will discuss several techniques on building portfolio, but the most important thing for me is that the portfolio should focus on QUALITY over quantity. Is better to have 5 really excellent images, rather than 10 that are more or less. And also only include in your portfolio work that reflects want you want to work on. If you want to focus on packaging, then only include images that are related to that topic, don’t include logos. If you still don’t have any customer reference, it doesn’t matter, include the work you have done while you were learning, the ones you like the most. Today most of graphic designer’s portfolio are online, but if you are visiting customers face to face, having a high quality printed portfolio can make the difference.

Â

5. You will need to have Business Knowledge.

This advice is mainly for people who are working as freelancers. You will need to learn stuff about business, marketing…. How do you position yourself, how do you build your network, how do you differentiate from all the others graphic designers? It’s not only about price, it’s about what value you provide to them, the relation you build with them. And also there will be a part that depending on where you live & local regulation, you will need to learn on how much taxes you will pay according to the income you are doing.

Â

TIPS

See you in the next post! If you like the article, please share it!
Leave a comment below if you found this post interesting and if you are a graphic designer, tell me an additional advice for the people who are starting!

[shareaholic app=”share_buttons” id=”25934634″]