13 Comments 05 April 2011

Few new arrivals have quite the beginning to their PPH experience as digital illustrator, graphic designer and art director, Daniel Poynton. He joined PeoplePerHour and on day three, won a bid as epic and wondrous as his illustrations.

His profile says under areas covered “the entire universe” and certainly the sky was the limit when he began bidding and on the third day, won the most amazing-sized job. We promised not to say exactly how much but lets just say he probably didn’t need to bid again for another three months.

We were so chuffed for him, we reached out to him to find a little more about his remarkable bidding success and vivid illustrations…

Can you introduce yourself to the PPH community, who you are and what your skills are?

Hello PPH! I’m Daniel, I’m a self taught digital illustrator, graphic designer and art director living in London. I’m a huge photoshop geek and thanks to 7 years of  pretty much messing around in Photoshop and Illustrator, creating personal artwork and things I personally thought looked cool, it spawned into making me my living, which I’m very thankful for.

Can you tell us a bit about your personal circumstances around the time you first found PeoplePerHour.com?

A lot of the work that kept me going before I signed up to PPH was album covers, the odd flyer here and there and a couple of ongoing contracts that included changing banners, brochures e-templates and the like – which was fine, but I knew I needed to network more, develop a broader client base and network with other like-minded creatives. And then I found PeoplePerHour…

How did you find us and what made you decide to sign up?

Completely by chance actually, I was just Google surfing after a click around on the site I was impressed with the range of jobs that are posted by clients, from touch up jobs, logos, album covers, children books, etc.

We notice that within three days you bid and won a quite remarkable job. Can you tell us a bit about bidding for, winning and completing the job?

PPH is suitable for both students getting a feel of things right the way up to established freelancers (I’m starting to sound like part of your marketing team! haha). An important part about bidding for the jobs is always make sure exactly what the client wants via the clarification board.

PPH is very accessible for everyone which is what makes it great, but in turn the odd person will make a vague job description, make sure to get as much information about the job before you bid,  ”need logo – to be made in vector format” for example does not warrant a bid, for all you know the logo he wants is of a rainbow coloured unicorn riding a motorbike, and your bid price didn’t reflect what the clients expecting.

You can also judge from clients responses how serious they are about their project. As for winning, do a little dance if it’s a big job, and then get stuck in as soon as possible, where completions concerned as much as a no-brainer this will sound, always meet your deadlines! If you’re snowed in with other work, give the client a realistic deadline, and explain that you have a lot of work on – honesty is the best policy!

Developing trust with a client is what forms a good relationship and ongoing work. And using excuses like ”my friends house burnt down and I have to look after his cat” will get you nowhere.

How did winning a such a large job feel and affect your life and indeed your broader well-being?

It did feel pretty good! I’ve had my eye on a really fancy camera and have been meaning to get into photography for years, but have never been able to justify the purchase to my girlfriend until I won that job, thank you PPH!, I’ve since been spending all of my spare time getting to grips with my camera and taking loads of pictures, and I just love it. here’s the best picture I’ve taken so far:

My favourite photo taken since I bought my new camera (thanks to the big job…)”

The camera will also help me loads with my digital illustration as I’ve always been limited to Stock image sites and collaborating with photographers when using images in my artwork.

What are you up to now, freelance wise?

At the moment I’m working on a couple of vinyl covers – one of which is for one of my favourite producers ever (Damu the Fudgemunk). Illustrating for vinyl is my passion, and if every job I had was a 12″ sleeve I would be a very happy human, it’s just such a big ‘canvas’ to work with and I always get given a lot of creative freedom which is just a dream come true for any designer.

I’m also working on some promotional artwork for Ben Atkins at Paper Recordings and also worth mentioning (that I won through PPH) is a really fun logo design for Wentworth Button. It’s for a wedding cake shop, imagine a coat of arms but with pastel colours, wedding cakes, buttons and abstract swirls, can’t wait to get started on it!

Another side project of mine is a children’s book I’ve been writing and illustrating for nearly a year now; ‘Dover’s Dreamland’ It’s about a lucid dreaming dog who saves up all of his happy thoughts for his dreams, where everything goes a bit mental .

Do you think formal education is essential for breaking into freelance design?

Not at all! Especially with the rise tuition fees around the corner, having a degree is great and of course if you want to be a doctor or a teacher etc, you need a degree. But I honestly think that when it comes to design/illustration/photography, anything creative really, that teaching yourself is the way to go, there is so much information already available to you on the internet, and being self taught helps you develop your own original style.

If you want to learn Photoshop for example, spend a week finding out what each and every tool does, the very basics, once you’ve got a basic idea and you understand how layers work, just go from there, start creating, practice, practice,practice!  Join an online community, post your work and get critique from people.

Once you have an online showcase and people giving you advice and tips on things you create, not only are you learning, but you want to improve, and it’s very rewarding when someone finally tells you  ’great work, I love it’. Being self-taught is not just great for freelancing either, design and advertising agencies would be much more interested in employing someone with an exceptional portfolio over a someone with a degree, it’s the work you produce that gets you a job, and you don’t need a certificate to prove it.