So after I graduated from uni I felt as if I still knew nothing coming into the design industry. I was fed to the wolves. Even though I was freelancing before it was nothing like when I graduated. I realised there were a lot of things design school didn’t teach me.

How to find clients

After uni, I had no idea how to find clients. I was using freelancer.com at the time to find work but nothing was really working. I did get jobs but I did a lot of work for free since I was joining contests hoping they would choose my design for their brand and win the project. At the time I didn’t really think much of it because I was building my portfolio. I started posting my work on Instagram and got a few clients and also from word of mouth. Uni didn’t show me where to go to find clients or even how to deal with them once I got them. I had to figure it out myself and through trial and error, I finally found a system that works 3 years after graduating.

How to deal with clients

After I found my first few clients I was still struggling to figure out how to set boundaries and still keep the client happy. I was having the worst experience dealing with clients that wanted me available 24/7, wanted the moon and stars for a $75 budget with infinite revisions. I was so frustrated and did it because I didn’t have enough confidence and wanted to keep the client happy. After my first, I’d say 5-10 clients, I decided that I was going to change the way I handled projects. Again, a lot of trial and error. The way I did it was with contracts.

Contracts

I didn’t have any contracts with my clients at first, so they just did what they wanted and I let them because I didn’t know better. Soon enough I decided that I needed a change. I googled contract templates and read a ton of them. Eventually I decided to use a template from Pandadoc, which was also the platform I used at the time to send contracts digitally and get them signed. After every uncomfortable encounter I added a clause to protect myself better in the contract. As I learn more things I was able to use my contract to get expectations and boundaries with my clients. But I also had another problem…

How to price my work

I was underpricing myself. I was charging $50 for a logo and I was only designing a logo. Uni thought me the principles of design and how to create eye-catching brands. But they didn’t teach me how to accurately price my work or sell my work. I came across a few of Chris Do’s videos on Youtube (The Futur) about pricing your work and how to deal with clients that don’t want to spend $$$$ on branding. After binge-watching his videos I started to get the confidence to raise my prices. But that also meant I had to raise the value that I had to offer with it.

How to present my work digitally

Everything was presented on a white background that was then placed on a blackboard to make it look clean and professional. However, this was always physical. So when it was time to present my work to clients digitally I had no idea how too. I think most designers can relate when I say I was presenting everything on a white background with no explanation whatsoever. Just hoping and praying that the client somehow knew what I was thinking and spoiler alert, they didn’t. I knew there had to be a better way of presenting my work and I tried 2 different approaches. I tried jumping on a call with them and actually presenting the concepts and explaining and answering questions. Then I tried putting together a document that basically did the same thing but had a lot more explanations as well as some feedback prompts.

What I found was that after the call, my clients were still a bit confused and most times couldn’t remember why the decisions were made and thus led to more revisions. With the brand presentation documents, it was easier for them to refer back to it and send clear feedback. Most times there weren’t any revisions!

There were a lot of things that I didn’t learn straight out of university but I think I learnt the most important design-related things in my opinion. I still have a lot more to learn though. Did you go to uni and what are some things you didn’t learn?