My guest today has made a huge splash in the freelance design world after. After his appearance on the Young Guns show hosted by Chris Do of The Futur, Connor was off to the races designing logos for businesses of all types. But to get himself to that point he had to be prepared. In his own words, learn what worked and what didn’t work for Connor as he jumped both feet into the freelance career.
Find Connor:
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/cfowlerdesign/
Dribbble: https://dribbble.com/cfowlerdesign
Patron Spotlight: Cindy Ross
Website: https://www.cindersblock.com/
Behance: https://www.behance.net/cindygoodmanross
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/cindygoodmanross/
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Connor Fowler (00:00:00):
You need to realize you have like six months where you’re probably not going to get any work. Like for the first six months, no one’s going to listen to you probably, unless you’re doing like the transition between fulltime and freelance. If you just do what I did, which was just drop in the water and see what happens sink or swim, then you’re probably not going to have any work for six months. So you need some savings. And I knew that going in. So I had savings already. But a lot of people don’t. So that’s something I would always say you need to have it. Some people will say, well, you know, if we don’t have the money, like it will push me to work harder. I’m like, you say that, but the internet is very fickle place.
Dillon Winspear (00:00:36):
Welcome back. You’re listening to Episode 97 of Designed Today. I’m your host, Dillon Winspear, and my mission is to help you improve your UX game from beginning to end. Whether you’re fresh out of school or five years in, my goal is to help you figure out the next step to excel in your career. On this episode, you get to hear from my new friend, Connor Fowler. Connor is a logo designer who in just a few years of his career really put himself on the map. And I can’t wait to have him share his story with you. But before we do, I need to take a quick moment to give a shout out. Over the last couple months, I found support in another new friend, Cindy Ross. If you’re listening to this episode, looking to bring on a new member to your UX team, or need a UX designer for your next project, give Cindy a shout. Cindy has been a patron of mine for a few months now and her financial support has been instrumental in keeping things afloat. But more than that, she’s an excellent person who I’ve really grown to enjoy talking with. She’s got a great portfolio, and you can find that in my show notes along with means of contacting her. I feel confident and vouching for her ability to come into any project, adding a level of professionalism, maturity, and design thinking. Check out her work and give her a shout. As always, your support means a ton to me. Even the things that you might find trivial, like sharing or commenting or engaging in an episode means a lot. And I thank you the listeners for that. Now, to my guest, Connor made his first big splash in the design community when he appeared on the first season of Young Guns. A series that looked at up and coming designers hosted by Chris Do of The Futur. Since then, he’s continued to build his client and fan base. With thousands of followers across Dribble, Twitter and Instagram, people have come to love and appreciate his work. Today we get to talk about transitioning into a completely freelance or contract position. What are the first steps you should consider before making that jump from your current employment? And what mistakes to avoid as you get started. Additionally, Connor and I discussed ways to attract new clients and keep clients happy, and so much more. So let’s go ahead now and jump into the episode. So Connor man, thanks for joining me, I appreciate you fitting me into your busy schedule. Thank you very much.
Connor Fowler (00:03:07):
Thank you very much for inviting me.
Dillon Winspear (00:03:08):
Yeah, this is great. I’ve listened to a handful of your podcasts over the last couple of months trying to get myself more familiar with what you’ve been up to and what you get passionate about. And you got a great podcast and I think people should go on and check out and give it a listen. Yeah, man, it’s an honor to have you here. So thank you very much. Our topic today is, we’re going to get a little bit into how you got started into your career. And I’ve kind of gotten into the flow of just asking people like, tell me your come up story and stuff like that. But I’m going to get a little bit more specific with yours because one of the things I found really cool about-, I don’t know if you want to call it early in your career, but you were able to participate in the Young Guns show with Chris Do in The Futur. So that opportunity doesn’t fall in everybody’s lap. So tell me starting there. How did you get that opportunity to work with Chris Do in The Future?
Connor Fowler (00:04:04):
So just to follow on from your opening statement there, I’d probably still say I’m early in my career now. Like I’ve been doing this for three and a bit years professionally. So I’m starting here again. Yeah, we’ve got a long way to go.
Dillon Winspear (00:04:18):
Well, that may be fair, but a ton of success in three years.
Connor Fowler (00:04:22):
So, you know, there’s the credit. So, through to the Young Guns stuff. I’ve been following The Futur for probably the best part of a year and interacting with various things and watching videos like every other fan of the channel has been doing. And then well, before season one was even announced, Chris actually posted some more informal kind of apprenticeship. They’re looking for apprentices or they’re looking for people for this show, or whatever the point of view was, but it was specifically aimed at younger designers or people who were doing their own thing, who were kind of 25 and under. And it so happened that, I never actually formally applied for anything. And this is where some people seem to be confused. Obviously, with the second season they did applications. I don’t know about the other guys within the first season one group, whether it was a rune or sharif. I don’t know what they did. But I was approached directly by Chris to be on the show, I wasn’t actually applying or kind of recording my videos and sharing that with them being like, hey guys, I want to come on, and I’d love you to help and teach me like, I was very interested. I’ve spoken to Chris in DMs a couple of times, and just after Christmas, the year before it started, and that was when he reached out to see whether I’d be interested in being part of the show where we have groups of younger designers on and at that point, there was no name, there was nothing like that, it was just a kind of pie in the sky idea.
Dillon Winspear (00:05:54):
Where were you at that point in your career? Because that Young Gun show was about two years ago. So what had you been doing because I know your background in design, you’re doing like some screen printing stuff, you’re doing some other fun stuff. But what were you doing at that point in time that Chris Do said like, you know what, he’s a great guy to bring on.
Connor Fowler (00:06:13):
By that point, I’d probably been doing freelancing for just under a year. And at that stage, I’ve had some fairly decent sized clients coming and I started to charge some more money and started to figure out my major services and skill sets and understanding more of the clients’ side of the world. So I was still very fresh into that design professional space, even though I’ve been designing on my own kind of using the software and creating things for many years before that.
Dillon Winspear (00:06:44):
Yeah. Now that’s pretty cool, you know, in a year to move from like, smaller clients to better clients, that is a big deal. What do you attribute some of that success to that you’re able to move so quickly in that first year?
Connor Fowler (00:06:56):
Very quickly learning from my mistakes. I think one of the better traits that I do have is saying like this didn’t go well. Why are we continuing to do this? I have a very cut and dry-, actually something I forgot to completely ask, am I allowed to swear on the show?
Dillon Winspear (00:07:12):
Oh, that’s a way, man. It is welcome.
Connor Fowler (00:07:16):
Okay, cool. So I’m a very no bullshit person. My thinking on this is you don’t make the same mistake twice. And that’s how I avoid doing things and getting stuck into the same traps over and over again, which many freelancers do where you get in this cyclical cycle of, well, you’ve charged so much; therefore, you’re only worth that much rather than doing things like I did, which was every single job, I would charge higher, I would just be like, let’s just push this and see, because I’d reached the stage. And this is probably due to many years of doing karate, many years of discipline with that approach. And this idea of just pushing boundaries, that’s what I’ve always done in this term of, okay, it worked this time, how can we push it further until someone says no. And this is something that Chris kind of talks about when Chris talks about money, but I was just pushing the envelope. And I was just seeing like, okay, well, when this bigger client comes on, rather than saying, oh, this work will cost $500, what happens if I say it’ll cost $5,000? And that saves you time and effort and money in the long term. So you’re not stressing over where the money comes from, regardless of whether you think you’re worth that. You can just pick the number.
Dillon Winspear (00:08:29):
You know, it’s funny that you’re sharing this content is because I just realized, as I more recently landed some larger clients, I just realized that someone like the website design stuff that I do, I’m still charging the same rates that I charged from six years ago. And they’re not high rates. And I was thinking through that going like, what about my 10 years of expertise now? Why am I not charging for that? Why am I not charging for the fact that I’ve now built 50 to 100 different websites, and I’m not charging for those rates of all the things that I’ve learned in, I think, to have learned that such on early on in your career going that. Every time I do a project, I learned, I grow and therefore I take that to the next project, and therefore your cost can come up, I think is super beneficial. Did you ever run into a scenario where you price somebody too high and they said, no, no way?
Connor Fowler (00:09:19):
Oh, yeah, always. But the half is on almost every single project. But the thing I do is I don’t just go in with one number. I go in with three. So we go in with the Blair ends three option approach, where the proposal has three different options, one of which is usually around their budget, one of which is completely left feel like two or three or four times their budget. And then you have something in the middle and it usually ends up with a one in the middle because of the exchange of value for what they get. And it’s different services and things like that. So I don’t go in with the approach of it’s a yes or no, I go in with the approach of well, it’s a 25%, no, and then there’s 75% they’re going to pick something and that’s how I’ve been able to be more confident with selling things, more confident with pitching higher numbers, because I know when I go into proposal call that I have thought about the absolute most incredible service I could give them and then worked out how much that would cost. So that could be a project say that $50,000, when actually, what they probably want to need is somewhere in the middle, but I’m just going this high end, amazing thing would serve them really well, but might not be great for them right now. But I’m just going to show it to them to be like this is what we can do. You set the expectation, and then you go down the middle track or down towards the lower. Either way, everyone gets loads of value, and the client feels like they’re getting the most of their money as well. So that’s one of the kind of things I do to get over that mindset of pushing back on people coming and say, well, that’s too much. Well, I know it’s too much, because you’ve just told me, I’ve figured this out already. The three option proposal makes people feel like they have a decision. And it makes people feel like they have more control, which is really good, because then they can compare them more easily as well.
Dillon Winspear (00:11:12):
I think you’re hitting on a couple skills right here that a lot of people are still trying to learn if they’re beginning of freelance career, or even if they’re been in that freelance career for a few years, they’re still trying to figure out that balance. One of the things that our listeners might start thinking is like, well then, Connor is a pretty smart guy. Tell me a little bit about his design schooling or tell me about his experience at an agency. Why don’t you tell our users a little bit about your background and where you learned some of your design skills?
Connor Fowler (00:11:39):
So I started practicing design in a kind of inverted loose commas when I was in college. So for your American listeners, college in the UK is between the age of 16 and 18. So it’s like the last two years of high school. And within those two years, I picked really awful academic subjects, because I did really well previously in them. However, at that higher education level, I was struggling, and I just didn’t care. And I was done with being in formal education, like I was sick of it. And I ended up spending almost every single free period, every single lunch period, basically any lesson I had homework to, I would just skip it, and then go to the library and tinker around an Adobe Illustrator, making album artworks and merchandise designs and band logos for the band at the time, which at the time, I had no idea what was going to happen with it or where it was going to go or anything like that. But it was no formal. It was just no formal education, just me smashing buttons in Adobe Illustrator and being like, what is the scissors tool? What is the pen tool? But if I click the Pen Tool ten times and it makes a shape, what’s an outline, what’s a stroke? And then moving through there, I could have gone to some kind of design school if I wanted to, but I didn’t want the debt of going to university. And I didn’t have any qualification that would indicate going to design. So the likelihood of me getting into a design course would be very slim. So I had to kind of hack it out on my own. But I ended up going into screen printing, so merchandise t shirts, and handling squeegees and pantone inks all day long and ferocious, sweaty warehouses for a couple of years before deciding and had enough of that and realizing actually, I can do more good helping people with the design of their products and their branding and the things that get printed on the shirts that I can actually just print on the shirts. Because I had very little control over any creative aspect there. It was very much just a manual labor job.
Dillon Winspear (00:13:44):
So getting your feet wet in design was self-taught. You were seeking out education on your own. What type of resources were you looking to? How were you playing around? You know, I just had someone reach out the other day saying like, I’m going to go the self-taught route. Where do I start? How would you answer that?
Connor Fowler (00:14:01):
I think a lot has changed since I started and shortly after. I need to go check the numbers. But the future probably existed when I started teaching myself or very soon after. But I had no idea about that. I didn’t think that design education platforms really existed. And so I was going to-, or more specific channels or things like that. So when I was first starting, I was just like googling how to use pen tool, like what is the Pathfinder intersect function? What does it do? And that was just kind of bringing up blog posts and blog posts from there. But then I was also using just random YouTube tutorials and Skillshare as well. So Aaron Draplin had a bunch of Skillshare courses, kind of in the interim of when I was still learning some of the basics. And also as I started to transition to realizing actually, designs what I wanted to do. So mainly Skillshare and occasionally dipping into YouTube and things like that. But I can’t say I have spent more time practicing and picking up the things that I needed to along the way, then I have kind of laying out a very strict curriculum. And I know some people prefer a very strict curriculum, and you can go and find that, you could go and buy a bunch of the future courses, you can go and buy a year of Skillshare. And literally spend five to six hours a day, just going through courses like that. But I didn’t do that. I was just practicing stuff in and out every day. And I know I have quite a creative kind of just general talent and mindset in overall. So I’m quite good at picking up shapes and visualizing things. I’m quite creatively inclined, you might say, but I those were the places I looked. So it was more just random share on Google and YouTube and then Skillshare, if you want a more focused platform.
Dillon Winspear (00:15:55):
Were you finding inspiration and going like, ah, I bet I could do that or I bet I could put my own spin on that?
Connor Fowler (00:16:03):
Yeah, for sure. So there’s like logo challenges as well. So I did some of those for a while, like 30 days of logos, where you go through the tags, and you can see what other people have made for the same ideas. And I was doing some of those, you can’t see any of them online, I don’t think unless you go deep into Google. But the idea behind it was looking at someone else’s work, as you say, and kind of adapting that style or adapting that image or focus into something that is your own. But I didn’t sit down and kind of say, here’s a poster, because a lot of people get taught. Look at this poster, for example, can you rebuild it? I never did any of that. I’ve kind of had this mindset from when I was in the band. When I first made and kind of became part of the band when I was in age, like 15, 16. The thing I was adamant about with the band was that we were not going to play covers. The only time we played covers was like the first gig we ever did, and maybe three or four band practices and that was it. I was adamant that we were going to rewriting stuff from the very start. Because, I personally, absolutely hate the idea of writing somebody else’s material or claiming someone else’s material. So the idea of looking at a poster and being like, hey, can you reconstruct this, just makes me kind of a little bit sick. Because I don’t want to do that, I want to make my own thing. I might take inspiration from that and say, right, how can we make a poster that involves lines and geometric shapes? But I’m not going to sit here and just deconstruct and rebuild. So that’s how my mindset works out. In comparison.
Dillon Winspear (00:17:41):
Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. And then after you started to get your feet wet in design, you started doing a little bit of, you know, branding, or logos here and there. You didn’t go the route of a design agency, you just jumped, you know, right into the deep end of starting your own agency. Is that right?
Connor Fowler (00:18:01):
Yeah, I’m not sure if I’d call it my own agency, but I do use, it’s just my name. So I would say most people would call me a freelancer. But I tend to steer clear of the freelancer term, because I think it’s a bit demeaning, depending on who you’re trying to talk to, especially if you’re talking to big corporations, or bigger clients. But yeah, so I started my self-employed practice and use my name as the forefront for that.
Dillon Winspear (00:18:26):
And what type of things did you learn early on in your career regarding business that maybe you hadn’t had experience with yet?
Connor Fowler (00:18:34):
Set up a second bank account first, makes your accounting a lot easier. And that’s where I would start. Secondly, you need to realize that you have like six months, where you’re probably not going to get any work. Like for the first six months, no one’s going to listen to you probably, unless you’re doing like the transition between fulltime and freelance. If you just do what I did, which was just drop in the water and see what happens sink or swim, then, you’re probably not going to have any work for six months. So you need some savings. And I knew that going in. So I had savings already. But a lot of people don’t. So that’s something I would always say you need to have it like it doesn’t matter. Some people say, well, you know, if I don’t have the money, like it will push me to work harder. You say that, but the internet is a very fickle place, like it’s just not going to work out. So the first few things were get your accounting solid, make sure you’re signed up to do the proper taxes. Because if that comes and bites you in six months to 12 months, you don’t want to hear about it. Like it’s an absolute pain in the ass to deal with anything towards the government, whether that’s UK or US or wherever you’re based. It’s an absolute nightmare. Secondly, make sure you have people you know who are within your own community. So, but don’t expect your followers who are designers to find your work. So you need people in design and fellow peers to help you with projects and be social and get feedback and stuff. But you also need to recognize that they’re never going to get you work or very unlikely going to get you work. So focusing content to point at designers, unless you’re trying to teach designers is your income. You need to switch your mindset over to rather than just appealing to designers, you need to figure out what other people want, who would pay you.
Dillon Winspear (00:20:21):
Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. And I’m glad you brought up the whole bank account and the corporation piece to it. Admittedly, obviously I’m not familiarized with setting up businesses in the UK. It took me about five years to realize that Dillon, you’ve got to stop freelancing out of your own personal account, your own personal taxes, because when tax season would come around, I was getting taxed at like 40 something percent of my freelance income, and I was like, it’s not even worth it at this point. I’m not even making money off these projects at this point. Until I set up an LLC, you know, dropped into a lower tax bracket, and all of a sudden started making a little bit more sense. But I think people think setting up an LLC, that sounds so complicated, and again, I don’t know how it works in the UK, but it’s not that complicated. I set up my LLC myself. And it saved me, I mean, I can’t even tell you how much money in the long term since setting it up. So yeah, those are some of the business things that I don’t know if everyone’s aware of when you get started. Is there any other business insight that you go wow, I was blindsided by that?
Connor Fowler (00:21:26):
You need to listen to your gut a bit more on when leads come in, because there’s kind of a trap freelancers and new people fall into, which is someone’s coming to me because they like my work, they’re willing to pay me for it, I have to take it, which is just not true. And you should be saying no more than you are saying yes. So I, my general rule of thumb is that, one in 10 leads will be a good lead. Regardless of how many followers you have, regardless of how many leads you are getting, if you’re getting thousands of leads a day, one in 10 will be good. Like that’s generally the rule of thumb I found to be true. And if you don’t keep an eye on the red flags that come in, whether that is the words they use to describe your services, whether that is the way they talk about their project, or their business, whether that’s the way they talk about money, or timelines, if you ignore those red flags, you’re likely to end up in a very sticky situation. That’s probably the other one is the other big one.
Dillon Winspear (00:22:30):
So you talked a little bit about those red flags. Let me dive into it a bit more. So you’re basically saying nine of those ten are going to show red flags. Is that right?
Connor Fowler (00:22:40):
Maybe not, right? Maybe not all of them will show red flags. Red Flags is like a big, aggressive, kind of like, don’t definitely work with this person. They’re real bad. But I don’t know how many of those nine would be really bad red flag people. But the general cases like those nine out of ten will either fit under the red flags and be like, yeah, definitely don’t work with these people. Or the leads coming in, we’ll just be people who are not going to be a good fit or either their timeline is too short, they don’t have the budget. They’re looking for something you don’t do. Maybe they go; I love your design work. Do you do websites? I don’t do websites. So you have to kind of shimmy them on and be like, okay, see you later. But generally, my rule of thumb is like nine out of ten of those will be nos, for some reason or another?
Dillon Winspear (00:23:24):
Sure. How many clients do you end up taking on that you later in the project realize this may have been one that I should have turned away?
Connor Fowler (00:23:33):
Not very many anymore. I probably haven’t done that, not many. I can’t imagine trying to think about the last time I had a bad client. It was probably over a year ago. Just trying to think. The fact I’m thinking about it says that it’s not top of mind.
Dillon Winspear (00:23:54):
Is that often?
Connor Fowler (00:23:56):
No, not very often at all. And I do my best to kind of make sure that’s the case.
Dillon Winspear (00:24:02):
Well, with your years of experience of doing this, and you’re vetting them out again, if you’re turning away nine of the ten already, you know, you’re probably narrowing in a good group of potential clients. I just shared a podcast last week about how I recently had to fire a client. And I haven’t had to do that now in a couple years. But one of those red flags that slid under the radar for me is I was involved with all the decision makers on the client side, I had the conversation going with them, had a good working relationship with them, except one partner, who kind of flew under the radar and wasn’t very involved early on, made himself very involved at the end, and just made the project extremely difficult. And so it was midway through the project and I’m going like this is unhealthy. As is mentally taxing, is emotionally taxing, and I can’t keep doing this and so I’m out. And it was one of those things were like man, I wish I could have seen that coming but I don’t know how I could have seen that coming.
Connor Fowler (00:25:00):
Yeah. In your situation, it’s difficult because you’ve got multiple stakeholders and I’m typically dealing with clients who are like three to four people max kind of stakeholders. But you’re totally right. If someone jumps in halfway through a process, or they’ve not really been engaged, and sometimes they just have to stop paying attention. Like they’re like, I’m not really worried about this, but then something will catch their attention. And then they’re all in, which can screw up the entire thing. And then you’re at the end of that stick being jabbed.
Dillon Winspear (00:25:30):
Let me ask you this question. How comfortable are you with sharing how you price clients? Is that something that you’re willing to talk numbers with me on?
Connor Fowler (00:25:40):
I mean, I can give you kind of some minimum levels of engagement. But I don’t have like a price list. I don’t have static prices. So it entirely depends on the client, and depends on what they need. And obviously, as I mentioned earlier, I’m always trying to push the envelope because from my perspective, the idea of value is from the client side. So if the client is willing to pay me three times the rate, I charged the previous client, then you see what I mean. So I can, of course, more happy to have a more open conversation around that. But it may not be representative a week from now, two weeks from now or even last long.
Dillon Winspear (00:26:20):
Sure. That makes sense. I’m thinking years of experiences of what you shared earlier on in this podcast was about how when you got started, you know, you started charging for a logo, and the next time you tried to improve it. What was your baseline when you just got started? What was the scope of work? Was it just a logo and what were you charging the day you got started?
Connor Fowler (00:26:37):
So probably one of the first projects I did, I charged 150 pounds for a logo, which is about $200. And it was for someone who was much more local to me, they found me through a friend of a friend on Facebook or something. And that was a nightmare. That was a horrible client. They were my age as well, but they were just really awful people. And they’ve tried getting in contact with me since and I’ve just doubled my rate every time they’ve contacted me. And it’s just obviously, its rate of doing business with people you don’t like. But originally, probably around $200 was probably where I started.
Dillon Winspear (00:27:17):
So next time project came around was at 400 and then 800? Or how quickly did it improve?
Connor Fowler (00:27:23):
Well, it also changed depending on the type of client who came in. So within that period between the first ones and that cycle of the year in between I probably 10x the price I was doing for the same rate. So it was less than a year, probably in eight months. So I went from charging like $200 to $2,000 for the side one, no logos and very basic identity stuff.
Dillon Winspear (00:27:47):
And do you feel like as your price went up, the quality of clients also went up?
Connor Fowler (00:27:54):
Interesting question. I think maybe it just filtered the types of clients, because obviously price is one of the best filters for things in general for products or for services. So as you do better work, charge more for that work. And then you’re not stressed because you’re not being paid enough. You’re not trying to help kick the job through. So it’s done, you don’t have to worry about it. You’re also sharing better work and showcasing and spending more time on those case studies. So yes, I think charging more money, got me better clients, but by a process of elimination, not by being like, hey, guys, this is 5000 plus dollars, and just waving it around and kind of attracting people with a shiny object, and it was more of a case of it’s a filter than a magnet.
Dillon Winspear (00:28:44):
That makes sense. Tell me a little bit about how you’re getting your leads right now. Because when you and I first shadow, you talked a lot about how you have a stream of leads that are coming in through Dribble. And a moment ago, you talked about how you know building an Instagram account for other designers isn’t going to attract a lot of leads for you. It’s going to attract other designers to you and unless your business is teaching designers, that’s not business leads. So tell me about how you’ve balanced Dribble and other social media platforms.
Connor Fowler (00:29:11):
Yeah, so a caveat to start, most people will know me from having an account on Instagram. That’s where I built my account. Firstly, and that’s where most of my following is, however, I don’t spend very much time on that at all anymore. And I wish I had stopped spending so much time on there for like a year and a half, almost two years. Like the first year Instagram was amazing, but since then it’s just been downhill. So most of my leads previously would come through Instagram. However, in the last eight or nine months, I’ve spent more effort on Dribble and Dribble seems to be bringing in more leads for me than Instagram ever did in the same time span. Like we’re talking two or three fold away Instagram would bring me in with leads. Now, I can’t, I’m not going to be like sometimes ago when I get hundreds of leads every month because it dips and ebbs and flows and it changes and some weeks it will be one, sometimes it will be ten. But that’s not the point. The point is I’m fully booked. So that’s my thinking on it anyway. But I get many more in there. So most of my leads used to come through Instagram, but it dipped off really soon after I started within the first year. Now I focus largely on using Twitter and Dribble. Twitter is very much in the early stages, I don’t have too much to report back on with that. But with Dribble, I’ve been using it for a significant amount of time now. So I can say quite clearly that it’s finding me much more work than Instagram or any other platform has so far.
Dillon Winspear (00:30:47):
Now, when I think Dribble, I still think of a resource that I go to, to find inspiration and see what other designers are doing. So I always think of Dribble is still a designer’s platform. So are you finding that businesses are finding you on dribble?
Connor Fowler (00:31:01):
Yes, so one of the benefits of Dribble is that it is a designers’ platform, whereas Instagram is definitely not that. And that’s not how people use Instagram. So if you think about, yes, designers use dribble to find inspiration. What do other people who are not designers do? Well, they’re not going to be finding inspiration on Dribble for their corporate banking job. Like that’s not going to help them in any capacity. But what it may help them with is finding an illustrator who can write or who can design a header for their latest article, or blog post, or that type of thing. So people use dribble who are not designers as a directory. So it’s like having the yellow pages or yelp for designers. And that’s how other people see it. So that’s again, a mindset shift people need to have, which is that, yes, it’s a platform for designers but what’s everybody else who’s not a designer? What’s like 99% of the world using Dribble for?
Dillon Winspear (00:31:58):
So what type of content do you post to dribble? Is it completed projects, is it just logos, is it a process? What are you doing?
Connor Fowler (00:32:05):
Typically, it’s a mixture of identity work and logo design, which is generally the services I do. So I share stuff that I’m actually working on. And occasionally, I’ll also put stuff up that I have made just for fun or providing its relevant within that identity design category. That’s what I’ll share. So it will be things such as logos, it will be some process shots, it will be applications, identity application, so posters, merchandise, digital applications, as well for social media and that type of stuff. So basically, breaking down a case study into individual posts. And that’s how I would say.
Dillon Winspear (00:32:40):
Sure. Are you very active on LinkedIn?
Connor Fowler (00:32:43):
Not really. I’ve seen lots of people talk about the benefits of LinkedIn. But right now, it’s tricky, because lots of people are having great success on LinkedIn. There’s a guy, I can’t remember his first name. But if you look up Juju branding, he does really well on LinkedIn and that’s where he gets most of his leads through and his creative content is wonderful. But I’m sat here thinking, LinkedIn is not really the kind of platform for me, I am quite sarcastic. I’m not particularly a professional writer. I’m very blunt. And right now, I’m still trying to figure out how we can best use something like Dribble or Twitter to gain traction and get through the messages, because there’s something I haven’t mentioned about Dribble as well, which is just the discoverability of Dribble is absolutely insane in comparison to places like Twitter, or LinkedIn, or even Instagram. So that’s one of the reasons I’m focusing on these platforms is to get really good at Dribble and Twitter, and then think about, well, how can I transfer that to LinkedIn.
Dillon Winspear (00:33:50):
That makes a lot of sense. You know, why it popped into my mind was, I was thinking that obviously, LinkedIn is a professional network, where you’re going to have CEOs, you’re going to have your chief financial officers or chief of products or whatever, on there. And if you could get yourself out there, as you know, a creative on a professional network, maybe bring in more income, but it doesn’t sound like you’re having issues finding that on dribble.
Connor Fowler (00:34:12):
No, but I recommend people going to strongly consider LinkedIn as a possibility. Because you’re totally right that if you imagine just like your regular in person networking event, and you go to a networking event, and you’re the only designer in the room, that is often what will be the case on LinkedIn. If you go to somebody’s post and comment on it, the likelihood of you being the only designer is quite high. So that just builds up your network, that builds up your connections, that makes you the go to person. So that’s where LinkedIn has a strong suit. But I’m personally trying to just focus on two platforms now rather than doing what I’ve done previously, which is tried to do like six or seven at once, and it just blows me out of the water and burns me out.
Dillon Winspear (00:34:57):
It’s so tough to keep all that going. It’s funny you brought that story up about your commenting on LinkedIn, I just saw a post two days ago, and it was a developer, he actually does more like native iOS development was posting logo options for a new app that he’s working on. And I don’t know who did these logo options, but he had six of them. And he was just asking in the comments which of these six he prefer, and I looked at the six I was like, oh, these are all trash. Like, there’s not a good one in this group. I was like, who did this? The contrast is off, there’s too much detail at a small thumbnail, I mean, it was so bad. And so I jumped into the comments, and there’s like, 80 comments on it. I’m like, how many of these people are actually designers? Because they’re going through and like, oh, pick one one’s great. I’m like, don’t pick one. One is awful. It’s maybe it’s the best of the most awful, but why are we stopping there. And it’s funny, because I was tend to go on, like, I’ve got a pretty decent background in freelancing, branding, and designing and all that kind of stuff. And I thought maybe I should jump in here and get my two cents, but I’m like, just going to get lost in the shuffle. I’m of the personality, where I actually don’t like to engage in like, comment threads, because I just feel like Facebook specifically is a garbage bin of just like, you know, nasty comment threads, but it doesn’t get much better on LinkedIn. It’s all just like, you know what, I’m going to stay out of this one but I think key to what you’re saying here isn’t necessarily jump into the comment sections and just engage with everybody you’re seeing. But there is a principle of visibility, if you can get yourself visible and find your niche or your I don’t know, if you can find out how to get the most ROI out of visibility, that’s where you’re going to be best served and it sounds like for you, it’s been Dribble, for others, it’s LinkedIn. And maybe for some, it’s Instagram, but it sounds like you’re all about ready to give up on Instagram.
Connor Fowler (00:36:47):
I am, yeah. And we briefly discussed this as well. And there’s a big reason for it and kind of to leave the goal to the end of the show. I think it’ll be worth talking about this now, where the reason I’ve largely switched over from Instagram is I kind of had an epiphany one morning, when I was staying at my girlfriend’s house before we moved into this place. And I immediately ran over and grabbed her iPad, and was just sketching this idea out for like half an hour. And what I’ve figured out and just through some googling, and just general searching and paying attention to how the internet’s working, Instagram is really, really shit for discoverability. So the point you’ve just made about being visible, you don’t get that on Instagram at all. You used to when hashtags worked, but hashtags don’t really work anymore. And the search engine side of Instagram just doesn’t work either. Now, the reason for this, I believe, is again, I don’t typically share this type of thing, because it gives me a leg up on everybody else to kind of be brutally honest about that. But with Dribble, Dribble is amazing for discoverability. So Google will search and list Dribble images. So if you tag your dribble images correctly with the correct tags, and you also title it correctly and you also include in the description, some alt tag type keywords. So I made a heart logo the other day, let’s say the title would be something heart logo, the tags would be heart logo or love logo or whatever, something related like you would do for good SEO on a blog picture, do that for your Dribble posts, because they will rank. And if you go to Google now, there are some of my Dribble posts that are out ranking people who have things like Shutterstock, I’m out ranking Shutterstock for certain keywords. I’m out ranking designers who have been posting on dribble for 10 years almost, with just my tagging images correctly. And that is how people are finding me largely through Dribble. Then obviously some people are going directly through Dribble. But some people are finding me through Google search and then going to Dribble. Whereas, Instagram, LinkedIn, Facebook, they almost do not show up in Google Images at all. Instagram has just started implementing tags images, but no one is using them. And almost no Instagram posts show up in Google ever anyway. And I think that’s because of the whole Google Facebook rivalry. But that’s one of the reasons why I’m focusing more on Dribble is because I’m tired of having an account that is largely appealing to designers when I’m trying to build relationships with people who actually need my skill set to help them build a better business. So I need to figure out how to get hold of them and how to get my work in front of them. And in terms of a social network, Dribble and Twitter, because again, Twitter has an alt tags as well. So you can do the same thing with Twitter and Google will rank those images. But Dribble is doing it really well at the moment and I’m out ranking as I say, many people and who have been on Dribble for a long time simply by tagging my posts correctly.
Dillon Winspear (00:40:07):
That’s really interesting insight. And now I’m going to be on the fence of should I even air that or should I just put that one in my pocket? And then try and benefit from it as well.
Connor Fowler (00:40:16):
Yeah, the only other person who I’ve publicly spoken to about this was a university in the states who interviewed me for their students like that’s the only because I’m like, well, students need the leg up when they leave University and the people listening to your show today and listening to this. I’m sure they’ll, as you mentioned, the most of your audience are UX designers, you’re not going to be competing with me. I’m totally fine with it. And I hope anyone listening uses it because there is so much space out there that no one is capitalizing on at the moment.
Dillon Winspear (00:40:47):
That makes plenty of sense. Connor, I need to let you wrap up so that you can get on with your day. You’ve got some meetings that are happening right after this. So I want to wrap this up. But before we do, where can people find you? Where do you want to direct the listeners of this podcast to learn more about you, to follow your work? Are we directing them at Dribble, go ahead and plug what you’d like to plug.
Connor Fowler (00:41:07):
Sure. Well, thank you for inviting me on the show firstly, it’s been a pleasure to talk to you and I hope if anyone has any questions after this, they can find me on the Internet @Cvalleydesign. That’s pretty much any social network you can find me on LinkedIn and Instagram if you really want to, but I am most active at the moment on twitter @Cvalleydesign and the same on Dribble. If you want to talk Twitter, if you want to look at some more of my work, Dribble will be the best place to do that. You can visit my website at connorfowler.com which is where most of my case studies like the more in depth look at my work and process is hosted at the moment. And yeah, that’s where you’re going to find me and see our design.
Dillon Winspear (00:41:47):
That’s a wrap on another episode. Thank you for choosing to listen to Designed Today. Check out our website at designedtoday.com. There you’ll find all of our past episodes, resources, links to join our slack community, and even an option to sign up for a career coaching session with me. If this episode has provided any level of value to you, then consider subscribing. There’s so much more to come with episodes launching every single Tuesday. If you’re already subscribed, then thank you. Consider leaving a rating or a review, share this episode with a friend or co-worker. As always, your support means a ton and it goes a long way. Until next time, this is Dillon Winspear, encouraging you to keep pushing and design something new today.
