Maybe you’re ready to leave your 9-to-5 and start your own freelance graphic design career. Your first stop needs to be setting up your website, so your new clients will be able to see your amazing portfolio, right?!

 

Oh, you’re saying you need clients to have portfolio projects to put in your portfolio? And you need the portfolio projects to find those clients?! Yikes — you’ve hit The Portfolio Catch-22!

 

Here’s the funny thing, though — you are about to launch your new solopreneur adventure and you’ve hit your first problem. Guess what?? You’re officially in business, where “problems” are daily challenges put in your path to train you to leap higher and further!

 

You’ll be more creative than you’ve ever been before. And it will start here, today, right now — with your Portfolio Catch-22.

 

 

There’s a solution. A little secret we’re going to let you in on — so you can stop scrolling through graphic design blogs searching for your answer: Graphic designers (and other creatives) have full permission to create projects from scratch — even if there isn’t a client!

 

Imagine that level of freedom! You’re a graphic design freelancer, you are your own boss, you set your hours, and you work with the great clients you want to — and you practice your trade by creating dynamic, alluring passion projects for your best-of-best portfolio!

Doesn’t that sound great!? It’s as easy as that. You’re going to start your business by creating portfolio pieces that show your future clients they can have confidence and enthusiasm based on your professionalism and creativity!

 

How do we know this? Because we quit our 9-to-5 and we didn’t have any clients at the beginning of our freelancing career either! We created passion pieces and displayed them on our brand-new website.

 

And we got clients. We learned lots. We improved and updated our portfolio, again and again… and now, our floating graphic design agency is working with dream clients at a starting package price of $12K!

 

We did it, and you can, too! We even have a free workshop to help you uplevel your design portfolio so you can attract $12k branding, graphic, and web design clients — snag your spot here:

What Is a Portfolio and Why Is It Important?

Just so we don’t lose anyone in our enthusiasm and run ahead, let’s back up and review the basics.

 

A portfolio is how every creative demonstrates their capabilities to prospective clients. It’s your opportunity to shine, to show off! By mastering a couple of simple tricks for driving traffic towards your website, you’ll have a passive marketing campaign securing early interest and getting you a steady stream of booked jobs.

 

Your portfolio can feature work you’ve done before, or it can feature pieces you created to demonstrate your abilities. Your next client isn’t going to focus on whether the companies featured in your portfolio pieces are real!

 

Your freelance graphic design clients are going to be attracted to your genuine style, your creative ability, your professionalism, and the aura of finger-on-the-pulse activity you’re presenting.

 

Here’s what your portfolio can’t be:

• Cluttered
• Disorganized
• Partial pieces
• Student projects
• Notes and other bits of inspired creativity
• Too many projects

 

Here’s what your portfolio must show:

• Capability
• Creativity
• Stunning designs
• Knowledge of your craft
• Examples of the services and pieces you deliver
• Some interesting information about your process
• 4 – 7 complete projects for unique brands/clients

The perfect number of portfolio pieces for your website, in our opinion, is six. Aim for six. Here’s where you can find them:

1. You have past client work that could be improved/expanded and you work it through to completion
2. You network a passion project for a cause in your community (maybe for a charity or a special event) and create a package for them for free
3. You look at some businesses in your area who could use an update and use their business model as a framework for creating a conceptual rebranding (make sure the company isn’t identifiable unless you have their permission!)
4. You think about what type of industry and client you’d love to work with and create a couple of sample projects based on those parameters
5. Of course, if you have it, you can use past client work

 

Can you see that finding 6 portfolio pieces, even if you’re just learning how to become a freelance graphic designer, is going to be easier than you thought? Can you also see that creating new projects that are conceptual or passion projects isn’t a problem? Let your creativity lead the way!

 

 

Where Should Your Design Portfolio Live?

This important point bears repeating. Your portfolio will be the backbone of your new freelance business’s website.

 

Every bit of interest you drum up, whether through cold calling, warm leads, referrals, networking events, or passing out your business cards or flyers — it will all point towards your website.

 

It’s where you have your very best artwork displayed proudly. It tells anyone stopping by about your level of professionalism, what services you offer, and what amazing design skills you clearly have! Seeing is believing, after all!

 

It isn’t enough to have a profile on another platform, like Behance for example. You need to have your own website. If you don’t know how to design and code for a website, or if you hate the feel of stock websites from hosting platforms, you may need to invest a bit of money in your freelancing launch and get a great website going.

 

This will be money well spent. In fact, without a good-quality website, you just aren’t going to be able to attract the clients you want to work with.

If you’re just starting out in the world of freelancing, we have a wonderful program that you might want to consider investing in. Like a great website, this is a one-time investment that will ensure you have a great return on your time, money, and energy.

 

Our 12 week Profitable Designer Program is designed specifically to help brand, web, and graphic designers start their freelance businesses, get the nuts and bolts of things like their website in place, and sign $15k+ freelance design clients. Check out the Profitable Designer Program here!

 

Over time, you’re going to learn how to pitch your services to clients who need what you are offering. You may start out on freelancer platforms, but the better clients who pay more and are loyal to you won’t likely be there.

 

Part of what you’re going to become an expert at is finding where your ideal clients hang out online. Once you know that, you can network and hang out in the same places. You’ll be getting your name and your website in front of them, so they can check out your great work and hire you for their next project!

 

Passion Projects & Conceptual Brands

The beauty of going out on your own is that you get to write the rules. One thing that we hear a lot, when we talk about how new graphic and brand designers can create projects from scratch, just for their portfolio, is…. “Is that legal?”

 

It sure is! If necessity is the motherhood of invention and creativity is your thing… then it stands to reason that this is your time to get going! Get those creative juices flowing and produce some of your best work.

 

Take a bit of time, before you begin. Think about where you want your freelance career to go. What kinds of projects have you loved doing in the past? What kind have you dreamed of being able to do? Is there a kind of professional or business that you work really well with? Who are they? What do they do?

 

Are you going to target businesses? That would be B2B (business-to-business sales). Or maybe you want to provide services to individuals (this is more unusual for graphic designers, but if you think of real estate professionals, commissioned artists, or other individualistic careers, their target clients will be individuals, not necessarily businesses).

If you’re going to create a few projects from scratch, it’s wise to focus on the types of clients and industries you want to be around. If you want to attract law firms, then have a couple of conceptual legal-oriented pieces in your portfolio.

 

If you want to work in the fashion industry, focus your conceptual pieces there. If you want to help retailers sell their online products, make sure your portfolio’s content communicates that future reality.

 

And, while you’re thinking this through. Is there a way you can help your community and build a portfolio at the same time? Are you passionate about animals? Or housing? Or pre-K education?

 

 

Approach a non-profit organization in your community and see if they would appreciate some branding and design work. You can explain that you’re offering the work for free, in exchange for being able to feature their name and the story of the creation process on your website.

 

If this seems like a lot of work you’re doing for free without any money rolling in, don’t worry. It’s just at the beginning. This is your new business, and you’ll always have control about your pricing and what you decide to do for less than your going rates.

 

In general, we recommend not undervaluing your work by working for reduced fees or for free, but when you’re thinking about portfolio pieces, that’s the time to be a bit more creative and to recognize that there might be a great win-win in the experience, for you and a cause you care about.

5 Steps to Creating a Graphic Design Portfolio Piece

Here’s a quick breakdown of how to create your portfolio pieces:

 

1. Think of each piece as a “case study” & lay out the format this way for each one, so potential clients know the services you provide in a descriptive flow they can understand. Each project is one portfolio piece, but it has scrolling content that is in logical order and looking eye-catching amazing!

 

2. Walk your website reader through the project process. Don’t just show a logo as if it was flat on a piece of paper. Jazz it up. Talk about the concept, how you developed it, then show the final product in the most flattering way possible. Go from sketches to color selections, to fonts, to b&w version, to dynamic 3D mock-ups.

 

3. Keep it simple. Six projects, logical presentation, unique looks but an agency “feeling” to it all. Reduce clutter and give the viewer’s artistic-appreciation places to bloom.

 

 

4. Don’t include features you don’t normally offer to clients. If you don’t plan to focus your business on book covers, don’t show a portfolio piece with a book cover design project!

 

5. It’s a good idea to provide short descriptions of your process through each project. Don’t overwhelm potential clients with too many words or too much detail, but talk about project goals, sketches, and notes leading to drafts and designs. Explaining what you do will help clients understand the professional benefits they receive from hiring a specialist. This part will help your portfolio stand out and will differentiate you from the crowd of designers — especially in the target industry your pieces will focus on!

 

 

A Word About Targeting

We’re really passionate about knowing who our ideal client is. We focus on selling our services to our ideal client and their industry. That doesn’t mean we don’t sell to other types of clients and businesses — for sure, we do! (And we get lots of referrals, so we have a wide variety of clients we’ve worked with.)

 

But our core focus, particularly for our marketing, advertising, and networking is with our ideal client and their core industry. For us, that’s skincare products and retail sales. We picked this niche because it’s where we love to work.

 

We figured out a generalize profile for our “quintessential client” and gave her a personality and description. We researched a bit about what she does and where she works and lives.

 

 

Most importantly, we determined where she hangs out online. This is critical to all of our advertising and marketing decision, particularly for paid ads (like Google and Facebook) and for our social media presence.

 

Guess where we hang out a lot, because our ideal client does, too? LinkedIn! Yep, we’re all over LinkedIn because that’s where our client is. We don’t need to use Behance or Upwork, because we have a growing reputation as a quality graphic design studio for businesses in our target industry.

 

Focusing your efforts like this is called “niching down.” It is essential to do. You aren’t doing your business growth any favors if you refuse to niche your design business right from the beginning.

 

 

It took us a couple of years to figure this out, but when we did, our sales and our reputation grew dramatically. Don’t wait, like we did. Niche down from the beginning and watch your growth outstrip your competition, just because you did.

 

Your clients are experts in their industry. They want someone who understands them and their unique environment. Nobody, really, wants to hire a “generalist.” They want specialists. So, be that specialist.

 

Focus on who you want to work with and enjoy the others that arrive as part of networked connections and referrals. We’re certain that the backbone of your growing design clientele, however, will be exactly the type of industry and ideal customer you choose to focus on.

 

You know how to start your freelance design work. You have the roadmap. All you need to do is get your portfolio pieces ready.

 

How long would you expect to work on a client’s project, start to finish? You’ll be a little faster working with a “conceptual client” instead of a real one, but plan it out like a real project. Decide when you’ll have the proofs ready and get to work!

 

Then snag your free spot in our workshop to help you uplevel your portfolio and present your conceptual projects so $12k clients want to hire you:

 

 

And, at the same time, figure out how you’re going to get your website live and how you’re going to present your projects in a logical flow (remember those process notes and stories we said help to set you apart).

 

Your website is going to start attracting new paying clients. In the future, you can always update the projects you feature and add some of the great client work you’ll have done by then.

 

But, for the next phase of your decision to start your own freelance business, you’re going to have your professional freelance graphic designer portfolio looking great and attracting new customers!