Blog - Jill B Gilbert

Mar

2024

Twelve Tips for Success as a Freelance Graphic Designer

You are creative, have a number of graphic design projects in your portfolio, and want to work for yourself. What does it take to become a freelance graphic designer, and a successful one?

Becoming a successful freelancer—in any field—requires thought and planning. Running a solo practice can be a challenge, but I think I can help. Here are twelve things I have learned in leading a solo practice for 20-some years.

1. Know Your Motivation

Are you motivated by the freedom to select clients and projects, focus on a distinct niche, do hybrid/remote work, lifestyle flexibility, or other reasons?

Are you willing to put in the effort? Can you balance work and life demands?

2. You need creative skills, and then some...

As a freelancer, you will be running a small business, whether you realize it or not. You need business, financial, marketing, and people skills—on top of graphic design talent and expertise.

You will be responsible for sales and marketing; proposal writing; invoicing and accounting—and graphic design work!

3. Freelancing is Not a hobby

Treat freelance graphic design work as a business, not a hobby. Set up a studio or office where you you can work without distractions. Whether or not you work from home, have regular office hours—on your own schedule. Just make time to communicate with clients on their schedules.

4. Develop a Business Plan

Once you have a few clients and know what you’d like to do, make a simple business plan. This is especially important if you want to get a small business loan, apply for a grant, or obtain business credit. Have someone review your plan and provide feedback before you finalize the plan.

The plan gets you to think about what you really want to do. What is your vision? What type of projects do you prefer? Who is your target client base? What is your timeline? What is your budget, and how do you set rates for your services? What are your startup costs?

5. Save 6-12 months' expenses

It may take a while for the first client payments to arrive, and you may not have an even cash flow month-to-month. Save 6-12 months’ living expenses before you start. Maintain this reserve fund and add to it as often as you can.

6. Know what you don't know

You’re not expected to be a Jack/Jill of All Trades, so know what you don’t know. Get legal and financial advice as needed to set up your business, provide standard graphic design contracts, and to plan routine cash flow and paying taxes. Develop relationships with legal and financial experts so you can call them for advice on a moment’s notice.

7. Be Professional

Avoid cute business names, though it’s OK to be clever! Act like a professional. Dress appropriately. Have business cards available—yes, people still use business cards! Avoid acting too casual on sales calls or in client meetings. Be aware of post content in personal social media accounts.

8. Network, Network, Network

Don’t underestimate the value of networking. Network to learn your market niche. Find local chapters of professional organizations for graphic design, and for specific niches like illustration, web and user interface design, advertising, package design. Consider attending local Chamber of Commerce, Rotary or similar meetings. All of these can teach you about business and can lead to new work.

8. Learn from others

Just because you are a freelancer, you need not isolate yourself. If you want to be a great illustrator, seek out role models, and get to know them and how they work. If you want to be package designer, then reach out to an expert in this field. You may find a mentor this way… I did!

10. You are valuable

Your time and expertise are valuable. Do not work for free, or for bargain rates, to build your portfolio. Professional associations frown on this behavior, as it cheapens the graphic design profession. Clients who ask you to work at bargain rates likely do not value your services, and will not pay your full rates in the future.

11. Be a leader

Once you focus on your graphic design niche, become a leader in that area. Develop a terrific portfolio and put it online to reach a wide audience. Get client testimonials. Write a blog and spread the word. Use social media for marketing your graphic design services.

12. Keep on Learning

Continuing education is critical in graphic design, especially with developments in technology. Keep your skills up to date with formal and informal training. I am a firm believer in lifelong learning.

Jan

2024

Procreate Brushes Provide a Plethora of Graphic Design Possibilities

Procreate digital brushes and Apple Pencil are key tools

What is Procreate? This powerful $USD10 illustration-lettering-drawing app generates high-resolution, multilayered raster images. First made for the iPad Pro for creatives, (thus, “Procreate”), today the app works on any iPad that can pair with an Apple Pencil.

In Procreate, you draw with a digital “brush.” Some brushes are strokes that mimic those of physical drawing and painting tools; others are “stamps” or shapes. Only Apple Pencil Generations 1 and 2 provide both tilt and pressure sensitivity for full stroke variability.

Procreate comes with 100+ brushes installed. If you need more (or are a “brush junkie”), you can tailor-make brushes or import ready-made free and paid brushes. You can find thousands of brushes with a little Internet sleuthing. Import brushes or brush sets via the Procreate brush panel.

I follow Procreate artists and graphic design blogs and often find new brushes. I purchase some and get others free. Here are a dozen of my favorite free and paid Procreate brush sites, in no special order:

Most all of these providers also offer free Procreate tutorials, color palettes, and more; Procreate Folio offers a discussion group and other resources, including a complete Procreate manual.

Procreate brush management tips

If you download everything that catches your eye, you will reach “Brush Overload.” So, consider these brush management tips to make it easier to use and find your Procreate brushes:

Keep only the brushes you need active in your Brush Library. Experiment with new brushes you download; you will find lots you like and lots you don’t need.
Keep your Brush Library organized; Export unused brush sets to your iCloud, Dropbox, Google Drive, or other file backup locations.
Create a Favorites folder. Copy the brushes you use the most to that folder.
Set a Brush Restore Point. Explore brush settings, but remember to back up settings before you change them.
Make your own brushes and brush sets if you don’t find what you need in the marketplace. Export (Share) them for safekeeping so you can use them for another project.

I use Procreate almost daily in my design workflow; this little $USD10 app—now in its fifth generation—has amazing capabilities. Procreate provides a plethora of possibilities with an abundance of ready-made brushes and the ability to tailor-make your own. Experiment with different brushes, try different drawing styles, and find the ones that work the best for you. Keep your brushes organized, and copy your favorites to an easy-to-find folder.

Explore the possibilities, and happy drawing!

New Content! The original post was rewritten on 05 January 2024, including changes to the Procreate brush source lists and updates re newer iPads and Apple Pencils.

Jan

2024

Five tips for making the transformation from graphic designer to digital marketer

You’re a graphic designer, and want to be a digital marketing pro. This involves a transition from traditional marketing to digital marketing. I know, because I mastered the move through exploration, research, and course work.

Moving from analog to digital requires thought and planning

I did not just wake up one day, and poof—I was a digital marketing pro!

Moving from traditional to digital marketing took some thought and planning. I had done traditional marketing communications in past job positions and was self-taught in certain aspects of digital marketing when I founded a management consulting firm more than twenty years ago. I knew how to use a few Adobe creative apps and learned enough HTML/CSS to manage my Website.

At some point, I knew that I needed more formal training and found a course of study that would take me where I wanted to go. Then I continued to explore new technologies and apps to provide digital marketing services.

Five tips for making the transformation from graphic designer to digital marketer

First, decide on the digital marketing services you will provide—social media marketing, content design, web design, web development, web analytics, user interface/user experience (UI/UX) design, advertising, analytics, and more.
Assess your software, IT, business, sales, marketing, and people skills. Yes—whether you work for an employer or are a freelancer, you need to use “soft” people skills to identify clients’ needs and provide the appropriate digital marketing solution.
Network, network, network! Find local digital marketing firms and identify professional organizations. Speak with people in the digital marketing industry about the required skill sets and job opportunities. Find a mentor if you can.
Make a plan to fill skills gaps between where you are currently, and where you want to go. This can entail classroom and/or online training, as well as formal and informal internships.
Finally, work your plan. Acquire new skills. Learn new technologies and software apps. Build your digital portfolio to demonstrate your capabilities, and market to potential employers or clients.

Take your path to success in this exciting creative industry that hardly existed twenty years ago! You can become a digital marketer by shaping and working a thoughtful plan, through networking, and developing a solid digital portfolio.

Dec

2023

Animals are social, too: Oklahoma animal rescue group uses social media to publicize upcoming training webinar

Grace Animal Rehabilitation Center in Sapulpa, Oklahoma rescues, fosters, and places dogs and cats in loving homes. The nonprofit engaged Jill B Gilbert to create graphic designs to publicize an upcoming webinar on social media, and also to prepare a brief presentation for use during the webinar.

The webinar presentation followed the colorful theme with images of various breeds of cats used in the social media posts.

Mar

2023

Multilingual graphic design matters

When asked to do a project for a repeat client, naturally, I said, “Yes!” My pro bono graphic design skills would allow my client–and the original author–to more widely distribute an important training manual. Welcome to multilingual graphic design!

The non-profit philanthropic organization in Melbourne, Australia came across an 80-page training manual written in Argentina and had it translated from Spanish into English. They wanted me to create the English manual with the same typesetting and layout as the Spanish version.

This introduced several challenges, also known as localization issues:

English sentences are shorter than Spanish sentences. This creates pages with less text and more “white space.”
Some typefaces/fonts are multilingual; others are not.
Graphic design and style naming conventions differ among languages.
The translation required the designer to recognize differences in spelling and word usage between Australian English and U.S. English.
The English translation required rewriting in a few areas to make the words sound more natural.
The original, Spanish manual looked good to those who are not trained in graphic design. Behind the scenes, the document needed to be set up with consistent typographic styles and colors.

Luckily, I have a working knowledge of Spanish and have written hundreds of English articles. I enjoy layout and typography. I was up to the challenge.

In this case, my mission was to make the English translation look like the original manual, published in Argentina. But what if my client originally envisioned a document that worked well in multiple languages?

Multilingual graphic design considers several localization issues:

Language differences—the translation and the use of common phrases.
Cultural differences—the use of acceptable images, colors and words.
Sentence length in different languages.
Languages that read from left to right vs. from right to left.
Multibyte languages with complex characters, e.g., Chinese, Japanese, and Korean.
Multilingual fonts—fonts that have all the characters, glyphs, and accent marks found in each language you want to use.
White space—embrace the use of white space when designing a document to be written in multiple languages; one line of text can look as elegant as two.

If you are not well-versed in multilingual graphic design, you can find a design firm that is. This was an enjoyable project with great results. My clients and the author of the original, Spanish training manual were pleased, and I learned a few new things as a bonus.

Feb

2023

Cat breeder client gets cool new brand

Howzabluz breeds and shows Russian Blue cats. Jill B Gilbert took cues from the owners and ran with it… creating the Texas cattery’s brand as a “cool cat” that brings to mind the Blues Brothers.

The business name “Howzabluz” and the fedora are a rich azure blue; the sunglasses and tagline “Russian Blue Cats” a deep charcoal gray.

The design has made its way to cat shows a few times since its introduction. The brand adorns T-shirts, tote bags, and stickers.

Jan

2023

Jill B Gilbert reaches a milestone with pro bono projects impact

Volunteer work benefits a range of educational, environmental, professional development, and philanthropic non-profits in the U.S. and abroad

JIll B Gilbert recently reached a milestone: she has provided over 800 hours of volunteer work, saving non-profit organizations more than $USD 100,000. And she’s not slowing down—currently working on her next project!

Gilbert provided marketing communications, graphic design, and web design services on two dozen projects—many were multiple projects for the same client. The projects ranged from a highly-customized presentation for a sister organization to a U.S. National Park, to branding and logo design for childhood education and Head Start programs and a new high school, to custom presentations and brand guidelines for healthcare organizations.

Gilbert began working with volunteer matching organization Catchafire in 2021, during the height of the pandemic. Technology advances in the past 5 years made it possible to complete all of this volunteer work remotely—even for clients in the Houston area—with client meetings via Zoom or Google Meetings. She provided project deliverables in electronic format, using Adobe Creative Cloud apps like Adobe Illustrator, Adobe InDesign, Adobe Photoshop, and Adobe Acrobat; Microsoft PowerPoint, Google Slides, and Apple’s Keynote slide software.

Gilbert remarked, “I have enjoyed working on projects with these non-profits. I am open to paid commissions and plan to continue volunteering marketing, graphic design, and web design services to worthy non-profits so they can spend their budgets to further their missions.”

You can read more about several of the pro bono projects in our blog.

"Jill is extremely organized and creative. Her commitment to advancing causes is genuine and inspiring. Jill goes above and beyond! It was a pleasure working with her."

Rosa

Bridges to Science

"I highly recommend anyone to work with Jill. She has a wealth of knowledge, is very kind, responsive, and did a wonderful job on our visual brand guide."

Heather

Wisconsin Association of Free & Charitable Clinics

"Jill knows design! She understands principles of good design and has in-depth knowledge of professional tools to make your designs look great!"

Kerry

Many Hands

Dec

2022

Case study: social media ad campaign for children’s book “P is for Pterodactyl

P IS FOR PTERODACTYL is the perfect product for a social media ad campaign. The English language is difficult to learn because of the many exceptions to spelling, grammar and pronunciation rules. This silly, fun read-aloud book by Rapper Lushlife (Raj Haldar) and Chris Carpenter teaches kids the ins and outs of spelling and phonetics. Adults love it, too!

Buyer demographics

Who would buy this book? P IS FOR PTERODACTYL is attractive to parents with young children, parents with school-age children learning to read, and to grandparents, aunts, and uncles. More females than males would buy the book. Relatives would buy this book as a gift. Buyers are more likely to be college-educated, often with advanced degrees.

Buyer persona

Digital marketing technology lets us target specific buyers, or personas. My marketing campaign targets a buyer called “90th Percentile Nana.” She is 55-65 years old, married or widowed, with two or more grandchildren. Her household income is in the 90th percentile of U.S. Households. She has an Amazon Prime account, a college degree, drives a luxury SUV, and has a designer Doodle dog. 90th Percentile Nana is in a book club and is tech-savvy, but prefers physical books to Kindle books. She is a foodie and an amateur chef who walks or exercises to stay fit.

Buyer's goals and challenges

Buyer’s goals:

Entertain grandchildren
Visually appealing book
Durable book, can be read over and over
Teach grandchildren the alphabet
Teach grandchildren to read
A New York Times Bestseller and/or award-winning book.

Buyer’s challenges:

Tired of the standard bedtime books
Finding a unique and interesting book
Finding a funny book with educational value.

Social Media Marketing Strategy

Goals and social media platform

The ad campaign goals are to create product awareness through advertising and generate sales leads. Facebook is a good fit for these goals, as it is the leading social platform with 2.7 billion monthly users; 54% Female, 46% Male. Facebook hits the sweet spot for 90th Percentile Nana’s demographics. Facebook has more users, and a greater percentage of users, in the target age and income groups than TikTok, Pinterest, Instagram, or YouTube.

Social media scheduling

A key element of a social media campaign is timing. SproutSocial shows the highest Facebook engagement times are Tuesday, Wednesday and Friday between 9 a.m. and 1 p.m. (Figure 1). The American Marketing Association recommends skipping Saturday posts.

I developed a two-week schedule for Facebook posts and News Feed Ads (ads that pop up on your Facebook feed) targeted at peak engagement times. Content and design strategies include:

Each Facebook Post will be a Sponsored News Feed with one or more images plus text.
Many of the posts will be educational and informative versus “hard sell.”
Each Facebook Ad will appear in the user’s News Feed and will use images or graphics and limited text.
Using images of the book itself will help to build product awareness.
The ads will offer 10% to 15% discounts or free shipping and will ask users to sign up for emails and/or texts.

Metrics

Of the hundreds of social media metrics available, I selected a few to gauge the success of the P IS FOR PTERODACTYL advertising campaign:

engagement
impressions
mentions
tags
reposts
shares.

Marketing Collateral

Marketing pieces for the social media ad campaign use images optimized for Facebook. Collateral includes ads for desktop and mobile views, considering most people interact with social media accounts on smartphones—though 90th Percentile Nana might be more comfortable using a desktop or laptop computer. Marketing collateral also includes an original Acme Books logo for the ad campaign.

For further information on this digital marketing case study or to hire Jill B Gilbert for marketing communications advice or to design social media graphics, illustrations and ads for your company, please contact us.

Dec

2022

New energy drink packaging crushes the competition

My challenge was to design the packaging for a new energy drink and then create social media ads to post via Google Ads. The result is packaging for three flavors of Speed Whiz Energy Drink, a (fictional) energy drink that provides “All the Sugar & Twice the Caffeine” of normal energy drinks. The 500 ml aluminum can might account for the beverage’s high energy levels–most energy drinks come in smaller cans.

The Google Ads focused on the tag line, “All the Sugar & Twice The Caffeine.” That should get someone’s attention!

Oct

2022

Low poly artwork is a lesson in persistence

I recently had the opportunity to learn a new skill—how to create low poly illustrations. Low poly, short for low polygon art, is a minimal art style used in video game design, animation, and illustration. This art form requires at least 50% technical skills and the rest artistic skills.

I photographed a Mississippi Kite, a swallowtail bird with its wings spread, roosting in a half-dead tree in nearby Exploration Green. I used another photo of cirrus clouds in a blue sky, and a third photo of the Hunter Moon a couple of weeks ago for the background. I used Adobe Illustrator to create hundreds of triangles to highlight the bird’s colors and contours. This took many hours plus lots of patience and persistence.

You can see the results below.

1. Know Your Motivation

2. You need creative skills, and then some...

3. Freelancing is Not a hobby

4. Develop a Business Plan

5. Save 6-12 months' expenses

6. Know what you don't know

7. Be Professional

8. Network, Network, Network

8. Learn from others

10. You are valuable

11. Be a leader

12. Keep on Learning

Procreate digital brushes and Apple Pencil are key tools

Procreate brush management tips

Moving from analog to digital requires thought and planning

Five tips for making the transformation from graphic designer to digital marketer

Volunteer work benefits a range of educational, environmental, professional development, and philanthropic non-profits in the U.S. and abroad

Buyer demographics

Buyer persona

Buyer's goals and challenges

Social Media Marketing Strategy

Goals and social media platform

Social media scheduling

Metrics

Marketing Collateral

Latest Posts