Over the years I have moonlighted as a freelance designer in addition to working fulltime or studying fulltime, more recently I have seen a few designers I have worked alongside engaging in daylighting practices. For those of you who are scratching your heads about that term, it is the practice of doing paid work for yourself on your employers computer during your paid working hours. Now the first few times I saw it happen I wasn’t overly impressed as they are literally stealing from their employer. They are getting paid to do work for their employer and not for themselves. I am sure it is tempting during quiet periods to check your emails and quickly knock out a simple change for one of your freelancing clients, but it just isn’t worth it in the long run, as technically your employer owns the work you have done during work hours on their computer.

I am not saying don’t do anything, I am just saying wait until your lunchbreak to hop on your iPhone and deal with any freelancing related requests. Even then, if your regular clients know you are only available during certain hours, most things can wait until after hours for you to deal with.

The worst example of this was someone I worked alongside who had asked about doing some “charity” work for his sister. It was all the promotional poster work for her business. Then he just happens to mention to us that he was paid for all the work he did. I swear the amount of time he had “jobless” tagged on his timesheets sometimes almost full days where he worked on refining his concepts for his own work, or the amount of time he spent developing his portfolio to send out to employers truly boggles my mind. Yes, he was fired, but the morale drain for the business employees that saw him doing his own stuff and when asked if he needed work to do, he suddenly had projects to work on. These people have no qualms about stopping work late afternoon to finish out the day watching YouTube videos, searching through the current positions vacant advertised online, or simplying facebooking for the last couple hours of the day. (or even trying to poach their employers clients for their own freelance work)

Moonlighting is something I stopped doing for a few years, mostly to have some free time to watch movies and so on. These days I kick myself because that could have been a perfect way to build up my freelancing to a point where it was nicely ticking over with regular clients filling my pipeline of work. Even if it’s just the odd one or two projects here and there, it is extra income you would not have had and you are building client satisfaction and testimonials. It’s great for your portfolio and can give you much greater experience in dealing with clients, managing projects and invoicing. The experiences gained through moonlighting can help you when you go fulltime for yourself. That’s a pretty big step but something a lot of designers aspire to.

Thing is, most employers don’t feel threatened by a bit of moonlighting (as long as the clients are yours and have contacted you and have not been poached from your employer). If you sit down and discuss it with them, you might find they are open to you doing some extra work for yourself. If caught daylighting, it throws open all sorts of problems as they can fire you or sue you for any work you did whilst in their employ. Remember some businesses have strict policies in the employment contract stating all work done by you during your employment with them is considered theirs, or any freelancing work done will bring about your immediate termination.

Do you have any opinions on this? I would be very interested in hearing them.

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After several years doing part-time freelancing the time has come to rewrite my business plan as it is coming to the end of its projections. Now a lot of the milestones in the initial business plan have been achieved, but not all. Some of them were so out of range that it felt almost silly putting them in. But, having an impossible goal to strive for has made me aim higher than I would have otherwise and no one should be happy with mediocrity for themselves.

So I can admit some were fanciful in nature (like a Ferrari for me and early retirement) most were more sensible of get registered business name, design stationery and have it printed, build and deploy website for business, generate client leads, attain a steady income stream, build the exposure of the business, revisit website for SEO and SEM, achieve a first page ranking, implement a job tracking and invoicing system. Switching to full time and getting the tax offset for working from home and the tax offset for purchasing business materials.

New projections can be adjusted turnover target, higher profit margins achieved, further business expansion, a detailed goal/reward system, lower running costs, run a carbon offset system to counter the business produced carbon emissions. Build scalability into the business model in case of multiple big clients coming on board at a similar time. Also have flexibility in the business structure to adapt to the changing requirements of a design business (in case every client suddenly needs iPad apps or broadcast graphics for their online video)

In addition to the five year plan a rough ten year plan would be a big help in revising the business plans further down the line.

Forward planning like this will enable me to take advantage of any opportunities as and when they present themselves. Being in a position to act quickly can be the difference in getting a big client on the books or missing lout because you were too slow.

Also it easily let’s you see if you should buy into another business or sell yours to another bigger agency if the option arises.

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In my opinion the only direction is to an all pervasive digital environment. We won’t print posters we will have poster screens where the file is sent to for display. Each billboard can be remotely changed and have exact appearance timing controlled via a database. You obviously are thinking what a waste of power, it may be a waste in your opinion but once installed screens don’t need you to print the posters onto paper (or plastic for the rolling billboard designs) they need to be delivered set in place and then when replaced a month later thrown in the rubbish causing landfill. I guess you need to balance one over the other. But if the billboards are 3D they will have an edge over normal posters. Plus you will be able to animate them or further into the future even have them interactive with their surrounding environment or viewer. Think Jaws movie promo in Back to the future 2.

Information touch screens or info apps relative to your location (run off your built in GPS) would be the new local news source removing the need for small local papers. The ones we get go into wet layers on the garden beds to stop weeds.

The iPhone and iPad are just the forerunners of the turning point in multipurpose touch screen tools. Once we find a way to run energy efficient wi fi networks for minimal cost then everyone will embrace the digital age like never before! I have lived through the main advances in computing and mobile communication for the masses and I can’t wait to see what’s coming next!

Will this mean the death of traditional design skills? No as the skills are all based in a theory that is above the tools that are used to implement a design. Yes you will need to learn the new tools as well as the basics. I can see designers learning colour theory and life drawing along with broadcast design formats for the various mediums like HD or 3D.

The web itself is the medium that for me has brought about a lot of this change. Mass communication and globalisation has meant even little known designers can be seen the world over as instantly as they load their designs up to their sites.

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