Makings Space for Socially-Engaged Design Practice, Brave New Alps
I’ve been a freelancer for almost 3 years now and counting. It’s definitely not everyone’s cup of tea including mine but it pays the bills here and there. Another reason why I am doing this is to gain exposure and because it’s extremely important in building your list of future clients. Meeting people increases your chance of getting potential future clients. If you had a good relationship with your actual clients, they will eventually introduce you to other people as well, so on and so forth. It’s different when you work as a freelancer, you learn different type of things that focuses more on you as an independent artist than if you were working for an agency or a firm. Why? Because when you’re not, it’s very common that you’d under the influence of a team and/or a project manager. Don’t get me wrong, I love working in teams, but only if colleagues push me to my limits and that I could learn from them. As a freelancer, you do things your own way, your own rules and no one can stop you. I have to admit that I haven’t been very fond of freelancing but it does push you to your full capabilities in all types of skills, whether that is time management, interpersonal, business skills, etc. As a freelancer, it’s so much easier to just give yourself a personal challenge. Unfortunately, being independent means you have to deal with every single complicated thing on your own, and that could become extremely difficult on your mental health. When you’re in a team, you’re working through stuff together and it decreases pressure immensely. As freelancers, it feels less “legal” so people tend to undervalue you as an artist, your time and value. I am a hard worker and it makes me sad that way too many clients can’t appreciate that or see it. Worst, they see it but it’s not their problem as long as they pay you less, and that’s incredibly unfair and degrading in all aspects. If it was the other around and they would get paid 5-10$ less in their salary, I think most people would be infuriated by that situation so how come it can’t be the same for us freelancers? It’s not because it seems less official that freelancers deserve to be mistreated, it’s just another work method, no one should be undervalued, at any cost. We use as much time, sometimes, even more, we’re employees too and we have bills to pay as well. It’s technically never acceptable to work for free because the moment you do it, people take advantage of you immediately, it’s human nature. And about our conditions? We don’t have those health benefits or insurance and as human beings taking care of our whole business on our own, don’t we deserve to have some time off for our mental or physical health to heal? People don’t pay attention because it doesn’t affect them directly, once it does, it will be a big deal.