If you are into graphic and like us you love twitter, then you know him for sure, we are talking about @chrisspooner of SpoonGraphics.

Hello Chris, first of all welcome to TheLanceLife and thank you for this interview. Would you mind introducing yourself to our readers telling us something about you and when you decided to be a freelance and why?

I’m Chris Spooner, the guy behind design blogs Blog.SpoonGraphics and Line25. I went freelance after working at a local studio for two years.

At this point my blog had reached the stage where it was bringing in a good number of client projects, and had started generating a base revenue that covered my basic outgoings.

This gave a safety net that made the transition to employee to self employed much easier. I’ve never looked back at the decision and have loved every moment of the freedom of freelancing.

How did you get involved into graphic design?

I’ve always followed the subjects of Art and Design right through school, college and university, so it was natural to follow this on into the design industry. I’m not sure how I first stumbled across Graphic Design, but it certainly caught my interest at a young age.

What’s your usual day like being a freelance?

My days usually involve sitting in my home office working on various personal projects and blog posts.

I usually have TweetDeck open on my MacBook monitor and glance at some interesting links periodically throughout the day.

My fiancee Laura returns home at lunch and makes me a sandwich (life of a king!), then my working day continues until 4:30-5ish.

Every now and again we’ll both make the most of the freedom of being self-employed and arrange to take the day off if our schedules allow. It’s always nice to take a cheeky break and go to the theme park.

Where and how do you get inspiration from?

Being sat on the computer all day means I’m often finding inspiration online through blog posts and designer portfolios, but in the ‘real world’ I tend to catch ideas from everything from magazine layouts to promotional displays in shops.

Basically anything that catches my attention is usually noted down or photographed for reference. These inspirations might then turn into a tutorial for my blog, or a personal design one day.

What about past and present project you are involved into ? Any spoiler about future ones ?

I’ve just finished up an enjoyable project that involved the logo design for BioThemes. I can see this site becoming pretty popular in the community so it will be great to see my design tag along for the ride.

The design itself was interesting, as it involved the creation of more icon-like detailed graphics as opposed to the usual styles of logo design, so it was definitely a fun job!

How did you manage to become well known and get hired? Did Social Networks helped?

Blogging and being active on social networks are the basic ingredients. I guess having your name appear next to 3 years worth of tutorials, articles and Twitter design links does a good job of associating you with the subject, and helps generate a nice chunk of exposure!

Do you think having a blog like blog.spoongraphics.co.uk or writing for Line25 is something important for someone wanting to go freelancing nowadays?

It definitely helps, as blogging is a great way to get your name out there and show what you can do. Many of the clients I’ve had have found me by stumbling onto my tutorials.

However you don’t have to setup your own blog, simply being active on Twitter etc can help put your name out there. There’s plenty of designers I know on Twitter who don’t blog very often, but I’ve come to know them well simply by interacting online.

Networking is an important task for any freelancer. In the ‘olden days’ freelancers would interact with local business owners to spread their name. Nowadays you can do this internationally online without getting out of your office chair!

What can you suggest to someone wanting to go freelance?

Firstly make sure you plan your transition by bringing in work before you throw in your current job position. It’s much better to work some late nights finishing up personal client projects after a full day at the office than it is to go from a steady wage to nothing.

Start early with your promotion and networking, as it takes a while for your profile to grow, then, when you have a steady influx of inquiries, it might be a good sign to take the full plunge.

I made sure I had a basic income from my blog to see me through any rough times in the early days, just in case I didn’t get any client work in. I actually found that things picked up immediately once I started working for myself, and I managed to earn more than my previous wage in the first month.

I think most freelancers find that things turn out better than they had initially hoped, but being careful in your planning is important.

Having a couple of months of savings, or a source of passive income (guest writing on blogs, selling stock graphics, etc) would be sensible to cover your back.

Thank you Chris for spending your time with us and, last but not least, give us your contacts for anyone wanting to get in touch with you:

contact: http://www.spoongraphics.co.uk/contact.html
blog: http://www.blog.spoongraphics.co.uk
twitter: http://twitter.com/chrisspooner

Tags: freelance, Inspiration, interview, twitter

The Author : WPstudios

WPstudios is a graphic and coding agency specialized in web design, print design, logo and branding, wordpress customization, PHP and Javascript coding, 3D graphic.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, February 16th, 2010 at 12:44 and is filed under Freelance Life. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.