There’s lots of books out there that seek to help major agencies deal with Fortune 500 level companies, but what about the lone Joe Freelancer? Every day, the biggest companies in the world hire out countless freelancers (or subcontractors as they call it) to work on their projects. In this little guide I’ll seek to spread some light on the topic for anyone that’s seeking to tackle some big projects, and I’ll share a few tips on how I grabbed my first Fortune 500 gig.
How I started on big projects:
When I was still new to design, the very idea of working on huge corporate projects was actually a turnoff because it felt like a compromise. I guess I felt that a project for a mega corp could never be as artistically challenging or as fun as a project for a little indy label. It turns out though, that this couldn’t be further from the truth. After working on several projects for the likes of DirecTV, IAC, SAP, Westinghouse, and more, I can confidently say that projects for major label brands can exciting, challenging, and easily as much fun as any other project.
A few years into my freelance career, I got a call from a friend of a friend who knew a guy who owned a big studio in Santa Monica that needed an extra designer. It was one of those random opportunities that really wasn’t that random at all when you consider the amount of people-to-people networking I was doing at the time. Long story short, within 30 minutes I was at my computer designing some cell phone artwork for Def Jam Mobile. A week after that, I had been assigned to a project for DirecTV.
About two years after landing the first “big” gig, I now count these major projects as about 75% of my studio’s monthly income. Because of legal reasons I can’t talk about any of the projects in detail, but I can say that they range in everything from product design reviews to web and brand redesigns to full scale software prototyping.
So enough with my story, here’s a few tips that I found to be of good use when tackling projects for large companies:
1. They’re Human
It sounds obvious, but the first step for a freelancer who hasn’t ever taken on a project from a big public company is to demystify the experience. Pretty much everything that you utilize to deal with smaller clients will work with big clients. This means that good communication and people skills still rank as the easiest way to both land a gig and see it succeed.
Generally, you’ll have 1 or 2 project managers that you’re in constant communication with, and you’ll never see a hint of the rest of the company (if you’re lucky, you might get an art director, but don’t hold your breathe). In many ways, these project managers can be viewed as small clients themselves. The same rules apply: treat them well, deliver great work, and you’ll probably be invited back.
2. Get a Team
As a freelancer, you’re just one guy/gal and there’s only so many people that you know. Generally, Fortune 500 companies that are subcontracting out projects still use the oldest communication channel available: who they know. Project managers and art directors are in constant communication with friends and colleagues and this is usually how they find new freelancers. Be it at a party, a conference, a blog or a friend-of-a-friend, your chances of getting hired go up exponentially when you have a network of like-minded professionals all seeking out the same type of work.
The benefits of having a ‘team’ of contractors is twofold. 1) More people on the ground means a better chance of finding a project. 2) When you finally land a project, you’ve got a team of people to assist with it. In this way, you’re getting the benefit of a studio without actually having to quit being freelance.
3. Know Your Role
This one’s simple, but profound. Large companies usually have in-house design teams or established ad agencies. When they subcontract out, they are looking to break a pattern and get fresh ideas. For instance, there’s a very low chance that you’ll actually be hired to redesign a full website; Instead, you’ll be hired to design a series of new ideas and iterations that allow the project manager to see a completely different take than what his/her own in-house team is doing. In all likelyhood, your design will never see the light of day, but it provides a different kind of value to the company; Your value as a freelancer is that you are outside the immediate sphere of influence of the company politics. Remember this and allow it to inform how you approach each project.
This is probably the biggest difference between small clients and big ones. Big clients can afford to hire out subcontractor teams to explore new territory for a brand and bring in fresh ideas. Small clients usually hire simply to get a project done. There’s even been a few cases where actual agencies will hire teams that I work with to bring in new ideas; so don’t underestimate the power of creative thinking and your ability to break out of the box.
4. Know The Battlefield, Define a Win
Corporate politics can be as messy, brutal and confusing as the Iraq war. Before you actually begin work on a project, take some time to ask your project manager some direct questions that he might not bring up in the creative brief:
Are there any hidden goals or situations that I should know about that will help me succeed?
and my favorite is from Peter,
Tell me in your own words what a “win” will be for this project.
There’s probably a thousand other ways to phrase this line of thinking, but the root is this: understanding what the company or project manager is actually seeking to do with a project is perhaps the most crucial piece of information you can ever get from a client. Sadly, this often isn’t a piece of information that’s included in a project brief, but taking the time to dig it out will ensure that you at least know what your client is looking for.
5. Communicate Early and Often
This is one of those rules that works for pretty much every client, but is especially important with the likes of Fortune 500 clients. Early in every project, I (or the team that I’m working with), establish a high frequency of check-in meetings. This ranges from a 2 meetings a week to several in a single day. The main reason is this: big clients usually have stricter time deadlines than small clients because there are so many other moving pieces to a project. Ie: If you’re being hired for a web design, and the company already has a team working on development, and the CEO is expecting a certain launch date, it’s imperative that your work is done on time for them to meet their internal goals. Being able to constantly adjust direction will keep you from spending a week on the wrong path, and will save everyone time, money, and stress.
6. You Ideas Will Be Watered Down
This was the hardest pill to swallow for myself, but one that I’ve encountered in every project for big label clients: no matter how great a designer you are, the likelihood of you being given full creative reign over the final implementation of any project is 1 in a billion. The simple fact is that there are far too many people who will need to review, edit, and approve your project before it sees the light of day. This includes a) your project manager, b) his boss, c) the marketing team, d) the legal team, e) the executive team, etcetera. You get the picture, right?
It doesn’t mean that your work isn’t extraordinarily great – it’s just a fact of life that any time 50 people look at a project, a few of them will make changes to it based on their own agendas. Griping over this is common fodder for Friday night beer sessions between designers, but it’s not something any of us are going to change. Learn to live with it and celebrate when one of your great ideas actually makes it to the public eye.
Conclusion
I’ll say this: the process of working with big clients is something that I enjoy, but it’s something that I’m still very much learning as I go. There’s a lot more that can be said about tackling large clients (feel free to share them below), but these are the core principles that I use whenever I’m working with some of my bigger clients.
For many freelance designers out there, the notion of working on a Fortune 500 company project is as intimidating as it is exciting. The fact is that these projects need not be intimidating as you long as you bring the skills and enthusiasm that landed you the project in the first place.
Links:
Here’s a few other places you can go for more information on this topic:
Blog.ShaneandPeter.com – A blog for one of the teams I work with – lots of great info about freelancing here.
Freelance Switch – A great posting of articles to help freelancers succeed. Here’s just one.
Nice and complex article. Under point 6. I would only add, that watering down ideas is on the other hand caused by numerous clientel the big companies have, so less chance that radical inputs will be accepted by such a mass of customers … – and they are very well aware of this.
Hi nik, thanks for the comment. You make an excellent point and I couldn’t agree more – In this draft I left out a comment about how I actually believe that these companies can and should be trusted to make the right decisions for the final art approval. This isn’t always the case; I just finished a particularly beautiful web re-design for one of the top 200 most visited sites on the net that sadly was mauled by their internal team simply because they didn’t want to tinker too much with the original source code – but that’s yet another case where I’ve gotta go back to the “know your role” point and trust that whatever decision that was made was justified, whether I understand it as the designer or not. In this case, internal financial and/or marketing technicalities over-ruled a good design decision (probably based on a cost/benefit analysis of what it would cost to recode such a highly scaled site). I’ve seen a number of other particularly befuddling decisions by executive teams in the past as well – and what it comes down to is that in 99% of cases, they know their target market better than any outside contractor can.
In any event – point well made – I plan on going back through this article in a month and I’ll definitely make the addition and credit ya
.
Oh, btw – you’re officially my first comment on the new site (4 days old)! Silly for me to get excited? Sure… but thanks!
Very good article. I’m not a web developer or designer, I am actually in the video production world, and I still thoroughly enjoyed reading your article. Full of great information. I also love your website! Very attractive.
@Ken : Thanks for the comment Ken – I actually work with a small team of video production guys too (the founder of http://www.rukkus.tv has been working in the field for top tier post-production stuff for a while), so I definitely was trying to keep the topic as open as possible to anyone from programmers to creatives. I happen to have more experience with design, but these tips/rules can definitely be applied across the creative industry. Thanks again for the comment, glad you like the redesign!
I really like your site and way to “handle” words and opinions.
Thank you for this very helpful article and links to the topic.
I will come back soon to see what´s happening on, at and with this site/project.
Thanks, Ronny
@Ronny – Thanks for the kind comment. Glad you like the article… I’ll look forward to writing more in this line of thought in the next couple of weeks
Cheers!
Hello Brandon, very nice reading.
But lets say I have a good portfolio and a good working attitude but you live in the opposite side of the world.
How do you get in touch with the important people? I know what to do, just getting exposure and a good reputation, what I mean is how to approach them yourself instead waiting for their call.
That big guys are open minded about working trough internet? In my case I live in Spain and I have work trough internet all the time, it works, but not sure if that kind of companies always require you being working locally.
Also, sometimes I find that bigger is the company, smaller is the budget, they know you would kill to work for them (and they are right
). Its usual in that level too?
Cheers.
Sergio
PS: thanks for your kind words in my last PSDTuts article, its much appreciated
@Sergio: Thanks for the comment and questions! I’ll happily take them on for ya. I checked out your work and it definitely looks up to par with what’s currently out there… it’s just a matter of pairing yourself with the right people.
First – all of the studios that I happen to work for are extremely open-minded about working remotely. The primary group that I’ve been working with for the past year or so, shaneandpeter.com, actually runs their entire business remotely, with contractors from the States to Australia and all over.
I’ll write a post pretty soon about how remote design & project management works, but in short: the workflow remains the same – you just work on your own time and place… as long as you meet deadlines and are available for meetings, everything works as you’d expect. In 99% of cases, the end client (say, Microsoft) won’t actually be contracting you – it’ll be a studio that has the contract and they’ll in effect be ‘subcontracting’ it out to you as a remote freelancer. Some larger studios like this might include the KDU and Ars Thenea, but having not worked with them personally, I can’t say too much about them specifically. You can also hunt around on the typical Job Boards – including Krop, Freelance Switch, etc. – the boards that charge the client for posting a project usually work to filter out all but the significant projects. This isn’t the most ‘personal’ way to hunt down big gigs, but you never know who you’ll meet through these.
Second – how do you get in touch with the “big guys”. Well, in all honesty, I think the use of the term “big guys” is unwarranted. It infers that there are a few key people with suits in the industry that hand out all of the good gigs and that they’re highly selective… when in actuality, there’s thousands of thousands of people who would be able to send you a gig and usually, they need you as much or more than you need them. That isn’t to say that you can push them around or anything silly like that… it’s just that the meeting up of a designer and a client is mutually beneficial. It’s just two people with needs that match up – they have a need for work – you have a need for money – deal!
So, to be more specific. I know lots and lots of designers/programmers/creatives that simply hunt around for the blogs of people they want to work for, and fire out comments and emails inquiring about work. The fact is that there’s people behind each studio blog, and the simple act of starting an online dialogue with someone can turn into contract work. The studio’s themselves are always seeking to grow and take on more projects, so it doesn’t hurt to add your name to their freelance roster. I’d recommend hunting around first for work that’s out in the industry that you like and then see if you can’t track down what studios worked on it – then start a dialogue with several of the project managers at various studios and followup with some samples of recent work. It doesn’t have to be super formal or anything, but just starting some of these dialogues can be the first step towards getting bigger projects.
I’ll also note that I’ll be writing more about a lot of these topics in depth over the next couple of months… so while my answer skims the surface of things that you can do to succeed remotely, the upcoming articles will digg a lot deeper into actionable items.
Anyways – so, my question back to you would be: What kind of work do you want to be doing? What clients are you interested in seeking out? I might not have direct contacts since I’m more on the UI side of things, but I’d be happy to help ya with a bit of strategy from a superficial level.
Hello Brandon, thanks a lot for such a detailed reply. Its much appreciated.
Everything sounds reasonable, I realized things I already knew but the reading made myself completelly conscient about it.
So, in my case, since I have no too human power (Im just a one person) I should aiming to design agencies instead final costumers. That´s a good point.
Would be very interesting if you post a list of big agencies and advice at time to contact them. How to write a email, how to select the portfolio pieces, how to showcase them…
I would define myself as a graphic artist, more an illustrator than a graphic designer, I would like to do illustrated logos, illustration and possibly webdesign with heavy graphic load (in this field Im not too experimented yet, but Im improving latelly) for companies with young target audience (videogames, films, apparel and cloting, toys…) on top would be Disney, Coca-Cola, Mcdonadls, Nike, Marvel, Mattel, Sony…
Cheers.
Sergio
Hello Brandon,
I wanted to let you know that your template Dark Alantica is SUPER AMAZING! The functions are very easy to use, the template is user friendly and I'm not even a true PHP & CSS expert. I would like to see more of your work.
Where can i have more info on this ?
Have a nice day
Jacjin micyle
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When is the next post comming on this topic.
Thanks
Dev khal
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I bookmarked your post will read this latter
Thanks
Venu shaki
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