Work for Free... Really?

You may think during these uncertain times that offering your services for free is madness when you might be able to take a small job and get paid for it.  But, it really depends on at what stage of your career you are at and who the clients you may be dealing with are.  Personally, I think you need to look at the bigger picture when it comes to Pro Bono work.

Before saying “yes” to offer your graphic design services free of charge you need to pick your clients very carefully.  You should take your time and understand the philosophy of the company. If you agree with what a company stands for you are more likely to produce better work, it will satisfy both you and the company, by understanding the company better you will also be able to stick to your own personal beliefs and ethics in graphic design.

Offering your services free of charge also gives you a chance to promote services.  I believe that if you are producing a piece of work you should always include a tagline at the bottom of the piece stating you name and details.

And probably most importantly of all, offering pro bono services will most likely lead to future paid work, which if we are being honest, is the reason why we ALL choose to work.

Above picture: http://epiffani.com/sharethisblog/wp-content/uploads/2011/01/will-work-for-free.jpg

You can call me...

Well, this is my new identity.  Like it?  Designed by myself of course and i'm in the middle of buidling a new website at the moment as well.

I kind of feel like a super hero now that i have my own logo... Freelance Fella to the rescue!

Don't take it personally, but...

There will always be someone better then you...

Not really what i wanted to hear when asking someone in the design business for advice! but when i thought about what he was saying, it made complete sense.  I'm only new to this and know next to nothing compared to others who have been in the industry for years. 

I've also been told to be realisitic about things, starting off it's hard to try and be the best in the world at anything, so i've decided to try be the best Grapgic Designer in my class... A fairly realistic goal i would have thought? I'm sure my class mates will have something to say about that though.

Never stop self branding

I recently came across this great little article, it’s a brilliant read that offers any budding designer or even experienced designer great tips and advice on how to become a top designer.

I especially like the section on “self branding”.  It is SO important for a designer to self brand as much as possible.  Design is not about what qualifications hand on your wall or what you CV says, at the end of the day we can all fluff one of them up.  A designer will always be judged on the quality of work he or she produces.  A top class portfolio is absolutely essential and takes time to get right, don’t include work just for the sake of it, make sure its up to scratch and adds to the quality of your portfolio. 

At the end of the day and the way the world is at the moment, you need to give yourself every opportunity of staying ahead of the chasing pack.

Get yourself out there!

Simple really, get yourself known in the design world.  As a Graphic Design student absolutely no one in the business knows who I am, sure why would they!  It’s my job to become known, people need to know my name and why what type of work I’m capable of producing.

The only way of doing this is by getting out there and joining design networking sites, following and leaving comments on design blog sites, setting up my own blog, launching my own website and logging onto design forums.

I’ve found using my own personal networking sites a useful way of letting people know what I’m doing and how its going.  Facebook and Linkedin have proven to be extremely useful in helping spread the good word of Anthony Rooney, design god in the making!

Graphic Design in Sport

Graphic Design and Sports, two loves of my life, and combined, probably the main reason as to how I wanted to peruse a career in design.  Having previously worked full time for a semi professional footie club (soccer to any American friends who may be reading this) in Ireland.

I love looking at design pieces that involve design and sport, whether its an editorial piece or purely a design piece.  No matter how simple or detailed the piece is I like to look at and see if there’s anything I can learn form it, and as I’m still involved in the production of Bray Wanderers match day programme I’ll always take ideas and try put my own twist on them to see if I can incorporate it in the publication.

I absolutely love this design, it gives a great feeling of movement and action while at the same time it has an urban edge to it.  The idea of making the image from typography is something that really appeals to me as it makes you take much more notice and really study the piece.  

Image Source: http://cdnimg.visualizeus.com/thumbs/7c/83/graphic,design,illustration,london,2012,mosaic,olympiad,olympic,games,olympics,tsevis,typography-7c839c33ab8ed134284a27cb42995f1d_m.jpg

It's Never to Late...

At the tender age of 33 I decided to go back to college and study Graphic Design, it’s probably one of the biggest and best decisions I’ve ever made.

Having being present in the work place since the age of 18 I found myself (along with thousands of others in the country) out of work due to others mistakes, but we won’t go into a conversation about years of neglect by our lovely little country’s governments. That’s a completely different kettle of fish I could well delve into one day...

I first caught the Graphic Design bug when working in my dream job. Working for the football club you have supported as a young kid is most men’s dream, I was lucky enough to be in that position.  I started working for Bray Wanderers Football Club and marketing and commercial manager and soon found out that the role was far more wide ranging.  As part of the job I was asked to update the clubs website and “look after” the match day programme.  I soon realised that “looking after” the match day programme was nearly a full time job in itself.  “looking after” meant is was a Graphic Designer, Journalist, Researcher, Press Officer, Statistician, Proof Reader and Editor all rolled into one, quite an under taking for one person to say the least.

Having never done anything like that before I took to it like a fish to water, I started to look up tutorials online on how to use packages like Photoshop, Illustrator and In Design, I read books and asked friends in the business for advice, I soon became consumed with wanting to know more.

I won’t talk about the following 3 years (or seasons in football language) but I felt I did a damn good job for the club, as well as having great success on the commercial side of things I single handily brought the clubs dated image into the 21^st century and redesigned the website, match programme and all of the clubs branding. I had really caught the design bug.

Then on a sunny December afternoon, BOOM! It all came crashing down, the club had been struggling financially for a while and players had been asked to take a pay cut, a couple of the staff’s hours had been cut so deep down I knew I was next in line for the chop.

In the following months of looking for new employment and finding temporary positions I kept thinking about going back to college to try and take my growing love for Graphic Design on further but was always held back by my age, or at least I felt being over 30 was too old to start a completely new direction in my life.  After much soul searching and weeks upon weeks of talking with loved ones, I finally decided that I would to what I wanted to do and pursue a career I would be happy in. Graphic Design.

I haven’t looked back since and am loving every single minute of my new life, so to those of you who think you are too old to try something new, think again! Stop coming up with excuses and reasons why you can’t do something, as a famous American sportswear company says “Just Do It”.

Picture - http://www.forestchapel.org/clientimages/51137/generalimages/the-laugh-echo-in-practice.jpg