From Form studio staff share the experience they have gained after opening the studio a few years ago.

Having traveled the difficult path to success, its creators learned several lessons that they decided to share with all young entrepreneurs who decided to follow their path.

This list is not the main thing that will help you in building your own studio, however, it will help prevent the most common mistakes at the initial stages – save money, nerves and efforts.

1. Create Your Own Prospects

Where can you find a job like a design studio? If it will be, for example, in From Form, then perhaps ask its founders if you can take part in one of the largest creative conferences in Europe, after which you will open many doors and opportunities in the world of design. This is a variant of the first step. Small, but confident and firm. In short, chase your dream, create yourself!

2. Invest time in projects that you REALLY want to bring to life in order to raise funds for serious commercial projects

To participate in the OFFF 2013 conference in Barcelona, ​​From Form had to donate time spent on commercial work. This is a risky strategy for a new studio, which then does not have solid capital. “We learned that investing time in what we think is worthy of projects is better at first, even at the expense of commercial ones,” says Keijer, one of the studio’s three founders. You need to prove yourself, be active and conscientious.

3. Believe in what you want to do

“In the end, commercial projects will appear!” – says Ashley Govers, one of the owners of From Form. After the participation of the “young” studio in OFFF 2013, a huge amount of press began to generate around it, the studio received a number of industry awards, including the ADC Merit Award Motion. Thus attracting more customers.

4. Create a high quality studio website

With him, it will be much easier for you to establish contacts with clients whom he should attract. In most cases, the first site is created independently or for a small investment. It is also important to have like-minded people, and to be confident in their reliability. This is of strategic importance.

5. Set goals

Profit? Creative development? Personal ambition? What will you do and what is your potential client. It is also important to decide what resources you have: money, team, their work, useful contacts, etc.

6. Determine the number of employees at the initial stage

At the initial stage, it is enough to have a director, manager, chief designer and one or two more. The functions of the accounting department can be entrusted to outside companies for the time being – at first it is profitable. When applying for a job, pay attention to their experience, quality of projects. We need to make them understand that at first they need to work especially intensively.

7. Choose the right staff

Many firms at the beginning of their careers in the field of design cease to exist after only a year of work. The reason for this is that their employees are professional designers who are not ready for voluminous work in uncreative terms: administrative, organizational, accounting.

8. Technique for work

It is important for a designer to have a decent technique: a graphics station, so that there is a large amount of RAM, a good processor, capacitive hard drives, a normal video card, input-output devices, a special monitor. And all this is not so cheap. These, of course, are not all the conditions for creating a studio, but, nevertheless, they should be taken into account in the future implementation of your business and the achievement of success in the web design industry.

Source: say-hi.me