Hard Lessons I Have Learned in a Year of Freelancing

It was almost one year ago that I said "good-bye" to my bi-monthly paycheck and a 9-5 working for someone else life. I have never been happier with the choice I made to pursue my own business. It was a scary leap but one I am so grateful for every day. It has given me freedom, the ability to pursue a wider range of work, the chance to work with so many new people and finally, I can take advantage of my type-A personality and control my own working life.

It has also come with some pretty harsh lessons I guess you can never be quite prepared for. Some of them, people warned me about ahead of time, but until you go through it for yourself, it really does not make a dent in your choices. I was lucky enough to have someone there to back me up every step of the way, emotionally and financially. This has made such a huge difference, but so many of the lessons I was going to learn the hard way to make better decisions the next time. This are true for me, but are not necessarily true for all freelancers or people with their own businesses.

1. You cannot hang your hat on any work you have currently
In the beginning, I thought that when someone said they had a project coming in that they wanted me to work on, it was a guarantee. I also thought that work I had now was going to stay for a while. This has almost never turned out to be the case. I am hunting down new work all the time. I would say more than 50% of the time, potential projects never happen or they are on hold until a later time. If I waited for all of those, I would never be working. I have had to learn to be in contact with people all the time to keep stirring the pot of future work.

2. Take out 30% or more of every check you get and put it into an account you never touch to pay for taxes
It is tempting to think that the money you get you can spend right away. Come tax season, you could be in a for a huge shock when you suddenly owe and you have already spent that money. In a regular job, all that is taken out for you so you never notice it is gone. Like all of your accounting and paperwork, taxes are up to you as the freelancer.

3. Workflow has its extreme ups and downs
You have to be prepared to have time when you can barely keep up and you work early in the morning and late at night. This can last for weeks at a time. Being that busy is great sometimes because you are making more money and you are staying busy. There are also extreme times where you literally have no work coming in at all. This can be hard because you have no money coming in, it can be long and boring and also creatively and emotionally straining. This can also last a long time with no real knowledge of when it might end.

4. You might be doing more production than design work This has its ups and downs as well. It is expensive for company's to hire a freelancer and what they might need is someone to do the down and dirty work. It is up to you to decide if you want to do this or not. This also may mean doing your own creative work on the side to keep doing projects you enjoy.

5. You have to make money to freelance. This was also a very hard lesson for me. It comes with a lot of freedom but at the end of the day, you still need to make money. It is not all about doing what you want to do when you want to do it. Pick and choose but do not be too picky if you want to keep afloat.

6. Some clients are more trouble than they are worth. I don't know of another freelancer who would not agree with me on this. It may be that you have to hound them to get paid. It might be that the amount of work versus the compensation is unbalanced. It may be that their approach and personality is hard to deal with. Or it may be that the work is not satisfying. In each case, you have to decide where you are and what are your priorities. Each week, this changes for me based on workload, scope and style of the project, the client and money flow. You have to do work you like and keep incoming work as well.

7. You have to say "NO" to work sometimes.
This is very hard as a freelancer because you never know where the work is going to come from. This means it is very tempting to say "YES" to everything just in case you have a dry spell. This works sometimes, but it also can mean you have way more than you can handle and you will get burned out. Listen to your instincts. If it feels wrong, it might not be for you.

8. Take a break sometimes.When I started, I had the feeling that I really had to prove myself. I worked all the time and never took a break during the day. Then someone told me that if you worked a regular job, you would talk to co-workers and walk around once in a while. Now, I take advantage when I have some downtime to work out of the house, work a different schedule or go to the gym during lunch.

9. Find other occasions to socialize and network. This has been the hardest for me. I have a quiet personality and so do not notice much being alone during the day. Eventually though, it can get to you. Try and work outside of the house with other people, see friends on the weekends and network to make some new connections. Network as much as you want to to seek out that next piece of work, but also, just to talk to other people. I also like to work on-site sometimes just to have connections with people during the work day.

Overall, freelancing has been great to me so far. Harsh lessons sometimes, but never regrets.

What Have I Learned From Teaching?

When I originally decided to take on design teaching as part of my freelance life, there were two main reasons. One obvious one was to have some income during lean times in freelancing. The other was to try and impart some important things I hold near and dear that I learned when I attended art school and that I acquired in my professional life. How could I express to people and have them be as passionate as I am about good typography, the fundamentals of design and having a strong concepts behind every design?

I went into teaching with, I think, very uptight attitude about the whole thing. I went through hell in art school with the workload, tough critiques and other challenges. I think the whole experience made me a stronger designer, and so I wanted to teach the way I was taught. Tight structure, controlled syllabus and constructive critiques was the way I started. OK, sounds reasonable, right? Well, easier said than done. I quickly realized that teaching outside of my immediate experience was going to need constant tweaking and adjusting based on the students and their skills.

My fourth teaching experience was at MCAD with students in a partnership with a local high-school. This was the experience that immediately had me learning so much more than I think I have taught them.

1. Sometimes, approaching students gently rather than harshly yields better results.
As hard as this is for me to admit, because I am a total no-nonsense type of person, I cannot expect all students to be like me in their approach and focus.
2. Encourage as much as possible
Especially with my high school students, I want them to keep coming to class and finish school, so small victories may lead to something bigger.
3. Keep critiques as interactive as possible, but do not push it further than it can go.
Some people are not going to be good at this and I cannot only push the class so far to be constructive in terms of comments. It seems that most people think critiques are only for positive comments and have a hard time making suggestions. This is a skill that gets better with time as people get to know each other.
4. Adjust assignments based on comments.
I reuse assignments that work well and that I think have great lessons in them, but will change in the next class after seeing the results. Sometimes, students don't get as much out of them as I did.
5. Hands-on exercises work well sometimes, but have to be adjusted sometimes as the attention span and technology changes.
This has been the hardest lesson for me to learn. I learned almost all design by hand which I still think is amazingly valuable to understand the fundamentals, especially typography. It teaches you to train your eyes and I still think the computer is a tool, not the design. That comes from your ideas. But, I have had to adjust to get an assignment at all because younger students will push back to use the computer. Sometimes, it is the lesser of two evils.

All in all, depending on the age group and the class, teaching adjusts every week. I am surprised and challenged all the time. Good lessons for me and hopefully my students.

Baby Announcements

When I found out I was pregnant, I knew I was going to design the baby announcements for our daughter. I had the design completed months in advance, with the coordinating pink and brown colors chosen to match our nursery theme. The only thing left to do with the design was to await the birth to have all the information to include on the cards.

On October 21, at 5:49 pm, our daughter Charlotte Kristine Craig was born at 5lbs. 13oz. and 19.25 inches long. After some necessary days of recuperation, I completed the design.



My husband and the very proud father decided he also wanted to participate by silkscreening the cards. He took the designs to Northwest Graphic Supply Company, a great screen printing supply company in South Minneapolis. They did a beautiful job of creating highly detailed screens for printing.


After some ups and downs, experimentation with some really detailed illustrations and typography and getting just the right ink consistency, the printing commenced. Jason did a beautiful job, even with no drying racks. The sheets had to be dried on the basement floor.

He then spent the next several days trimming each card by hand. This was often done with a small baby crying for attention on the work table. We then spent an evening doing all of the assembly for approximately 60 announcements.


In the end, we could not be more proud of the result. The announcements and the beautiful baby girl!

Gotham: The Most Overused, Best Font in the World?

I think it was during the presidential campaign for Barack Obama that I started to notice a beautiful font called Gotham.



It was simple. It was clean. It was clear. It was perfect. For the campaign, it was the typographic embodiment of everything the new president was trying to accomplish. A clear, simple message of hope and modern change.

Gotham was designed by the Hoefler Frere-Jones foundry in 2000. This is an excerpt of their description of this font.

"Every designer has admired the no-nonsense lettering of the American vernacular, those letters of paint, plaster, neon, glass and steel that figure so prominently in the urban landscape. From these humble beginnings comes Gotham, a hard-working typeface for the ages."

It is simple and classic like Helvetica but rounded and more architectural. It is also perfectly modern and a great combination with almost any other typeface. It comes in a great array of styles.

As a designer, when this font became more popular, I was in love. Suddenly, it became the "go to" font for almost every layout. Unfortunately, I guess almost every other designer had the same idea as me.

Suddenly, I saw it everywhere. This was not always a bad thing. It brought beautiful layouts to life and made good typography better.

Coca Cola used Gotham for their "Open Happiness" campaign. It also is used in their overall brand.



I also saw it used in some Target packaging.


It has also made appearances on several movie posters, in fairly nice layouts.



Then, I saw it on larger advertising and some unusual places that I was not expecting.


But, like Helvetica, I feel that Gotham has become so overused, that it has lost its sparkle and allure. It is no secret anymore to be used by only the very careful designer with a concern for good typography. I now see it in banner ads, websites and in TV shows.








Is it time for Gotham to be transitioned out? This is in the eye of the beholder and user. For me, I see it so much in so many situations that its uniqueness has worn off. It is still just as amazing as the first time I saw it, but I am less inclined to use it simply because I want to approach each design in a fresh way.

I don't think Gotham has run its course yet. And once a font has been put out there, no designer can control its use. This is part of the joy of fonts and cannot ever be owned by one person or by an ideal of design. All we can do as designers is to respect each layout as unique and approach it with a different set of eyes each time. Maybe seeing Gotham on the Maury show is enough to throw people off of its use?

In reality, most audiences would not even notice its use over something else. And look at Helvetica. It is also used almost everywhere but is still a classic. A strong enough font can stand the test of time and overuse. Gotham may follow this direction.

The most important question is, did Gotham help elect President Obama? Well, I guess it did not hurt!

Colman's Mustard and Penguin Books

Every year, corporate logos and their applications are changed, revised and completely redesigned. Sometimes, these changes are necessary and welcome to the consumer. They can also present a rude awakening that make you wonder why it was ever decided that they should be changed.

As a consumer and a designer, I can see both sides. I enjoy seeing the design world always changing and developing. I also hate when brands I recognize change just when I was starting to recognize them without effort.

Two brands that have a recognizable logo and style but have not made major changes for the consumer are Colman's Mustard and Penguin Books. Both also have beautiful packaging.



I love the details and bold colors used on the tin package. The typography and illustrations are also amazing! They are very decorative and yet this package stands out as being very simple and classic when comparing it to others on the shelf. The design was added to the bottles and tins in 1855 and it has remained the same ever since.





Penguin Books is a publisher founded in 1935. The logo has undergone some minor changes over the years, but without completely confusing the consumer. The orange has remained and the publisher has always had a host of great designers, turning out some amazing covers.



There is even a great book called "Penguin by Design: A Cover Story, 1935-2005." It features some of the amazing book covers over the years.

Logos and identity systems will inevitably change as the world around them changes. As a designer, it is a great lesson to keep in mind. How do you create a design that is classic and can withstand minimal changes? Is something modern or traditional the best approach for longevity? There is no right answer for these questions. Look around and appreciate the identities that have remained the same for the most part. Why are they successful?

Beer Bottles

A couple of Christmas celebrations ago, I created a special gift for my older brother. Inspired by a project from work, I hunted down and packed a wooden crate with beers from around the world. Each one was chosen based on its original location and its interesting packaging. It was called, "Mark travels around the world in 20 beers." Needless to say, it was a big hit! All of the beers were found at the great Surdyk's Liquor in Northeast Minneapolis. It was such a fun experience to go through all of the bottles and choose the most interesting and tasty.

After that experience, I became even more aware of the amazing packaging out there for beer bottles. I began to compile images of some of my favorites and wanted to share them here. Of course, the packaging does not always make the beer. Some of the best beers do not have the best designed bottles and visa versa. As a designer, I am biased towards what looks good, but for someone like my brother, the taste of the beer is what is worth buying.



















Creative gift ideas can sometimes provide the best ideas for other creative inspiration that you can use in your design work later.

Design in Black and White

Often when I am teaching students, I have them work on a design in only black and white. This is mostly based on my belief that this technique helps you focus on your typography, layout and concept without relying on color tricks to help you distract the eye. It is also because it is amazing what beautiful results you can create with this simple combination.








Black and white emphasizes the negative space and the sharp edges of shape and form. I think it is a technique that designers often overlook as a potential solution to some design problems. It really can create more opportunities than may be obvious at first. I have attached some samples of designs I have found in black and white. They are inspiring and just as amazing as color examples. In some cases, they are more powerful, especially in packaging, where black and white is rare.















Typography is especially strong in black and white. It helps emphasize all the details and negative space in between.

Because black and white is so rarely seen in design, it can be hard to approach your own designs that way. If time permits and the brand will allow it, at least for initial concepts, I try and start some of my designs in black and white. I have always felt that if the layout is strong without color, than color can be used for branding purposes and details. I have attached some of my designs that I began in black and white before adding color.


Coca-Cola Company concept anniversary card


Coca-Cola Enterprises concept poster


Coca-Cola Enterprises concept awards album spread


Coca-Cola Enterprises concept banner


Qwest concept poster

I almost always start logos this way as well from practical purposes (possible faxing, copying, etc.) Some stay black and white because of their strength without color.


iRoam logo concept


MillerCoors Beer Garden logo concept

Black and white in graphic design can be an amazing exercise and can offer potential opportunities for unique marketing and visuals.