Design Agency VS Freelance Life

As a designer, I often get asked what is better, freelancing or working at a design agency? To be honest, there is no correct answer but there are certainly perks and pitfalls of both. In this article, I’ll share my honest opinions based on 6 months of working at an agency and 4 years of professional freelancing.

Before I launch into comparing them, I thought it should be known that I still currently do both… I work full time (Mon-Fri, 9 to 6) at Carrot Creative and also do contracting under my own business, Just Creative Design, mostly at night and occasionally on weekends if need be. I love both.

For comparison’s sake, I’ll look at the components that form the foundation of a happy designer: the type of projects they get to work on, the amount of work they have to do, what they get in return, the amount of freedom they get, as well the ‘fun’ factor.

1. The Work / Workload

Freelance:

As a freelancer, you get to choose when you work and what type of projects you want to work on, however this perk comes with much more behind-the-scenes work such as marketing yourself, doing paperwork, emailing etc. Consequently, this means you will be doing less of what you love (designing).

Agency:

At an agency, the behind-the-scenes work is being done for you, which means you can do more designing but the downfall of this, is that you don’t get as much say on the type of projects you work on… however, if you find the right agency, this shouldn’t be a big problem.

Another bonus of working at an agency is that you get to work for larger brands though this is not always a ‘bonus’ (so I’ve been told). In my short time at Carrot, I’ve luckily enjoyed every project I’ve worked on, especially the ones for Disney & Star Wars.

Verdict:

As long as you work on projects you like, you will be happy either working for yourself or an agency, though personally, I prefer working at an agency as it gives me more time to actually design and on a much wider array of projects… and I just love Disney pixie dust.

2. Rewards / Freedom

Freelance:

Nothing is more satisfying than running your own successful (freelance) business. As a freelancer, you can choose your own clients, set your own rates and most importantly, work when you want to. This allows for much more flexibility, more vacation time and overall, an arguably better way of life. (eg. no daily commutes, more time to yourself, etc.). The monetary rewards are also generally better than working at an agency as well, though this of course depends on your experience / roll as well as how hard (smart) you work.

Agency:

Agency life also has its perks, the main being job security… the fact that you know you’re going to get paid and when. There are also other fringe benefits of working at an agency such as health insurance, parties, work outings, etc.

Verdict:

Overall, in terms of monetary rewards and freedom I think freelancing is a more rewarding choice, especially if you love traveling as much as me… though you do have to work for it.

3. The ‘Fun’ Factor

Freelance:

Freelancing can get lonely at times, especially if you don’t have anyone else around the house or office, however, you do get more freedom, which essentially means you can go out with your non-work buddies more often… and wake up later.

Agency:

An agency atmosphere is going to be a lot livelier than if you were freelancing at your own home / office as you can talk, laugh & collaborate with people at the office. You also have outings with your work buddies such as lunch breaks, movies, day trips, sport games, etc.

Verdict:

This may be biased as I am in NYC and working for Carrot, but you’re definitely going to have more fun at an agency.

Final Words

Whether you are just about to graduate or are considering switching to freelance or agency life, ensure you know what your goals are, have done the appropriate research & have planned out how to get there.

If you’re going the freelance route, I’ve collected many freelancing resources over the past few years, so be sure to check them out. If you have any further questions, please let me know and I’ll happily answer them in the comments.

Your Opinion?

These opinions are based from my experiences only so I would love to hear what your opinions are re freelance / agency life? If you’ve worked in both, what do you prefer and why?

Car Vehicle Wrap Design Process & Tutorial

Earlier this year I had the pleasure of rebranding Luke Arms‘ photography businessOne Fine Day Photography and as part of the rebrand, came the job of designing his car.In this article I will guide you through how I designed a “custom car vehicle wrap” along with tips I learned along the way… but before I launch into that, I would like you to meet Caroline, Luke’s new company car.

© Photos copyright of One Fine Day Photography. Larger photos here.

Now that you have been introduced, let me begin…

1. Do The Research

Before you start any new project, you should get familiar with the process and subject matter and as this was my first time doing a car vehicle wrap, this was even more important.

As I couldn’t find much information on the web or have any idea where to begin, I asked my Twitter (follow me) followers if they had any tips or resources and that was a huge help, along with asking the print shop directly.

It was also handy to read the FAQ’s on these three sites: MotaGraphics,AdsOnWheels, SkinzWraps and the getting started section on CarWraps.net. Remember that your printer may have different requirements than these shops so it’s best to ask your printer for their special requirements.

2. Buy / Create The Outlines

The first step of the process is to create the outlines for the car to scale, as this is what you will need to provide to the printers.

I asked my Twitter followers if they had the outline for Luke’s Toyota Carolla 2009 Hatchback though this was to no avail (though 4 people did send the 2003 version) so this meant I had to create the outlines myself.

Before you go about creating the outlines yourself, check to see if these places stock your particular car.

Places to find car vehicle outlines:

• 6000 Free Car Outlines
• The Bad Wrap
• Car & Truck Pro Vehicle Outlines 2009
• Digital Auto (send them an email)

If you can not find the vehicle wrap for your particular car model you will have to create the outlines yourself and to scale.

Below you can see how Kyle Anthony explained the process to me.

Ok, basically, when I layout a vehicle I’m doing a wrap on, if the vehicle isn’t already in one of my templates from a collection of vehicle templates from a company called The Bad Wrap, I’ll take a good side profile photograph of the vehicle and bring it into Photoshop.

Below you can see the original side photos of Luke’s 2009 Carolla that he took himself.

Kyle continues:

Once you’ve taken the photos, here are the steps to laying it out so you can design at a reasonable pace with such a large file. This is for car wrap designs that are in raster format as apposed to vector.

1. Measure the distance of anything you can use as a reference point for scaling on the vehicle, this could be the distance of a door handle, door window, wheel, anything that you can use as a measurement.

2. With the side photograph of the vehicle in Photoshop, and all of your measuring tools set to inches, (also make sure your info palette is up F8) measure with the ruler tool, the distance of whatever you measured in the 1st step in one tenth scale. Do this by scaling the image size of the photograph down to make it match up. Not the canvas size.

3. So if you measured the wide of a door handle as lets say 7 inches wide, your info palette with the ruler tool active should measure the door handle to be .7inches wide.

4. Once you get this done, change the ppi of the document to 720ppi. When designing a wrap, a popular way to design at an appropriate scale without slowing down your machine is at 1/10th scale. Once the wrap is done and the design is ready to be set to print, flatten the document, and save it as a non compressed tiff. When you send it to print, or “rip” it, make sure to print it at 1000x scale.

5. Once you rip it at the 1000x scale, the wrap will print at 72dpi, the minimal acceptable resolution for printing a wrap so that you get acceptable results, and acceptable performance when designing and printing it. This also cuts down on the ripping time, or the time it takes from when you hit “print” and from the time it actually starts printing. On very large jobs, I’ve had ripping time take excess of 4 hours.

6. That’s pretty much it, the same process can be used for all sides of the vehicle, just make sure you work off of good square photographs of the vehicle, and if you have any questions at all, email me!

If you are designing in vector format, you will not have to worry about the DPI, but the outlines should still be to scale.

Below you can see the outlines of the 2009 Carolla Hatchback to scale.

Below you can see the comparisons of the car to the outlined version.

Below you can see the aerial view of the car with the red rectangles showing suggested print areas of the car. This was for my guide only and did not reflect the final print.

3. Gather Inspiration

As with any project, it’s a good idea to know what is out there first before you begin. I’ve found a few car wrap galleries to be of assistance:

Car / truck vehicle wrap inspiration:

• Car Wrap Gallery
• Vinyl Vehicle Wrap Gallery
• SkinzWraps
• AltaPac Car Wrap Gallery (the print shop we used)

4. Create The Design

It’s probably a wise idea to sketch out some ideas before you jump straight onto the computer. Print out a few thumbnailed copies of the outlined car and start working on your designs.

After you have some rough ideas, you can go into Illustrator and draft up your proposed designs on the car. Personally I found working on the photos a bit easier than the outlined versions of the car. I also set the photo opacity at 50% so I could see the car and colour at the same time.

Below you can see the mockup with the photos set at 50% opacity.

Below you can see the mockup set at 100% opacity.

5. Recreate To Scale

After you have finished with the photo mockup, you should create it to scale on your outlined version and send it to the print shop. This step may or may not be necessary depending on your print store.

The print shop will take it from here and create the file ready for print.

6. Prepare For Print

After giving the mockup files to the printer, they create the design into a 2D format, ready for print. Below you can see what a similar project for a Ute looked like, just before going to print. The green lines are the separate sections that got stretched or wrapped around the Ute. Below this you can see the final result.

Graphics below created by Matt from Altapac.

Caroline had a similar process and after the project was complete I asked Matt if he could explain exactly how he went about doing the wrap for Caroline. Matt kindly obliged and below you can find his tips and explanation.

Here are the file I used to print and the files I used to set the files up ready for print. [Matt attached several PDFs]

I can’t say how I did it, is the way it is done through-out the industry (not really sure how they do it elsewhere) but I have found this method the best for myself and for our applicator. I will explain a few things just here and some of the things we normally do in case you need to do a design for next time.

Above you can see how each section of the car was applied, to scale.

Matt continues…

Firstly as you will be able to see that we had to include the rear bumper bar into each side section print [1]. This is because you had a gradient coming out from the rear wheel going over the rear bar and up and around the rear quarter panel. As you can see it is able to be done but we had to run a center join line in the rear bar to accommodate for this effect [2]. We normally print the rear bar as one piece so there is no need for a join line as we trim it off where the bumper bar meets the body. Because of the gradient effect we could not do this as it would have been impossible to match the gradient sections up at the wheel and where the body meets the rear bar because of stretching of the material and the like. We then had to cut the slogan in vinyl lettering which is no big deal but if we could have printed the rear bar in one section, we would have most likely included the slogan in the print to avoid applying it later.

The gradient sections [4] that were in the design I could not oversize properly as they were cropped images so I reproduced them myself so I could over size them. We have to oversize the print so it can wrap under sections and not fall short in parts as the many curves in cars can bring you unstuck and can cause headaches in the application process. I know firsthand from my mistakes thinking that I over sized enough but when it came to but it on the car it has just made it with some stretching. Like the piece I printed up for the rear tail gate of the corolla. I thought I gave them heaps to play with only to find out it only just fitted with some more stretching. Whoops.

You will notice this in the files I have sent you where and how much I over sized the print [See how far the print goes over the edge of the car & wheels, in particular the bottom edge]

Another point to look out for in parts of the car that are difficult to wrap. Bellow the doors and complex cut outs and deep recesses in front bumper bars. They can be done but possibly not and may require the design being cut up into a few pieces. In the instance of your design I tried to keep it much to your specifications as possible. This meant laying part of the design over the door handles. It’s not a big problem in cars that have flush fitting door handles but with the corolla and many new cars the door handles protrude out meaning there is a bit of conforming to do around and on the door handle with the sticker and not to mention the wear and tear that comes from grabbing the door handle all the time. If possible I try not to run the design over the door handles or place parts of the writing around the handles.

Hope that gave you an insight into how the car wrap was applied.

7. Apply The Graphics

After printing, the print shop will literally wrap the 2D graphics around the car, section by section. For the One Fine Day Photography car, it was split into 6 separate wraps; one for each side, two for the bumper, one for the tailgate and one for the top of the car. The text and the logo on the front of the car were not wrapped but were stuck on like stickers.

8. Admire

As when any work comes back from print, you just have to admire it… but sadly, I am yet to meet Caroline or Luke for that matter though I hope to do so very soon – they only live one suburb away after all.

I should also take this time to send my congratulations to Luke & Michelle (Luke’s wife) for their newly first born son, Josiah!

A Cohesive Brand

You can see how the whole brand works together – car, business card, website, twitter profile, etc.

Below is Luke’s Twitter profile, designed by Luke himself. A nice job I’ll say!

Testimonial

Below you can read the testimonial Luke gave after completing his logo design.

I hired Jacob to design a new logo for One Fine Day Photography. It was my first time working with a professional designer, and I couldn’t have been happier. From beginning to end, it was clear that he wanted to deliver a logo that would achieve my aims for it while providing a tangible connection with my current branding, encapsulating the core values of my business and designing a piece of art that we could both be proud of.

None of those things can be rushed, and although I was impressed with Jacob’s turnaround, I had no doubt that he was extremely thorough in researching my business and market, experimenting with a variety of designs, and preparing his concepts for my feedback. I wasn’t easy to please when it came to finding a design I loved, but Jacob was exceptionally accommodating with all of my requests (including the silly ones) and within a few days we had arrived at a design I could accept without hesitation.

Jacob might only be in his early twenties, but his giftedness as a designer and his command of doing business in the 21st century are clearly evident in the international following he has gained within the design community. This speaks volumes of the quality of his work and the passion he has for it. I cannot recommend him highly enough.

A Final Word

I would like to close with this quote from Jennifer Sims found in Issue 165 of Computer Arts magazine.

Take on intimidating projects – fall into holes and you’ll learn more when you’re forced to claw your way out.

When I first took on this project, I had never done a car wrap design before, though after putting my claws into it, I really did learn a lot! So yeah, take on intimidating projects – the worst you could do is improve.

What do you think of the final car wrap design? Have you ever worked on something similar? Have any questions or tips to add?

Designers, why do you do what you do?

This is a timely guest article by Jennifer Moline of PsPrint. – Jacob CassThe depressing economy we’re in has me very interested in careers – mainly, why we choose to do what we do. A creative career is often seen as a dream job – one that allows you to get paid for doing what you love. I’ve often wondered, however, if a creative profession is worth the stress.

I believe people become graphic designers for the following reasons:

1. While growing up they were always doodling on a notepad, eventually graduating to doodling on the computer.
2. They’ve always been those ‘techie’ types – the ones who would experiment with new programs, codes, hacks and software – teaching themselves how to build computers and make cool stuff.
3. They knew that in this technological era, a career involving computers was a smart route to take.
4. They’re critics about advertising and think they can do better.
5. While signing up for college classes, they noticed their crush was registering for an Intro to Graphic Design course.

So whatever the reason, now graphic designers are freelancing or working in-house at agencies, corporations, publishing houses and more. They create logos, lay outwebsites, design magazines, etc. But as any creative professional knows, graphic design isn’t necessarily glamorous like “Mad Men,” with Bloody Marys on hand at every meeting.

Designers have their own set of blockades:

1. They have to answer to clients, who don’t always have the best taste or tact. (Tips on how to deal with that here.)
2. They face constant deadlines, often overlapping ones.
3. They inherit more work as downsizing continues.
4. They’re expected to come up with original ideas every single day.

Is it any wonder people burn out? So why do we continue on this path? The work isn’t always creative. Sure, designing a magazine cover or an ad can be a fun and challenging project, but what about the interior of a newspaper or book – those columns and rows of text?

Here is why I think creative professionals – including designers, journalists, photographers, etc. – stick with it:

1. We’re deadline-oriented and work best under pressure.
2. Once an assignment is turned in, that’s usually the end of it – no revisiting.
3. We’re egotistical and enjoy seeing our bylines and credits.
4. There is nothing much more satisfying than finishing up a job we’re particularly proud of and to see it in print or online. Our success is tangible.
5. We have a passion for good design.

What do you think – if you knew then what you do now, would you still choose your current career? Why do you do what you do? How did you get into this industry?

Design Agency Job Hunting Tips

“It’s not a pink slip, it’s a blank page.”This is the tag line of ‘Lemonade‘, a short film that I saw earlier this year about 16 advertising professionals who lost their jobs after the 2008 recession and then ‘found their calling’. Although I didn’t technically get a pink slip, I certainly got a blank page after parting ways with my previous employer.

I was left with 2 weeks to find a new job before being booted back to Australia due to Visa restrictions. I considered my options very carefully and finally decided to stay in NYC as my time was not done here, plus I had a girlfriend here. I set my goal; I had to find a job within 2 weeks.

Below I’ve outlined what I did for the first two weeks and some job hunting tips I learned along the way.

First week without a job (July 13 – July 19)

• Researched my Visa options so I could stay in the USA. Saw an immigration attorney.
• Blogged, Tweeted and Facebooked about my situation and then replied to the hundreds of messages of support. HUGE, HUGE thank you! Seriously.
• Wrote & designed my CV. Updated my LinkedIn profile.
• Put together an up-to-date private portfolio. I unfortunately can’t show this publicly due to NDAs.
• Researched agencies that I would like to work for.
• Prowled job boards for open positions.
• Seriously stressed out.

Second week without a job (July 19 – 23)

• Wrote cover letters, emailed my CV & portfolio to specific agencies.
• Continued researching, prowling job boards & agencies.
• Worked on my personal freelance projects.
• Attended 5 interviews for 3 separate companies.
• Looked for a new apartment to move into with my girlfriend. (Coincidentally, my lease was also up the same time I lost my job.)

Although this doesn’t look like much when listed in dot points, anyone who has tried looking for a job, knows it is a full time job. Add that in with looking for a new apartment and needless to say, things got pretty hectic. Though this craziness was not necessarily a bad thing, as I seriously learned a lot during this time, stuff I didn’t know when I wrote these articles:

• How To Get Your First Job
• How To Get A Job In Social Media
• How and Where To Get Paid Freelance Work As A Student
• A First Hand Guide On How To Start Freelancing

Anyway, these are some of the new things I’ve learned in the past few weeks…

Things I’ve Learned

Your job is never secure

Just a few weeks ago, I wrote an article comparing freelance life vs agency life and in it I stated that one of the benefits of agency life was the steady income, however, what I failed to mention was the false sense of security that you get by having that job. You can lose your job at any time. This time around I was lucky enough to have my freelance work & savings to fall back on, but yeah be prepared & have back up.

Always keep your CV + portfolio up to date

I hadn’t updated my CV for a number of years which left me scrambling at the last minute to put everything together. I wish I had kept my CV and LinkedIn profile up-to-date as it would have saved me a few valuable days. Same goes with my private portfolio. I also need to listen to my own advice and refresh my public portfolio too.

Designers with digital-know-how are in more demand

Agencies receive hundreds of CV’s and portfolios a week. Many of them from extremely talented designers with beautiful, amazing portfolios. Although amazing, many of them lack knowledge in the areas of digital and interactive design. By this, I mean the knowledge of web design, mobile design and how people interactive with them using different platforms and technologies.

If you know to create custom websites from scratch, know how to work from wire frames, know the principles of user experience, can develop unique brand strategies and a have sound knowledge of existing & emerging web / mobile technologies, then you’re definitely going to be more employable than a designer with a pretty portfolio. Just ask any Creative Director.

Know what job position you are looking for

I had no idea what type of ‘graphic designer’ I was… seriously. ‘Graphic designer’ is such a vague term and agencies use a whole different vocabulary than what freelancers would be used to, and even then, there is no standard term for each position. Was I an interactive designer, a visual designer, a senior designer, a web designer, a creative director, a social media strategist? I soon found out that I was all of these things, it just depended on the agency.

Do the research to find out what each job title means within each company and even if you don’t think you have all listed qualifications, still apply… just make sure it’s for the right position.

Contact agencies without open positions

Agencies who have job vacancies listed on their website literally get hundreds of applicants. This is time consuming for them to go through and more often than not, you won’t hear back from them for at least a few weeks, if at all. On a three week deadline this isn’t ideal. A lot of the places I got interviews & call backs were actually from places that weren’t advertising.

Jobs are plentiful but so are candidates.

There are many job boards out there, however there are also many candidates who apply for these jobs and like stated above, this makes the hiring process time consuming. Instead, I would recommend to find the agencies you would like to work for and then aim your target at them. It worked better for me anyway.

Contact HR Directors directly

Rather than applying to the career pages of agency websites I also found that if you contacted the Creative Recruiter / HR Director of agencies, they would be more likely to respond. Even more so if you knew someone in the company or knew a friend that knew someone in the company. Bridging that connection between 1st, 2nd or 3rd tier relationships is a huge help and the best way to do that is via looking up company profiles on LinkedIn or by asking your already established network.

Update: I also want to take this time to send a HUGE thank you out to the talented designer & developer Jerlyn Thomas for her continued efforts in supporting a fellow unemployed designer, even while on the search herself!

A Wonderful New Job + Apartment

With all this said, I am pleased to announce that I did find a job after 2 weeks and am now employed at The Wonder Factory as a permanent freelance designer, which may lead to a full time position if everything works out. At TWF I am continuing to work with Fortune 100 brands, namely brands under Time Inc. (Sports Illustrated, National Geographic, etc.) Most of the work will be visual design, UX & strategy for the web, iPad and mobile platforms. Also, be sure to check out TWF’s wonderful office space, shown above.

On a similar note, I also just signed a lease for a new apartment in Midtown, NYC where I will be moving in with my girlfriend of 2 months. A crazy move, but why not?

A new chapter begins.