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It takes a single principle to earn more from design and it is easier that you would think. |
| Everyone wants to earn money, and every designer wants to design, and every sane designer wants to earn money while designing; doing something they like and getting paid for it is the best desirable outcome, however most designers know that unfortunately it is not so easy but it is definitely possible and it involves several concepts and advanced thinking to make it happen. |
| The first thing is to change your understanding of what design is; if you are a true designer, you would understand and accept that design is about structured and methodological development of an idea; i.e. for example coming up with a product, service or offering by keeping in mind many considerations and requirements to provide a result that is desirable and happy for all. Design is structured thinking. |
| When you think this way, you understand that when you like design you like practising your mind, which is design. So any job that involves higher thinking, deep thought, problem solving, complexity analysis and resolution could give you the same pleasure as designing a creative outcome, product, service, offering or business would give. Admit that you like progressive thinking and keep that in mind. |
| You also should remember that freedom is of absolute importance. Not everyone likes to design everything; sometimes designers would prefer to design something in particular; something that they are either or both; interested in, specialised at and expert at. When you first start designing, you will be given a specific thing to do in your job; to design something specific. |
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| When you are required to design something very specific, you will not have any creative freedom for choosing what you want to design; it is already given, most likely with restrictions and requirements. However most designers would be happier if they were able to choose what they could design, and that is why some good design competitions such as the A' Design Awards exists; so that you could design whatever you like and compete with it. |
| Money is used to make people happy; you need money to first satisfy your basic needs and then to make yourself happier; for example money can take you to cinema, can cook you a good dinner, send you and your kids to holiday, take care of you when you are sick and warm you in cold winter. Money is a friend that is there to make you happy. Many designers unfortunately do not give much importance to it but money matters. |
| To earn more as a designer, you need to understand money as a big concept; money is a medium via which we can satisfy our needs and desires to make us happy. Money buys happiness, this is absolutely true. However, if you are getting sad when you are earning the money, than it means you are not having a good understanding of the whole concept of money; you might earn a lot but unless you are happy what you are doing, you will not get emotionally rich. You will be broke forever. |
| Most designers are broke because they work for money instead of money working for them. It is not okay to design products or services that you are not interested in just to earn more money; because if you do so, you would be sad yourself and the money you earn would not be enough to offset that sadness, that feeling of misery and despair, to know that you are a slave of the system. |
| So to earn more money from design, you need to design things you like; because money, at its largest meaning money means a way to purchase happiness; and this is trivial; repeat ten times: Money is happiness. So if you earn 100 money and get 100 sad while doing so, in the end you got 0. If you like what you do, and earn a bit less you might still get more money; such as earn 70 money and get 20 sad, you got 50 happiness left. |
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| Sure, that is a good philosophy but you also wish to learn how to make more money in its pure sense right? I mean no one gives much importance to what I wrote earlier; it is about getting more money from your design work right? So why this talk? Because.. you cannot be productive and creative if you do something you do not like; your daily happiness determines your quality of creativity. |
| If you are not creative you will not create a good design and bad design is not good business. Good design is good business but bad design is not good business. So if you design something you do not show interest in, you will most likely not going to create something special and therefore you are not going to earn a lot of money, so you need to establish in your mind and accept the truth that you will never sell your design for more money unless you start doing something you really like. |
| Now that this conceptual basis is well understood and established, I would like reemphasise it once more before actually telling you how to earn more money from design. To earn more money from your design, first love what you are designing. Because earning money is not easy and you will need to love what you are doing to first of all do your best and then to also enjoy the process so you get what they call the double happiness. |
| Now, to earn more from your design, you need to be free on what you are designing. You can be free to design anything you like if you work for yourself; like your own boss. So to earn more from your design, first of all, you need to be having your own design company. However, this is not so easy and you would fail most likely if you have never run a company before, do not quit your job if you have one. |
| If and when you decide to open your own design company, remember the general concept of design is that designing your own company is design too, so design it well, make it the best design you can. While you design your design company, design several design products that you can yourself produce and supply. I tell you to produce yourself because if you open a design company and then be the only person in that company and than design what your clients want than it is the same as working at a job for someone else, so do not design for other companies; be free and design for yourself. |
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| If your design is really good why do you design for others and make them rich? Design for yourself instead. This is the most important aspect of earning more from design. You need to design the way you design, you need to design for yourself and you need to design things you actually like. You need to embed this philosophy to proceed. This is the real important stuff, do not try to pass this and look for other specific bullet points or keynotes. |
| Ok, so also some real life tips because otherwise you would just be a sad person saying I read an article about how to earn more design and it all talked about freedom, loving design, designing for yourself etc and it did not include any bullet points for real life scenarios? Wrong; here are some important bullet points about how to earn more from your design, in practical terms. |
| 1. Improve your price. 2. Improve your design quality so that you could improve your price. 3. Improve your wisdom and creative capability so that you could improve your design quality so that you could improve your price. 4. Get A' Design Award. 5. Get A' Design Award so that you could express your design quality to clients easier and also to attract new audiences to your design. |
| 6. Reach more customers. 7. Advertise so that you could reach to more customers. 8. Design a really interesting, unique and cool object, product or service that is worth to advertise and publicise. 9. Learn public relations, marketing, press releases and design awards. 10. Compete. 11. Compete with other designers so that you could do better designs. 12. Do not compete on price, never bargain too much. |
| 13. Be Smart. 14. Be Happy. 15. Be Happy so that you can stay sharp and smart. 16. You need to stay sharp and smart to manage your clients and charge them correctly. 17. Keep thinking and designing on ways to help yourself; think about how you can find new clients, what new services they might need and which services you would be willing and happy to offer, which type of your designs you wish to make. |
| So a quick summary. Earning more from your design is easy in long term but not easy in short term. All you need to do is love your design, work hard, advertise harder, improve your design quality and attract more design buyers. This is easy in long term if you establish your business and easier if you start designing products that you personally like so that you could achieve your best. |
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This article was added on Saturday, 16th of July, 2016 at 06.10 pm by author 
