Jeremy Mura says free design work can help you learn, but avoid contest sites like 99designs where you compete with hundreds of others for nothing. Instead, do pro bono projects or personal work that actually builds your portfolio.
A question a lot of young designers have is, should you do free work? The answer is yes and no. It's up to you. Some people are against it, some people say it's okay. To be honest, when I first started, I was doing free work. You know, in college I did some logos for some mates. I've done some logos for my family and my cousins. And, you know, the projects weren't always the best, but it was fun, it was practice. And at that time I was learning. I wasn't really a good logo designer, so I was just learning the ropes. I was still learning Illustrator and trying to get better. So I was doing that free work. There's nothing wrong with doing free work as long as you don't get abused and as long as you don't keep doing free work. See, you got sites online like fiverr99designs and freelancer and things like that, but most of them have like a contest system where a lot of people can upload their design and the client will just pick one out of all the designs. You know that that's a waste of time. Rather, spend your time doing pro bono work for a certain company so you can actually do the own project for yourself and for them, because it's like a real world opportunity or for a friend. Try and focus on that. Or instead of putting your time doing that, you can do a side project, you know, try and do something that's trending or something that you're interested in and do a project based on that. And that's going to help you be inspired and motivated to actually complete it. And, you know, build that up and then you can use it in your portfolio. It will not only help you practice your technical skills, but will also help your creative thinking as well. So, you know, there's no right or wrong way to do it. Just when you're first starting out, it's okay to do free work. And the main key is take action. Don't worry about perfection, don't worry if it's ugly or bad. Just put it out anyway. Share the world, because that's how you grow and that's how you learn. So, so take action, start learning. And if you have to do free work, then do it. And that's the best way to learn, but another way. So, yeah, leave a comment below if this was helpful. Let me know if you want the free work or if you've done projects that are free in the past. Send me a shot and I'll take a look at it and subscribe for more content every week.
