The Free Creatives

Posted on February 18, 2010 by Crystal

We’re always looking for great web designers or freelancers otherwise to share with us their experiences, lessons, and tips. We are now taking on interviews to be published right here on The Free Creatives, with a link back to your portfolio, and some exposure to some of your work. Get noticed in the design and freelancing community, and share what you know!

To request being interviewed, head on over to our contact page and tell us why you think you need some recognition. Share a link to your portfolio, any interesting experiences or lessons you’ve learned within the niche, and how you stand out as a web designer and/or freelancer.

We love inspiring stories, inspiring work, and also just down-to-Earth real people wanting to help out our readers by sharing what they already know!

Posted on February 11, 2010 by Crystal

Design is all about getting a message across to the viewer, and there is no other way to do that better than just spelling it out for them, in type. In recent years, good typography has become an entirely new standard when used in web design, and many designers are creating websites focused entirely around the typography.

When the focus of a design is put on the type itself, the message becomes that much more clear. Better yet, designers can design the type itself to strengthen the message. In this post, we’re going to look at a few examples of just that. Here are 15 new, interesting, and creative web designs that use typography as the main focus of their designs, rather than imagery, photography, or otherwise.

Posted on February 8, 2010 by Crystal

Any business can benefit from having a marketing budget to buy advertisements, subscriptions to job boards and the like, and for any software that can help them with marketing. However, most new freelancers do not have that sort of budget, and even with a few extra bucks in the pocket, it is still incredibly important to live frugally as a freelancer (just in case next month isn’t so fortunate!).

When I was just starting out, it took me some time to realize what worked and what didn’t in terms of marketing my freelance business. Just within the first year, I hastily lost plenty of my income on unneeded or ineffective marketing. Now, I’ve learned from my own mistakes, and have a successful marketing strategy on only $7/mo. Even with my large $7 a month being spent though, in this post I’d like to show any new freelancers how to get going with a steady client base on only $0 (free!).

Posted on January 28, 2010 by Crystal

We put out a lot of freelancing guides and how-to’s here on The Free Creatives, but of course that doesn’t mean that every designer wants to be a freelancer. We understand that many web designers, or creative people otherwise, want to start home-based businesses of an entirely different type.

For many web designers who flee the office to work by their own standards, freelancing is just the beginning — it is just a business model that can get them working (somewhat) steadily until they can reach bigger and better dreams. In this post, we’ve compiled seven popular home-based business models that are quite reasonable for those in the web design industry, and some basics on how to get there.

Posted on January 22, 2010 by Crystal

As freelancers, it can be easy to comply to each and every client request, compare yourself to other freelancers and how they work, and do enough and the right type of work to impress others around you, whether they be friends, family, or acquaintances. Yet, many of us originally became freelancers to give more professional respect to ourselves, opposed to working for the man. So when does that respect and self-worth kick in?

Let’s today discuss when we need to comply to ‘cultural standards’ of work, and when its ok as a freelancer to say no to the rest of the world and pay some attention to yourself and your own wants. We’ll discuss some of our own ideas here at The Free Creatives, but please chime in with a comment discussing your own lifestyle and in what areas you’d like professional respect or freedom!