How to Build a Graphic Design Business

Anyone who has run a business can tell you that the road will have its ups and downs. Graphic design work is no different. There are, however, some steps you can take to make the process easier. Here are a few tips that help you more effectively build and grow your business as a freelance graphic designer.

Advertise Efficiently

Whether you are selling products at a retail store or custom design intellectual property like artwork, you need to be strategic about how you market yourself and who you target for potential customers. A graphic designer who takes jobs for every client who responds to a marketing drive will ultimately end up with unpaid design time, clients who want too much for too little, and far too much time spent fielding emails and phone calls rather than actually designing artwork. Start by building a website and pitching your services to specific businesses that will be profitable to have as clients. By advertising only to those potential clients that will best serve your business, you can reduce the chances of being overburdened by low-paying clients.

Be a Smooth Operator

The more successful pitches you have the better you will become at pitching new clients. When you are just getting started with selling your services, the key to making a successful pitch is to adhere to a principled sales operations job description. You may be selling graphic design as a product, but the real job here is to be a great communicator. When operating as a freelance designer, then you are essentially an entire marketing team wrapped up in one person. You handle the books, market the product, and manage the clients, and the goal when dealing with clients is to appeal to the needs of their business. In other words, you are not selling design work as visual art but as a marketing tool that will turn a profit for the client.

Do Not Sell Yourself Short

A common mistake that fledgling designers make is to under-value their design products in order to make a sale. While you can always raise your prices as you grow, lowballing yourself will cause you to run afoul of a bade customer base. Undervalued products have the natural tendency to draw non-paying customers or a clientele who is unwilling to pay higher rates in the future. Work with a realistic profit margin based on the time and energy that a given project will take, not discounting your other costs of business like rent, insurance and taxes. While the tendency for new designers may be to sell at lower rates with tight deadlines in order to land more clients, it only places an unnecessary burden on you. Commit to higher-profit work with realistic timeframes, and both you and your clients will be better off.

Prepare for Hiccups

As with any business, working as a graphic designer will present you with the occasional stumbling block. These can come in many forms, but some common issues that you will have to deal with are changes to design software and shifts in popular design trends. The software changes are usually minor; however, when those changes accompany new operating systems or entirely new computers your workflow will be temporarily disrupted. That is why planning ahead to have extra time for projects is always a good idea. When the industry as a whole begins to shift to different popular visual trends, such as the shift away from bold colors to pastels and the common inclusion of more abstract geometric shapes in logos, you will have to be flexible in your design style regardless of personal preference. After all, the product you sell is custom designed for the client, not for yourself.

Just as every designer has their personal artistic style, so too will you have an individual take on the specifics of how to build your design business. Regardless of those specific details, if you will apply these principles to your overall business model, you will be successful faster, more efficiently, and avoid some of the pitfalls that other designers have suffered.