David Airy, author of the popular Logo and Corporate Identity, has released a new book called “Design for the soul, business for money”to help designers starting their own businesses find answers to their most common questions. So, where to start, where to find clients, how to present yourself, why hired employees are needed – this and much, much more is collected in one book.

How to create your own studio

Referring to this topic, David described all the steps required for the studio to come into being. I will not say that without this book you would never have coped with this task, especially now, when you can find the answer to literally any question on the Internet. It is better to consider it as a concentrated dose of basic information, having obtained which, you can easily become the happy owner of your own studio. The main thing is to clearly articulate the following positions: what do you want to do, why you are better than others, and how you stay afloat when it comes to hiring employees and renting an office. You must answer these questions yourself and only yourself.

What is this book about

If you haven’t guessed by the name yet, here is a completely unambiguous “hint” – a book about creating your own design studio, or the official work of a freelancer as an individual entrepreneur (IE).

The author gives many pros and cons of working both in a design team and alone. David Airy himself has long been an individual entrepreneur and does most of the work on his own, only occasionally attracting other designers – experts in areas where David is not strong (like illustration or 3D graphics).

Who is this book for

The target audience of the book is, first of all, people who have been working in the “design world” for at least a year. If you are just starting your journey as a designer, I advise you to read Mike Monteiro’s book “Design is Work” first. It covers the basics of working as a freelance designer. But for those who have already worked in the studio for some time or as a freelancer, Airy’s book can be very useful.

I am sure that after a while every freelancer thinks about creating something “of his own” – his own design studio. And it is the process of creating a studio where the people hired by the designer will work, David described in the book “Design for the soul, business for money.” Those who work directly with designers should also read the book. It will help you understand how to interact with them more effectively. David, in the profession, describes his experiences with a wide variety of clients. Of course, designers, who often met difficult “employers” on their creative path, will only laugh when they remember “harsh everyday life”. However, it will be useful for customers to learn how to correctly set a task for a designer and why not every person is called a designer.

The book is also suitable for aspiring project managers looking to work in a studio or with a specific designer. The author does not use specific terminology that is understandable only to a select few. On the contrary, the entire text is written in an accessible language, the chapters are very well structured. Managers will find useful information in the book about finding clients, communicating with them, forging long-term relationships, discussing prices, and much more.

About the sequence of presentation in the book

As always, the most interesting thing to expect from a book is in the middle. And this book is no exception.
The most important topic in the design business is still finding new clients. Yes, yes, neither the logo, nor the identity, nor the VKontakte or Facebook groups, nor even regular tweets on design topics will bring you good new customers if you do not purposefully search for them. It is important to understand the very principle of finding people who will be interested in your services. It’s very stupid to sit and wait for the customer to find you and offer you to work, it’s very stupid – this never happens. Alas, this is true.

All novice freelancers and entrepreneurs face the problem of finding clients, for this it is not at all necessary to work in the field of design. In any other field, finding clients is almost the main part of labor costs. Therefore, in the middle of the book, I advise you to pay attention to each word – it is useful.

Minus publishing house

I cannot fail to note one drawback that immediately caught my eye – this is an unacceptable number of errors in cases. In my opinion, all modern publications are guilty of this, because they are published in huge volumes, but no one canceled the proofreading. One gets the impression that the entire book was checked by only one proofreader at a time, and after processing 50% of the material he got tired and stopped paying attention to mistakes in the use of case forms. In the second half of the book, while reading, I found about 20 mistakes in the choice of case and declension forms. And these are only those errors that I encountered by chance, i.e. I didn’t look for them on purpose.

In general, I recommend reading the book to those who are just thinking about their business or have already come close to making a major decision, but have not resolved the last organizational issues.

The book can be purchased from the publisher Piter.com (with a coupon infographics get a discount in 25%) or in the Ozon.ru store.