Jon Simmons Design
1) How have you found working free-lance? What have you found are the biggest challenges? Have you needed to have other employment alongside this?
I have loved working as freelancer overall which has been about 5 years now. I think I'm naturally good at working on my own and have found myself to be really disciplined working from home and always at my desk for 9! I love the creative control and discussing different options with clients and lead a project with your own vision.
The main challenges I've found are managing a work/life balance when you've got lots of busy schedules and deadlines between different clients and try to keep onto top of everything whilst keeping the standard of work I expect from myself to be maintained. Being away can sometimes be tricky but I've found that as long as you let your clients know in advance you can plan and prepare the workload around this. I haven't needing other employment since going freelance full-time, however when previously working a design agency, I worked with my own base of clients in my spare time and evenings, building up a small client base from there which gave me a good platform to build on when I decided work for myself it full-time. There are also creative industry recruitment agencies out there (Orchard / The Book are a couple) which you can sign up too and potentially get the odd day here and there working in-house for an agency which can help plug the gaps where you might not have a full day/week/month of work booked in.
2) How did you start getting commissions/putting yourself out there within the music world? and therefore how do you suggest I should go about making contacts?
The small amount of music based work I've done have been for bands I've been part of, friends bands, by word of mouth or related contact. I would love to do a lot more creative work in this particular industry but I've found that by going to as many gigs/events as possible and talking the artist is a massive foot in the door and just by being generally interested in what they do and wanting to reflect this through your work. Also emailing work examples and requests to bands could work out really well and getting involved on social media. I do work for a music festival as well, which is a much bigger job with lots of client input, etc. There are a re growing number of estival these days and a lot of them don't have the best design so could be worth approaching some smaller ones just to see if they're open to some new direction.
3) When you get commissions for posters and covers, how much free reign do you have over the artwork?
Generally the posters and covers I've done haven't been completed on a very big budget if any at all so that has enabled a lot more creative control of the design because and has sometimes allowed me the freedom to explore new techniques that seem right for the project but I wouldn't have necessarily explored on other projects. There is usually going to be some client input and they'll have their own ideas, but as a designer it's up to you to suggest potential alternative designs and ideas that they may not have considered. My golden rule is never present anything that you're not a fan of or would enjoy working on!
4) Have you found that analogue or digital is more popular? Or do you always find that you use a combination?
Personally I prefer to use a mixture of the two where possible, sometimes going for a bold graphical style but combining it with some analogue textures, photography or hand drawn illustration. Overall I would say the more digital, graphic stuff I've done has been more popular though and is probably more of my strength.
5) What tips would you have for me trying to get into the world of art and music? Is it more important to find a niche/have a particular style or be versatile? What would make a strong portfolio?
Get in touch with as many bands and artist as possible. Focus on the genres of music or areas of culture that excite you and you want to be a part of. Eg, There would be no point approaching a jazz artist if you don't like the music style to with! At first be prepared to work for a minimal budget that will give you creative freedom and build from there. A lot of bands I've worked with only do this part-time so it can't always be expected that a budget is involved. Potentially create some artwork based on existing releases but giving your own spin on it.
Just give me a shout if you need anything else!
Have you got any examples of your work online? I would be keen to have a look at work sort of stuff you've been producing.
No comments:
Post a Comment