[Davy]

Hey,

Ive just started HND Graphic Design and its great. however its part time and i had a great job with in a media company as a graphic designer. But the recession cost me and three other employees our jobs.

Ive always wanted to go freelance but just struggled getting a steady supply of work.
How do i go about this ?

I mean every ones on the internet selling themselves. would starting locally be better? Newspaper ads, etc etc?

If thers any fulltime freelancers that wish to shed some light on how they got to where they are now that would be great.

Ive a little blog linked in my sig but i feel i need a simple website that seperates my design work from my bike racing.

also let me know what you think of my work.

Cheers, Davy

[Mercy Design]

Go to the back of Creative Review, make a list of all of the freelancer agencies and sign up with them.
It's the best way to get yourself started.

[Davy]

Cheers, but what exactly is creative review ?

[Boss Hog]

A magazine > http://www.creativereview.co.uk//sub...ubscribe-to-cr

[Mercy Design]

also check Grafik & Design week (both industry publications) use them for information, not inspiration (because that's what every jobbing designer does hence certain people's work all looking the same.)

Also check out the 'creative' section of your local recruitment agencies (if they have one)

Gemma Germains
Mercy : Design Agency, Literature & Arts Collective : London / Liverpool : UK

[Davy]

Great. So is there any other ways ? or is that the primary way to start out, then from that you get reccomendations !?

[Mercy Design]

There's 2 ways of doing it- 1- you get an agent & they place you in companies & find you work- taking a percentage of your earnings for doing so, or 2- you go it alone, build a portfolio, promote the portfolio and manage your own client base, retaining 100% of your profits.

That's pretty much the way it goes. It all depends on how skilled you are at securing work for yourself (it's a full time job in itself & one that Mercy pay me to do, focusing on nothing else.)

It's always difficult scoring yourself an agent at first, especially if you have no 'live' work in your portfolio (i.e. real work created via real briefs fr work that then went into public circulation) If you don't have any 'live' work in your folio then I recommend you find yourself a placement with a design agency (aim for the one who do lots & lots of corporate looking work and who have secured public sector contracts as they'll be busier with work more attractive to a freelancer agent) and build your portfolio with them, sadly you'll be doing it for free.

Essentially, that's the long & short of it!

gemma
Mercy : Design Agency, Literature & Arts Collective : London / Liverpool : UK