During the class, I learned about freelancing and what you need in order to be a successful freelance designer. The most important thing to know about freelance designing and working as a freelance designer is having a contract. I learned that it is important to have a contract with whatever client you’re working with and to make sure that both parties know the agreement from the beginning. I took this into consideration because even now as a student I have done some work for people and they’ll either ask for something early or completely change what was asked for from the beginning. While freelancing and creating a contract, this could have been avoided because in the contract, I could have simply put what my time goes toward and what must be given to the client at a final date. This way if anything is subject to change or things absolutely need to be pushed forward, I would have a contract in place and be able to charge extra, or only tell them I can deliver what was promised at a certain time.
While as a freelancer you have more time management, and you have a flexible time schedule, but with your time you want to make sure you use it valuably. You want to make sure you have a well set balance between working. You don’t have a boss hounding you to get your work done and at times your client can forget to keep you updated on the due date, therefore it is better that you learn to keep track of your time. The most important reason to keep track of time is because of the contract. You want to make sure that you are getting paid for the correct amount of hours. The different part of the contracts are something I also learned, The cancellation fee, the consultation fee and deliverable are somethings that I really needed to know about.
I also learned about the process of payment and design. The larger the project and the more time consuming, is where the budget increases. You as the designer charge for your time. The longer a project takes, and the more time you spend on creating the final project, the more you should be getting paid for it. The way you go about this ideal of time = payment is the process of proposal. The proposal and contract coincide with each other, but there are multiple parts that go along with this part of freelancing.
I also know relationship isn’t very important and it’s something to become accustomed to in the world of design. You must Network and it’s something I’ve been hearing since the beginning of the class. It’s not always easy to network, but it is easy to make money once you have friends in the business.