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27 April 2010 | 0

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The designers questionnaire – I am sure that I am not the only person who gets these on a daily basis. Anyone appearing on Google for anything mildly related to graphic design will no doubt be familiar with the university student armed with a hundred and one questions.

Unfortunately I seldom have the time to reply to each one, so here it is, my answers to the most common questions I get. (questions from inspired by Nicole, the most recent person to ask)

1: How long have you worked as a designer?
Around about 16 years now, with 9 of those spent working for myself.

2: Do you often gets jobs from design companies outsourcing work?
The majority of my clients are businesses that don’t have a design or marketing department, and individuals starting up a new venture. However I do take on a little bit of work from other design agencies from time to time, but these tend to be projects that I am not at liberty to showcase in my portfolio – for obvious reasons!

3: What are your working hours like?
I think it is very important for a freelancer to emulate a regular working environment as much as possible and that includes having some kind of structure to their working hours. For me that means 9am-6pm 5 days a week.

That being said, like in any job – if a project has a deadline I will do whatever it takes to meet that deadline, which can sometimes mean working late or over the weekend.

4: How do you obtain your clients and make yourself known?
I have always though that if you can get one client and make them happy, well they will naturally refer you to another in due course. So the best way to get clients is to do great work and deliver it on time!

Personal referrals may get you less exposure than something like an advert, but they come with the benefit of trust which is something you can’t buy.

Networking in person, search engine listings and advertising would be other ways to attract clients.

5: Do you exhibit your work?
Your portfolio of work should be your strongest selling point. Far too many designers send me CVs and don’t attach a portoflio link, or a PDF. If you don’t have any clients yet,  you can invent a company and create work for it – anything is better than nothing.

6: Do you employ a particular design style?
I don’t set-out to design with any particular style in mind, but I think every designer will develop their own style over time. As a designer your always creating artwork for different audiences and whilst you may have a preferred style, it may play second fiddle to what is required for the audience of which the work is intended.

Having said that, I am a firm believer that simple design is often the best solution and if I had to pick a style that I liked myself it would be Swiss Legacy.

7: Do you accept overseas clients or are they mainly based in the UK?
I have worked with clients in every continent… except Antarctica!

8: What inspires and influences your work?
Oh, that is impossible to answer. I am open to a mix of styles and get influenced by so many different mediums it’s impossible to put your finger on any one source. I notice nicely designed work every single day just from going about your daily chores – there is so much packaging, advertising and marketing that it’s impossible not to be inspired by something every day.

9: Who do you feel are your main competitors?
Nobody in particular, although I guess anyone that is offering the same service at the same price-point as I do is naturally a competitor by definition. But I don’t think designers see eachother as true competitors, most of us are happy to trade advice with one another and even refer clients from time to time.

10: How do you communicate with your clients?
Every project and every client is different. Email, telephone, face to face, video conferencing, there are many ways to communicate through the course of a project. Email is the most popular, but I am happy to go along with the clients’ own preferred method of communication, whatever that may be.

11: Is your work all produced in house, or do you ever outsource work to other companies or designers?
I try and do as much actual design work as possible myself as that is what I am good at. If a client comes to me on the basis of liking my portfolio it would be pretty unethical to hire someone else to do the work, so that isn’t something I do without the clients knowledge.

I do collaborate quite regularly; over the years I have built up a nice list of people that pull together on larger projects, or when I have something that require a specialist skill such as  illustration, photography, copywriting or web development.

12: Do you use a fixed base price or time based pricing structure?
Fixed price where possible. Most clients like the safety net of knowing exactly what a project will cost, and as a designer it’s nice to be given the freedom of working on a project until it’s perfect. In the past I have found working on an hourly rate tends to make clients want to rush a project.

13: What is your typical day like, as a designer?
Life as a designer is pretty good. I start work around 9:00am, check my email, catchup with my current clients and layout a plan of action for that day. My time is generally spent working in a design capacity, although running a business means there are always some mundane task such as invoicing to do!

14: How is the recession affecting business?
I think with the recent recession clients are being a bit more careful about what they invest in; which is perhaps going to make them more savvy to what they are going to get in return – and that is a good thing. But to be honest, my experience last year during the main downturn was that most businesses took it as an opportunity to refresh their image and a lot of people took it as an opportunity to setup on their own.

15: How did you get into the industry?
From Art school I walked into a publishing company and became their lead designer, after that I went to a design agency and finally went solo in 2001.

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