To be honest, from my (limited) personal experience, I don’t think it’s awfully different from being a male freelance web/graphic designer. I don’t feel marginalised, underpaid or intimidated, and I’ve never had any indication that a potential client has decided whether to hire me or not based on my gender. I don’t think I’d win more jobs or get paid more money if I had man-bits. Around half of the clients and people that I work with are female too – intelligent, driven and successful women doing pretty well for themselves in this man’s world.

That said, I do tend to be a bit oblivious to this sort of thing because I was brought up surrounded by tech and never saw any reason why I shouldn’t be as good at things as boys are. I never saw myself as being disadvantaged in any way by being female; if anything, I felt that being good at traditionally male-dominated things just made me more special. I’m also in a country and culture that’s fairly progressive in terms of women’s rights – I wouldn’t have the same opportunities if I wasn’t born into a privileged middle-class life in a Western first-world country, had less encouraging parents, or married a less awesome husband.

I’m interested to hear if anyone has had a different experience – are you like me in never experiencing any real disadvantage to being a woman, freelancing or in a male-dominated industry? Have you ever suspected a client decided whether to work with you or not based more on your gender than your skills or portfolio? If you’re a freelancing mum, how do you balance that with work? Are you ever suckered into doing more chores and errands than is fair because you ‘have more flexibility’ or are ‘always at home anyway’? Any guys out there – what’s your opinion of women starting their own businesses and working in traditionally male-dominated industries?

I have to admit my thoughts on this topic are not particularly well-formed at the moment, but I’d be really really interested in having some discussion around it!

Current projects board

It’s a pretty awesome and very creative shared office space, although I can’t take any credit for it – most of the setup (including the funky wallpaper) was done by Paul of Monk Media. I did give the whole place a good clean over the holidays, so I’ll take credit for that (office of mostly boys = ‘cleaning’ is done with a leaf blower).

My desk

My setup consists of an Ikea desk, my Macbook Pro on a laptop stand, an extra monitor, keyboard and mouse, a pencil box, a small pinboard of current projects, and my needle-felted Piplup. I suppose it isn’t the most stylish of desk setups, but for my graphic design work the extra screen space is absolutely vital. I also have a foot rest because at my height I can’t have my seat at a comfortable typing position without my legs being too short to touch the floor!

There’s a bit of a library of graphic design books I’ve been meaning to flick through and some instruments which office mates and randoms play when they drop in.

Also (important for me) there’s a kettle and a collection of tea! I think the lemongrass and ginger is my favourite, although I haven’t tried the French Earl Grey yet. We all bring in random drinks and snacks to share.

What’s your office like?

1. Decide on an hourly rate

I think I’d prefer not to publish my hourly rate here, especially as I work fast and quote by project, as described below. But basically it has to be something which you’re comfortable with charging and which is going to cover your costs. The rate calculator on FreelanceSwitch is pretty helpful, if a bit in depth. You should definitely be charging more than what you would be getting paid in a full-time position, as there’s a number of expenses (office rent, software, computer gear, time spent marketing etc) that you wouldn’t otherwise have to cover, as well as the complete lack of security.

It can take a while to feel out the right rate as well as the right clients for you – don’t be disheartened if you get a couple of potential clients disappear once they get their quote, as long as you have some work. If you have people commenting that your rates are very low or clients insisting that you quote more, then maybe it’s time to raise the rates.

2. Break the project down into tasks

How granular you go is up to you I suppose – the point is to get it to a point that you can accurately estimate the time it will take you to complete each task. Most of my jobs are website design and development ones, so my task list generally looks like this:

• Homepage design, with up to 2 rounds of revisions
• Secondary page design
• Installation of WordPress and basic plugins
• Development of approved design
• Add-ons (blog, gallery, illustration, any dynamic features)
• Training for the client, if necessary

3. Estimate the time required for each of the tasks

This takes a while to get the hang of, and even then some projects still surprise me. It helps to keep records of the time it takes to projects, broken down into tasks as above, for all projects – it’s a lot easier to see if you’re coming in under the time budget or not.

Some things are straightforward enough that I can predict pretty accurately how long it will take (installing WordPress, or coding simple templates). Other things, like design, can easily get really time-consuming. I usually try to estimate towards the longer end of what I think it will take me, as sometimes you need that extra time to give the client what they want and really get a design right. If the client has a very specific look in mind that cuts down the time needed considerably, since I can usually get the design right in an initial concept with some tweaking after feedback, so I charge much less for these. Asking the right questions or getting a detailed quote helps immensely with this.

Quoting for things I haven’t done before, but can figure out (like a lot of the jQuery stuff which is becoming so popular) is pretty tricky, and usually I end up losing out on those. On the plus side, the next time I have to do the same thing I know exactly what to do.

4. Multiply time estimates by the hourly rate

Pretty straightforward! If any of the figures look a bit out of whack, I double check that my time estimates look right.

5. Adjust as necessary

This is also a bit tricky to get the hang of, and I can’t say I’ve mastered it. After a while I’ve gotten fairly fast at what I do, so sometimes the amount I come up with from my hourly rate multiplied by my estimate of how long it will take me looks a bit low. At that point you also have to look at what it’s worth to the client, and how your estimate compares to others in the industry. Other factors to consider are whether you’re including the rights to what you’ve created (such as design work, templates or logos for example) which are worth more than just the time you spend on them, how desirable the work is, how busy you are, whether the client is picky or laid back, how soon the deadline is. It might not sound ‘fair’, but remember that there’s always going to be someone charging more than you – I can guarantee that design agencies pitching for big name clients aren’t just quoting $100 for a logo, no matter how little time it takes them. The quality of work is what makes it worth more than the time it took them to create it.

It’s also worth considering what the client expects to pay – certain types will go for what they consider a mid-range option over bargain-basement. Others will say upfront that they have a limited budget, and you have to decide if you’re able to work within that or not.

5. Put it into a formal quote

I use Billings for quoting and invoicing these days (more on that in another post), but I used to just use a Word template to put together quotes. I keep the quote itemised into tasks (grouped if they got too granular in the process) so that the client can see how much they’re spending on each aspect of the project. I put down the final cost estimate for each task, without the hours estimate. People seem to react badly to hearing a freelancer’s preferred hourly rate, because they compare it to what they earn per hour – usually in their secure, full-time-with-paid-leave jobs, which are completely different. Fixed prices always seem to get a better response.

A few extra notes

• When putting down the tasks in a fixed quote, it’s a good idea to be fairly specific – that way if the client requests extra things during the process, an additional quote can be made for the extra work. If it’s unclear to begin with you can end up doing extra work beyond what you thought was the original scope without getting paid for it.
• Some projects can be a bit hard to estimate accurately, so I end up giving a rough estimate of time along with an hourly rate to the client instead of a fixed quote. I try to stick with fixed quotes where I can though.
• I usually try to also let the client know that I require a 50% deposit upfront when sending the quote, so they have all the information they need to decide whether to work with me or not. I suppose I’ll write more about invoicing in another post.
• People who have no idea about your work might be severely misinformed about what you should be charging, so try not to take their comments to heart. I have a feeling a lot of my friends still think a complete website is worth just a couple hundred dollars (it is not!).
• On the other hand, if your quotes are all unsuccessful it’s time to look at whether you’re charging correctly for your services and skill level, or whether you’re just pitching to the wrong sort of client.

Happy quoting!

More of this:

• Logo designs! Logos are very challenging and (for me at least) don’t pay extremely well, but they’re good fun to design and very rewarding to get right. I think I’ve started getting pretty good at them, so hoping to do plenty more this year.
• Complete websites – from design to development, the whole process. I love both aspects of creating websites so having a balance of both is always nice. I also have my process nicely streamlined, so things usually go fairly smoothly.
• WordPress websites – it does have its faults and limitations, but overall I’m definitely a WordPress groupie. It’s come a long way from being just a blogging platform, and for most of my clients it’s just right as a CMS. I have my favourite plugins and base templates sorted so again it’s a nice, streamlined process.
• Flash to WordPress conversions – lately there seems to be a lot of people moving from websites that are completely or partially dependent on Flash to a CMS based, i-device compatible system. These are usually mostly straightforward with a bit of jQuery for the dynamic element to spice the project up a bit.
• jQuery/Ajax/dynamic stuff – it’s the way of the future, and I’m definitely on board with it. I have a bit more experimenting to do to get a good streamlined process going, but the learning is always fun.
• Illustration – I love drawing, especially cute designs and fun characters. I haven’t pushed this aspect of my business much in the past, and it’s something I really want to promote more this year.
• Photography – I’m still learning, but hoping to second or assist with shoots and weddings over this year to get a bit more experience.
• Stock design/templates/illustrations – I’d really like to get a passive income set up, even if it is just a trickle to begin with. This is something I’m going to start working on when things are a bit slow with paid work.

Less of this:

• E-commerce websites – these were a major cause of woe and unpaid work for me in 2011, so I’m taking a break from e-commerce websites until I can find a system I know inside out and can really stand behind. Related – don’t use the WP E-commerce plugin unless you want lots of woe.
• Print work – I like doing simple things like business cards, but complex stuff just isn’t my thing.
• Content Management Systems I dislike – I’m going to focus on WordPress wherever possible, which I think is going to serve me well enough. Trying to deal with foreign CMSs is a major learning curve, and for me it never seems to be a profitable one even in the long term. So goodbye Drupal, goodbye Joomla. We won’t be playing anymore.
• Flash – iDevices seem to have killed Flash for the web. I can’t really claim that I liked it much to begin with.
• Stuff I just don’t know how to do – unless it’s something that looks easy enough to figure out or will be very useful in future (like Jquery stuff), I’m going to just turn down or pass on things which are completely out of my comfort zone this year. Usually I can figure things out, but often it takes much, much too long.
• Subcontracted/overflow work – I’m still a little on the fence about this one, as it does give a nice supplement of work to the clients I get myself. Then again, I charge less and don’t get to use the work in self-promotion, so in busier times it’s less worth it. Going to have to play things as they come.

Hopefully it’s going to be a good year! What kind of work are you hoping to do more of this year?

Can you go into more detail about paying taxes as a freelancer? That’s always confused me. Like at what pint do you start paying taxes, and what type of records should you keep to show to an accountant. Thanks.

- Anon

First up: I find this sort of stuff pretty confusing too, so I can’t promise that I’m the most reliable source of information. I’d definitely recommend speaking to a tax accountant or small business advisor, even if you plan on doing your own tax eventually, just to make sure you have everything set up correctly to begin with. You really don’t want to be in the position of having to pay back a ton of tax that you didn’t realise you owed in the first place. When I started out, the accountant that I spoke to didn’t even charge me for that first appointment (although he turned out to be very unreliable and I didn’t end up using him at tax time, but that’s another story). Even if they do charge a fee for the advice, it’s worth it to get things right from the beginning.

All this information will be as it relates to Australian freelancers. Here’s a really long and rather boring document from the ATO that you should really read, as it’s more comprehensive and reliable than my information here. But here’s a summary.

Business or Hobby?

The first thing to work out is if you have a business or a hobby. The ATO has a rather vague article that’s supposed to help you figure this out. The main jist is this: if you’re doing work with the intention of making a profit, it’s a business. It doesn’t matter if it’s just something you do on weekends whilst carrying on with your full time work, or doing part time – it’s still a business. If you’re not really making a profit and aren’t really doing it as a source of income, then it’s a hobby.

For example: I’ve had a craft stall at a handmade market and a few anime conventions. The amount that I made from these things was just about enough to cover my materials, a bus fare to Sydney from Canberra and (barely) a hotel room for the night. It just barely covered my expenses (or not even, in some cases), so I made negligible profit and don’t consider it at all a source of income. It is definitely a hobby. Therefore I didn’t put the money I received or my expenses on that year’s tax.

On the other hand, if you’re calling yourself a freelancer that implies to me that you’re doing it as a business. Even if you’re just doing it on top of a full time job and are just charging peanuts (which is what I was doing when I started), it’s an income and it’s taxable.

Acronyms galore

ABN: If you’re running a business you can and should register for an Australian Business Number (ABN). The form is a bit of a pain to fill out, but it’s free and makes doing your tax etc. much easier. You can just use your personal Tax File Number (TFN) if you’re operating as a freelancer/sole trader.

Business Name: a freelancer/sole trader can operate under their own name, so don’t need to register a business name. Some banks require you to have a registered business name in order to open a business account though (which I recommend doing), so you might find yourself having to get one anyway. The process for doing this depends on what state you’re in, and there is a yearly fee (which can be claimed as a business expense, of course). Mine costed $90.

PAYG: You will be told if you need to Pay As You Go for your tax, after your first tax return as a freelancer. For me, this is calculated based on my previous year’s tax and paid in quarterly installments. They do charge you extra fees if you don’t pay them or pay them late, although if you don’t leave it ridiculously long they usually waive them. At the end of the year when you do your tax return, if your yearly earnings differ to the previous year’s you might end up getting some back or having to pay a bit more.

GST: If you earn over $75,000 per year as a freelancer, then you have to register to claim Goods and Services Tax (GST). If you earn less than that amount, you can still choose to claim GST – I’ve been told that it can work out better for you tax wise. I don’t earn quite that much and don’t want the extra work of figuring out GST at this point, so unfortunately it isn’t something I’m familiar with yet. If you’re not charging GST, make sure to make a note of it on your invoices so it’s clear to clients.

Record Keeping

ATO has a lengthy guide for this as well. The basic things that you really must keep track of are:

• record of invoices and payments made to you
• receipts, with the business’s ABN on them, for any expenses
• bank statements for your business account
• your previous tax records
• justification for any partial expenses*

These need to be kept for at least 5 years. They can be electronic (my software receipts and business statements all go to my email), as long as you can print them out easily if needed.

How fancy your record keeping needs to be is up to you. I have probably the most basic ‘system’:

• spreadsheet of payments made to me, with the client’s name, project, date paid and amount
• spreadsheet of expenses, with the type of expense, date and amount
• file of printed receipts
• folder on my computer for electronic receipts
• folder in my email client for email receipts I haven’t saved to my computer yet

There’s lots of other ways of keeping records, and if your expenses etc are more complicated then you might want to look into purchasing some software for it. I haven’t really dabbled with any so can’t offer any recommendations – if you’ve tried something you can recommend please let me know!

* Some things will be part business, part personal – for example, my mobile phone or petrol for my car. I only claim part of these things as business expenses. To justify the percentage used for business, keep a logbook of usage for a week or so.

Hopefully this has given you a general idea of what you need to do based on my personal experiences, but I really recommend speaking to someone more knowledgeable about these things. I don’t claim that any part of this is 100% correct, legal advice and am admittedly terrible at all things tax, so take all of this with a grain of salt and read through the tax office’s information thoroughly yourself as well.

Good luck!

I’m going to try and write a weekly post each Friday about what it’s like to be a freelancer! This is something that I find a lot of people are curious about, and there’s a lot of incorrect assumptions out there. If you have any questions for me on freelancing, leave a comment here or on Formspring.

This year I don’t think I’ll be taking a summer break – Christmas, Boxing Day and New Years Day will be taken up with family parties, but other than that I’m still planning to go into the office and get work done. January is generally a quiet month for me, so the plan is to work whilst there is work to be done, and relax a bit more as it eases up a bit in the first quarter of next year. I have some personal projects, including rebranding my business, to work on during the downtime – I hope I end up with a bit of time to spare for it!

If you’re working from home it’s easily to get a bit down around Christmas – especially when everyone around you seems to be going to work Christmas parties (The Boy had four!) and you don’t really have anyone to party with. Don’t be too sad – give yourself an afternoon off, get some nice food and drinks and have a solo party where you don’t have to worry about offending your boss or getting super sloshed. Or get some other freelancers together and have a little party together! We had a little Monk Studio (and Friends) lunch at Five Bar today, which was a great way to round out the year.

A few tips when it comes to holidays as a freelancer:

Save up for downtime

When figuring out your rates and what you hope your yearly salary is, remember to include some holiday time – otherwise you might find that you can’t afford to pay yourself (or your bills) when you take time off. It also helps to have a bit of a buffer in your business account instead of living hand-to-mouth.

Plan way in advance

Not such a big deal for the Christmas period as it’s likely most of your clients will be in holiday mode too, but if you’re planning an extended holiday it’s important to plan far in advance so everything that needs to be completed before the holiday gets done and clients know what’s happening. I’ve had to do bits of work and answer work calls on holidays before, and it really sucks! Of course you can’t plan for everything, but being organised definitely helps.

Make sure you give yourself a break sometime

If you’re working days and nights and weekends and public holidays, maybe it’s time to give yourself a short break. It’s hard to tear yourself away sometimes, but clients do understand that you need a break sometimes and you don’t want to burn yourself out!

Only a few days left until Christmas – if you’re taking some holiday time now, enjoy yourself!

I’m going to try and write a weekly post each Friday about what it’s like to be a freelancer! This is something that I find a lot of people are curious about, and there’s a lot of incorrect assumptions out there. If you have any questions for me on freelancing, leave a comment here or on Formspring.

Have some savings

One piece of advice I see constantly coming up in regards to freelancing is to have a nice little nest egg of savings before you start. Doing this definitely helped me in some tough times when I just got started with freelancing, and I’ve continued to keep 3 months or so in earnings tucked away in case I need it again. I haven’t needed to dig into it for some time, but if I have a slow couple of months or aren’t able to work for some reason at least I’ll still be able to pay my rent. In the meantime it’s growing slowly in a high interest account, which is nice.

Keep a separate business account

This might seem obvious, but to begin with I just had everything jumbled into my personal accounts. It was a bit of a nightmare. Now I have a separate account that all my invoices get paid into, and all my expenses (including my wages) get paid out of. It’s much easier to see exactly how much is going in and out of the business and keep track of how it’s all going. If I don’t have enough to pay myself or my quarterly tax, I know I’m in trouble. If have surplus I can give myself a bonus or shift it into my just-in-case business savings.

Put taxes away to one side

I pay my tax quarterly, and it always seems to be a bit of a scramble to come up with the money. I can imagine it would be even worse if I were paying it only once a year, as I know some freelancers do. I’m finding it best to just keep that amount aside so it’s there when I need it.

Have a salary

Since properly separating my personal and business bank accounts, I’ve started paying myself a regular fortnightly salary. This amount is currently a modest sum, a bit less than what is left from my net income after tax and expenses have been taken out. I’m finding that having a regular, scheduled income makes it much easier to sort out my personal budget and savings. When everything was merged, I’d have a brief “I’m RICH!” moment straight after getting paid, followed by not keeping track of spending and winding up with not a whole lot to work with. If I’m really really ahead (including the amount I need to pay the tax man) then I give myself a bonus for being awesome.

Outsource the hard stuff

I use an accountant to do my end of year tax, and would probably get a bookkeeper to do handle things in between if it got too difficult. Dealing with tax and money to that extent is just a pain to me – I’d rather spend that time doing what I’m actually good at, and hire someone else to do that stuff.

I’m going to try and write a weekly post each Friday about what it’s like to be a freelancer! This is something that I find a lot of people are curious about, and there’s a lot of incorrect assumptions out there. If you have any questions for me on freelancing, leave a comment here or on Formspring.

So last week I wrote about the Good Stuff – but don’t get too excited yet, freelancing isn’t all peachy and working in pajamas.

Work-life balance

The problem with setting your own schedule is that something tends to get a bit lost with work-life balance. Many freelancers either work ridiculous hours and never have time to enjoy their rewards, or procrastinate and don’t work enough to get by or achieve deadlines. Most other self-employed people I’ve spoken to run towards the former (or at least they say they do); I have to admit that I tend to struggle sometimes with the latter. It takes a lot of discipline to get the work done but still make sure you have time for other important things in life too. This is the reason that freelancing doesn’t suit everyone – not everyone has the discipline to ensure a good balance. I’ve found that working in a shared office is a big help with the procrastination that can happen when working at home.

One-man band

Unless you have the cash to outsource the bits you don’t want to do to other people, as a freelancer you are the entire business. You aren’t just what’s on your business card – you’re also your own marketer, accounts manager, bookkeeper, customer support, project manager, and other roles that would have been taken care of by someone else as an employee. If you don’t have any training or interest in these aspects of running a business, this can be tricky. Personally I hate doing anything akin to admin, and really have to force myself to get on with it. It helps to find tools and tricks to do these less fun tasks as quickly as possible so you can get on with what you do best. If you can afford and justify it, outsource!

Loneliness

If you work alone, especially if you work alone at home, it gets very very lonely. It helps to be comfortable with your own company, but it’s easy to get to a point where you haven’t left the house at all in days. You really do have to force yourself to get some kind of regular human interaction (and no, Twitter and Facebook help but don’t completely count). I’ve found that doing classes that force you to leave the home/office, meeting up with friends regularly and getting involved in the web industry (or whatever your industry) community helpful.

Health

If you’re working insane amounts or end up not leaving the house for ages, it’s likely you’re not getting enough exercise. It’s easy to forget how important health is when there’s heaps of work to do, but as a freelancer it’s more important than ever. Why? Because there is no sick leave. If you don’t work, you don’t get paid, simple as that. A long-term injury or illness can easily leave you with no income. It’s much easier to take care of your health to begin with rather than trying to fix it later.

Finding Work

This is something that a lot of people struggle with, particularly if they’re shy or not particularly good at marketing themselves. It’s not something that you need to learn as an employee, and as far as I’ve seen it isn’t something that’s taught in schools or universities. If you’re not a natural, you have to learn quickly – or end up with nothing to do and nothing to eat. Sometimes even if you’re doing everything right it can still be hard to find work – the economy, location and trends all play a role. Once you have a bit of momentum and few jobs under your belt, word-of-mouth is a huge help. But getting there certainly isn’t easy!

Security

Following on from the above, until you really get going there isn’t a huge amount of job security. It can make things really hard to plan in advance – do you really know you’ll have enough money for that big holiday? – and hard to get any kind of loan. I imagine it’s particularly difficult to do if you have children or other dependents. This is why I’ve chosen to start my freelancing career fairly early, even thought it was a bit of a jump – I’m hoping that things will get more and more stable over the years and I’ll eventually be able to safely commit to buying a property and think about having kids. It does get better as you get better at running a business, but you do always have to be on your toes and have a bit of a cash safety net waiting in case the worst-case scenario happens.

But don’t fret

With some planning, discipline and a bit of luck freelancing can be doable – and worth it! I’m still at it and don’t plan on giving up any time soon.

This is partly inspired by Gary’s post on The Upside of Freelancing, which I found really interesting and useful when I was starting out back in 2008! I’m definitely a little more green, but here’s my perspective.

Flexibility

Working from home, in our courtyard

This is without a doubt the best (and the worst, but I’ll come back to that one in Bad Stuff) thing about freelancing. If you set your own schedule you can adapt it to suit your lifestyle and circumstances – and rearrange it as you go if you need to. I can do a grocery run, or meet up with a friend for lunch, or go for a jog when I choose to, and make up for lost work time later. For holidays it takes a bit more planning and work in advance, but I don’t have to worry about using up holiday days or whether colleagues are taking time off at the same time. I tend to generally be fairly typical in my working schedule, but it’s useful to have that flexibility when I need it.

Attire

Okay, clothing doesn’t sound like much of a pro – but if you saw how much my friends spend on business attire maybe you would agree with me. As a freelancer I’ve worked from home, where I just wore t-shirts and shorts, or even worked in pajamas. Working in pajamas is awesome. Now that I’m in a shared office I pay a bit more attention to what I wear, but it still usually tends towards t-shirts, jeans and ballet flats. No shirts, no heels, no pantyhose, no designer branded anything – just the way I like it. I don’t have a gap between ‘casual’ and ‘business’ clothes, I just have clothes.

For meetings I try to dress a little more formal – I like to call it ‘pseudo business’ – but as my clients tend to be mostly small businesses or organisations they tend to dress just as casually as I do. Plus hey, I’m a freelance designer – we’re supposed to be quirky and creative right?

Variety

This might not go for everyone, but as a freelance web designer I tend to take on a large number of smallish jobs – so there’s lots of variety and lots of different clients. I can be sketching logo designs one day, designing a website for someone else the next, then coding up another client’s website another day. Each job presents its own possibilities, challenges and new ideas to work with. I think I would go a little insane doing all design, or all development, or always working with only one client; the variety of my work keeps things interesting and challenging for me. This sort of thing might not suit everyone, but it is something that as a freelancer you have control of. Want to stick with doing one thing? Take on a longer contract, or market yourself as a specialist in one particular thing.

Loving your own company

When you work by yourself every day, you either begin to enjoy the solitariness and feel comfortable with your own company, or you go insane. I’ve gone with the former. Of course it’s necessary to get some actual human interaction regularly (it helps if you live with someone, or do some kind of class that forces you out), but I think there’s something lovely about being comfortable with yourself. The greatest love of all and all that.

Accountability

Okay that might not sound like a good thing exactly, but in a way it is – when the business is entirely your own, so is its successes and failures. Every win is my own; when I look at how far I’ve come I can safely say that I built the way myself, right from the bottom. That’s not to say that I haven’t had the support and help of many wonderful people along the way, but in the end it’s me taking the risk and doing the work and getting somewhere with it all. It’s a lot of pressure, and it isn’t always a win – but overall it’s coming up well and that’s something to be proud of.

Awesomeness

I can’t help being a little smug when people ask me what I do and I say ‘freelance designer’ and their eyes light up. They don’t necessarily know what the hell a freelance designer actually does, but it hints at creativity and freedom that’s missing from the jobs of a lot of people I know (this could be because for some reason half the people I know seem to be lawyers). Sure, I might not be able to afford their designer brand whatever, but I have an awesome job and I actually like it. Apparently this is a very rare thing, and I feel pretty pleased with myself that I’ve found it.

My original intention was to design something more simple and minimalist, to better show off photographs. But as I was designing it became apparent that 1) my photography isn’t really good enough to carry a design the way that the amazing photographers I admire do; and 2) I’m more of a bright colours and cartoon characters sort of person anyway. This two column design does open up a bit more space for photos though, and I’ve taken out bits that have become less important to me and added a few new things in.

Geeky bits:

• I’m using the Twentyeleven theme as a base for this theme
• All graphics, characters and icons were created by me, over the past few years
• The curly font is Kavaler Kursive, which is free for personal use