To get your first design client, the goal is to present yourself as a solution to your future client’s design problems. You get clients by proving you can solve problems they have. You do this by showing you’ve done it before.
How can you be someone’s design solution when you’re just starting? We can train our design muscles and build artifacts that can be used to get our first client, and many more. I’ll show you how.
Hacking your network
To be truthful, all of my clients have come from relationships I’ve had. After the first client, everything rolls downhill. The hardest part is getting the first one.
What we want to build is a group of people asking you to do design work for them.
If you have a large network, you’ll get more inquiries than you can handle
If you have a medium-sized network, you’ll several inquiries a month
If you have a small network, you’ll get inquiries one by one
To hack your network, you need to create something valuable to other people and share it. To hack this, we’re going to create something valuable to you. You can think of it as a micro-product we’ll leverage to flex your design skills.
By creating something valuable to yourself, and maybe a small community of other designers, you can hack your network by getting people to recommend you. You can position yourself as an expert in your specific niche because of your unique experiences.
If you’re helpful to other designers, designers will recommend you to anyone who asks them for work. If you’re helpful to other startup founders, those startup founders will recommend you to other startup founders. But first thing’s first, doing the design work.
Do the design work, building something valuable for yourself
The first step is to show you’re a designer by being a designer. We don’t have any clients yet, so we’re not able to show detailed case studies about how we solved specific problems. So here’s the plan: we’re going to design—and build—a product from start to finish. And you are the first customer.
If the word “build” seems overwhelming, don’t worry. When I say “build” I mean, “create something valuable to yourself and other people.” This could be…
Designing something for Figma’s community. Ask: what’s something I needed in Figma that I don’t have, that I can’t find? Maybe a layout grid for the latest iOS device or cute little blobs designers could use for a homepage.
Designing a list of your favorite coffee spots in your area (fill in coffee with your favorite imbibe) and create a little website, maybe using Webflow. Post and make a case study on your portfolio.
It all depends on what you enjoy doing, and what you think you could offer to the design community. The reason you’d design (and build) a tool for the design community, is because you’re a designer! Right? You’ll have an audience of one (yourself), and that’s all you need to get started.
Here are some real-world examples…
Figma Community is a great place to explore solutions designers have made for designers. My old team, Mixpanel, and good friend Mark Johnson made something called “Annotation Kit” which is a great way to document your Figma files with sticky notes and other elements.
Product Hunt is also a great place to check out what people are building. It doesn’t have to be a full-fledged product like this color generator. It could be something simple like this design checklist for designing products or this simple list-turned website. These are probably all over-achieving. I got great feedback from this post about simple rules for forms (another idea).
If you need help finding an idea, ask in the comments!
Designing and creating a solution to a real problem does two things
It gives you product design reps. You’re training to be a product designer, you are a product designer by solving real problems with a design-first mindset. Even if you’re not designing and building a “real product”.
Because you’re solving problems, you now have ammunition for generating case studies—a document talking about the problem and how you arrived at your solution—which is great to share when chatting with potential clients.
Be the change you want to see
Sorry, lol. The old adage is true. If you want to get a specific type of work: like designing a mobile app, or designing crazy desktop dashboards, you have to show that you’ve done that type of work before.
It’s chicken-and-egg. Stalemate. A vicious circle of no work, or boring work if you don’t pull yourself out of it. Do the type of work you want to do, and share it. You’re going to get the type of work that you’ve done, shown in your portfolio (case studies), and proved you have experience doing.
Step-by-step guide
Brainstorm a list of “products” you could design for yourself, that’d be useful to you. It doesn’t have to be useful to a large group of people, but maybe it’s useful for one of your friends, or a group of designers too.
Start designing. Go through your design process. If you’re stuck, you can use something like the Journey Design Process.
Build your micro-product.
Share it on Designer News, on your Twitter, on your Dribbble, and write a brief case study or blog post and post.
Oh, and share it here! The goal isn’t to get huge hits and millions of likes. The goal is to get a couple of people interested and to have something to point to when it’s game time. It might take a couple of tries. This is okay! Because it’s useful to you, and hopefully you’re enjoying it, it’s okay to have a couple of dud projects or designs.
Remember, you get the type of work you’ve done. Good luck. Feel free to comment on this post if you have any ideas or questions 🤙