Tag: freelance

  • Easle, find the best creative freelancers

    Easle, find the best creative freelancers

    Finding work when you are an independent creative can be a struggle. That’s why after hearing stories from their creative friends, Scott Wooden and Nick Law decided to start Easle, a new online platform allowing freelancers to showcase their work and clients to discover and hire the best creators and artists.

    Scott and Nick state that “Easle is specifically for the creative arts. The focus for us is on quality across the platform, rather than super low price point, and we’re taking the vetting process seriously for creators and clients alike. We have also built a unique system for handling incoming work, allowing both sides to seamlessly negotiate a proposal through conversation and have it paid for within minutes.”

    At the moment, Easle focuses on showcasing the work of some of the best illustrators across the world although Scott and Nick have received applications from creatives working in all types of fields and they’ve noticed “corners of creativity that felt lost online without a true place for them to show off their work with the opportunity to get hired. There’s no reason why Easle can’t support more niche creative outlets.”

    Easle is currently comprised of an initial group of 50 illustrators. Scott and Nick have intentionally decided to keep strict limits on numbers with the idea that every illustrator on the platform should be seeing a significant amount of work coming through on a monthly basis.

    Easle is open for applications, free to use and takes 10% of the negotiated fee.

    www.easle.co

     
     
     
     

  • F*ck You. Pay Me.

    F*ck You. Pay Me.

    Creative Mornings is a free, monthly breakfast lecture series for creative types, happening in different cities around the world! In this video from March 2011, Mike Monteiro, who is the Design Director and co-founder of Mule Design Studio talks about the topic no one likes to talk about – money. A must watch for all the freelancers and owners of small studios!

    www.creativemornings.com

    2011/03 Mike Monteiro | F*ck You. Pay Me. from San Francisco Creative Mornings on Vimeo.

  • One Question Interview: Oisín Share

    One Question Interview: Oisín Share

    Oisín Share is an Irish graphic designer based in Manchester, UK. Though Oisín specialises in print-based projects, he also creates corporate identities and other communication imagery for art exhibitions, and photography for leading international publications.

    Oisín is the first to contribute to our new One Question Interview.

    Future Positive - Oisin Share

    What is the most exciting thing about working in the creative industries? What do you enjoy about being a freelance graphic designer? What are the challenges?

    I think I still have the mentality of someone who’s just flown the nest, in that seeing my work out in the real world is still a tremendous thrill. The more creative work I do in the industry, the more I get to see it out there around me, which is something I might never get used to.

    At present, a lot of the design work I do is for small independent businesses in my local community and it’s exciting and encouraging to see something that was previously a thought in my head or a pixel montage onscreen, to suddenly being in the hands of people around me.

    Working as a freelance creative is something I never thought I would do, and each day I am so thankful I get to do it – it really is close to ‘living the dream’. I always feared there were already enough designers out there going it alone, and perhaps not enough clients out there to merit our efforts, but I have (thankfully) been proven wrong. It is an industry like any other, and the same rules apply to it that would to a coffee bar or bakery: supply and demand, quality and skill, and passion. It’s incredible to be making a living doing what I have a passion for, it’s something I know is rare in the diverse world of careers. I really do my best to make what I do for people as great as it can be, no matter who the audience. It comes with countless challenges though – the leading one of course being financial. Every project comes alongside a tiring chase for payment, or even uncomfortable janglings of terms and agreements during the quotations and invoices. And of course, the famous ‘clients from hell’. When I realised that most of my work would be directed by clients and infrequently self initiated, it really drove me to ensure I had other parts of my life to exhibit creativity or follow other interests of mine. I’ve been lucky to finally get a website of mine off the ground after years of mulling it over – the European Post – which keeps every day colourful and diverse. I am oddly obsessed with European identity, news and politics and decided to create a site that combines these things. So many designers out there illustrate and create little elements that together add to a wonderful collection of updates and visuals, documenting this continent around us.

    It’s certainly a challenge to ensure that I don’t treat freelancing as a job and nothing more, but at that, it’s a challenge that I’m indeed lucky to have. There are few things as energising as an enjoyable challenge, don’t you think?

    www.worksofoisin.eu