In this short guide I will give you 5 tips to help you find new clients as a graphic designer. One of the main components of being a freelance graphic designer is finding new clients and growing your network. In this blog we’ll give you tips on starting your own network and expanding said freelance network. This blog is based on a video released a while ago, which can be found at the bottom of the page.

Find your niche / dream clients

Start big. What really makes you want to go out and design? Try to come up with a list of your ideal clients and see if there’s a trend that links them. Once you find this trend, you’ve also found your niche.

Make a portfolio specific for your niche

Let’s say you want to work for a techno dj. You can’t immediately start out and work for Charlotte De Witte or Reinier Zonneveld. In order for potential clients to consider you for a potential project you have to look the part. Start small by making a portfolio that is tailored to your niche. Do some fan artwork for songs you like, or offer to do some free work for smaller, local artists. This way you can fill up your Instagram page and use it as a portfolio so potential clients can get an impression of your work.

Don’t be thirsty!

You don’t want to come off as “thirsty”. By this we mean don’t go out of your way and send artists messages saying “Hey let me do your artwork”. The biggest reason for this is that at that point the artists aren’t looking for an artwork done by you. The smart way to go about this is commenting on their posts or sending them a dm with your portfolio. The main reason you do this is to get on their radar. You want to get your work out and build your network. If the artists like your work and know where to find you, they’ll come to you.

Retain your first clients

So, you found your first couple of clients and made an artwork for them. What’s next? Ideally, you want to keep the connection between yourself and an artist so that over the course of say, six months, you can keep working with that artists. What usually happens next is that a manager or another artist contacts the artist you worked for and asked them who did their artwork/lyric video/animation/whatever applies here. The word of mouth component is really important here. Keep your clients happy and they’ll expand your network for you.

How to maintain a good relationship with your clients

So, in order for clients to spread the word about us, we need to keep said clients happy. Here are a couple of guidelines that may help you keep your clients happy:

• Always be polite
• Communicate! Be transparent as to what’s going on during your projects
• Add a personal touch by meeting them in person or through Zoom

What to do if you have questions

We have a continually growing community on Discord that contains over 3000 graphic designers, fashion designers, musicians and more. Feel free to ask them anything that’s on your mind by joining the Discord server with this link.

Do you prefer listening over reading?

Then you might be interested in watching the video below. It is from our YouTube channel, which contains a lot more helpful videos, mainly focused towards graphic designers. Most of these tutorials however, will apply to you if you’re a photographer, musician or any other creative as well.