One of the things you probably won’t be ready for when you make a step up to freelance is the thickness of the skin you have to develop. Often you will end up in the middle of a poo throwing competition and doing a swan impression through the mucky water (calm on top, kicking for life underneath). Couple with that the releasing your design into the wild or wild clients and having them judged; you quickly learn a more fluid approach to stress and criticism. It’s not just being freelance though, having a thicker skin can help in a lot of instances and so long as you don’t become a rhino learning to cope better helps keep you off the window ledge.

It’s raining poo and you’ve got no umbrella

In the end it’s about being true to yourself and honest with your clients. I’ve recently had a situation which meant I could either put a front on and get into deeper issues or I could be honest and talk through options with them. I know I am lucky to have the clients I have and this proved truer in their reactions to my recent situation - it may have been out of my hands but you should never ‘expect’ them to understand. It had to be done though and you have to be prepared to deal with such dilemmas, you can’t plan and you definitely can’t control everything. As was said to we so wisely this week ’shit happens and life is shit sometimes’.

Client relationships lego and the art of growing balls

Part of this is about building up a relationship with your client and the other part is about growing some things down below a woman shouldn’t have. As a designer it’s easy to be in our fuzzy happy world of slappy back smiles. We all love each other and link up friends like they are some web currency. Whilst this is nice, the cruel world where we are going to be attempting to get money for our designs isn’t so happy clappy. I’ve talked before about the need for constructive criticism and not just ego massaging, this helps everyone grow and become better, along with preparing for the ‘real world’.

Talking to your clients and keeping up contract is a crucial part of the process - create a strong foundation where you . Client’s understand only if you bother to tell them, work with them to gain that relationship and tell them in the first place. There come times when you will be up a creek without any paddle like object and those are times to breathe, take 5 and regroup mentally. We all have our ways of doing this. If you are lucky those client relationships that you work hard to maintain will pay off in the times of trauma, relationship lego pays off in the long term.

+65 designer shoulder pads of doom

You designer tools are important but so is developing your armor to be able to deal with working in the real world. Your designs will often be ripped apart and stitched together in some frankenstein like monster - it’s about taking and as I’ve said before being a filter for what they really want. This isn’t always the case of course, some clients you just want to hug until they burst as they are so great. Usually though there is something that is wanted to be changed or not right - client work is no place for a designer ego.

Poke your head up on the web it may get cut off

If you are a blogger you also have to both stand by your words and stand up for yourself at times as at some point someone will object, criticise or there will be some post that brings something out. You may not even mean this post to poke someone, it may be a true statement - that’s not really the point. The nature of comments is that people have their say. Just like the nature of showing a design for approval - you are leaving the door open to potential criticism.

What doesn’t kill you…

I like the phrase ‘what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger’ and I like to remind myself of it when smelling fragrant from a bad week. Whilst it is ‘only work’ if you are worth anything you will care and that caring is what will cause you to hurt when things happen. Learning to see silver linings and take the negative into a positive by not doing again or by learning - these are all crucial things. Whilst you may question someone’s sanity if they always see the silver lining, it is actually not a bad thing if kept in check. So long as you front up and sort out the situation then everything will be better in maybe a few mornings.