I just posted another ad on Craigslist looking for some freelance design work, and it seems like very little has changed since the last go ’round some 13 months ago. Sadly, I don’t even need to re-write the post I threw together last time, I can simply re-cycle it. Here it is in case you missed it.

I am not a professional designer, I only play one occasionally on the internet. I have taken some formal design training, I did used to live with a very talented professional designer, and I do have some very talented friends who are in fact professional designers, but I myself, am not a professional designer. I am however, someone who can distinguish good design from bad (or at least I think I can), and feel like I can recognize technical mistakes, sloppiness, and just those simple things that can set a real quality designer apart from the wannabees.

Why does this matter you ask? Well, recently I was tasked with finding a designer to do some long term contract work for the new company I am part of, and I reluctantly posted the position on Craigslist, knowing that I would get a deluge of responses, most of which would be unqualified at best. The hope when posting on Craigslist is that you get two or three passable respondents, and if you are lucky, one that is hire-able.

When looking for a designer via a classified ad, I always try to pre-filter the applicants by asking for a very specific and reasonable set of items in the response. The thinking is that if someone cannot follow this very simple bit of direction, there is no way that they can possibly be counted on to follow more complex direction relating to the projects that we would ultimately have them working on. This is exactly what I included in the ad, verbatim.

To be considered for this position, please send a resume, several relevant work samples (a URL to a portfolio is best), your desired hourly rate, your availability, and a little information on who you are. Inquiries that are missing any of these pieces will be discarded and not considered.

Not surprisingly at all, roughly 50% of the responses were missing at least three of the things I had asked for. Some even wrote single sentence replies, saying “I would like to be considered for this position.” and included no resume, portfolio, work samples, or anything else beyond that one phrase. Honestly.

Luckily, there are SOME people that were talented and able to follow simple directions, which was encouraging. However, here is some advice for you designers out there that are trying to make it in the freelance game. It’s a tough gig, and you need to be always scrapping for work. Remember that there are a lot of you out there, and you are going to be competing tooth and nail for every posting on Craigslist, with at least 75 other people, so you need to stand out. And sadly, standing out in many cases, may only mean doing the minimum of what is expected of you during the ad-reply process. That being said, here are some things to keep in mind if you are looking for, and applying for, freelance work.

• Read the posting and respond properly. I know this sounds horribly basic, but somehow this is the single most irritating and common offense that I have seen each and every time I do this. If a hiring manager asks for specific items in the ad, and you flatly ignore them and send a response that is missing pieces, you will be filtered out immediately. Screwing this one up shows a complete disinterest in the details and an inability to follow simple instructions. Very bad.
• Get your own URL. A top level domain costs $8, so ditch the geocities account and get a domain. I know this sounds a bit pretentious to say that those designers using freebie ISP URLs are no good, but having your own domain, given the non-prohibitive cost, can really go a long ways in making you seem more professional. Again, attention to detail and going the extra mile here is very important. Having your own .com is simple and cheap, not doing it is just….well…cheap. So get a URL and use it.
• Make sure the URL works. I can’t tell you how many times I get portfolio URLs that don’t work, go to error pages, or go someplace where I need to dig for the work samples. I understand that sites go down every now and again, but broken URL’s, and out of date pages with missing information are quick deletes in my book. Spend the time to make a specific page on your site and use it to store easy to find and nicely laid out work samples, and make sure it is in a place that is always up to date and working. And for the love of god, don’t bother sending a URL that you KNOW is broken, qualifying it by saying “my site is still under construction, but here it is anyways”. Honestly, use your head.
• Write a genuine and custom response to the posting. I am not looking for a 500 word essay on how much you love the idea of this job, but I am looking for some evidence that you actually are reading these job postings and not just firing off 50 stock responses per day to every ad with the word “graphic” or “designer” in it. If I am looking for a web graphics person, I don’t need three paragraphs on how “sick” your 3-D animation skills are, or other babble that is completely irrelevant and unrelated to my need. Oh, and if you are doing the copy/paste responses, please make sure to remove references to the other jobs you are applying to with the same email BEFORE sending it to me.
• Know the market. Maybe in 1995 you could command $125 an hour for some basic HTML work, but that’s not the case now. Sending me a quote of $95/hour for graphic design work, along with your AOL website is a joke. I completely understand that good design costs money, but don’t price yourself out of the game by not having a clue what the going rates are.

  I am sure there are some more things I will add to this list in the next week or so, but those are the biggies. Violate these tenets, and you may as well get comfortable with the idea of finding a real job, because freelance design isn’t for you.

  Oh, and I guess this is also relevant. When it comes to judging a designer’s work, I typically know within a minute or two whether or not someone has the skills to do the job. These are the immediate things I look for (once you have gotten past the above items of course):

• Strong use of typography. If you use Papyrus font on restaurant menus and Microsoft stock fonts for everything else, that is a very very bad sign. There are millions of free fonts out there, and the proper use of typography can really show that you know your stuff. Mailing it in on the font side though, is a deal breaker in my eyes.
• Properly used filters and effects. No need for gradients, drop shadows, pattern overlays, glows, and every other Photoshop filter on every graphic you have ever done. There is a time and place for filters and effects, and you should know when those times are and where those places are.
• Right image formats at the right times. Know the difference between gifs, jpegs, and pngs and know when to use them.
• Good basic design sense and understanding of balance, alignment, and color. Again, basic stuff I know, but somehow a lot of awful design work comes my way that just has no place in any professional designer’s portfolio.
• Understanding and following of current design trends and styles. Design (especially for the web) is a very fluid thing, and though obviously subjective, it is constantly evolving and moving…so if all of your samples have old stock imagery and lots of antiquated elements, you probably won’t make the grade.

And that’s that. If other designers and/or those that are tasked with hiring designers want to weigh in, the comments are open.