I’m not quite sure where the time has gone, a lot has happened since then. My mum was diagnosed with breast cancer early in the year and beat it like I knew she would. I’ve moved in with my lovely girlfriend who has been nothing but patient with me and my anti social work hours.

Starting out I had to set up a client base from scratch. Being frightened of not earning enough money for rent each month took its toll. I took on too much work at times and exhausted myself working late nights and early mornings. I gained two stone! Before being self-employed I played football weekly and jogged quite a bit but because of injuries and work commitments I had to stop playing. This resulted in me gaining weight and feeling pretty crappy in myself. After reading freelance articles from people with the same problem I decided to take action and fix myself (my body) I hired a private physio to fix my torn muscles and set about swimming 2/3 times weekly. Since then I am steadily losing any extra weight and have started to feel myself again.

I importantly learnt to prioritise my workflow. When I started out I would find myself checking emails most of the day and taking phone calls. This ate up my days work time very quickly, now I check emails once in the morning at lunch then in the evening. Allowing me to work without distractions breaking into the creativity. I created my own visual task system as I found online task systems just didn’t work for me. You can read more about that here » Why a visual task system has proven so productive

When leaving my last job I created the site Needstyle which I used as my freelance site. I found however the largest searched keywords for Needstyle were ‘Harry Ford’. Realising that my clients or prospect clients were searching for me individually helped me change my mind and move over to harryford.co.uk and away from the agency sounding Needstyle. After all it’s me as an individual that the client wants to work with for the re-design or branding of their website/app.

As a creative I find myself coming up with my own ideas for sites and applications all the time. Sparing time to work on these is hard but it is vital to work on them if you want them to become a reality. I am in the process of building Duuel.com which already has well over a thousand beta members listed, not bad for a still pretty unknown idea. I have just finished the first stage of my idea Rememberthewar.com along side Phil Ricketts which has been a great success and so far very well received. I am in the process of designing a Mac app called Invoicebox which I would like to get finished and in the app store early 2012.

When starting out I didn’t have the time or the funds to spare to go to events, well this is what I thought. I actually made the mistake of not socialising enough which was never a problem of mine previously! After attending a few local events including the Sushiworks launch party and the monthly meets generously hosted by Kyan I found my work load increasing and the type of client projects improving.

Prepare to Activate was one of the best events I’ve been to this year. If your a lone freelancer like me or a web company it was fantastic day out. Hosted by the guys at Decode and Elliot Jay Stocks it was by far the friendliest web event I have been to, meeting far more designers and developers than ever before. I highly recommend it for 2012. I even met Phil Ricketts there who I have worked with on Rememberthewar and even some client projects.

One thing I have only just realised is the importance of this blog, other than Twitter and Dribbble it is the only way I can connect online with like-minded professionals. Since blogging more in recent months Fordoing’s traffic has more than quadrupled, at one point hitting 7000 unique hits in a day, with the help of some social sites mind. The more work or time you put into something the more you will eventually get out it’s the same with a blog or a personal project.

Just like to say a big thanks to all that have followed me over the last year it has been awesome making so many new friends and I hope to make many more. May see some of you at New Adventures of Web Design in January?

Each website or application I used seemed to just build on my hatred towards all online task management systems.  Eventually I’d had enough, so came up with a solution for managing tasks that is best for the way I work. It’s not a fancy website or application that requires to signup and pay yet another subscription fee, instead it goes back to basics; a whiteboard and some post-it notes.

It is true what they say ‘out of sight is out of mind’. I needed something that was visually available 24/7,  so I purchased a cheap whiteboard just big enough to fit on the wall right next to my desk where it couldn’t be missed. The board is split into four sections; Backburner, To Do, Actions and Payments and use different coloured post-it notes for the various types of action, foe example Blue: Client task, Yellow: Personal task, Pink: Notes or Shopping Orders, Green: Meetings & Events.

Backburner: For  tasks awaiting quote confirmation or personal projects and tasks that are your least important.

To do: Tasks that are next in line for me to complete

Actions: My current actions, my tasks for the day ahead. Be it a design task or a meeting at 4pm in London they all go into my actions for the day.

Payments: Last of all payments, once I have completed a task I move it over to payments with a completion date written on the post-it. Ready for my invoice to be sent out.

This visual task system may not be for everyone but it has helped improve my day to day productivity since working for myself, as I am reminded to update it daily unlike all the online task systems I have not enjoyed using.

Dleoblack

Maebara Keichi

Jonas De Ro

Grzegorz Rutkowski

Kerem Beyit

NJay

Therese Larsson - *Fordoing favourite of the week*

The Nutcracker

Stormy Horizon

Sleepy Hollow

Peaceful Days

The Resting Traveler - *Fordoing favourite of the week*

Discovery

A dragon girl and a fish

Once again I have two more Dribbble invites to give away and this time round I wanted to do a something a little different. To enter this round of Dribbble invites you have to link me in the comments below to what would be your first Dribbble shot once invited in. You can do this by hosting the image yourself or uploading it with droplr.com or getcloudapp.com.

Linking me up or following me with me with your prospect account will also increase your chances of me finding you and drafting you in faster  > dribbble.com/harryford

The giveaway will close on the 31st of May. I will then choose my two favourite shots and send them out the invites.

Dribbble Invite Round 2 winners:

Nate Laffan – http://dribbble.com/Laffan – http://www.natelaffan.com/

Adam Stoddard - http://dribbble.com/adamstoddard - http://adamstoddard.com/

Thanks for all of your entries, keep Fordoing bookmarked as there will be a Dribbble Round 3 at some point in the future

If a friend approaches you asking if there is any chance you could illustrate their dog or build a mini website for my business (for £50)… say NO. This is your time, your life, your one chance to prove to the world that you are the dogs bollocks, that you can be innovative and stand out from the crowd. No one will help you apart from yourself, you are your greatest friend and biggest enemy when it comes to getting stuff done.

I can guarantee if your in my line of work or are in any way creative you will have in the back on your mind or sketchbook  ’your’ perfect idea or project just sitting there waiting to be started on. Once again, this is your fault it’s not getting done! Your clients will expect you to work all hours. They will expect you to do this, it’s just life, the life of a freelancer. But, you are your own boss now, so stand up for yourself and make your ideas happen. Every great idea started somewhere and it is just the people that decided to work harder and get theirs done that are out there earning money and building their reputation.

This is the same with client work; if you have spent all hours of the night perfecting the best of designs and your client the next morning says… “nah, its just not got the bang that I wanted, it needs more colour at the top” or whatever, stand up for yourself! They are hiring you because you know what you are doing and talking about. Explain to them why your design creates the right image for them, and that the changes they want may not neccessarily have the same impact as the initial design . You are the head chef when it comes to your design so make these decisions. A head chef would not let someone who doesn’t really know what they are talking about tell them that their raspberry brûlée needed more raspberries would they! No! He would tell them to fuck off and go back to chef school.

You may at times feel down on yourself and have real low points when things just aren’t working out. These are the times you have to show your character and ride through it. Making sure you come out at the other end a better, stronger person. Take what you learn and put it to good use. Be positive about everything you create and do, even if it is the most menial of daily chores.

I’m not telling you to tell clients to fuck off, or that they are always wrong, what I am saying is you need to stand up for good design and educate your clients into learning this too. It is a part of the job that we could do without, but, it is part of the job.

So make time for your dream project and allow time to educate your clients. Only you make yourself a stronger designer / illustrator/ freelancer. Only you can tell yourself I am going to get this project of mine done and do it. So get out there pull your creative fingers out and get building.

I promise you will feel better for it.

I’m a designer, illustrator, speaker, and author. I like to have my fingers in many pies, mainly because I have a relatively short attention span when it comes to projects. I think I’ve always wanted to work for myself, because it’s the only way I can be truly flexible with what I do.

I get a lot of questions about setting up as self employed and the financial issues that come with this, Income Tax, VAT, insurance etc. It certainly worried me to start with and I think it could put a lot of people off going by themselves.  Did you find setting up as a freelancer difficult?

No, not at all. In fact, I was shocked at how easy it was: everyone seems to think it’s a mission but it really doesn’t need to be, especially if you’re only a Sole Trader to begin with. Just get a great accountant from the outset and have a good system for recording your incomings and outgoings, like Xero. You can become VAT registered or form a Limited Company further down the line once you’re settled, which is what I did.

When starting out have you any tips on pay structure. i.e. The way you charge clients, hourly, daily rates or per job.

This has actually changed a lot in the (almost) three years I’ve been doing this. First of all, I charged by the day and thought it was the only way you should do it. But as time has gone on, I’ve ended up charging fixed, per-project rates (with carefully outlined cost breakdowns for when goalposts are moved). It makes things easier. Life’s too short to be tallying up hours or days here and there.

What time limit do you give clients to pay you for a job and how do you implement this? Do you use a standard contract which contains payment instructions?

I’m pretty flexible about this, and I think you have to be. All of my invoices say ‘due in one week’ but I rarely enforce it. Most clients are pretty good at paying, and when certain corporations have rigid 90-day payment policies, there’s not much you can do but bite that bullet.

How do you prioritise your work, management of clients and the day to day running of your business?

Not very well! Haha! I’m a terrible procrastinator. But I somehow manage to scrape through by using The Hit List for general to-dos, Basecamp for project-wide to-dos, iCal for diary planning, and Xero for all accounting stuff. I’d be a mess without those systems in place.

Sometimes I find it hard to concentrate, I either get distracted or have designers block. Sometimes putting on a movie in the background helps me concentrate but one I have seen many times. What are your tips to combat designers block!?  How do you motivate yourself and out of interest what is your favourite movie?

I couldn’t work with a movie on in the background — I’d just watch it! I’m not sure I have any particular method for curing creative block. The best one I’ve found is probably going for a walk: getting away from everything and approaching a problem with a fresh perspective. Sometimes that means accepting that certain days can be a total write-off… which is another reason project-based charges work better for me.

Incidentally, my favourite movie is The Big Lebowski, which perhaps goes some way towards explaining things…

What advice would you give to somebody who is looking to promote themselves as a freelancer.

Don’t be afraid to talk about what you do. It’s fine to be proud of your work; just don’t be a dick about it or try and make yourself seem better than you really are. Also, do stuff for the community to give back, or just do cool projects with your friends for fun. The best work comes out of having fun.

What are your latest and favourite apps and tools you are currently using?

Dropbox (isn’t everybody?), Cloud App, Reeder, Instapaper, Ommwriter, Plex. I’m a big fan of indie apps and I couldn’t live without the above list.

You recently released the all new 8faces magazine.  How important is it to earn passive income as a freelancer?

Not that important at all, and that’s certainly not why I created the magazine. In fact, it’s not passive at all — I have to do loads of work for it and the financial result is less than if I spent that time doing client work! I just do it for fun. I get a bit of passive income from the ads on my site but I wouldn’t say it’s something freelancers should seek out. It’s nice to have, but not essential if you do half-decent work.

What are the advantages of going freelance and what are your least favourite aspects?

In my opinion, the pros far outweigh the cons. You can do the kind of work you want, when you want, where you want, how you want, and with whom you want. You have control over your own destiny: you’re working towards your goals rather than those of your employer. Also, contrary to popular belief, you can work fewer hours as a freelancer than if you were in full-time employment. Another misconception is that freelancing isn’t as ‘safe’ as full-time employment. Well, to that I say: who is safer? The employed guy who can get made redundant without a day’s notice due to his employer performing badly, or the self-employed guy who’s in control of the way he runs his business and can foresee dry spells three months in advance so that he can do things to avoid them accordingly? The freelancer wins every time.

Are there disadvantages? The admin side is a ball-ache, for sure. Other than that, no. Yes, problems arise and life can be difficult, but good planning can avoid most of those problems.

Photographs by: Elliot Jay Stocks, 0703, IXD OSLO

Build up your client base before leaving your job

The best advice I can give is to take your time.  Don’t go quitting your day job just yet.  You may have the experience and the skills but that is not all you need to earn yourself money.  You need clients and contacts to survive.

While working at your previous job you have to take the time to build up a client base.  Out of hours I spent night after night designing & building sites for clients.  Not every company will allow you to do this but if you want something bad enough, you have to take the bull by the horns.  You won’t get anywhere by sitting on your arse and doing nothing.

Save money before you leave

As well as building a client base you need to build up some savings to use as security for yourself as a freelancer.  You will also need to buy yourself hardware, books and programs to work for yourself.  Think about having enough money to pay the rent if you have a slow couple of months.

Create a Plan of action

Everyone needs a plan.  It is a business you are building after all.  You should take some time creating your plan of action, setting it out professionally, you never know an investor may one day want to see it.  Your plan of action should include the following sections:

• A cover page

Your plan should be professionally displayed, create a cover page that you can present with pride.

• Contents

Lay your plan out like a small book, breaking it into sections to include page numbers.

• Company Bio

Register online as self employed

The fastest way to get into business is to become a self-employed sole trader.  There’s very little paperwork involved and no fees or other charges to pay.  You can’t simply declare yourself as self-employed.  You need to formally register, and take responsibility for paying your own tax and National Insurance.

HMRC requires that you notify them within three months of becoming self-employed.  This is easy to do, either by filling out the online form or phoning the Newly Self-employed Helpline on 0845 915 4515.

Keeping accurate records

From day one keep clear and accurate records of everything that happens to your business, especially financial transactions.  Try to be as organised as possible and put time aside each week to keep paperwork up-to-date.

You will appreciate this when it’s time to fill out your tax or VAT return.  There’s nothing more demotivating than having a large box with months worth of paperwork to dredge through.  Whereas, filed organised paperwork, will make it a quick and easy process.

Find yourself an accountant

If you don’t want to manage your own books with the many online accounting systems that are available, then you will need to find yourself an accountant.  Keeping accurate records will help towards this as well.  Even if you have an accountant, they will ask you to record all transactions and keep all receipts so they can use them for your Tax return and end of year report. An accountant will help explain clearly what you can claim back on in your tax return, including, petrol, electrical bills and even software and hardware you may have previously purchased for your business.

Build up design contacts online and locally

Freelancing does not have to be lonely!  It is however, up to you, to venture out and find out what’s going on.  Once I went freelance it took me far too long to network with other designers and businesses local to me. I can almost guarantee there is at least one organised meet in your area.  As a freelancer and working from my own home, I found it very lonely for the first few months.  I would try and socialise with friends as much as I could, however, not mixing with like minded people i.e. designers and developers, was something I missed very much.

There are plenty of local web companies holding meets all the time, in all different types of venues.  Going to local events, I found a lot of new friends that I could share ideas with, who were not bored with me chatting about the internet, like most of my family and friends were.  I have even found work through a few events.  You can guarantee 99% of people at these events will use Twitter to network, so make sure you are using it too!

Off to your local bank to discuss a business account

You will need to set up a business account.  Just phone up your local bank and make an appointment with the business manager.  They will offer you several packages with products such as Sage included.  As a single freelancer, it is up to you, to decide what you would like but I can only recommend taking the free business account.

Using one bank can help you manage your money easily.  I access both of my accounts under my one online login, allowing me to manage personal and business in one place.  Keeping the accounts separate is very important, managing your taxes and business finances should be fun and not stressful.

Insurance?

Even as a self-employed person working on your own, you should look at professional indemnity and public liability insurance.  The later being more important when on your own.

Market yourself professionally & build a portfolio

Your online presence isn’t just about social sites like Twitter and Facebook.  You need to have your own site.  A place to present your work and more importantly, yourself.  After all, as a freelancer, you are the main selling point of your business.  As a personal experiment, I wanted to create a large online presence for myself, with a few different sites.  One described my work and services, and it takes the form of NeedStyle. Another site I built lists where I can be found all around the web, aptly called HFord.  Ranking top in Google for your name will obviously enable people to find you quickly and easily, plus it looks good!

Last but not least, I wanted a place to share my experiences as a freelancer, enabling me to help other freelancers achieve their goals.  Doing this in a form of a blog (Fordoing) allowed me to become more of an active force on the internet.

Business cards

Once you have branded yourself and your business, you can start creating some physical forms of advertising to pass around, such as business cards and leaflets.  Business cards are great for when attending local meets or when out and about and someone needs your contact details.  Make your cards friendly and simple.  My favourite business cards have been ones with just a URL or a single Twitter username.  Very simple, but I am much more likely to visit one thing rather than several listed.

Writing yourself a contract

I’ve never had a client not want to sign a contract, if that happened to me I’d view it as a red flag and end that engagement immediately!  Writing up your own contract and sending out with each project you are involved with, is essential.  It looks profesional, and is vital in laying out payment, expectations of the job, including changes and revisions, technical support that you may offer and deadlines etc.

Good luck in all your future endeavours and please let me know if I have been of any help.

I work as a full time designer & Illustrator under my new brand NeedStyle. I was also lucky enough to learn and pick up photography from a very young age with my first camera being an Olympus OM-1 MD Chrome.  Working within the web, I use a lot of photography when building portfolios, company sites and even in personal work.  This has allowed me to re-learn a lot of old skills learnt at college.

The build

Building Fordoing was a priority, but launching myself into the freelance world, simply meant I didn’t have the time.  This is why I hired my good friend Steve Whiteley, to re-build Fordoing within WordPress for me.

Steve Whiteley:

My goal for this theme was to get every piece of content into the database and manageable by the WP admin interface, allowing you to concentrate on the managing content, rather than editing theme files.

Not only did Steve build the new Fordoing WordPress theme from scratch, but he also updated one of his existing WordPress plugins – contact details – to work within the new navigation and provide a contact form. You can download this plugin for free from the WordPress Plugin Directory.  The theme also makes use of post thumbnails, navigation menus, widgets, shortcodes and custom comments display.

The original design

As with most design processes, it took several attempts to get it right.  The original idea was to keep it in the same vein as two of my previous sites, HFord and NeedStyle.  HFord has a very personal illustrated style, with its simple portrait and content area.  NeedStyle keeps within a similar illustrated design style, allowing the content to be easily read on each page and being complimented by the photographs and imagery used.

Wanting to keep the new Fordoing design in this simple style, with illustration to make it personal, I posted an early layout on Forrst and it received some good feedback.  Pleased with this design at first, I subsequently found it would limit a lot of what I needed to do with Fordoing as a design, illustration & photography resource in the future.

I found when using large photographs and images in the post page, it looked disjointed and weak. It is offen the case that the second attempt at a design will naturally be better, after critiquing the first.

Parts I wanted to keep

The ability to present a single targeted advertisement on every page, throughout the site.  Although I want Fordoing to be a place to help freelancers, I thought it would be nice to gather feedback on personal sites and ideas I have been developing by including an area to show the current personal projects I am working on.

In the footer, I list archives and categories.  I wanted to bring this across to my next design, in an original way, that enables the user to find articles they are looking for. Hopefully making it easier than scrolling to the footer each time.

Parts I wanted to change

The Fordoing logo in the header on this design, was too impersonal, used solely for the sake of using a beautiful font. The Fordoing logo I created for the current design, has a much more personal development and meaning to it, which I will explain in its own article soon.

The linked images in the footer, have all been taken out, as I have a very similar layout on NeedStyle.  Doing this helps keep the users interest and focus mainly on the sites articles.

The new design

Too many blogs are cluttered, so full of buttons and social icons, that it is hard to concentrate on what is important, i.e. the content. I really wanted to keep it clean and solely based around the posts without being too distracting.

The initial feedback for my latest design, wasn’t as positive as the previous one. This was not surprising, as I had taken the site in a very different direction and people appeared to like my original illustrated style.

However, I have to keep growing and moving in different directions as a designer, if I am going to succeed in being a leader in this profession.

Advertisements

Finding targeted advertising for my site was pretty easy.  I was in contact with a few different ad site agencies but found by far the most helpful and communicative was Influads.  Ana was a delight to be in contact with and helped me make my decision to use Influads by just being helpful through email contact.

The site is still in early beta, so be sure to check them out if you are needing advertising for your site or blog.

What is to come

So what is to come with Fordoing?  My aim is to help freelancers around the globe with the articles I have lined up to release.  If I can help you save money, time and energy on your day to day freelance job, then I will feel the site is a success and I will be happy.

So here is to the future of Fordoing and the future of Freelancing in general.