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Who are you and what’s your background?
I’m a self-taught user interface designer in his early 20s, born and raised in Germany. Whilst I achieved my original qualification in computer science, my true passion is design – how things on digital devices work and look. I started full-time freelancing around two years ago and am planning to expand my business over the coming year by hiring my first employee and working for some new, exciting clients.
Why have you moved from a company to a full time freelancing position?
To be honest, screen designers aren’t paid very well in Germany, and your chances of building a great career are limited. I can’t see any reason why talented designers who can also handle the business part should be working for an agency. If you are able to maintain good relationships with your clients you can easily make six fgures a year.
Another great perk of being a freelance designer is that you can manage your working hours and the clients you want to work with on your own.
What’s the hardest part in consulting?
Defnitely to stop working at some point. As long as I’m not on vacation my clients can reach me 16 hours a day, 7 days a week. I enjoy every single minute, but it can be pretty exhausting over time. When I close my email client or Skype, I feel like I might miss a great opportunity or one of my clients might need my help when something goes wrong.
Where have you learnt design and where do you think we should start if we wanted to?
I grew up on the Internet. One day (I think I was about 14 years old back then) I discovered deviantArt and was immediately hooked by designing my own web presence. I downloaded some popular graphic design software and started to design some horrible looking websites. I continued to follow the international design community and read a lot of tutorials before one day my designs started not to look so horrible.
If you want to start learning design today, there are a lot of great resources around. Reading quality blogs about design topics and completing an online course via Treehouse or tut+ will be a good foundation. Following active and talented designers on platforms like Dribbble or Behance will teach you a lot as well. The rest depends on your talent and the time and passion you invest.
I have done some consulting in the past months and have found it so difficult to understand what non-technical customers want. How do you deal with them?
I have never worked with clients who don’t get the basics of the technical side. My focus lies with tech-industry startups and mid-sized companies which also focus on building applications for the web, mobile devices or desktops.
With an increase of web developers and designers from China and India, how do you try to compete with that market? Obviously, price is where we all lose.
I’m not sure if designers or developers from China or India have had any infuence on my business but the clients I usually work with are not making decisions based on a price-tag, but rather based on the level of quality they are expecting.
I know some great designers working from India but they are charging western rates as well. In the end, in this industry you still get what you pay for.
What’s the best way to get known and receive requests without looking for clients?
Become an active member of the design community, try to build some connections with other designers. If you have something to share with others, start writing a blog, and most important – show the world what you are doing.
Is there anything that motivates you in designing and building things?
It’s pretty motivating when you see and hear how something you designed or developed is used by real humans. It’s amazing when you’re talking with a random person you met somewhere and this person uses a service you’ve helped to build.
