Any freelance art directors have any advice for starting out? Pretty broad question - but what are you 5 best tips!!
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- Hi Maria,That is a very broad question.As you appear to be coming out of education, getting your foot in the door on the creative side of the industry is hard enough but as a freelancer, it could be even tougher. Sadly, freelancing isn’t just about delivering great ideas. More often than not it’s about delivering what a client wants, pretty quickly and without much, if any, to-ing and fro-ing. And that’s why agencies and clients alike look for experience. Nevertheless, here are a few tips for going freelance:
- You will need to decide how you will operate. As a sole trader, though an umbrella company or as a limited company. Small companies who use freelance may be happy for to operate as a sole trader. Larger ones will either insist that they tax you at source, you go through an umbrella company or you are registered as a limited company. In my opinion the latter will soon be dead for contract freelancers.
- If you wish to approach advertising agencies directly, get to know as many people on the creative side of the business as possible. Particularly those with influence - such as senior creatives and traffic/resource managers. Simple stand out DM pieces and cold eDM can be a very effective way to open a conversation and a door or two.
- Meet/have conversations with quite a few recruiters. You’ll quickly find out which are right for you.
- Utilise any skill sets you have beyond ‘creative thinking’ such as Adobe Cloud software to get design/motion design/video work, get into places and earn money.
- And if freelance is the way you want to go, try and get as much live brief work or work that ran on your website.
Hope that helps!
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