A marathon, not a race - Motion Designer Hashmukh Kerai
Hash landed his first freelance gig by accident while he was still a student at uni. It’s seven years later now and he’s never looked back. He got some studio space from that first client in return for the odd bit of work, and through word of mouth and meeting people, he was able to build up his contact list and bring in a steady flow of work.
Hash has learnt as he’s gone along, bouncing back from mistakes to keep pushing forward. “When it comes to freelancing,” he says, “It’s a marathon, not a race.”
He’s worked on plenty of side projects during his time freelancing, including a guide for new freelancers, and he says “You’re only as good as your portfolio. Putting stuff out there that you believe in and that you want to create is so important.”
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Transcript of the Being Freelance podcast with motion designer Hashmukh Kerai and Steve Folland
Steve: As ever. How about we get started hearing how you got started being freelance?
Hash: Yeah, sure. So my freelance career starts at university, so I studied motion graphics at university and I had a little bit of an unfortunate case that seemed to sort of repeat itself out my career and my education where my course got cut at university and I ended up having to move from the motion design course to the graphic design course, so it was really interesting.
Steve: No way.
Hash: Well yeah, it was a bit of a downfall, but also I got to learn sort of more strict graphic design and then in my own time learn sort of motion graphics via online tutorials. So that was a bit of a weird footing into the world of animation motion as it was. And I sort of just ticked the long and then it came to graduation and as a young university student really scared about what the heck I was going to do. I didn't really know there was much of an industry out there. I didn't know what advertising was.
Hash: But, so it came to my degree show, which is obviously really big for any creative student. If you're an artist illustrator, a designer, animator, because that's where you put on your big show for you to showcase all your three or four years worth of work. I was quite lucky to be sort of approached by a designer that came along to the university show. I think they were desk camping, a studio, a production company that was only about two, 300 meters away from my university. So it was literally around the corner and they saw my show. They saw the project that I'd set up and got in touch saying that oh the company that they're desk camping at is looking for a motion designer and sort of calling me in.
Hash: I was a bit confused because I thought it was an internship. I thought it was a free thing. I'm going into just help out. I was a student, so I had no idea what the heck I was doing. But it turned out to be a freelance gig, which is really weird. And they were like, "Hey, we've got a day rate for you." I was like, "Oh okay, I'm getting paid to do this." And yeah, that's just kind of how it started off. It was a really weird sort of setting where, yeah, I just didn't know what freelancing was or contracting was. I think they said, "Yeah, you're coming in to contract." So I was like, "ah, okay." I think it's Googled like what does this mean and I just sort of fell into it. I was never told what freelancing even meant as a student, but yeah, that was my first intro.
Steve: And what year was that?
Hash: That was back in 2013. It's been a good six, coming to seven years of freelancing now.
Steve: So I was going to say straight off the back of that, did you just continue freelancing?
Hash: Yeah, I just continued from there. So it was, it's a weird thing. So I personally never met another freelancer who has gone from university or education straight into freelance. You often I find out that you do internships or you go in, most freelancers actually work in an agency or a studio full time and then find freelancing. They need the flexible hours or they want to try something new. I kind of did it obviously the opposite way around, which was I personally think good because you know freelancing is so all over the place. You don't know when your next job is, so you have to live a little bit of that.
Hash: I feel as if it's kind of still being a student in the sense where you don't know when your money's coming in, when your loans coming in. That's how it was for me when I was a student. So that introduction was good. Not having to rely on having full freelance work in the beginning because I was still living that student life. And then yeah, it's just continued, the last seven years has just been full on freelance, although the last three or four years has been full time. I think I've just been winging it the whole time really prior to that. But that's how it goes I think. I think you've just got to, it's like testing the waters, understanding what this all is. And I definitely think that it's like a marathon, not a race when it comes to freelancing. And it's a lot about learning from your errors and your mistakes and sort of pushing forward.
Steve: So how did you go about getting your first freelance clients beyond that first one? What did you do? Like how long was that for? Was it going in each day for a certain period?
Hash: So it was a pretty interesting one. That first gig was coming into just to do one or two projects. And they probably had me doing like a week's worth of work month, maybe even less. But I was quite lucky they allowed me to stay in the studio and use it as a bit of a workspace and in sort of return, if they had like an hours work here or there that they needed done, I'd do it for them and I'd help them out in return for not having to sort of pay to use the space.
Hash: And then other than that, my next freelance gigs really came from people that I'd met in that studio. Luckily that studio was a production company, so there was a lot of directors and producers or freelancers that were coming in, sort of freelance producers. So then it was kind of just naturally sort of evolved. I never did any new business. I never did any sort of calling out to new people. Everything was the people that were around me. I think I was very fortunate to be, my first job was somewhere where, where it was full of talented people who are going around and doing cool projects and working with other people. So it was very sort of natural, evolved quite naturally and they just called me on to their other projects that they'd work on, so for the agencies and other companies. So everything's been word of mouth and that's kind of how my career has been in general. It's often someone recommends me and very rarely I sort of go out and poach for new business.
Steve: Did you go from that one job to another then? Or have you had slower periods?
Hash: I've definitely had like super slow periods. Like I said I think the first year or so was like one week's worth of work accumulatively you know, maybe a day here or there per month. So it was super slow for sure in the beginning and then just as you meet people and as I got into the books for a lot of agencies I worked at work became a lot more regular, started taking a lot more longer gigs and yeah, it just sort of evolved from there. I just started to meet more people and I think I've been very lucky that the kind of work that I do is all sort of social media work. So it's all very fast paced as all project basis. So I've just been jumping around from one thing to another.
Hash: Like I said, a lot of the places I work, I'm very lucky that there's a lot of freelance producers or wherever they go, they'll sort of take me with them if I'm their go to motion designer that they like to use, or if they're a director that likes to use a motion designer that they know, so they just pick me. So yeah, I've just sort of bounced around from place to place just with other people. I try to create a good partnership with the people I work with all the time to make sure that they keep me in mind going forward for whatever they do.
Steve: Yeah. What about what you put out on, I know various forms of social media, bit like the likes of Instagram or the ones more targeted for your industry? Do you put time into those?
Hash: Yeah, so Instagram is really big for me and has kind of changed my career in the last two or three years. So I traditionally was a motion designer out of uni. That's where I learned, and I've always done 3D. 3Ds a big part of motion design. But personally the motion graphics I've done is all 2D animation, it's quite simple. It's all social media stuff, so it's all like infographics and flat 2D graphics. It's often over a sort of video footage, and yeah, sure, it's kind of your bread and butter stuff. I've always done 3D, but over the last I'd say actually three or four years I've been learning how to do a lot more 3D, picking up some 3D software and a bit of a trend on Instagram and even though there is portfolio websites like Behance and back in the days like DeviantArt and stuff like that, the trend is just like put up your work. Even if it's a sort of work in progress. Just put your stuff out there to kind of see what other designers think of your work. You can chat. You can build a little bit of a community.
Hash: Instagram's been big for me like that because I try to make a post every week and it's just a random piece of work, because often some abstract piece of work got put together. And that could be from an idea or it could be from a tutorial that I've learned and then I sort of take it and then evolve the idea and I just post stuff. I've been posting very regularly and sort of, it's a bit weird, but I look through my Instagram now, it's becoming a portfolio in itself and it's a lot more vast than my actual sort of design and commercial portfolio. So I have a lot more 3D work than I have commercial work to show that, from the last seven years are freelancing.
Hash: So I've just been posting on Instagram very regularly and that is actually starting to get me work recently. And that's why I've taken on this sort of different career path. Now I'm doing a lot more 3D and I'm trying to be a bit more of a 3D illustrator, which is cool. It's different. So it's a bit of a change in my freelance life from doing motion graphic jobs and now taking on more 3D, more 3D commissioned jobs, which is quite different as well. Previously I was a sort of journalist motion designer, so I'd be called in often after a project has been sort of the art direction is done or the graphic designs are. I just come in to help animate whatever's been done. So I'm often an after thought in sort of all the projects I work on.
Hash: But the 3D stuff's quite different because you kind of come in at an earlier stage, you help out with art direction, with the overall idea and commission work is cool because often your clients come to you because of your style and your direction and Instagram has just for some reason worked so well for that. I think a lot of people are just gravitating towards finding new people on Instagram compared to maybe some other portfolio websites just because people are pointing stuff out a lot more. So yeah, social media is a big thing for me for it. That's actually my new business I guess is just post and put stuff out there.
Steve: That's great. So by experimentation and sort of playing around and putting out work there that you wanted to be doing, people have seen that and now they're getting you in to do it.
Hash: Yeah. I always say you're only as good as your last job that you do and you're only as good as your portfolio, right? So if your portfolio for any creative, this is, if you're a copywriter, if you're a director for whatever it is, you can only showcase work that you've done and if it's work that you don't like because that's all you're getting hired to do, you're never going to be hired to do a job that's anything better than that, because clients don't like taking that big leap of faith. And also they don't have the vision as you do. So I definitely think putting stuff out there that you believe in and that's the stuff that you want to create is so important. I think way too many people are very precious about the work they put out and they're trying to make it all look very commercial, maybe very corporate. But if you sort of try and add that tone of voice that comes from you, you can start creating that work a lot more.
Steve: How do you find a time to do the client work and your own projects?
Hash: Yeah, so it's just putting in the hours. It's a lot more harder now. I got married recently so I have a lot more different responsibilities and I've got to share my time out equally with my wife, but previous to that sort of an early days of freelancing and it was just putting in loads and loads of time. It was different maybe earlier on in my freelance career because I didn't have as much work, but now there is still that battle between commercial work and personal work, but just based on how much of a believer I am in side hustles and doing that personal work, I try and even them out as much as I can. I guess it's just evenings, weekends. I mean if you're enjoying it, I think you're willing to put the time into it. And whenever I have a spare moment, even if I have an hour or two between, in like a lunch spot between working or doing a gig at an agency, I'll put a tutorial on just while I'm eating. It's just finding those little bits of time and I enjoy it.
Hash: That's why I think I can afford to skip out on social time or watching Netflix or bingeing on a TV program, because I feel as if it's not work. When I'm doing the personal stuff, it's just R&D, it's experimentation, and I put a podcast on in the background. I put some music on so it's just kind of like therapeutic. I just get on with it really. So it's definitely tough. I think that balance is definitely tough, but if you love it, I think it just comes naturally.
Steve: Yeah. So you work a lot in-house do you?
Hash: So I used to. I used to do a lot of in-house stuff. I'd sort of bounce around from agency to agency or production company, primarily small production companies just because of the work that I like to do. I don't like to work on big campaigns, just a personal preference. I like to work with sort of smaller teams. It's a little bit easier to communicate and to get your personal sort of message across and on how you want to work or your credit direction. I find big agencies are quite tough to work with, but there's a few that I work with who are really, really cool now. I actually love working them. But recently the last, since I'd say last summer, I really changed things up and I'm trying to push a lot of my clients to let me do a lot of remote work, which is working. I would say about 30%, maybe 30 25% of my clients are allowing me to do a lot more remote work.
Hash: I think the give is that I can spend more time working on stuff because I'm not commuting, I'm not having to waste time with a lot of time, like I'm going into places and I can, first of all, you can't even get into the building, because you're at some weird workspace where they have to come and sign you in and then I can't get onto Adobe, or I can't get onto their server or their whatever it is. There's always some issues and then time wasted on meetings and, but I do, but just like random stuff. So the trade off is look, I can narrow down my focus. I can just work a lot harder, and also I'm working on my machine now.
Hash: Now that I'm doing a lot more 3D stuff, a lot of the agencies I work at just don't have the sort of hardware that I need to have to get the job done. So I'm trying to push a lot more for sort of remote work and working from home, which is just so much more beneficial. It's so much more better for me. I can just get on with stuff. It's just peace of mind just in terms of my mental health as well, just working from, it's just so much better to not sort of be commuting and rushing around. So yeah, it's still a bit of a mixture of both, but I'm trying to push to do a lot more remote work.
Steve: How do you find it when you are working from home? It sounds more like a relief after. A lot of people they might feel isolated or if they're not seeing people, but I don't know maybe it sounds like you've got quite a good balance of-
Hash: Yeah, I think I've got good balance based on the fact that I do still go in-house, but it's also tough. It's my ideal, I'd always ask on a new project, oh, can I work from home? Even if it means like a lot of the time it's the first few days are working in-house, just so you get a feel of the project and you're working with the team to just start things up, make sure you're all on board. And then when it comes to the just getting on with the job for animation stuff, I can just work from home. I don't need any credit direction. I can just get on whatever I need to.
Hash: It's interesting, the thing that I think with myself at home, I need to be a bit careful because I have my exercise bike in my studio, so I work out in the evenings and then I also watch TV from my studio and then I like there's just so much that goes on in this tiny little room in my house, so it can get a bit claustrophobic. I try and take a walk as much as I can, but it's for sure tough, but a lot better than being at an agency. There's just a comfort of working from home, which is like nothing else.
Steve: That's funny, I just got visions, you know those Peloton adverts, which are on at the moment?
Hash: Yeah, exactly.
Steve: Would be the big, beautiful, open spaces of houses that they seem to be in. I want to see one with you with a closed source in one corner and your iMac in the other or whatever.
Hash: Well it's funny when I do Skype calls, I really have to sort of angle the webcams so it doesn't show the random bike in the corner. But yeah, for some reason it was the only place I could put it in my house. So yeah, it's just here, but it's all right.
Steve: That's all right. Well things are rendering. You just hop on it or whatever.
Hash: Exactly. Exactly.
Steve: It's one thing I noticed that you'd done, and I think this might have even been, I remember really seeing this when you started pushing it out there perhaps on Instagram or whatever. I think it was last year that you created your own freelancer guide.
Hash: Yep.
Steve: Yeah. What was the thinking behind doing that?
Hash: So I'm quite lucky to have a little bit of a following on Instagram and it's predominantly, I find a lot of young designers and I always get asked the same questions all the time. So same, same questions. How do I find work? How do I invoice? How do I charge for this? How do I set up a portfolio? Can you look at my work? It's the same things over and over again. I think it's a bit unfortunate because there's obviously a gap or in education in terms of not teaching or learning anything about freelancing.
Hash: I found that at university. I studied design and it was a design course and it was a design university and I've spoken to a lot of freelancers who say freelance was just not an option. It's like you're going to leave here and you're going to go and work an agency, or you're going to go work at a design studio on animation house or whatever. So I just thought, you know what? This was last year, so I had about six years, I think it was six years last summer of freelancing. I was like, let me just put this into ... It was originally meant to be a blog post and then I ended up writing a bit too much and I thought, you know what? It'll be better as a PDF guide, and I thought, what should I do with this shit? How do I put it out?
Hash: I thought, okay, a PDF would be a good idea and I also want to turn it into a bit of a project, so there's a bunch of sort of 3D illustrations that accompany all the tips and tricks I put into the guide and yeah, generally it's just a guide with all of my sort of, a lot of it is my personal opinions, and I say that in the intro. I say, look, this is not going to guarantee you work, but this is just stuff that I've learned over the last six years of freelancing. And it was just a place where I can put all of those answers that people asked me about freelancing, it's mainly for junior sort of designers or people wanting to just get into freelance.
Hash: Or if you're making that transition from full time to do freelance and if you want to just know what freelancers sort of day to day is or those first sort of like the really basic stuff like setting up an invoice. A lot of people don't know how to do it. I didn't know how to do that. I was very lucky to have a friend that was freelancer who I copied. I asked him for his like template and basically just replaced the logo, so really, really simple stuff. Nowadays, thankfully there's a lot more resources online, but I thought, let me just put this thing out and it was actually really good. It had a pretty good response to it, a lot better than I thought and ended up getting me actually some freelance gigs off the back of that just based on the fact that I made all these illustrations to your company and it got me featured in a few places as well, which was great for my personal brand in general.
Steve: It looks amazing, it's great, but it got you work. But when you were writing it down and you were thinking over all the stuff that you'd learned over those six years, was there anything that jumped out at you when you were writing it and you felt, oh yeah, actually I'll put that in?
Hash: The thing that jumped out to me was all the moving pieces that come with being a freelancer. So all those little, little things, the further you go down your career, you obviously things become a lot more easier. To some degree you stop thinking about the invoicing stuff or the portfolios side of things. Or even the financials, you start to get a better bearing of how to sort of navigate through all that stuff. So I think for me it was like, oh wow, there's actually a lot of stuff you've got to consider. And I had to be careful because I didn't want to scare people from freelancing, but I also wanted to be honest enough to tell people that look, there are going to be ups and downs. There's going to be time when you don't have work. Be careful with your finances. Don't just jump into freelance without having any savings. So I think that's what really sort of jumped out for me was knowing that there's actually a lot that comes with trying to make this transition, especially if you're coming from being a full timer.
Steve: How have you coped with that sort of business side of it? Other than that first help with the invoice?
Hash: It's honestly all been trial and error. I've messed up so many times, it's unbelievable. The first few clients I had, I very badly sort of undersold myself and had terrible day rates. I didn't know how to write emails in the beginning. I was so bad at writing emails. I'd write emails as if I'm messaging someone, so just simple stuff I didn't know how to do. It's just been trial and error. It's literally been understanding how to work with people.
Hash: As I've sort of grown as a freelancer and as a designer and as I've gone into the industry, just feeling how things work, it's all come naturally. I've never had anyone there really to tell me how things work. Like I said earlier, I think it's only been the last sort of two or three years where I can properly say, "Oh, I'm a freelancer and this is what I do." For sure the first couple of years were just like, this is just a kind of a thing that I'm doing to sort of just tick along to pay the bills, just about. It was really tough in the first few years, but it's all been natural I think.
Hash: Then the business side of stuff, you get better at it as you go along. It's still tough to this day. There's still stuff that you come across where you're like, what the hell is this all about? Like iAuthor, oh my God, that is the worst thing right now and everyone's freaking out about it. But it's just you just come across these things and you've just got to try and sort of gear yourself up on whatever it is and just take it on really. I think that's just a freelance life I guess. You just take what whatever comes at you whether that's a brief from a client, meeting new clients, coming across a new project they never worked on or some financial struggles or whatever it is. You've just got to sort of take it on the chin. You just roll with it.
Steve: I noticed on your about page that you're represented by Snyder New York in the U.K. and the U.S. So presumably that's an agency for illustrators and motion designers. How did that come about and has it been a benefit to you?
Hash: Yeah, that's been great. That is what has given me this new sort of path into 3D and to do more commission work, as I was talking about earlier. I've been putting the feelers out to sort of being represented for some time now, and then sort of last summer I contacted a whole bunch of people, but then sort of mutually got in touch with Snyder and they're a great female owned agency in New York. So they're cool. They come with a fresh perspective and yeah, they just represent me for U.K. and America, and just help get me work.
Hash: A lot more so, I've found a lot of this stuff that they use, like editorial work, so stuff I've never done before based on the fact that everything I've done is sort of social media related. But yeah, it's just cool that they just helped me find work and that's only come after the years of working. I think you've got to build up a strong portfolio to be able to sort of find an agent, but they're cool. They just help me out, helped me find some work and it's just a sort of another arm where I can sort of find new business without having to actually find new business. I think the most important thing is to just try and find people that can help you as much as you can help them. So building that community around yourself is super important.
Steve: Another thing I noticed was you have a thing where you've been featured at some point magazines or videos and awards that you've won. This is on your website and there'll be a link to how Hash's website, beingfreelance.com so you can check out. Is that something that you actively go after for example, appearing in things or going for awards?
Hash: Yeah, I'm trying to push for it. Not so much the awards stuff, but definitely the features. I think it just helps my personal brand. That's a big thing actually. Personal brand as a freelancer only over the last couple of years I've really pushed that and I've started to understand how powerful and impactful it is to create a personal brand. Before I was just ticking along as any other freelancer, and it was very hard to make myself stand out amongst the noise of so many other people that are so talented.
Hash: I have to tell you that, I get hired to do the work that I do based on a kind of a number of things. One you obviously have to be good at the job, but two, you have to be able to work with the team. You have to be able to show the different skills that you can do. There's people definitely that are better than me at my job, but you've got to be able to know how to actually be a freelancer, be able to work with the people. We have to work with teams. You have to take a brief and interpret that correctly. So yeah, my personal brand is super important now for helping me sort of find work. So the more features I guess I can sort of get out there, as long as they really relate to the work that I do, it's all the better. It's just helping me find more work, getting my name out on the internet a lot more. And that's something I'm for sure trying to push this year. That's sort of a big initiative.
Steve: When you do that, when you talk about your personal brand, do you put yourself out there, like your face and your personality or do you just let the work do the talking?
Hash: So it's a bit of a mixture of both. Definitely I would say 90% work, but there's 10% of you because you're the one who's working on it and you need to have that face. You need to have there's that somebody behind the work. Like my Instagram, I could very easily just make an Instagram that's pure work like a lot of artists do. But my Instagram sort of slightly shared is predominantly work, but it's also a lot of personal stuff. I want to show clients me and that's my brand. I'm my brand just as much as the work that I create and I want people to see that. I want people to see who I am. Especially for me as a person of color working in an industry which might not sort of represent me a lot. I think that's just super important to show who I am. So it's a bit of a mixture, predominantly work, but yeah, my tone of voice and who I am already has to come across in everything.
Steve: Now if you could tell your younger self one thing about being freelance, what would that be?
Hash: Well, I think it would be to just put yourself out there. I think that's the most important thing. Just be true to yourself and just put yourself out there. I found for sure as I progressed in my career, the stakes got a lot higher. So there's a lot more sort of riding on the work that I do and making money. But in the early days it was all really about having fun and just testing things out. So I'd definitely say for, sort of me back when I started out, or a younger self, it would be to just stay true to myself and just create. Just make stuff and just have fun. Just have fun doing this all.
Steve: Yeah, that's really nice. I do like the fact that it's obvious that you love what you do, but you're constantly creating or learning and pushing new things rather than sitting still. And I love it on your website, the way on the homepage, it says making random shit since 2008.
Hash: Yeah well, I think that's just, it's totally it's weird. It's so strange. My wife always actually pinches me or when I complain about work, she's like, "Look I have a full time job. I have to go and do this, this, this." She's like, "You wake up every morning and you do what you love." I'm like yeah, when things get stressful, it's yeah, I just make random crap and people want to pay me for it. It's so weird. But people like what you do and you put out what's true to you, I think just work. So yeah, just making random crap since, yeah.
Steve: Hash, thank you so much and all the best being freelance.
Hash: Thanks.