[J. Nielsen]

There are numerous folks out there working as freelancers, from all over the world and all have a different approach to their web presence. So numerous examples of web presence are out there.

Seek out profiles of freelancers on websites like UpWork.com, LinkedIn.com, and others. At the end of the day it is a personal decision on how you proceed. find what is best for your situation and go with it. Just understand that freelancing, from my perspective, is 85% hustle, 10% managing time and 5% meeting deadlines. Be prepared to write a lot of proposals that get ignored.

[J. Nielsen]

Upwork.com is a freelancing site that caters to the individual designer and provides various services, such as contract writing, escrow, third party arbitration, as well as various communication services.

There are pros and cons, but overall it is worthwhile site to work off of.

As far as setting yourself up as a business, it is always a good idea to separate your work life from your personal.

[J. Nielsen]

In Oregon, any project that exceeds $2000 requires a contract.

[J. Nielsen]

There is a lot of good information here.

I am on UpWork and have completed a few jobs since I signed on in March.

I have found that I am hustling for work far more than I am working, but that is the nature of freelancing. What Bob said about the competition and that clients are looking for Filet Mignon on a hamburger budget is absolutely true. But the upside is the ability to choose from a wide selection of projects and UpWork provides of a lot of financial logistics. It balances out.

My metric for billing is How much I have to make to clear my overhead per month (software licenses, state fees, taxes, etc.) I also take into account that UpWork cut’s 20% off the designers end and factor that into my hourly rate.

Do the math and figure out what is the absolute minimum amount that you can afford to do the work for, then add 10% – 20% on top of that as a buffer to cover you between jobs. Freelancing is feast and famine. you’ll find yourself with more work than you can handle one minute and none the next.

[J. Nielsen]

Paper App

[J. Nielsen]

ProCreate App

[J. Nielsen]

When My MacBook Pro fried its third logic card (after 11 years of fairly hard use) I replaced it with an 12.9″ IPad Pro and an older Mac Pro (tower). one of the cool features with Mac is the easy ability to pass documents between machines with AirDrop. So a sketch or photo that I drew over on site can be dropped onto desktop without a thumbstick or cable. Nice feature.

I have read about the Wacom vs the Tablet and I believe this is an apples vs oranges argument. I have a 21″ wacom cintiq attached to my tower and at 20+ pounds it is not portable. the resolution is decent, but not remotely as good as the IPad. Both have a purpose and both serve those purposes well.

As for apps, I run the following:

ProCreate – graphic arts app that works in layers, much like Photoshop, but has a much more hand drawn aesthetic.
Paper – a very simple sketching app that is great for doing napkin sketches with a client
Trace – a digital replacement for trace paper. good for rapid iterations

I typed this earlier and tried to attach photos, but it dumped the whole response. I’ll try to post a photo separately.

[J. Nielsen]

Thank you for that.

As it is, I am on that trajectory even if I did not set out to be. I am already semi-retired after a career in the military, so I have a separate revenue stream and I really do not need much. Honestly if I make enough to pay my software subscriptions, I am pretty happy.

You are correct, having a cash stream from doing CAD/3D for for an engineer does free me up to work with select clients doing the design work I enjoy as well as the work on my own home. Currently I am doing a design/build on a raingarden/swale in my own yard that also has to keep the neighbors running bamboo out. Having some built projects in my portfolio is a priority for me. I also have two clients with rather whimsical tastes. The work they have me doing is fun, but not really portfolio material, which is fine too since they are paying.

Thank you. Your responses is a good read and there is a lot of good advice there. not just for me, but for anyone else in the position of trying to find their niche in the field.

[J. Nielsen]

Andrew,

Thanks for the advice. I reached out and got connected to a local civil/structural engineer who needs someone that can run CAD as well as work in 3D (Rhino3D/Sketchup). It is interesting work applying tools that both disciplines utilize in different manners.

[J. Nielsen]

To go with the flow, one has to know where the river is located.

Thanks.

[J. Nielsen]

Thank you for the thought out response. I am 120 miles from Portland and not really affected by what is going on with the unrest there, beyond the exodus of people that are leaving the city for the suburbs and semi-rural surrounding communities.

Wildfires, on the other hand are affecting me big time. As I type this, the AQI is in the 500s and it is not safe to go outdoors for any long periods of time. This will be a temporary measure as the fires will extinguish eventually, is the aftermath there will be a need to rebuild.

Currently I am staying occupied doing short term gigs on UpWork and PeoplePerHour, much of which is overseas work. I’d like to get involved with more local work, within my own time zone. I believe that the tempo is going to go from stagnant due to the quarantines to full throttle soon. My sense is that with whole communities destroyed that the local firms are about to get overwhelmed. I do not want to come off as an ambulance chaser, but it seems that this fire season has presented the opportunity. Six months of sitting on ones behind at home would make anyone jump at the chance.

I guess real question is how to navigate the way forward. How does one even broach that subject with city planners and managers that have just lost their tax base and know that the FEMA dollars are a limited and finite resource.

[J. Nielsen]

Most of the AutoCAD stuff I have been tasked with, line-weights and parameters are preset by the firm and I, as a designer, have no say in them. It does what it is told and is happy to do so. I believe you are correct that the quality of drawings is no longer a priority, especially when most renderings are done in Photoshop. I am not saying it is right, It just is.

Interestingly, in Europe I have been seeing a shift away from cookie-cutter Photoshop rendering back to more “Hand Drawn” media. Technology is catching up to being able to quickly produce digital media that was once only done by painstakingly hand.

[J. Nielsen]

Procreate or Morpholio for IPad for sketching and process work. (trace layers)
Sketchup for 3D mapping that can be drawn over later
Photoshop for Entourage and collaging
Illustrator for finalizing drawings, lettering and to produce vectors
InDesign or PowerPoint for product assembly
AutoCAD w/LandFX for CD Sets

I am liking the IPad. It allows for hand media, but directly to digital. It is also portable and takes pictures that can be sketched on while onsite with a client and later worked on in the studio.

[J. Nielsen]

Universities are offering career services to seniors and recent grads. I have been to a couple info sessions and one-on-one meetings and from I have seen it has been a bit of a mixed bag. It really depends on who you talk to and what they know.

On one hand, I did get some good information about freelancing and branding. But on the other , most of the job seeking and career advice was fairly general, and some of it was out of date.

If you are paying someone, be aware of snake-oil sellers and gimmicks. They are out there.

[J. Nielsen]

Robert, you might want to change out whatever you got on your hook. No one appears to be taking the bait.

JN

[Author]

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