Finding gigs isn’t always easy for the freelance graphic designer, it even can become very stressful when there is an urge to pay the bills. Of course waiting for that situation to start searching is a very bad and insecure to do your freelance, and you better have a plan on how to promote yourself and hunt for work if you are freelancing. If you are working in a company, these can be ways to get some extras…

  • Job boards
    Best place to find graphic design work. Since people who post requests on job boards are usually paying to do so, they want to find a real professional, so you better have a portfolio and samples of your work ready when answering. Following are the best design job boards that I know.

  • Blogging
    Obviously, blogging isn’t a short term solution to find design jobs. It’s probably the best way to show your expertise and to find an audience. People reading your blog regularly and liking your work will come to you, partly because they know your way to think about graphic design. Make sure you make it easy to contact you and eventually create a “hire me” page (which I will do… some day…).
  • Classifieds
    I put it here because I know that some people use it to find work, but I personnaly never used it. I tend to believe that browsing classifieds will only get you to find cheap jobs, but hey, I might be wrong.
    This said, classifieds can be a good way to find local jobs. You’ll just have to find the classified site that fits your region the best. For general sites, you can try those.

  • LinkedIn – Facebook
    The way to use LinkedIn to is quite obvious, make friend with people you know and try to get recommandations from them. To my opinion, LinkedIn should be used more to use your network to find clients than to find new prospects.
    For Facebook, I’ve found that it’s a good medium to let people know what you are doing and what kind of projects you are involved in. You may get work from people that you wouldn’t have talked to otherwise, of course that requires to have a good site/portfolio.
  • Forums
    This isn’t a quick way to hunt for jobs, but forums can be a good way to show your skills by answering people’s requests and connect with them.

There surely also are other ways to find gigs such as contests, but I only wanted the ones that seemed to be the most efficient. What about you, which ways are you finding graphic design jobs?

About the Author

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Mirko Humbert

Mirko Humbert is the editor-in-chief and main author of Designer Daily and Typography Daily. He is also a graphic designer and the founder of WP Expert.