What do you do if you’re a graphic designer, but have not yet been hired by a firm or studio? Until art becomes your official job – the kind you need to file on your taxes – you’ll most likely have to take on a ‘regular’ job while doing freelance work on the side in order to build up your portfolio. But now and again, it’s difficult to find legitimate jobs in graphic design on a freelance basis. Most people have heard of Craigslist and art jobs can be found there, but the downside is only about a quarter of them are genuine…the rest are posted by people who frequently aren’t willing to pay for services, even if they say they will. I’ll discuss how to ensure a good deal as far as freelancing later on.
But first, I’d like to just name off a few sites where you can find graphic design jobs, most of which can be done right from home. These aren’t listed in any particular order.
- SimplyHired.com is a pretty good choice not just for graphic designer jobs, but for anyone seeking employment. It’s fairly easy to navigate, but the downside to this place is it’s only available to job seekers in the States.
- ODesk is a site where prospective employees can bid on jobs posted by buyers. You can even have job alerts sent to your email daily in fields of specified expertise. ODesk promises compensation for hourly work, but several buyers ask for significant amounts of work and offer a meager payment (build a website and corporate identity for five bucks? Don’t think so).
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Krop. Now, I have not had much personal experience using this place, but I went and checked it out, and it seems pretty simple as far as navigation and listings. This place seems more geared toward actual career positions rather than freelance work.
- Craigslist. The fallback source for freelance graphic design jobs. Really, don’t go here unless you’re desperate or don’t mind not being paid. There’s no guarantee you’ll be compensated here and no one will care if you get bamboozled. I have had personal experience with Craigslist and I got swindled a lot more than I got paid before I knew how to prevent theft.
Here’s a great way to determine if your client is honest or a jerk: demand a fraction of the total payment up-front; consider it insurance for your work. If they acknowledge this arrangement and make the payment, then they trust you and I’d say it’s safe to trust them. But if they snub you, don’t respond, or insist that you nix the partial payment just for them, don’t bother communicating any further. Odds are they were banking on you being stupid and doing the work first and getting paid later, only they’d coincidentally “forget” to pay up once they had the work in their hands (or pixels…whatever). If you want to be really serious, write up a contract and have the client sign it; a contract is a legally binding document and if they go against what they consented to in writing, they could get into some serious trouble.
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