Video Script
How do I find more freelance clients? How do I land my dream design job? How do I become an art director? If you’ve ever asked questions like these, then you’re going to want to stick around for today’s video because I’m answering all of your most common and graphic design questions. Let’s get into it.
Hey, everyone. Welcome to the channel. For those of you that are new here, my name is Tom Munz. I’m an art director and brand designer with over 15 years of experience. And this channel is all about helping creatives. Just like you take your craft, careers and confidence to the next level. Today I’m doing an Ask Me Anything style video because I keep seeing a lot of the same design questions being asked over and over again.
It occurred to me that a lot of solo designers or junior designers or self-taught designers don’t have a great place to go to get these questions answered. My hope is that I can share what I’ve learned about the design industry over the years and help fill some of those knowledge gaps.
Do you have any good tips on picking up more clients?
So as a freelancer, something I see a lot is that people think that it’s all about doing great design work
And that’s certainly a big part of it. But I would argue an even bigger part of it is being a salesperson, being a marketer, having a funnel, a way to get clients to know about your work. Right? It doesn’t matter how great your work is, how great your portfolio is, if no one’s going to your portfolio. So the way to get people to go to your portfolio is to set up basically a sales funnel.
So you need to generate awareness at the top of the funnel and then create steps that convert people into clients. So the best way to do this is to identify your perfect client, right? So create a persona of exactly who you want to target. Think about where they go, what sort of conferences are they attending, where do they hang out, what social platforms are they on?
What problems do they have? What are their businesses? Pain points. And figure out where you slot in. Where can you help them fix those pain points? What solutions can you offer to them? So now that you have this persona built out and you’ve done your research and figure out all of these things, you need to make it actionable, right?
Again, you need to go where they are. So go to those conferences. You should be posting work that looks like the work that they want done on the social networks that they’re on on a weekly basis. Your portfolio needs to be full of work that speaks directly to those potential clients on your website. Have verbiage that speaks to their exact pain points.
Make it to when this client sees your work, your social post, your website, it’s a no brainer for them. They can clearly see that you’re the expert and that they need you to fix their problem. And that then converts them from a window shopper into a client. So this certainly is not an easy process and this is just kind of a high level overview, but you basically just need to keep this funnel going constantly to always have new leads coming in.
Some other things to think about, to find more clients is to reach out to your personal network. So friends, family, your LinkedIn network, let them know that you’re looking for work. Let them know what you do and see if they know anyone that might need your assistance. Beyond that, another great thing to do is reach out to local agencies.
Just kind of let them know that you’re looking for work, share your portfolio, take them out to lunch. Even if they don’t need the help today, they’ll keep your portfolio on file if they like what they see. And maybe in six months or a year, they’ll reach out with some work.
What are your honest thoughts on the design industry as of late? Do you feel the doom and gloom is warranted or is it a bit overblown?
I definitely think the design industry is struggling right now. I think with all the recent layoffs we’ve seen from these big tech companies, there’s there’s no way around that. Right. But I will say with kind of the overall sentiment and the doom and gloom, I think a lot of this is based on the juxtaposition of the years that we just came out of.
During COVID, the industry was as hot as I’ve seen it in a very long time. Designers were getting snatched up left and right and getting these crazy titles and huge salaries. And so now the industry is correcting itself. It was a bit of a bubble for a little bit there. So now we’re seeing that correction. People are starting to get laid off.
It looks really bad optically and it feels bad. But I think, again, that comparison of how good it was a few years ago to how it is today is making it look a lot worse. I don’t think it’s as bad as it was, let’s say, in 2008 or anything like that. I imagine things are going to kind of evened out over the next year or two.
They’ll start climbing back up. Like all markets at cyclical, right? So then we’ll probably see a new high as how a new bubble for design and then it’ll probably crash again. So things definitely aren’t ideal right now, but I think we’re going to get through it. It’s going to be okay. I don’t think robots are going to take all of our jobs, so just hang in there.
What makes a portfolio stand out? How can you have a portfolio that helps get you hired?
I’ve done a couple of pretty in-depth portfolio review videos. So I will leave a link to those in the description down below as well as linking them up above. But at a high level, you want to be making sure that your portfolio starts with a clear mission statement.
So the second I get to your portfolio, I should be able to know who you are, what you do, what sets you apart. You want to make sure that your portfolio is only showcasing your best work. So ideally, 6 to 8 projects are really high end design work. If anything’s a bit weaker, feel free to cut that out of your portfolio.
With your portfolio projects, I would recommend making them into case studies. So tell a story from start to end showing concepts, mood boards all the way through completion. And then make sure that you’re speaking the language of your potential client by showing business metrics, talking about ROIC, showing tangible results whenever possible for your design work. And finally, make sure the work that you’re showing in your portfolio matches that of the places that you’re applying for jobs at or the clients you’re trying to land.
So if you’re trying to get a job working as a designer for a sports team, making sure that your portfolio reflects that with a bunch of work that’s about sports that matches their esthetic. Make it a no brainer for that hiring manager so they know that you can do the work if they hired you.
How can you make your resume stand out to a hiring manager?
In a resume, it’s important to have restraint. So I see a lot of kind of crazy resumes that are over, designed with tons of photos and sliders and icons and things like that. In my mind when I’m looking at a resume. I want to be able to skim it quickly.
I’m looking for a mastery of things like typography and grid and layout, something subtle that isn’t over the top that I can read really quickly. I notice designers, it’s tempting to want to design like a really cool looking resume, but the reality is it’s not going to be read well by like air rail systems. And it also just comes off a little bit sophomoric.
I’d recommend saving the cool design for the portfolio and making the resume more focused on being easy to read.
What are some tips you to give to a new art director on managing a creative team effectively?
Yeah, so this is a great question and there’s a lot to unpack there. I think at a high level, I would recommend approaching everything with empathy.
Whether you’re speaking with a designer and giving them a critique or you’re speaking with a client or a stakeholder, just taking a step back and think about what’s their perspective on this, what problems are they having? What’s their goal? How are they feeling? Just being able to do that is going to change your perspective so much and it’s going to make you a much better communicator in all scenarios.
Secondly, I’m a big believer in protecting your team. So I think if you have happy employees, that’s going to lead to happy clients can lead to better work. So making sure that you’re protecting your team’s time. Sometimes that might mean that you’re the bad cop. If you’re dealing with someone asking for something on a really short turnaround time, that’s not realistic.
Whatever the case may be. Just making sure that your team members have what they need, that they feel safe, they feel protected, and they know that you have their back. I think that goes a really long way to motivating people and having a happy team. And finally, I would recommend leading by example. So it’s really easy to say the right things, but people notice when you’re not doing the right things right.
So keeping a positive attitude when things get chaotic, being the calm in the storm and then not asking people to do something that you wouldn’t do yourself. If you’re asking the designer to stay late often, but you leave at 5 p.m. every day, it’s a bad look and they’re going to end up losing respect for you. Just making sure that you’re not asking anyone to do something that you’re also not doing.
Are you and your team starting to use AI tools for your job? If so, what tools? How to use them? And do you discuss this with clients?
Right now with AI, there’s a lot of kind of legal gray areas where it’s pulling on sources and is that copyright infringement, things like that. So we’ve largely stayed away from using AI or we have used AI for is to quickly generate images for things like storyboards or internal pitch decks, places where details aren’t incredibly important
But we just need to kind of use visuals to get an idea across really quickly. I’ve used A.I. and I’ve seen some really incredible results, so definitely something I want to delve deeper into. But as of right now, again, with kind of those legal gray areas, it’s been something I’ve been apprehensive to start using fully. Everyone, I hope you’re enjoying the Q&A.
As a new art director, does the imposter syndrome ever go away?
Unfortunately, I’m sorry for the bad news, but in my experience, it does not. It’s kind of one of those things where we have good days and bad days. Some days you feel a bit more confident in your work. Other days you have a bad day and it’s a struggle.
I think if nothing else, there’s a bit of comfort knowing that’s a shared experience that most people have. But I did put together a video outlining some things you can do to help manage imposter syndrome. So I’ll link to that in the description as well. I love this next question. If you could give younger you any advice about starting a career in the field, what would it be?
For myself it would be to focus on things outside of design. I know for me in design school, it was all about just doing great design, learning the programs, learning the fundamentals and all that stuff is incredibly important. But once you’re out in the job market, there’s a lot more to being a graphic designer than just design.
I wish I had focused more on things like networking, learning the business side of things, focusing on communication, speech, stuff like that. I think those kind of intangibles, or at least other business skills that they don’t really teach you in design school. Those are equally important, if not more important in some cases than just doing design.
How long did it take you to move from a design position to a director management position?
This is very much a your mileage may vary type of question, but for myself, I was a designer for ten years before I moved into a management position. And so at the end of kind of my time as a designer, I realized that I wanted to move into more managerial art direction type of work. So I sought out opportunity, used to manage other designers.
I convinced my company to hire some interns to get that experience. I also volunteered with my local AIGA chapter to lead some projects and group work there. So it’s one of those things where to get hired into a managerial position. They want you to have managerial experience. So those are some kind of workarounds there to start making that transition when you feel like you’re ready to do so.
How do you stay motivated as a designer when you’re a client or your boss doesn’t value design?
This is definitely a tough situation. I think we’ve all experienced that at one point in our careers. But I think one way around it and what’s kind of worked for me is that I like to go to sleep at night knowing that I can put my name on my work and feel proud of it.
Even if your boss or your client doesn’t value great design, if you’re still doing work that you’re proud of, that you can put in your portfolio, that should be your your driving force shouldn’t be worrying about what they think about it or that they don’t care. They just want something really crappy really fast. I think you need to focus more about satisfying and fulfilling yourself.
So in those crappy projects, asking yourself, What could I do to make this a project that I’m proud of? How could I make this project fun? What’s the silver lining? So just trying to reframe your situation and find those positives is one way to go about that when you’re in a tough situation like that.
What’s better a pro at Canva or a novice at Adobe Illustrator?
That’s a tough one because I don’t think programs are that important. I think if you understand design, you know the fundamentals. You’re a good designer. I think you can learn a program pretty quickly. So I’m not super hung up on knowing programs, but I think if I had to choose one, I would say a novice at Adobe Illustrator, just because that’s the industry standard program.
On my team, we all use Illustrator. So if we need to pass projects back and forth, that’s something important. Whereas if one designer is using Canva, then we wouldn’t be able to do that. So be a bit problematic. That being said, if you’re a master at Canva and you’re doing great work, more power to you. I think good design is good design at the end of the day.
How do I maintain an overall design vision while also letting my team have enough agency on their individual design tasks?
I think this is all about creating great brand guidelines so the brand guide can act as the rails kind of the rule set for the designers to work from. So they kind of know the fonts and the colors and the copy and the overall vibe of the brand.
And then you’re giving them the agency to take that and solve the problem. So you give them the goal of the project, the brand guidelines, and then they fit the puzzle pieces together to see what they come up with to solve the problem. If you’re finding that they’re going too far outside of the brand guidelines, you might need to lock some things in.
Maybe some parts of the brand guide aren’t clear enough, or if they’re staying really buttoned up and just adhering to the brand too closely, you can give them a bit of a push and let them know that they can stretch the brand in certain ways.
Do you have any advice on what to say or show to non designer upper management to prove a designer’s worth?
This is a great question that really highlights an issue and a disconnect between design and managers that don’t speak design, right? So my recommendation would be to put together a pitch deck that showcases all of your wins at the company, showcases your biggest projects, and most importantly, speak in business terms. So why was your biggest project so impactful?
What sort of revenue did you generate? What was the ROI y? What was the click through rate? What were the metrics? How many users did you get to sign up for the newsletter or engage with the social post? So reach out to your art director or your PM or whoever has that data and those metrics and ask them for those and use those to put together a deck.
That makes it a no brainer to give you a promotion. If you can show them that you’ve generated hundreds of thousands of dollars of revenue for the company, then obviously they should give you a raise in that promotion because that ROI is black and white, right? So speak in their terms. Make it a no brainer showcase your tangible value.
How do you expand your design vocabulary?
This is one of those ones that generally kind of comes with time, but there are definitely ways to accelerate the process. One of the best ways to do that is by reading design books. I recently did a video talking about ten Must-Read Books for Graphic Designers, so I will link to that in the description below.
Apart from that, doing things like watching YouTube videos, taking online courses, studying other designers that you love, just trying to ingest as much design media as you can is probably the best way to learn those terms. And then any time you don’t know a term that you see, just immediately stop. Look it up, take a note jotted down and doing.
That’s going to help coin it to memory. It’s going to help you expand your design vocabulary.
What is art direction? Could you kind of give an overview of what a day to day looks like?
Art Direction is one of those positions that kind of differs from company to company.
At some companies, art directors are fully hands on doing design work 100% of the time. Other companies, there are a lot more managerial focused. So in my experience at my current role, I’m about 5050 design work to managing. So basically that might look like spending half of my time working on key artwork, creating project briefs, creating assets, putting together mood boards, pitch decks, and then the other half would be managing my team, giving them critiques, pitching concepts of stakeholders, working with other department heads to see what’s coming up, being in meetings, planning projects, project management.
In my experience, it’s about wearing a lot of different hats. It’s about being a designer, a manager, thinking strategically, being a good communicator, all of these things kind of roll up into one position.
What are your thoughts on multidisciplinary designers versus specialists?
So I’m a multidisciplinary designer myself, so I got my start doing motion graphics.
I’ve worked in agencies, I’ve done web design, instructional design. Obviously now I’m doing graphic design as an art director. So I think both definitely have value. It just really comes down to what you want to do. What sort of companies do you want to work at? I think for smaller in-house teams, generalists provide a ton of value because usually you have to wear a lot of hats.
There’s not a lot of people to kind of delegate things to, so you need to be able to do things yourself. So that’s the sort of environment that you’d like to work in. I think that’s really good for that. And then if you want to work at an agency or at a larger corporation with a big creative team, then being a specialist can be better in that case because they have the manpower to kind of delegate specific tasks to each person.
So again, I don’t think one is better than the other. It just comes down to that designer. What sort of work do you enjoy doing and where do you want to end up working?
What do you say to people that just tell you to quit your job and start an agency?
This is definitely one of those things that’s very romanticized in the creative field, right?
There’s something really sexy about just putting your day job and starting up a business and killing it as an agency owner. And while some people do that and that’s incredible. Nothing but respect for people that are able to make that work. I think we hear those stories because those success stories are the most interesting and they’re the loudest.
So sometimes it seems like everyone’s doing it. It’s working out for everyone. But I think the reality is that the vast majority of people are actually grinding away and 9 to 5 type jobs and doing things like that. So my recommendation would be, if you do want to do that, that’s great. I would definitely recommend getting a lot of experience working for other people first
I would recommend building up a financial nest egg too, where you have a lot of runway. You’re probably not going to be making money immediately, or at least not a lot of money immediately. As an agency owner. So you need a nest egg to fall back on. And then you also want to make sure that you already have clients lined up when you do quit your day job.
You’re not just burning the ships and quitting and hoping things are going to work out. Ideally, you already have a series of clients lined up to where you have work for the next several months. That’s going to bring in some good money and that takes the pressure off.
Besides having a great portfolio, what advice do you have for a designer that’s about to graduate?
My advice while you’re in college is to network, network, network. When you’re going to school for design, you are surrounded by people that do what you do that are going to be in the industry with you, right? So whether that helps you tomorrow or in ten years. Having that network established is super important.
Your professors are another great resource there, so be sure to network with them. Often they’re involved with other companies or they freelance and things like that. Be sure to join your AIGA chapter or other creative groups around town, so just try to establish relationships as early as possible, as many as possible cast a wide net and that’s going to come back to benefit you in the long run.
How often did you switch positions throughout your career?
For myself, my approach has always been to look for jobs that I could see myself staying at long term. That doesn’t always work out, unfortunately. So I’ve been at some roles for six months and other roles for six years. I think it really comes down to working somewhere where you’re feeling fulfilled, you’re feeling challenged, and when those things start going away, that’s usually when it’s time to start looking elsewhere
Do you have any advice on realigning your portfolio to start applying to senior and art director positions?
You definitely want to be showcasing high quality design work, obviously showing more conceptual work instead of execution type work. So trying mood boards, problem solving, thinking through 360 campaign, things like that. Apart from that, you want to start focusing on strategy and business and showing those metrics and results whenever possible.
Instead of just showing a cool email campaign, you did tell them what were the results of that email campaign, right? What was the open rate? What was the click through rate? Why was that campaign so great for the business? What sort of ROI did it have? Because as an art director, as a manager, those are the types of things that are driving your day to day decisions instead of just doing work that looks good.
That’s kind of where that line starts getting drawn between designer versus design leader.
What are your favorite books for design?
So as I mentioned earlier, I did a full video on my favorite design books. But some of the best ones off the top of my head, anything by Marty Neumeier is great for branding, anything by Ellen Lupton.
Specifically thinking with type is great for typography, I would recommend layout essentials for learning, grid and layout, and then creative strategy and the business of design is a great book for bridging the gap between design work that you learn in college and the business techniques that you need in the real world.
As an art director, what’s stopping you from becoming a creative director?
For me personally, I still enjoy doing some creative work. I still enjoy being hands on, coming up with those actual concepts. The key art work, things like that. So obviously making that jump to creative director. Normally they’re not hands on at all. It’s more of an executive type role. So for myself, I’m still at that point in my career where I enjoy doing some of that creative work.