I’m a 16 year old student who is trying to start a small freelance Graphic Design business for small businesses in my area. I have a couple projects I want to put in my portfolio before I reach out to anyone. One of these is an old recreation of the adidas logo I did for fun and another one is two versions of a logo I made for a fictional coffee company. Does anybody have any suggestions on how I can improve, anything else to consider, and especially a preference between the two coffee company logos? If there’s any other advice as far as starting out as a graphic designer I would really appreciate it. I’m relatively new to graphic design but I have experience taking classes on several adobe products as well as doing graphic design for my high school’s robotics team and wrestling team. Thanks!
Could you attach screenshots - most people won’t download PDFs due to security risks. And it’s a mad world out there at the moment with computer and cyber security.
When doing logo recreation and brand cleanup for local small businesses, the single biggest trap beginners fall into is relying on auto-trace (Live Trace) without cleaning vector anchor points.
Auto-traced logos often generate hundreds of microscopic nodes on straight segments and messy jagged curves. If the local shop ever sends that vector file to a vinyl plotter (like a Graphtec or Roland cutter) for shop window decals, or to a local screen printer, the cutting blade or RIP will stutter on every single unnecessary vertex.
A clean manual redraw in Illustrator with minimal Bezier anchor points placed strictly at curve extremes (extrema) will make you stand out immediately to any local signmaker or printer they work with. Also, always save a master package with PDF/X-4, clean SVG, 1-color black vector, and a full color version. When your local clients send those files to their printers without a single complaint from the prepress team, you get repeat referral work instantly.
Better than begin a new business, would better to go to school and study to become as a graphic designer? More important to begin business is more important to get experience!
You’re 16…Nobody will hire you based on your age and lack of experience.
In the meantime, there’s plenty of online courses and tutorials that you need to get under your belt, so that when you are of age, you can land that graphic designer role.
I highly suggest more schooling, post high-school. You need to learn the fundamentals of design before you tackle freelance projects. Graphic design is much more than mastering design software.
