How to start a design agency
The great thing about starting a design agency, be it offline or
online design, is that there's a pretty low barrier to entry. For a
relatively small outlay, you can teach yourself the tools of the
trade and start pitching for work.
However, this means lots of other people are doing it too.
Hundreds of agencies and freelancers are all fighting for the same
contracts and projects. Make sure you pick a niche and research it
well when you launch your design agency. A specialism in, say,
legal websites, Facebook campaigns, or pharmaceutical magazines
will give you the edge in industry-specific pitches.
Many design agencies evolve organically. It often begins with a
single freelancer, completing projects to deadline and making a
living from a portfolio of clients. When the freelancer ends up
with too much work (s)he will have to take on some help and create
a design network. Acclaim and experience increases, a brand is born
and the agency takes off.
Day-to-day
First of all, be prepared for long hours staring at a screen.
Design work is fiddly and requires oodles of patience and tenacity.
The good news is, if you are freelance and working on contracts,
you can choose your working hours. This can be handy when working
on digital projects: if you prefer to work at night, you're better
placed to pick up bits of work from the US and beyond.
As the business starts to scale and you take on employees/office
space, there may be exciting brainstorming sessions where pitches
are thrashed out and ideas and bandied about. Expect tight
deadlines, exacting clients who don't always know what they want,
and a whole lot of screens.
Check out this video from London-based agency Strawberry Soup for a sneak peek at a day in
the life of an design company.
The industry and market
The design economy in the UK is huge. Last recorded figures show
that £33.5 billion was invested in design in 2008, which is 2.4% of
GDP. It's a hugely competitive arena: in Central London alone,
there are as many as 35 web design companies (and many more
freelancers) per square mile.
However, the design industry is in the sweet spot at the moment.
The government is in the middle of a push to increase investment in
and awareness of small firms operating in intellectual property
industries, design included.
Whether this will translate into more grants and public sector
opportunities for up-and-coming designers remains to be seen, but
keep your eyes on the
prize.
Natural skills
- Patience: Will you keep your cool when a client sets an
impossible deadline or changes a design for the 100th time?
- A keen eye for design: Are you up to date with the latest
innovations in typography or, for a digital agency, an up-to-date
knowledge of web languages?
- Are you up for some stiff competition? There are thousands of
design agencies in the UK, from one-man bands to sprawling
agencies. You will have to compete with all of them. Are you up for
the challenge?
- Do you enjoy the challenge of finding and closing new business?
A big part of your job will be chasing new clients. As your
business grows and you take on more staff, you may do less and less
actual design to focus on running the business. Are you happy with
that prospect?
- Lose the ego. You may LOVE your latest version of a design
project, but if the client hates it, wants the logo in grey and in
a Times New Roman font, and won't hear otherwise, you'll have to
swallow your design pride and do the job. There's no room for prima
donnas in this trade.
Training
There are a huge range of training options available for
designers. You can attend a course at a college, take a full degree
in the myriad design specialisms, or enrol in a web course.
- Central
Saint Martins in London has turned out hundreds of successful
designers, from AdBusters art director Jonathan Barnbrook to
industrial designer and CEO of Dyson, James Dyson.
- Or teach yourself: Learn the basics of Photoshop and InDesign
(publishing) or Dreamweaver and Fireworks (web) through web
tutorials and product walkthroughs.
Premises
The great thing about running a design agency is that you don't
necessarily need an office. You can work from home and
manage a whole network of freelance designers without having a
permanent base.
If you do want a bricks and mortar office, popular locations in
London (where the largest number of design agencies operate)
include: Soho, where rent stands at between £30-50 per square foot,
Clerkenwell, at £25-45, and Hoxton, £25-45.
Staff
The speed at which you can grow your business depends on two
factors: The limits of your time, resources and imagination; and
your ability to recruit other designers.
There are hundreds of thousands of freelance designers working
in the UK right now. Not to mention all the design graduates
pouring out of university and looking for work.
How can you track these hotshots down?
- Or go directly to universities like Goldsmiths, Manchester
Metropolitan, Bournemouth Uni and the Chelsea College of Art &
Design.
- Use LinkedIn to seek out likely designers
- And keep a weather eye on MeetUp.com for any useful networking evenings
that will let you rub shoulders with the glitterati of the design
community.
Money
Presuming you already own a laptop or computer, your costs come
down to software and time. Software doesn't come cheap, although
many of the packages below come in Student/Teacher of pared down
'Elements' options which could be more cost-effective. However, if
you want to make design your profession, it's important to have the
latest tools or risk being left behind.
- Photoshop CS5 starts at around £279.99
- Dreamweaver CS5.5 - from £229
- Fireworks CS5 - from £123
- InDesign CS5.5 - from £279
If you decide to do a design course, expect to pay over £500 for
a short course, and over £3,000 a year for a Bachelor of Arts.
If you don't have the start-up capital for training, consider
joining an agency and learning the ropes from the bottom up
(although you may be making a lot of tea to begin with).
There are also a few standard business overheads:
- Professional Indemnity Insurance: from £250 a year
- Telephone & internet: around £50 a month
- Website domain name and hosting: between £100-250 a year
First steps
- Research your market: Make sure you pick an area of focus early
on. It's important to distinguish your brand from the hordes of
other design agencies out there.
- Assess the competition. Look at all the other design agencies
in your area. How do their compare to your proposition? Can you
learn anything from what they are doing? Steal any smart ideas from
their website? Remember, this industry is dog eat dog, so be the
Pit-bull not the Chihuahua.
- Create a beautiful website that showcases your ability and
range. Remember, your website is your company's window to the
world. Include some examples of your work, full contact details
and, if you have time, a blog to talk about some of the design
issues and trends that you care about. Customers will not trust you
to design their magazine or build their website if yours is a
disaster.
- Open an account with a stock image library. Subscriptions start
from £100 a month while image download fees start at a couple of
quid and go up to £75 for a single image.
- Get on Twitter. It's a great way to canvas for work, show off
existing projects, network with other designers and read up on new
design innovations.
- Get a Dropbox account. It makes sharing large images and files
a doddle. Remember, most email systems can't digest incoming
messages with over 10MB attached.
- Do a stint on 99Designs to build a portfolio of work. It's a
great way to get exposure to a wide selection of clients and could
provide future contact fodder.
Tips
- Stephen Holmes from Old Street-based graphic
design firm Bloody Big Spider says: "Get an accountant and get good
at doing the business side of things. This will give you more time
to do the design work you love."
- Remember: everything has a value. Ideas are currency and time
is money, so make sure you charge for ideas and time.
The idea is to make a fair profit, not run yourself ragged without
even breaking even.
- Do your homework: Research what the average daily rates are and
don't be afraid to stick to your guns. If you have a brilliant
portfolio of work, you don't need to compete with cut-price patch
jobs from 'production line' designers. Quality with value = a no
brainer for the client.
- Keep your finger on the pulse by subscribing to design
publications like .Net or Wired magazine
- Control cashflow - Take a deposit, invoice in stage payments
and spend at least some money on regular targeted sales
activity.
- Nottingham-based design studio Shape or
Form tweeted this little nugget through: "Contracts, coffee
& couches- Be prepared, be awake, and find an inspirational
workspace."
- Play to the areas you know - nothing works better than a
relevant case study.
- Reuse and recycle. Save all of your work and repurpose fonts
and images that hit the cutting room floor with previous
projects.
- James Sheriff, co-founder of Barnsley-based agency Genius
Division, says: It's all about communication between you and the
client. Make them sure they know when you should be paid before
starting the job!"
Common Pitfalls
- Not pricing your work accurately. If you push down your prices
too far, you could end up working for peanuts. While this makes
sense in the beginning when you're trying to build a portfolio,
once you're established, make sure you stick to your
rate-card.
- Projects often change and evolve - usually resulting in more
work for you. Make sure you get sign off on specs early, invoice at
every stage of production, and charge for any additional
graft.
- All your designs must be created - from scratch - by you or
your team. If you 'borrow' or resell other designers' work, or
steal images you could face legal action, which can be very
expensive.
- There's plenty of equipment and software out there to help you
create brilliant designs. But you don't need it all at once! Start
with the most crucial software - a lot can be accomplished with one
or two major applications, although it may take a little more time
- and you could save a lot of money. Once you have money coming in,
you can buy the perfect scanner, graphics tablet and other design
tools.
Support and resources
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