Today I mark another year as an independent design director, another year which has brought a lot of exciting opportunities. I’ve experienced a shift from working on a few long-term projects to a large variety of shorter-term ones across multiple industries, everything from high tech to health care. For a second semester, I’ve taught graduate students at the Academy of Art (one of my students won a Brand New Award for her work in the class). I even opened cuantogarabato, my Etsy shop.

But besides working and teaching, through freelancing I’ve rediscovered a passion for learning. In the past 12 months I’ve taken classes and workshops in diverse subjects, including type design in Italy, Portuguese (making my visit to Brazil here, here and here twice the fun), Processing programming, watercolour painting, finance, sign painting, even cooking.

Looking forward to the next twelve months!

Incredible that it has been one full year since the day I submitted my resignation letter at Landor and embarked on this roller coaster adventure it’s been to work as a freelancer.

It has been challenging, exciting, and rewarding on a professional level. Some of the highlights? Being able to see from the inside of big corporations how hard it is to execute brand decisions on a daily basis, acting as a consultant on a branding project in Mexico, sharing some of the knowledge gained over the years as a professional with graduate students at the Academy of Art, even art directing (bilingually!) a corporate video filmed in Buenos Aires.

It’s been a fun ride thus far. I’m looking forward to see what the next year will bring!

Continuing with my series of posts on discoveries and surprises I’ve made during my first year of freelancing, I want to use this third installment to share some thoughts I’ve developed in my relation to perfectionism.

I’ve always been of this school of thought: great designers are perfectionists by nature. With design being all about paying attention to detail, who better equipped to be relentless in the pursuit of greatness than perfectionists? But in my year freelancing I’ve discovered that while a perfectionist might make a great designer, a great freelance designer needs equal measures of flexibility.

Freelance design is a messy process. You may get called in the middle of a project, to contribute a few ideas to be continued in-house. A project may end abruptly, or be suspended indefinitely. Proposals may go nowhere. The right project may appear at the wrong time, or the wrong project at the right time. Navigating all this requires flexibility.

Perfection should be a goal, not a barrier. I don’t consider myself a writer, but I haven’t let that stop me from setting up this blog. I don’t consider myself an expert in web design, yet I’ve been able to put together a good website to showcase my work. I’ve made plenty of mistakes scoping work in proposals, or with my time management. But everything can be improved, and the only way to learn is by doing.

I know for some, this is old news. Especially for Voltaire, since he spoke of this in 1772 when he wrote in La Bégueule that ”the best is the enemy of the good.” But it’s been quite revelatory to me, and quite satisfying to be able to add learn new things within a profession I’ve chosen to embark in more than a decade ago.

Continuing with my series of posts on discoveries and surprises I’ve made during my first year of freelancing, this one focuses on how my views on time and money have evolved.

I remember many conversations with my dad over the years when he would ask me how could I be satisfied with being an employee. As an entrepreneur, he could not understand it. And I, as an employee working on big projects at one of the most important design studios in the world, could not understand his question.

Now that I freelance, I get it. It was a question of self motivation: how did I use all the idle times when not busy with work? The truth is that for the most part, that time went to waste. Why? Because idle time was still paid time.

The equation changes dramatically with freelancing. Idle time is not paid time. But with a newfound self motivation, I notice idle time has become a time for possibilities. Finding ways to promote myself. Updating my website or this blog. Contacting potential clients. Bookkeeping. Engaging in personal projects to stimulate my creativity. Even teaching an MFA graduate course in branding.

I think this motivation comes from having had to put a price to my time. Once “what’s your hourly rate?” became a common question I had to respond to, it was hard not to realize my time is valuable, and begin treating it as such.

On the subject of money there is a lot to discuss, but I’m not sure I could do it any better than Mike Monteiro in his F*ck You, Pay Me lecture.

Other than using a different choice of words.

Nailing the proper time/money ratio is an art, sometimes nerve-wracking. And freelance finances are very different from those that stem from steady paychecks. Fortunately, I found some very useful resources:

The Money Book for Freelancers, Part-Timers & the Self-Employed
Creative Inc.
Get a Financial Life: Personal Finance In Your Twenties and Thirties

Together with friends who already freelance, these books served me as a good compass in the early months of transition to a freelance approach to branding and design.

In exactly one week I will be reaching my first year as a freelancer, following 11 years of working as an employee at Landor Associates. I thought a fitting way to celebrate this milestone: sharing some surprises and learnings this new independence has brought with it by starting a sporadic series of posts I’ll call Now that I freelance I know.

But first, let’s take a walk.

Throughout the 11 years I worked at Landor, my morning routine involved enjoying a long breakfast while reading the print version of the New York Times, followed by a half hour walk to the office. For ten years this walk was along the Embarcadero, since I lived in SoMa. The last year I moved to Russian Hill, and the walk looked like the clip above (well, if condensed to 30 seconds or less).

As an employee, that walk was a result of necessity. I had to go to the office to work. But I never understood the importance this walk had in my daily life until I started working freelance from home. Suddenly, my commute became as short as steps between my bedroom and living room. I could work immediately after breakfast.

And so I did. Within a week, I noticed something. After working for an hour or two I would begin feeling restless. It didn’t take long to realize I needed a new routine! I needed to continue “walking to work.” After finishing breakfast, I began resorting to going for a half hour walk, destination uncertain. It felt right, clearing my head for the day ahead.

That was just one of many new routines I had to create for myself. Slowly a repertoire began to emerge. Settling on what chair to use when I work. When and how long lunch breaks should be. And a big one: how to “leave the office” or signal I’m done for the day. Since I work on a laptop, between 5pm and 6pm it goes into a drawer, not to be seen again until the morning walk the following morning.

Many people imagine freelance life as a free-from-schedules, you-must-work-in-pijamas kind of life. And there must be many freelancers out there that do that. Not me. My living room is my office and I noticed I’m more efficient if I treat it as such. During regular hours. And always after going for a walk.