Are you starting a design business?

And did you start by creating your logo first?

I hazard a guess this is what you probably did when you first decided to start your own design business. How do I know? Because it’s exactly what I did back in 2017.

Is there something wrong with that?

No, not at all. However, it’s not the most pressing thing you need to do to start a business for it to be at the top of your priority list. But we’re designers… we design things. So we can’t blame ourselves for coming up with our look first before even knowing who it’s for…which begs the question, who is it for?

Image: This is how you may have gone about it. Until you realise the order that can work better

How we typically start our design businesses

But just quickly, this isn't a designers only problem. There would be thousands of service providers in business who go about the steps to starting a business in a less than practical manner.

So this is an idea of what may occur when starting your business:

1. You’ll create your logo and business name
2. You’ll then register your business with your government
3. Then you take on your first few clients
4. To then be able to show off your work, you’ll create a website and possibly even social media content.
5. You then realise you should have provided a contract for your clients to agree to, to be able to show their work, get paid and possibly to retain copyright or at least your moral rights to attribution to the work you produce to say you made that work on behalf of your client.
6. Then you’ll probably realise you should have defined your services better and nailed down your ideal client. Because you’re doing jobs you don’t want to be doing just to make a dollar and you’re working with people or industries you don’t align with.
7. It then comes to tax time and you realise that draw full of receipts is looking pretty full and you’ve done nothing to manage your accounting in your first year. So you go knocking on the door of the first accountant you can find to help you.
8. Which then leads to a better understanding of what you need to charge based on what you need to earn to survive on more than ramen noodles and keep the lights on. Allowing you to better plan your financial position and be more confident in charging your value…Wait! Wouldn’t that have helped from the beginning?

Don’t worry, all can be fixed if you don’t get it right.

What is a better approach?

If you took that list above, and we were playing that tiny board game Mastermind, you’d have got only 1 in the correct order.

Switch them to this order: 6, 2, 5, 7, 8, 1, 3, 4

Which makes it:

1. Define your services and ideal client
2. Register your business
3. Have a contract in place (get help from a lawyer)
4. Find a proactive accountant that looks out for your finances (business & personal)
5. Set your prices based on at least what you need to earn and what you can physically accomplish in a week/month/year
6. Now you can create your logo
7. Then start working with clients
8. This is when you show off your work and services on your website and social media

Why does it matter?

I, like many other designers in business, did not nail this first go. So while it’s not imperative to get this order nailed from the get-go. Learning from these setbacks will save you time, potentially money and less heartache or stress.

So why is it better to go about it in this manner?

Step One: Your Service and Customers

Defining what your services will be, allows you to market them far easier than saying I do logos, websites, signage, packaging, illustration, photography, UI app design and SEO. Now while you might be able to do all those things, which is great if you can, you’re going to be far better off being known for one thing you do best and still offer those other services where needed.

Now the other part to this is understanding who your ideal client is. When starting a business we need to know who our ideal customer is AND MOST IMPORTANTLY, if they are a viable customer. In other words, are they going to be willing to pay for my services (especially if my prices increase over time) and are there enough of them out there that need my services to keep my business operating? If the answer is no, then you may as well not even continue doing the rest of the steps.

Step Two: Registering your business

Registering your business before you do anything else. That way when you set up your contracts, your accounting and your logo, it will all have the same name and details. Not to mention you’ll be able to start trading as a business.

Time to get a lawyer for your contracts?…maybe not this guy though

Step Three: A contract

This would have to be one of the most underrated parts of starting a design business and for that matter, running a design business in general. The number of times I’ve heard and seen fellow designers gripe about things like not being paid, scope creep, clients contacting them at all hours, copyright ownership and after-hours fees. Alllllll of these things can be addressed in an agreement with a client in the form of a client contract.

You can find generic templates online. However, my biggest tip is to seek the help of a legal professional. You could even take a template that you find to model it off and introduce clauses to the contract that fit your business needs and will help negate any foreseeable problems that may arise from a client relationship that may go sour.

Step Four: An accountant

Your business accounting is obviously not what you decided to start a business to be doing on the day-to-day. But in reality, it needs to be to stay organised and on top of your finances and potential government tax office obligations depending on your business structure and country’s requirements.

The other side of accounting is being able to issue your invoicing from accounting software that your accountant may recommend. This saves a hell of a lot of time compared to doing things manually when creating invoices and when needing to do what’s called reconciliation of your accounts (i.e. matching your ingoings and outgoings from your bank balance, with your invoices and expenses).

HOT TIP: Get a separate bank account

While it’s not entirely necessary to have an accountant helping you along the way with your bookkeeping (managing your invoices, expenses and possibly payroll) and other periodic tax help. If you find a good and proactive accountant that can give you more time to do what you do best, help you understand your financial position and show you what you need to be earning to turn a profit and still pay yourself. This is why having an accountant from day one before you even start trading (if you can) is a really good idea… it can also be a tax deduction for most countries.

Step Five: Your prices

This was touched on in the last post. But when you know how much you need to make in a year to at least be comfortable, you can then start understanding how much you can charge. So if you know you need to make $50,000 in a year, then it means you have to bring in roughly $4200/month. If you then think about how many jobs you can do in a month for that one main service you decided upon in Step One, you’ll then know how much to charge for that service, at minimum.

So if you could do two logo jobs a month realistically, then your rate should be $2100 per job. If you get 3 or more jobs coming in per month and you can’t handle that load, you can either put them on for a future date or outsource the work and even bring on a team if this continues to grow.

This is but one method of pricing your work and I find it’s the most realistic way of looking at your pricing (at a minimum) to know you’re going to hit your target goal to sustain your livelihood.

Step Six: Your logo

Go on, create your logo… you’ve earned it!

But just remember who it’s for.

Is it easily memorable and recognisable? Do the colours stand out? Does it fit with the niche of industry or demographic you want to work with most? Most of all, just keep it simple. You don’t need to flex, because when you do, you’ll try too hard and start to say “it’s so hard designing for yourself”. And no it isn’t any harder because you’ve most likely already forgotten that you’re not designing it for you, you’re designing for someone else… your clients.

Step Seven: Working with clients

Now you can start working with clients with the utmost confidence. The main reasons for starting your business with these 6 things ticked off before engaging with clients are:

1. You are going to be confident in who you are there to help
2. You’ll know exactly how you can help them
3. You’ll be as confident in the price you tell your client, as you are about saying the sky is blue
4. Your confidence in your price also makes for greater trust in your client as they’ll be less likely to try to push your price down
5. You’ll be able to produce a professional invoice to get you paid
6. Your contracts will give you peace of mind
7. You’ll start creating a reputable identity that can be tied into your logo, especially when your clients start to refer your business onto others.

Step Eight: Website and Social Content

While I say Step Eight is to have a website, this could also be done alongside your logo. As a simple landing page that shows:

1. Who you are (name, photo, location and bio)
2. What your main service and extra services are
3. How you can help (eg. identifying their pain points and outlining how your process can help)
4. Who you work with (what types of businesses you want to work with)
5. and your contact information

That would suffice for your business to start out.

Now if you leave this until after you’ve started working with clients, you additionally have the opportunity to include examples of your work, along with client testimonials.

All of this website content and the general context of your business can be shared on your social media channels as a marketing tool. To communicate points 1–5 listed above along with your work and client testimonials in your content posts and account bios.

The key takeaway

Your logo isn’t your №1 priority when starting your design business. Start with the make or break question of “what are my main services and who is a viable market that needs them?”.

Keep it simple and don’t get ahead of yourself.

If you want more tips from a guide that shows you how to start your design business in one day, check out my e-book by subscribing to my G’day Design Life newsletter over on gdaydesignlife.com

Reagan ‘Frank’ Mackrill, is a brand identity designer from Sydney, Australia. Frank is the creative director and owner of his branding design studio, G’day Frank and is the founder of G’day Design Life — a community for cheering on designers in business.

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