Tag Archives: profile

3 personality traits every freelancer should demonstrate

Personality traits for freelancers

Written by Alvina Lopez

Without question, maintaining a freelance career requires a specific type of person and quality compared to traditional nine to five job at a steady location. For many, freelancing may not fit. With a freelance career, individuals tackle new challenges with every job, a variety of skill sets are utilized for each gig, and a level of self-reliance and self-motivation is necessary to truly succeed and prosper as a freelance professional. While some of this is true no doubt within a traditional career, there is no arguing that freelancing is a different type of game in the professional world. Individuals who seek a thriving career in a freelance atmosphere will need to exhibit certain characteristics and interests for their professional lives that will set them apart from the traditional careerist. These three traits are attributes that every freelancer should have and know how to properly market to their potential employers. Continue reading →

Freelance Folios for August

We are pleased to be starting our new regular Freelance Folios feature today, and we have three freelancers’ portfolios to show you for this month.

Peter Rose

peter-rose
Peter is a creative who specialises in advertising and brand creation campaigns as an independent consultant. His career has included success as a Creative Director, both in the UK and internationally. His work has won awards including D&AD, Cannes Lions, The Clios, One Show New York and many others.

Emma Hackney

emma-hackney
Emma is an artworker and designer in the UK who started her career as a typesetter in a publishing house, but then moved on to artwork and design. With almost 9 years experience in the industry now she has worked on everything from logo designs to 60 page publications.

Donna Vitan

donna-vitan
Donna is a web designer from Canada who’s working in Australia for the year. She describes herself as “a graphic and web designer with a love for creative solutions, a mind for clean code and web standards compliance, and expertise in developing attractive, accessible and kick-ass websites”. Her website was built using WordPress with her own custom designed theme, using Photoshop, Notepad++ and her own photos.



Many thanks to Peter, Emma and Donna for sending in their portfolio details.

Want to be featured?

If you are a freelancer in the creative industry you can send us your portfolio details to be featured. Please see our Freelance Folios page for more details.


New freelance portfolios feature

Soon we will be starting a new feature called Freelance Folios. Essentially the idea is to feature the best online portfolios of freelancers from around the world – serving as both promotion for the freelancer and as inspiration for our readers.

So if you think your portfolio should be featured, let us know. To give you an idea what we are looking for and how to submit your portfolio for consideration, here are some notes:

How to submit your portfolio

  • Send us a url link to your personal website portfolio or your hosted portfolio (e.g Behance) via our Contact page.
  • Tell us a little about yourself, where you are and what you do.
  • If you built the website yourself, tell us how and the tools you used.
  • A small photo of yourself would also be good, but is optional.
  • Make sure your portfolio is relevant to our readers – we mainly focus on freelancers who work for design, digital and advertising agencies around the world but are also willing to consider other creative freelancers’ portfolios.
  • We will not rule anyone out, but the aim of the feature is to show top quality portfolios.
  • Note that while we make every effort to reply to everyone, if we receive lots of submissions it may not be possible.

That’s it! So either send us your portfolio details, or sit tight and wait for the show to start.

Not a creative freelancer? You can still promote yourself here through our feature called Freelance Five, which is a series of quick freelance interviews.

Freelance Five: Johanna Sapoznik

This is our third interview for the Freelance Five series – our collection of quick interviews with freelancers from around the world.

Today we have Johanna Sapoznik from New York.

jsapoznik

Johanna Sapoznik

I am a Freelance Graphic and Wed Designer and World Nomad. I was born in Buenos Aires, Argentina, capital of Tango and Maradona. I am a Graphic Design and General Arts Graduate with 6 years of experience on the field.
My Website: www.jsapoznik.com
Twitter: @jsapoznik
Facebook: Fan Page

1. What area of the creative industry do you work in?

My specialty is web design, when I started working on the design industry websites where lacking design, so I saw a great opportunity there. Now it continues to be the bulk of the work I receive, but I really enjoy doing other things too. I prefer to take on clients who will allow me to design and develop their whole Branding. My services include SEO and user friendly website design, Branding, Print, Image Retouching, Packaging, Illustration and Character Design.

2. When and why did you become a freelancer?

In October 2008, after finishing the contract with a big online company I felt it was time to devote my full-time energies to position myself as a freelancer. I worked in the corporate world for a while before branching out on my own. I had to learn by trial and error to make my business work. But I am out there making it happen; proving that when you persevere on your goals you will achieve them.

3. What do you enjoy most about freelancing?

Freelancing gives me the opportunity to travel around the world and work at the same time. All I need is my 17″ MacBook Pro, wacom tablet and Internet connection.

4. What do you think is the key to success as a freelancer?

Networking is definitely a key in every business. Also is giving 110% in every work and creating a good relationship with your clients. Another key is to keep in mind that you will not be getting a paycheck every month, so you need to be really organized with your expenses.

5. Do you have any advice for new freelancers?

Most people dream about having their own business, and that dream for most designers is to be firmly established as freelancers. Being your own boss is a difficult task and it requires a lot of discipline. I learned from my mistakes, I keep my work area uncluttered; I create to-do lists for every task according to priorities breaking large jobs into smaller, more manageable tasks. I focus my energy into accomplishing each goal one step at a time before moving onto the next.


Many thanks to Johanna for taking the time to answer our questions.

Want to be interviewed?

If you are a freelancer in the creative industry and want to send us your answers to these questions, you can. Please include a little bit of background information about you, a small photo or avatar (optional but recommended) and one or two links. We will publish the answers regularly but if we have too many we will aim for the most interesting ones – so make them good!


Freelance Five: Amber Weinberg

This is our second interview for the Freelance Five series – our collection of quick interviews with freelancers from around the world.

Today we have Amber Weinberg from Nashville, Tennessee.

Amber Weinberg

Amber Weinberg

I’m 23.9 years old and a lover of books. I’ve been building websites since the 6th grade, where I built a bunch of anime fan sites. I went to college for Graphic Design, but I hate designing for other people so I actually don’t offer those services anymore. I’ve always been more of a coding geek anyways. I’ve been freelancing on and off for 5 years now – my secretary is a Bichon Frise and my inspiration music is Punk Rock, mainly My Chemical Romance and The Used.
www.amberweinberg.com (Portfolio + Blog)
www.twitter.com/amberweinberg

1. What area of the creative industry do you work in?

I’m a front-end developer. My speciality is providing validated and semantic HTML and CSS services, and recently I’ve also specialized in WordPress implementation. There are too many terrible developers out there, and high quality, semantic developers are in high demand right now. I base my business on offering super clean coding and a normal turnaround time of less than a week. My prices aren’t the cheapest, nor the most expensive, so I’ve been able to find plenty of great clients.

2. When and why did you become a freelancer?

I first started freelancing in college, and most of the time I’ve freelanced on the side. I officially became a permanent freelancer almost 3 months ago. I have no plans on going back to a full-time job. Work was slow at first, but has been super busy ever since. After a month or so, I realized I hated what I was doing : designing for clients. I decided to niche my business into front-end development, which means my client base had to change as well. I’ve been freelancing for agencies ever since. I love that I don’t really have to “sell” my services, since agencies can tell quickly if my work is good or not. I also love the fact I don’t have to worry about non-paying clients or competing against a million other designers or developers.

3. What do you enjoy most about freelancing?

Freedom. I can wake up at 8 am or 11am. I can take as long of a lunch as I want. I get to work on the kind of computer I want, I can choose the clients I want and the work I want to do. Of course, this comes with bigger responsibilities. I can’t take super long breaks and never work; otherwise I can’t pay the bills. It’s on my shoulders to find and provide the work, to bill correctly and to deliver.

4. What do you think is the key to success as a freelancer?

Persistence. I went almost a full month with no work and no money coming in. It’s tough, especially when you’re young and have student loans, college loans and a mortgage to pay. It takes a lot to get up every morning and stare at the computer, wondering what to do, when you have no work.

5. Do you have any advice for new freelancers?

Don’t believe in the “recession” excuse. In our industry, there’s ALWAYS work to be found. It may not fall into your lap and you may not get paid as much, but there’s always work to be found, and always agencies that are overloaded. Don’t waste your time on freelance bidding sites like GetAFreelancer. There’s too much competition and the rates are
outrageously low.


Many thanks to Amber for taking the time to answer our questions.

Want to be interviewed?

If you are a freelancer in the creative industry and want to send us your answers to these questions, you can. Please include a little bit of background information about you, a small photo or avatar (optional but recommended) and one or two links. We will publish the answers regularly but if we have too many we will aim for the most interesting ones – so make them good!