how did i go from 25 logos up to 2500 plus for each and every logo design if you find yourself
struggling to increase the prices of your designs and that doesn't just apply to logo designs i'm
talking about your designs in general then you're going to want to watch today's video because i'm
going to impart on some skills some knowledge and some tips on how you can raise up the bar
on your pricing on your graphic designs so i think i started freelancing back in about 2009
and i started on a platform that many of you probably know and that is people per hour
if you look at some of my older designs you can see that they were not that great let's be honest
but i managed to secure semi-regular clients on people per hour way back in 2009 but of course
most people couldn't make a living from selling a logo for 25 especially if you take around seven
days to finish a project like i did back then so how do we go about raising that bar and increasing
the value of our time and our graphic designs well as you can see i have elevated myself up to higher
levels of pricing and also skill set standards the recent revamp of my portfolio website does
show how far i've come since 2009. and i find myself turning down clients quite often because
i simply didn't have the time to work on their projects and that's the first point that i want to
tell you guys time you're not going to be able to raise up your level of skill and also your pricing
overnight it just isn't gonna happen it's a gradual process that you need to be aware of and
it's something that happens step by step by step a good example here is that nobody picks up a guitar
for the first time and instantly can you know do the best solo ever or be kurt cobain from nirvana
it just doesn't work like that there is that saying that it takes 10 000 hours of work on one
specific subject or topic to completely master it and even though 10 000 is just a ballpark number
i do agree with the logic that you need to spend a lot of time on one specific thing before you
become any good at it and of course if you're not good at something and you cannot prove that
you're good at something people are not going to want to pay big money on you and your time for
your designs so that's the first thing you need to understand that it's a process and a step-by-step
method where you're going to be improving little by little over a long period of time and if you
take into consideration the tips that i'm going to show you coming up now you really will be able
to achieve higher levels of skill and then higher levels of income in return so if i tell you guys
the most important or one of the most important parts of increasing your value to clients
is the m word what do you think that m word is it's hugely important to business in general but
especially you guys as logo or graphic designers and that m word is marketing let's say you're an
up and coming musician and you've just created or made your first song now if you try and sell that
song by yourself with the means that you have at your disposal you're probably not going to get
too many sales and that's probably because of the absence of marketing it doesn't matter how good or
original that song is if there's an absence of marketing it's not going to get that many sales
that's because marketing allows more eyes and more people to view or become aware of something
and that's why musicians work with labels or agents because those people have their contacts
and also the resources to market things so as a logo or graphic designer you're gonna
want to market yourself and get as many people to view your work as possible doesn't matter if you
have awesome logo designs or amazing skills if people aren't finding your work then you're not
gonna guarantee sales and that's why freelance websites or platforms are so helpful because
they already have the marketing down to a t they already have many people or many potential clients
on their platform so they do the marketing for you if that makes sense but of course
freelance platforms can be saturated and they take huge fees in return so you're going to
want to market yourself on social media and also your own portfolio website and one of the biggest
reasons why my logo design career took off well there's actually quite a few but one of them is
youtube youtube for me has been a marketing tool because when my videos rack up millions
millions of views there might be some people watching those videos who want a logo design
so they're actually directed to my portfolio website from youtube and then they get in touch
with me if they want to inquire about a project and this is one version of marketing but you
really need to consider how to market yourself as a graphic or logo designer i'm not going to go
into huge detail about that today because it will take a long time and it probably needs the same
separate video so the next tip is to look at your own work but also to look at other people's work
so if you can identify successful designers that already exist out there who are already making
really cool really neat and professional logos then you can kind of deconstruct or
reverse engineer their logo designs someone who's going to find it hard to elevate their designs
is going to look a professional work and they're going to feel hurt they're going to have a bad
taste in their mouth and just ignore it that's not the right way to go about things because
let's face it most of us at the beginning or at the very beginning are not professionals and our
skills are pretty lousy so you want to look up to the people who are doing really good things and
admire their work and think why does it work how is it successful and then in doing so you can go
back to your own designs look at them critically objectively and think where you can improve
because like i said at the start of the video if your graphic designs are not or your logo designs
are not that good they're not going to draw in a whole lot of money so what i would do is i would
take your best and also your worst logo designs and then make some notes about them write down
aspects of why your logo works in some situations and how you do things in a good way and then write
down some notes on where it went wrong where their logo design failed and how you can improve on that
if you do this once a month for example you are really going to have a good idea of where you're
going wrong in your logo design process and that brings me on to the next point in today's video
i was guilty of this for the longest time and it really did hinder my growth as a graphic designer
i was somebody who got a brief from the client and i instantly just jumped into adobe illustrator and
just started designing just like that sure you can come up with some decent designs
every once in a while doing that but it's not sustainable and it's not a surefire way
to become a better designer as soon as i started to consider the graphic design process
in my logo workflow things started to really improve in my design skills
and the final outcome for the client the logo design process exists for a reason and there are
reasons why many professional and high-end logo designs and agencies consider it to be very useful
because it is yes you're going to take more time designing and yes at
the beginning it's going to feel unnatural and uncomfortable to do it or maybe even pointless
but once you start taking the process seriously you start taking your design seriously and you
start pulling up more ideas more concepts and your level of work is going to be raised up and once
that level of work raises up your prices can come up too so in a nutshell that's pretty much how i
went from 25 per liter up to 2500 plus you can narrow it down to persistence the understanding
that it takes time and it is a journey marketing being critical of your work and looking at other
work out there that's already really really good and then also of course the design process
yeah i've talked about some of these things in different videos but i wanted to put everything
here into one simple easy to access video so everyone can see how i personally went from low
tier graphic design and income to a higher level but if you want to learn something else about
graphic design today do click a video on screen and until next time guys design your future today
peace
you