A graphic designer is a skilled professional, which means that they can practically start a one-person business, all on their own. Provided that your skills and knowledge are up to the mark, there is no reason you should not consider doing so at the earliest. That being said, working as a graphic designer under an employer is not precisely the same as starting your own company.
Granted that you are likely to be the only employee under your company’s employment, for the time being, you will still need to be on point with your new venture if you ever wish to see it gain more employees down the line! So, keeping the business end of things in mind, let’s get started with three brief tips that are typically meant to help graphic designers.
1.Register Your Company as an LLC Entity
Register the company name as a sperate entity, instead of keeping the business a sole proprietorship. Understand that it has very little to do with ownership, but everything to do with staying safe against being held personally liable in worse-case scenarios.
A sole proprietor’s personal property can be put on hold or even sold off by creditors if the indebted company’s assets fail to pay off the debts in time. By registering your new graphic designing company as a separate entity and preferably as a Limited Liability Company (LLC), you will automatically protect your personal assets from ever being subject to the company’s losses and debts.
2.Get Professional Liability Insurance
Even if just one person is running a company, it can get sued by dissatisfied clients. You may or may not realize it yet, but lawsuits are inconveniently common in creative fields. For example, you may not even realize that the logo you created and sold to a client was already copyright protected and in use. Consequently, the client who was using that logo already breached the law for copyright infringement. They will most definitely attempt to get compensation from you as you were the one who designed the copyright infringing logo and even charged them for it. You will be glad to include your professional liability insurance cost as part of the necessary business expenses if that happens.
It would be irrelevant whether this was intentional or not because, technically, the client paid for nothing except the losses they may or may not have incurred on using the logo. They also do not have a useable logo to use. This is just one of several possible scenarios that makes professional liability insurance essential for graphic designers. It’s true that the professional liability insurance cost varies depending on the type of insurance you get, what the policy covers, how high the coverage limit is, the size of the company, and multiple other factors.
3.Work as an Employee for a Few Years
Credibility within the creative field is something that develops primarily based on one’s work portfolio. The issue is how will you build an impressive portfolio from past clients if your first client also wants to see your past work history reputable clients? This is largely why graphic designers will generally work under a company for a few years and build their portfolio before taking the entrepreneurial/freelancer route.
Given that you are a professional, there would be no point in stretching this post with generic advice about the basics of graphic designing. Instead, this is meant for professional graphic designers who already have the necessary knowledge and skills to do the job but could perhaps use a bit of business acumen to help them succeed faster and avoid beginner’s mistakes.
