William Lyons - Written December 16th 2019 Since my time at R Design came to an end, I briefly worked as a freelance designer on several small design jobs featuring a branding refresh and accompanying assets for a pub based in Wolverhampton. I found it intimidating to work on my own at first, but soon after, I found it a lot easier talking with clients; citing the knowledge I had gained from R Design. I still find it fascinating how remote working can be a satisfactory method of creation, and I believe that freelancing will be a continuous practice within my professional development. I really enjoyed working on this job for the pub in Wolverhampton as it felt like a big step in my design career. Going from an intern position at a large design studio to working solo on a large-scale branding job within the space of 4 weeks has been a huge step in my practical development. In all honesty, my time at R Design was an incredible learning opportunity for me and a great insight into the corporate side of the industry, however, I felt at times that the creative director had elicited a stressful working environment and would often clash with designers in the team, myself included. Besides the fairly insubstantial work I was given at R Design, I aided on a branding project for a Golfing and Hospitality company, where a large portion of my design work was used in one of the routes the clients could select from. This was really exciting and reinforced, in my mind, that I would prefer to be working on branding or identity projects as opposed to more corporate or FMCG briefs. For the time being, I will continue to work as a freelance graphic designer using the well-known job posting website Upwork, which is similar to Fiverr. Upwork allows me as a student designer to find small scale jobs without an extensive portfolio review which is both good and bad. I have noticed that within my most favoured disciplines (Editorial Design and Branding and Identity Design), job advertisements will quickly become inundated with responses and applications, meaning I am less likely to be selected for the position. As a designer on the site, you can see how many other creatives have applied for the position which can be disheartening when you find a job that takes your interest. Alternatively, without such a platform, finding work and small jobs such as the ones I have completed on the site would be nearly impossible, and my experience within this side of the industry would non-existent. Other than Freelancing, I plan to utilise my time outside of design offices to develop my skills in other disciplines. I believe that by trying things which I have been hesitant to try in the past, I will radically change my professional practice; especially within the freelance design sector. For the majority of my design education and career, my skills have lied mostly within printed matter and I have been actively avoiding more digital forms of design such as UI/UX. I believe that by developing my skills in computer-based programmes, I will be able to obtain more work as a freelancer who can work across a range of design disciplines. I have already started to expand my knowledge in fields that have always intimidated me such as Motion Graphics and Generative Coding Design. I hope that these new skills will boost my portfolio, and in conversations I’ve had with my personal tutor, we agreed that by utilising these specific design programmes with my adapted style, it may enhance the context that I present my work in. Whilst developing new skills and practices, I have also been in contact with a London based design studio named Kino Design. Kino is a fairly well-known branding studio made of a small team but with a long and impressive list of clients such as Chelsea Football Club, Visa and Barclays. I found them through a family connection and decided to reach out to see if I could get an interview or at least some feedback on my upgraded portfolio. I hope to find out soon if I could come in and have a quick chat as I feel it would be a great opportunity to talk amongst designers who are more aligned with the disciplines I wish to be working in.
Image 1: A screenshot of the user interface of my Upwork profile Image 2: A selection of screenshots of my development and exploration into new disciplines like Motion Graphics.
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