Boost Your Creative Freelance Career with Personal Projects

1. Introduction: My name is Andreas Preis and I'm an artist and designer from Berlin in Germany. I've been a freelancer for about 10 years now and I've actually never been employed. Over the years I've worked with a lot of different clients now, some of them smaller, some of the pretty big, like Nike, Adidas, Samsung, Microsoft, Adobe, Vans, Hyundai, just to name a few, and I did a little of different things for those clients. I started pretty much with traditional graphic design. I did logos, I did flyers, I did posters, I did CD covers, book covers. But also, I did traditional illustration. Then I started to repaint on things. I painted skateboard decks, snow boards. I did some murals and now I even painted a few cars. One of the most important things I've learned over these years, is that clients will always ask for things that they see in your portfolio. This sounds pretty simple, but it's really essential. If you're looking for a job that you really love, that gives you joy, in my opinion, personal projects are the way to go. This class is especially for people who are thinking about doing freelance. If you at the end of your studies, or you just finished your studies. Maybe you're already freelancing and you're looking for more jobs, this class is for you. Even if you're employed, or you want to be employed, but you're looking for the right job. This can help you to shape your portfolio in a way that helps you to find the right company for you, that helps you to show what you're able to do and to show your personality. By the end of this class, I really hope that I motivated you enough, to just start doing something. Whatever it is, just something personal, something completely free. Be it drawing, be it painting, be it a photo, a series of photos, maybe you build something out of paper. Whatever it is, just start and show it to us. Let's go. 2. Coming Up With Ideas: How can you come up with an idea for your personal project? For some people, it's very easy, especially for creative people. Therefore, with something in mind and they always knows something they could do. But for some people, it's harder. You don't have a professor that gives you a task, you don't have a client that gives you briefing. How can you come up with something on your own? And what I would recommend is just try to find something that's your main focus. Is it about a specific style? Or is it about that you want to show different styles like I'm able to draw this dog in five different ways, or is it about something material? You can do that. Is it about some crazy, fun idea where the style doesn't matter, but the idea is just so great. Just find one thing that's most important to you and focus on that for your project. What I did when I started out was just grow my portfolio, I just wanted to have more heart to show. Because I've focused on illustration very late in my studies, so the one thing I had was my thesis, which was a pretty thick book of like 60 illustrations. But you couldn't use all of them, some of them were very small, but it was just a lot. Also, it looked pretty different to what I do today, and I just wanted to have more of that I could show to potential clients. What I did was portraits, and mostly I used just photos that I found online, like on Google or maybe in magazines like 3D printed stuff, and I used those photos as references. I really wouldn't recommend to do that nowadays. First of all, it's very easy for people now to find your reference photos, and also the more important thing because you don't really get problems most of the time as long as it's just personal work. But there might be a client who will ask you for some old artwork, if they could license this artwork, and you have to tell them, no, because you don't own the rights. It's always better to just start with stuff that you actually own the rights to because you never know. My solution back then was that I only used photos in the end that were taken by friends. Either it was photos actually from friends where I asked some photographers I knew, if I could use them, or was photos that I took off of my friends, and I just did portraits that was just one portrait after the other, and there was no structure behind it, there was no smart topic or theme behind it. It was just portraits, but still it helped me a lot in yet because this time these [inaudible] , they really shaped my style. They shaped my artistic personality to something wasn't before. Because there's always some little accident, there's some new little thing that you try for the first time, whatever it is that you really like, and you never thought of it before, and then you can use it later again. I really think there's never a waste of time when you just work on something in your personal free time because there's always something you can take with you from that time. That's why I would always tell you try to do something that's fun for you in your personal time because as long it's fun, and as long as it gives you joy, it doesn't feel like work and it's easy to spend a lot of time with it. Back then, people always said, "whenever I see you you're drawing," because that's what I did basically all the time. In the end, what I did was I used all of those portraits and I released them on my website and on [inaudible]. It was collectors just I even called them portraits one or portraits two, and a lot of them are still out there. One of those collections gave me my first real illustration job. It was actually for Nike, and I really never thought I could get a job just like that. Especially a job like that for a company like that, and it was the best briefing I ever got until today. They just used [inaudible] , and it was actually an outbreak of my old roommate. He said with this piece, and they sent me a photo of some athlete from the seventies. All they said was, could you use the style of this artwork and apply it to this photo? And there was that. 3. Defining Your Goals: Like I said, when I started, I didn't really think about any bigger concept, or theme, or something. It was just about quantity. I wanted to grow my portfolio, get my art out there, and there was that. But after a while, you have to think about real goals. Especially when you start to repeat yourself, which definitely happened for me. You have to think about what's really the main thing that you want to showcase right now. If you develop some style, where you think this really works now, this is something special that maybe people haven't seen before. You should create some project that such as one awkward, but maybe five or 10, where you're really focused on that style. That should be the main thing that people recognize. Or it's something like a new skill. When the iPad came out, there were some people who did stuff. Where their main focus was, at this just using the iPad. People were going crazy because nobody thought this would be possible. So you can use some tool or some app that nobody uses like that, and showcase what's possible. Or you're just a crazy fun, creative person, and it's about storytelling. There's some people on Instagram, they drawn away almost like kids, but what they do is they have crazy ideas and funny stories, so their drawings don't have to be intricate, they have to be clear and straight so that you understand their stories in a fast and quick way. So their main focus is on telling great stories, not on drawing in a crazy new way. You really have to find this one thing, that's your goal in a bigger project and focus on that. What I did was, there was this one portrait. I still know which portrait it was, where I played around with the hair a little bit. I did something I never did before. I used some hatching, some organic shapes, some hot-lines, and I made an expert form of hair that I never did before, and I really liked it. I just thought, yeah, I have to do something with it. It's so nice, I want to do artworks where I use only this style. I also had in mind I wanted to do something bigger and not just a collection of some pieces, but some overall theme. My theme was the sign of the zodiac. I gave myself some rules. That's always a nice thing. If you give yourself some rules, like some boundaries what you can do, this also forces you to get creative in away. My rules were, only black and white, to be honest, just because it was faster and because it was 12 illustrations, signs of the zodiac and I thought this would take forever. Only black and white. Only symmetrical, basically the same reason. I only had to draw half of it, and then I put it on Photoshop and mirrored it. But also I really thought it would fit to the whole sign of zodiac theme. Then those hatching and shapes, no sprayed outlines, just organic shapes. Then I worked with that. The funny thing is that this project, it was the first time I really did those symmetrical animals that I still do till today. Mostly now because clients want me to, not on my own, and it basically defined my style until today. It just happen basically as a coincident. I never plan my style to look like that, but that's how it ended up to be. 4. Finding Your Style: How can you find your style, your own personal special thing? That's actually one of the questions that I get the most. The answer might be not too satisfying, but I've talked to a lot of other artists about this and my experience and also in their experience, you find it not while looking for it. The thing is you have to work and work and work. You have to try things, you have to experiment, you have to get your experiences. As long as you do that, your style will develop on its own. It's not something that can just look for in a special way. This idea of this totally new thing that nobody else saw before. That's not how it works. You just have to work and release stuff and do new stuff and tries up again and try new stuff. Then you will find something. My style is not something that I ever planned. I didn't think 10 years ago that I would draw back then. I never thought, I have to do something with hatching or have to do something that's very intricate, it just happened. That's not what I wanted to do, it just happened. What I did and what all those other people also told me is, you have to work with stuff that you like. You have to do things that give you joy. First of all, because as long as you work in a way that's fun for you, it doesn't really feel like work. It's way easier to spend time and invest time as long as you have fun doing it. Over the years, your personality will show through. Your personal style will definitely become visible after working for years. What's also important is it's not that your style is something that will ever be final. There's not a finishing line, that's not something where you think, "Now I've got it, that's it." Your style or my style or everybody else style, is always developing, it's always changing. If you follow some artists over the years and you check their stuff that they did like five or 10 years ago, mostly looks pretty different to what they do today. Those steps are very small, but they're always there. It's something that's always evolving. You do something new, then you never did before. If you'd like it and then you integrate it and use it later again and again. This idea of finding this totally new special thing that nobody saw before, it can be really frustrating. Try to not focus too much on their try to go more with the flow and just do stuff that feel good to you. Then you'd like, it's just about your personal preferences and your style would come. That's what my experiences and that's what as I said, a lot of people told me. I never had anything else. I never had somebody. "Yeah, I wanted to do this special thing and that's what I do." What I do now is just a mixture of everything I did over the years. What I liked, what I saw, what inspires me, what I saw on the streets and books, online or from other artists. Then one last thing. Other artists, this whole inspiration thing. You can always be inspired. You can also use something that you see from other artists, but really be careful and be aware to not copy other artists. Don't copy the slide of another artist. Apart from just being disrespectful, it's just nowadays, it's very easy for people to find out. There ill be somebody who recognizes the original. This whole world of artists, it's way smaller than you think. You might meet those people one day and yeah then you better know what to tell them. Also in my experience, as long as we're talking about clients and especially cool clients, if they have the choice between the copy of the original, what do you think? They will always try and get the original. Being inspired it's not problem, it's also no problem to sometime use somethings that you see from other artists, but try to always just integrated and do your own thing with it. 5. Make Your Projects Bigger: When you found something that you really like, like a specific style or a specific idea and you think this is cool, I want to work with this again, you should really do this but you should always think, is there a way to take the next step? Is there a way to take this even further? What I mean by that is you have your audience, you have your followers, your client, whatever it is and they like your work. They want to see some new stuff but you don't want to just keep repeating yourself. If they see your work and it's just always the same after a while, they might get bored. What can you do? You can add new things. You can always work in the same style while still adding new things. Just as an example, when I have the signs of the zodiac, the next project I did was a series of posters. I wanted to use those symmetrical animals again because it was something new for me and I really liked it but I wanted to add something. I did this poster series and what I did was I used symmetrical animals but I used color this time. I also added some topography and I added some more details. In the end, people liked this project even more. I did another poster series. This time I wanted to do even more details, become even more intricate. I did another series with even more details and molded animals and most stuff that you could find while looking at my work and really worked for the audience. They really liked it. You could see that some of them they commented again and again. Their reaction was, "I really like what you did before but this is even cooler." It was basically the same style but I just took another step and I made the whole thing a little bit bigger. I made the project a little bit bigger. A little bit more impressive for the people. This is what I mean. You can use the same thing but just try maybe to go to the extreme. You have this intricate style, become even more intricate. You have a lot of details. Use even more details. Well do the opposite, you have this very clean style, this very abstract, simple thing. Try to do this to the extreme, become even more abstract, even more symbol. Try to take an ambitious approach to it and just look how far you can go. When thinking about an overall theme you can even use something like social media. You can create new hashtags. That's something that actually a lot of artists do right now. They have these personal ongoing projects that go over the span of a year or something like that and they can't release all of them altogether. What they do is they just post one artwork and have this one hashtag that fits exactly to this artwork. Then a few weeks later, they release the next image and few weeks later they release the next image and they are all connected by this one hashtag. Some of those artists are really really popular and successful right now. When you now look for those hashtags, they are sometimes even trending. You can find all of these artworks that somehow belong together and in the end, you can put all of them together on your website. You have this one big project that consists of all these artworks that they did over the years in between your real normal paid jobs. You can also use specific color schemes. A good example for that is Shepard Fairey, one of the most famous and successful artists right now in this whole field, he has these specific color scheme that he uses all the time. Even if you see all of his artworks just as thumbnails, you can recognize his work because he always use the same colors. Also this tool that keeps all of his art together in a way. One last possibility that you can take is just go literally bigger. You're drawing on paper usually, go outside and paint on walls but use a very big canvas or a big object, whatever it is, just go bigger. It sounds stupid but the bigger the artwork, the bigger their reaction. That's just how it works. When I post something online and it's me painting on some or drawing on some papee, people usually like it but if I do exactly the same thing but it's a big wall, people are amazed. They think this is crazy. This is so cool. Try to use that and also try to use this possibility to learn something new because I had to experiment a bit when I did my first [inaudible]. I didn't know how to do that. I had to use a projector for example, because I never did it before. I didn't know how to work the size but now I know. This experiment actually helped me to get jobs later on. 6. Show Your Work: If you want to work to help you career, your personal work, you have to go online. It's obvious, you have to build a website, you have to go on platforms like Behance, Dribble. You should be on Instagram, you can be on Twitter, Facebook, whatever. You can't really need too much here. There's people, a lot of artists, also, other set I know who don't even have a website nowadays or personal website because they think Behance is enough and for a lot of them it might be enough. If you ask me, personally still think that you should have your own website because it's the one thing where you can really show your personality because you can layout and design the whole thing just as you wish. Me personally, I still think a website is a nice thing to have. You can add things that you couldn't add on Behance. For me. Just as an example, I started Behance very early because a friend of mine, she lived in London for a while and she told me about it. I registered and had no idea what it was and since I got there before, it belonged to Adobe, even I'm very big on Behance now. I've got far the biggest following on Behance because I was, before Facebook and before Instagram. I always found reasons why not to go to Instagram somehow. I don't really know why now, because mostly I think it was because I just didn't really like social media I still don't like it that much, but you have to use it. Nowadays I think yeah, I should've been on Instagram way earlier because now it's hard, now when you start out on Instagram to grow a following is hard. But back then it was pretty easy, because it didn't have all those algorithms and all that stuff. Really you can't do too much. The internet is your friend, you should use it. I think most of the reasons that people find not do some of these things for me now with my experience, I would say most of them are just excuses. I was just like that in some cases, so I would just say do as much as you can. Some of the reasons why people still fear a little bit, are things like, okay, I want to show my work, but what happens if people don't like it? I don't think that I can take it, stuff like that. There are students who come to me and they think like that and I get it. I also still don't like criticism, but you have to get used to it, there's no way around this. Also just think about when you're in the beginning, they won't be that much criticism. That's just how it works. If you put your stuff online and nobody knows you. Most people just don't care enough to really criticize you. That's at least what happened with me and I checked it with some other people, that's when usually happens. You get comments like, yeah, that's awesome and that's it. But really criticism where people really think about it, that comes later, the haters come later, they come when you're famous. That's winning, at least successful. That's when people start to criticize you and know better. Even when you get some criticism, it's not bad in general. There's a lot of criticism that actually will help you to get better. Just start out and think in the first place it will be pretty much only positive feedback and then some criticism will come. Then just try to use it to try to get better because of it. Another thing is this idea that, yeah, I can put my stuff online, but what will happen if companies just steal it? They can steal it, they can just take, they do it everywhere. I have to admit that's true. There's definitely companies out there and people out there who will steal your work. That's what happens to me, that's what happens to some of my friends. It happens a lot. Minutes I hated, it's totally annoying but just think about what are your options here. If you're not online, nobody will steal it. That's true, but nobody will pay for it as well. It's not like you really have the option to not be online. You just have to do it. But there are ways how we can work with this. You can add watermarks to your work, which is something I personally just don't like. I don't like the optics of it, so I usually don't do it, but it's a possibility. What I do, for example is I especially with originals, I often take photos but take it from a specific angle. So you never have the full image upfront, from the front. You can't really use it for printing files. I think a lot of artists do that now. What you should also do is just don't put whole artwork up in full high-resolution. Just keep it a bit smaller and it takes some of the details and put them on a high-resolution, so people can still get an impression of what you wanted to do and your style and all the details. Still there is no really usable printing file out there. Some ways that can help you that people don't steal your art so much, but it will happen because there are so many small products where people just don't care. It happens, but that's just how it is. One last thing about your, your portfolio online. Think about what you really want to show. It's not just about getting as much online as you can. When I started I wanted to grow the portfolio but there come a point when you have enough, it's not about the quantity anymore, it's about the quality. Try to select the best work and also think about what is it that you want to do. What are the jobs you would like to get? If you have this client and it might be some decline and they paid very well but you didn't like the job because for whatever reason you didn't want to do a job like that, don't put it in your portfolio because you will always get from clients requests for something they find in your portfolio. They will come back to you, whatever they see online, they will think, yeah, that's cool, we want to have something like that. If You want to get in the end to a place where you get at least mostly jobs that you really like just show projects that you really liked. Some simple, but it really helps. 7. Try Something New: When you're already had your portfolio, everything's basically done. You have some clients, you have some followers, you have your website, you'll be hands Instagram, all of that. There comes this point where you have to think about trying something new. This doesn't mean it has to become something completely different, you don't have to change everything. Just try something that you didn't do before. This might be some completely new topic or you try some new art or some new tool or if you're usually only do digital art, try to do something analogue, try to use real paint and just do something you didn't do before, that might broaden your skill set because it gets boring after a while. People like your stuff, but if it's always the same, they might not engage as much as they did before. Try and stay interesting, and try not to repeat yourself too much. Because don't forget, clients book you for what they see in your portfolio. If there's more a new portfolio, this opens the market up for you, this gives you more possibilities to get clients. Just like one very specific example for that, I worked with Microsoft a few times and I always did only digital artworks for them, and then I was on this wall. I did my very first mural in Berlin and I wanted to do this for years again, but I found reasons why not to do it. It was just somehow something kept me from doing it. There was this guy who told me here is your wall you have to paint, your work has to be big on the wall. Finally I did it and then Microsoft called and I was on this wall on the ladder right at that point and they were very surprised to hear that. They were like, yeah, you do murals, we didn't know that that's cool. Where in Berlin is it? We want to see it. I forgot about this call it was about another project. But two weeks later they called again and they just said, yeah you do murals? I was yeah, I do murals now. They said, "Yeah, great, we have this campaign like worldwide campaign, where we need an artist from Germany who's able to do murals." Because they knew me already and they knew now that I'm able to do that they booked me for it. It took two weeks to get my first commercial job like that. But it would have never gotten this job without my first personal work on the wall. The more skills you show, the more techniques you show, the more apps you show that you're able to work with these apps, the more topics you show, the more different kinds of objects that you are able to draw or take good photos of them or whatever, the more possibilities you get for actual paid commissions. Because like I said, clients usually are not that creative. They want to see these things before they book you. Also try to make your portfolio as broad as possible over the years. 8. Make Some Money: If you have freelancer you're always looking for some ways how to make money. Even if you're employed, you always think, yeah would be nice to have some more. This is where your personal projects can really help you a lot because there are so many ways how to turn them into money. Like you can go to stock galleries, Adobe Stock, Getty Images. Just go there and upload all the old artworks you have. That's what I did with Adobe Stock actually. To be honest, I don't really sell a lot because my work is not really made for stock galleries. But still every few weeks I will sell something. It's just money that comes in on the side. We don't really think about it before and you don't have to work for it anymore. This can really help you. All you create just prints. You can create prints, postcards, calendars, shirts, bags, whatever you want to produce. Because you own all the rights. That's what I told you before. You should try to only you stop where you don't own all the rights. Because that will enable you later to create product, whatever kind of product you want create. NTS artists that I know basically all of the income is from markets. They go there every week or every two weeks in their hometown and they earn a lot of money with it. When you have all those product, you can also create an online store where you sell your stuff to the whole world. Or you can go to local stores like, local gift shops. They love it to have stuff from local artists. You go there and you offer them 500 postcards and you tell them, "Yeah, you can sell this for me. But then we have to split 50-50 or 60-40," or however you want to split it. That's another way, to use your own product independent from any clients to earn some money. Even if you think, "Yeah, I would love to do that, but I don't have the money to produce all that stuff right now." Or maybe you don't have the time to do markets. You can use websites like societies six, or designed by humans or T public. A spreadsheet where you just upload your files and they print, they ship, they do all of the organization that you don't want to do. You just get some money when somebody buys something. It's not a lot of money, it's probably the least you can earn. But it's also, you only have to upload your files and that's it, you don't have to do anything else. It's all of these ways where money comes in without you working for it. You just you did your job and the years before because it did all those personal things and now it can make money with it. I have some images actually that I license almost every year now. I have this one, Fox, for example, that got printed on skateboards now that got used for a big lighting festival, got used for a Microsoft Craig show. It's always the same artwork that I did just for fun, maybe eight years ago. You never know what might happen. You never know which work the client might want to use. I have clients who come to me and they give me some briefing that they have right now and tell me, "Yeah, we need some illustration. Maybe you have something. Can you please show us some examples?" Then I go through my portfolio and I send them something. Sometimes they can use it right away. Sometimes I don't even have to do anything and it just buy something and or add to stuff like that. This board is hand painted, because I worked for this company. I just got some text from them. They were originally but not printed. I did these things where I painted on trade shows or a market because it attracts people, they come to you because they want to watch you work. I put all those things online and I linked to the original company. They actually liked it so much that they asked me, could you please create a printing file? I had to redraw the whole thing. Then I did it really just for fun, and then I got paid for it. It was one of their most successful designs for a few years. They asked me again, "Could create the same thing but as a black and black version." I did that and got paid again. All of that just because of the job that I do, just for fun, just because I wanted to spend some time painting. You never know, just do what you want to do. But use those ways that are there for you to make something out of it, to create some ways to earn some money. 9. It's Your Turn: As you see, there's lots of reasons why you should always try to use your own ideas and create some personal project. It will help your career in a lot of ways. Like you will learn new things. It will actually help you to get clients. It will help you to earn some money. It will help you to develop a style and most importantly, it will be a lot of fun. That's the main reason why you and me why we chose a job like this, a profession like this. Because we wanted to combine our job with our passion. So personal projects are the perfect way to do this. There's always something that you always wanted to do, at least for me, it's like that, I guess for most of you, it's like there there's always some things you always want to do. What I'm doing right now is actually I'm working on a mural for my studio. That's also something I do just in my free time and nobody will pay me for it, but always wanted to do it, and there's some stuff that I'm learning right now. Because the artwork I'm using for this I create on the iPad in the new art that I've never used before. So I have to learn this new art. I will use this artwork for my new calendar because my new calendar will be a series of 12 images of birds, but all of them will have backgrounds because I actually never did backgrounds for animals, sounds a bit weird, but that's just how it is. I never did it because I'm not really used to it until now. So I have to learn how to do that, and when I use this art work for my mural, it's the same. I never did backgrounds for my murals it was always just cut out of something. So these are things that I'm learning right now while doing something that's really fun for me. I don't have a lot of time for it because the more clients you get, the less time you actually have for personal projects. But since I love to do it, I still try to somehow squeeze it in. So now it's your turn. I hope this class gave you some ideas, motivated you enough to try and start your own personal project. Try something new, try something you never did before, try a new tool, a new app, try some new materials, some idea you never worked on before. Although the opposite, work with your favorite topic, your favorite material, whatever it is, just do something, create something, be productive, and don't forget, you have to publish it later. We want to see it. So really hope you enjoyed this class, have a great day, bye.