The Freelance LEAP! My Freelance Creative Journey.
Vol. 020
The Freelance LEAP! My Freelance Creative Journey...
From fully employed to self-employed, the peaks and troughs of starting my own graphic design and branding studio.
A quick bite:
The question of “how do you know when you’re ready to take the leap?” is different for everyone. Everyone's circumstances are different, and thus their readiness to take the leap reflects that. Below is a behind the scenes and hindsight review of my creative journey for the past 10 years in the hopes that shedding some light on the what’s, the why’s, and how it played out is helpful for you along your journey.
Continue reading below…
In response to my Instagram story the other day, I had a few different people ask about either my freelance journey or how to take the leap from fulltime to working for yourself.
Today I will be sharing a hindsight perspective on my own path as I navigated working as a graphic designer at a small shop in Ohio to running my own graphic design studio focused on branding and lettering here in Denver.
Below is a high level look at what has now been a 10 year journey, and I note a few key concepts or ideas that I feel led me to where I am today. Any areas with bold italic type note my now hindsight perspective on why the aforementioned step was notable.
I graduated from the University of Dayton in 2011 with a Bachelor of Fine Arts (BFA) in Visual Communication design.
After bussing tables for a bit right after school and telling my parents that I was going to be a freelance graphic designer, I ended up getting a random email and opportunity a Jr. Designer role at Touchstone, a promotional merchandising group based in southern Ohio. There, I worked for 2.5 years dipping my toe into a little bit of everything: web design, apparel design, branding, marketing, traditional graphic design, social media, email marketing, etc. I learned so much, and I wouldn't trade that first job for anything, but by the end of the 2.5 years I wasn’t growing or learning much anymore. I was ready for something new. I Quit that job at the end of 2013.
I firmly believe that having a real, professional, graphic design job was vital to my future success as a creative entrepreneur. To learn, in a professional setting, how to run meetings, present work, deal with feedback and so much more, from more experienced creatives, was imperative in my own career.
I’ve always wanted to travel, and I saw the transition period between job 1 and what I assumed would be job 2 as the perfect opportunity to do so.
You have your entire life to work. Don’t force yourself into a 8am–8pm grind by age 23. Despite what all “the hustlers” out there tell you, there’s a lot more to life than just work.
I first spent some time lingering around my parents place in Cleveland, and I then took a 4 month trip backpacking in Southeast Asia. On this trip I started messing around with hand lettering. I then again spent a bit more time bumming around Cleveland, and I then took a road trip to Portland, OR where I spent two weeks. I fell in love with Portland as a city as well as the creative scene, and I essentially set my heart to move there in the next couple months.
While in Portland I met one of my favorite artist / graphic designer hybrids, Blaine Fontana. Blaine’s tangible passion for what he did as well as the creative opportunities with which he was presented through the pursuit of that passion was perspective shifting for me.
It was at this time that the pursuit of my own self initiated creative career became alluring.
After returning to Cleveland with plans to move to Portland, I quickly switched plans and I decided to move to Denver with my sister who had just landed a job out there. I had promise for 1–2 months of freelance graphic design work at a design studio in Denver that my best friend Kelsey worked at.
I officially moved to Denver in August 2014. At this point I was continually practicing and learning hand lettering and I began to fall in love with the art form. To me, hand lettering felt like the middle ground between illustration and graphic design, and it suited me well. I leaned into this.
I worked part time (20–30-ish hr weeks) at the graphic design studio. Fortunately, this work was making me just enough money to get by, and with any spare time outside of those studio hours I practiced and worked relentlessly to learn hand lettering. Most of this practice was unpaid—literally just practice for the sake of practice. I was working 70–90hr weeks, frequently up until 2am drawing and then up at 6 for work the next morning to go into the studio.
I didn’t know this at the time, but I was slowly building a name for myself by posting all of my practice on Instagram. Additionally, I was again learning the inner workings of a small design studio, and I was learning how to present and pitch work for big clients like Vibram, Breckenridge Resort and Vail Resorts. At this time I was also building up a tolerance for long, hard days/weeks/months of work. I was on my own path, but I couldn’t yet see it.
After 1.5 years of this overindulgence in hand lettering practice and freelance graphic design at the agency, I burned myself out.
I was perpetually tired, I was always overworked, and I lived in a scarcity mindset—an unhealthy way to live for 1.5 years. Also, burnout is real, burnout is natural, and it shouldn't be something that devastates you. You can overcome feeling burnt out in just a few days.
Travel refreshed me the first time, so why not a second? I took this time to go back to Ohio for a month before my brother’s wedding, backpack through Iceland and Europe, and then ultimately return to Denver to just snowboard for a bit. It was another ~4 month break from “work."
Yall know I love talking about how your other passions in life lead to some of your best work. Welp, travel is a big passion of mine, and yet again this trip helped clear my brain and give me direction and clarity.
By the time I had returned from Europe the agency at which I had been previously working as a part time freelance graphic designer had lost a huge client, and they had gone out of business. My safety net was gone. Upon returning from Europe I had about $2,000 to my name: the equivalent of roughly 2 months of frugal living in Denver. I was at a crossroad of go get a graphic design job (an idea with which I felt extremely disenchanted, but fairly confident I could find) or try to start a business as a freelance graphic designer one more time.
I romanticize this moment when I look back — the moment I chose to pursue my own creative career as opposed to going to get a job; however, in reality, I was terrified. I was tired, scared, and nearly broke. I actually called my parents to ask them if they’d loan me $5k in the chance that my last-ditch attempts to start my own thing failed (a failure that I felt was fairly inevitable at that point).
Having just returned from Europe, I felt again creatively inspired by my travels, and I gave my freelance graphic design business one last ditch effort. In an effort to do so, I felt that doing more freelance design work with other agencies in town would be the best start; however, this time, I wanted to focus on how lettering and illustration can elevate brands and packaging. In March 2016 I sent out a newspaper promotional mailer to ~40 graphic design and branding studios and agencies around the country (mostly in Denver and Boulder, Colorado). At this time I also, for the first time, began networking my ass off. I was having ~3 coffee networking meetings per week with people I wanted to meet or pick their brains.
At this point, a few things started to fall into place (though I didn’t see it at the time) A combination of having been in my field for about 4 years at this point (ignoring the fact that I traveled for about one of those years), regularly talking with strangers about my “graphic design, branding and hand lettering business”, still regularly producing and posting work on Instagram led to a slow growth of confidence, recognition and I started to find my brand voice.
Fortunately, the aforementioned self promotional mailer and consistent networking catalyzed opportunities fairly quickly. And good thing, because I was down to a few hundred dollars! Before I knew it I was grindin' away with busy 40–50 hour weeks doing freelance graphic design work at studios and agencies around Denver. I was doing a little bit of everything: freelance graphic design, I did some work at a logo design and branding studio, I was creating hand lettering for packaging design as well as marketing and advertising agencies — truly, a bit of everything. The diversity of the work, the creative thinking, and my ability to root the majority of my work in graphic design and hand lettering started to feel both exciting, and fulfilling.
While, yes, this work was a ton of fun, it was at this time that I realized I wouldn’t be fulfilled by just freelancing at agencies. I wanted to have more control of the projects I took on, presenting the work and the overarching creative direction of the projects. In an effort to continue to push MY own creative work, I shifted my sleep schedule over a 2-month period, and I started waking up at 4am. I would work on my own lettering and freelance logo design, lettering and branding projects from 4am–8am, and I would then go into studios and agencies from 9–6. It was exhausting, but it helped me move my business in the right direction!
Moving forward, 2017 proved to be even more fruitful with work and opportunity as by this point I had continued to practice the hand lettering fundamentals and I really honed in on my hand lettering process. I started to get much better, I continued to network my ass off, and I continued to promote my hand lettering and graphic design work (mainly on instagram).
During this time, I started to work as a freelance graphic designer at agencies less, and started to land more of my own clients and projects.
During much of 2017–18 I said yes to everything. Every opportunity, project, and thing I could get my hands on. I strongly feel that this process of Chasing the Fog led me to find my true passions and interested within the field of graphic and brand design.
2018 & 2019 further yielded positive results for Vicarel Studios that were compounded by all of the hard work put in throughout the preceding years. My mind is blown by how fortunate I have been.
Overall, I would say that I owe a lot of my early graphic design studio’s success to these three things. Additionally, as I look back, I see that SO MANY of the incredible opportunities in my career have stemmed from a focus on relationships and people, not necessarily a pursuit of work. Your network is your net worth.
2020 has been a frickin’ shit show, but I’ve been very lucky to have been able to quickly turn things around and have a generally great business year.
Here's a few off-the-cuff thoughts on starting a freelance creative business (in my case, a graphic design and branding studio in Denver), based on my own experience:
If you're not naturally talented or amazing already then you're gonna have to work really hard. Hard work beats talent 9/10 times. I am a product of this.
The sooner you wrap your head around the idea of your 'job' and your 'life' becoming one in the same as opposed to two separate things you're trying to balance, the better off you'll be. Running a freelance creative business is more of a lifestyle than it is a career.
You're playing the long game. During my first 2.5 years as a freelance creative I was the guy who brought whiskey in a flask into the bar to save money, and I stopped buying feta cheese because it was too fancy and not worth the money. I had frequent calls with my parents lamenting the misery of working 70hr–90hr weeks as a freelance graphic designer in Denver, and hardly making a $45,000 salary. Acknowledging and accepting that the hard work, effort, and portfolio you build now doesn't affect you for a couple years is key. i.e., I'm currently reaping the benefits of hard work from years ago. Connections, opportunities, and business growth: all of this is falling into place now due to the foundation I laid early on in my career as a freelance designer.
It's ALL about who you know. Again, unless you're the Lebron James of your creative profession, making connections will be the best thing you can do for yourself. I've made a small name for myself in Denver as the hand lettering and artful branding studio. I’m known for drawing logos and words, not “just designing them”. Talking about my design business to just about every single person I pass may seem annoying, but it has benefited me greatly.
Learn to talk about your work, process, and value. You can do this by joining networking groups, practicing your elevator pitch, or telling every beating heart about what you do.
The last point that I want to make, a point that I feel has been huge for any success that I have experienced, is this: do what feels right for you. Always. While, yes, you need to have your business’ survival in mind, don't just do things because 'that's what you're supposed to do' as a creative entrepreneur. Marching to the beat of my own drum has been greatly beneficial for me.
A quick example of this: In early 2017, I had never formally taught anything before. Despite that, in March 2017 Goodtype asked me to teach a hand lettering workshop at SXSW. This was a TON of work, an unpaid opportunity, and scary as hell, but I spent all of Jan and Feb learning how to teach hand lettering for the first time as well as how to run a hand lettering workshop — what hand lettering techniques to teach, what to say, how to say it, how to show it etc. This was months of unpaid work with no expectations for the outcome. I was hopeful that it would pay off in the long run in some way. Ultimately, the workshop went great, and I ended up teaching workshops back in Denver for the remainder of 2017. I made $12,000 teaching from April–Dec in 2017 with this newfound revenue stream — a revenue stream that I didn't even know existed prior to taking on this opportunity. Thereafter, I garnered the attention of Bluprint who hired me to do an online hand lettering workshop. Through them I've since been on the Real Housewives of Dallas, Get a Room with Carson and Thom, and painted a mural in California for the SyFy Network and taught a workshop to the executive team at NBC in NYC. All of this has fallen into place through embracing what feels right for me.
Remember, all of this takes time. Be patient. If it were easy, everyone would be doing it.
I hope that my story is both helpful and encouraging. I wasn’t cut out for this early on, but through a lot of hard work and meeting some incredible people, I’ve made it work.
