Portfolio review

Hi! I’m a self taught novice graphic designer trying to properly get into freelancing. I unfortunately don’t have much experience since I haven’t been designing for that long :/. My issue at the moment is that I’m unsure of my current level and don’t know exactly when to put my self out there to find clients, so I need an honest review of my portfolio just to give me a solid idea of where I am at. Any criticism/advice is welcome, I’d prefer honesty over everything since that’ll help me grow.

Wawtamem.myportfolio.com

My CV is also attached in the ‘about’ section if you want to have a look at that too. Cheers!

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Freelancing is VERY difficult. The competition is fierce, since the market is saturated with graphic designers, and there’s a lot of clients who expect work that’s quick and dirt-cheap yet of high quality.

For the time being, you should expand your portfolio to, say, 20 diverse projects, which demonstrate a wide range of your skills, and try to land an entry-level full-time job, though this is also going to very be difficult, especially if you don’t have a degree in graphic design.

That being said, once you have a reasonably good portfolio, you could try to land some entry-level freelance jobs on Upwork to get some experience and positive reviews, which might help you get a full-time job.

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Thanks for the reply! Got a few projects lined up and don’t plan on ‘putting my self out there’ until those are done and set on my portfolio, just wanted to make sure I’m doing the correct thing before continuing any further. No doubt the market is extremely saturated but I wouldn’t let that hinder my drive to actually get into freelancing.

My plan isn’t too different to yours, full-time job → freelancing, or even balancing both at the same time. I don’t have a degree, although I’ve landed a few interviews at entry level jobs and got got into a decent internship/apprenticeship so I’m not too worried about getting a job at the moment.

Appreciate the insight, cheers!

From your website.

Care to explain the discrepancy?

Just a typo really, used chatgpt to help out with some of the writing and missed it out. Ill get that changed, thanks for spotting it out!

Just looked at it now, it was taken off from the starting page initially but I forgot to remove it from the ‘about’ section. The changes have been made, Cheers!

Honestly, you have some ability, assuming all the work is your own. However, you are a long way from being able to go freelance.

My first advice is always get a good degree from a good university (which there is in Manchester). Whenever I was involved in recruiting designers, we could almost always (with the odd, rare and very talented exception) pick out those who were self-taught and those with a degree before even looking at the CV. The approach to problem-solving is usually quite different. Less robust with the self-taught and a lot more reliant on polish.

Anyway, I digress. You’ve skipped the education bit, which I think will make the job a fair bit more difficult. My second stage of advice is to get 4-5 years of studio experience after graduating. I would suggest strongly, not skipping this part. Without it, going freelance at your stage of the game would almost be suicidal. You’d be competing against armies of uneducated, self-titled designers, with nothing more in your arsenal than they do,

At the moment, it is highly likely, you don’t even yet know what you don’t yet know. Five years in a studio and you will learn an awful lot. In your case, without the education under your belt, I’d probably get experience in a few different studios for an even longer time.

You may even decide that freelancing is not for you after that. It is seen as the de facto path to take. In fact, going freelance is no different to running any business. It’s not everyone’s cup of tea, nor does it suit everyone’s aptitude.

If you try to do it too early and without the requisite knowledge, you will also be doing any potential clients a disservice.

Finally, don’t use chat GBT to write. Learn to write yourself or use a copywriter. In the short introductory sentence, not only has made factual errors (which you really should have caught in proof-reading), but also has made grammatical/syntactical errors for you too and split an infinitive, This is never a good look if you want to appear professional.

That said, it is far better not to appear professional, but rather to be professional.

Overall the text sounds as though written by AI. Artificial and generic. Your job is to communicate uniqueness for your clients, yet your own text reads as ubiquitous marketing blurb.

I hope this helps, rather than discourages.

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^^^^ This!

Thanks, I appreciate this highly,

My plan going forward is to apply for an apprenticeship/internship related to design, and get some experience from there, meanwhile doing some other design work in my own time (was doing this previously but had to quit the apprenticeship for personal reasons).

Freelancing is something I’ve been wanting to do for a while so I’ll probably stick to that path, but who knows what could happen.

I’ve only been designing properly for 6 months so I’ve got a whole lot to learn. So again thank you for the advice, if any advice is discouraging, then I don’t think I’ve got the correct mindset going forward. Any help (especially detailed ones like yours) are much appreciated no matter the tone.

Cheers!

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Sounds like a great plan! Apprenticeships give solid experience, and freelancing will help you grow.

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