Create. Promote. Move Forward: The best thing you can do for your graphic design career early on.
Vol. 094
Create. Promote. Move Forward: The best thing you can do for your graphic design career early on.
Perfection is a plague — the best thing you can do to stimulate growth and awareness in your creative work is to start something, finish it quickly, and then post/promote it. Repeat. Repeat. Repeat…
I was listening to episode 80 of Martina Flor’s podcast, How To Get More Eyes On Your Work (linked at bottom of this article), and in the first ~10 minutes or so, she talks about the importance of building confidence through producing and sharing work.
Furthermore, from about 8:00–8:40, Martina emphasizes the importance of sharing and presenting your work intentionally. Flor notes that taking control of how your work goes out into the world gives you a better chance of working with people you want: your ideal client.
I couldn’t agree more, as I’ve built my career on this practice.
If you’re able to make a habit out of putting work out into the world intentionally (but, not obsessively), you can lay the groundwork for a more successful and fulfilling creative career.
** Important note: I want to caution you — demand you, even — do not allow yourself to become a perfectionist in the process of sharing your work and process. If you’re able to make a habit out of putting work out into the world intentionally (but, not obsessively), you can lay the groundwork for an incredibly successful and fulfilling creative career.
Early on in my career I had the very fortunate opportunity to do some lettering work for So Delicious. At the time, they were not only one of the more fun clients I had, but one of the bigger names I’d worked with, and I wanted to knock the work out of the park.
So, we did A LOT of lettering exploration for every piece we worked on.
This was a time in my career where I had a lot of down time. I had only about 3-6 hrs of actual client work each day, so I had a lot of time to practice hand lettering and really lean into promoting the work that I created.
With my spare time, I produced a lot of very intentional instagram posts that really highlighted our ability to execute a lot of fun, hand drawn style of lettering. I used to spend … wait for it … 4-6hrs on a single instagram post.
From photo shoot, to culling and editing, setting up the composition and photoshopping, and writing a thoughtful caption. I’d spend over half a day creating these posts.
Why? Well, partially because I had the time.
Though, at the time, I had no name for myself as a creative, but I KNEW that I could do big things. The world just didn’t know it yet.
Instead of sitting around and waiting for someone to find me, I promoted every damn thing I created. It really paid off.
Why is it valuable to intentionally promote your work?
When look back at the early years of my creative career and try to simply articulate one thing that led to success, it was literally posting and presenting everything I did in the best way that I could.
Constantly promoting work taught me to:
Be resilient
Move quickly
Make big impact with few resources
Not be a prefectionist
Make a name for myself
Develop my creative voice
For years, about 75% of what I created and posted was either personal work or it was client work that I doctored up and spent additional hours making look presentation-worthy, beautiful, or more aligned with my personal style.
I truly believe one of the most underrated keys to success as a freelance graphic designer or creative is to focus on quantity of output. Constantly produce work (you’re likely already doing this!) and constantly share that work.
Quantity begets quality.
Drawing from forever ago.
Even when you don’t feel like sharing the work. Even when the work isn’t “perfect”. Make the time. Make the time to complete “that thing” on your own time, and make it look beautiful. Make it look like what your ideal client would want to see.
I never could have imagined how impactful embracing this mindset would be. Create. Share. Don’t overthink. Repeat: this fundamentally catalyzed my career.
Constantly sharing your work is beneficial because:
It forces you to practice
It forces you to talk about your work and exercise your creative voice.
It establishes you as a leader in your industry.
My buddy Austin Dunbar of Durham Brand famously said: “Don’t stop working when the work stops.”
If you don’t have client work, then you have plenty of time for personal work.
I built my career on this principle.
Stop over thinking. Keep creating. Share more of the work and process. Be patient, be persistent, and you’ll be blown away by how much progress you’ll make.
Cheers,
Adam
Reference:
Open Studio: Episode 80. Martina Flor - How To Get More Eyes On Your Work. Listen now >