Me vs. Me - Graphic Designer and Illustrator Kingsley Nebechi
When Kingsley landed a job as a creative director, he learned the business skills he’d need to make full-time freelancing work the next time around.
After two and a half years, the freelance work he’d continued to do on the side was taking over.
The second time Kingsley freelanced for Nike, a dream client, he realised “I can’t stay in this job any longer. I just want to be home, focusing all my energy on creating the best artwork I can for things like this.”
Kingsley talks about the organic way his business grew through Instagram and word of mouth, the solo exhibition he hosted in 2017 that got him the gig with Nike, and how he landed the BBC as a client.
He chats about enjoying client relationships, working from home, making time for his own work, and shares his personal motto: to give 100% on everything he’s working on and “double the outcome” each time he does something new.
More from Kingsley Nebechi
Useful links
Lettering Artist Julia Broughton’s episode, Go with your gut
More from Steve Folland
Join us in the Being Freelance community
Transcript of the Being Freelance podcast with Graphic Designer and Illustrator Kingsley Nebechi and Steve Folland
Steve Folland: Let's find out what it's like being freelance for graphic designer and illustrator Kingsley Nebechi. hey Kingsley.
Kingsley Nebechi: Hey, how're you doing?
Steve Folland: Let's get started, as ever, hearing how you got started being freelance.
Kingsley Nebechi: There was a few different starts, I would say. I think the last start was probably the main one but initially, I went freelance in 2016 after working for an agency called ilovedust in Portsmouth. After a while, I decided to move back to London to be close to my family and friends. And I didn't want to look for another job. I thought I would just sort of give it a try for a year. It was that more of like a tester in a sense, to see how I would do. It was great, but one thing I realized is that I was missing the business side of things because I was an in house designer, so a lot of the invoicing and chasing clients I wasn't too familiar with, so I struggled a little bit with it.
Steve Folland: Oh I see. Sorry, when you say you were missing it, you don't mean as in you pined for it, but rather you didn't really know what you were doing?
Kingsley Nebechi: Yeah, it was sort of missing in my skillset, yeah. I ended up applying for a job with a grooming company, Jack the Clipper. And the funny story is I initially applied to be a senior graphic designer, but the art director, creative director, left at the same time I was interviewing so they ended up giving me his job. I ended up pretty much running the creative side of the grooming company from vouchers to promotional ads and also running the business side of things, which gave me a very good idea on things. And after two and a half years working there, freelance work just got in the way of things, and I've found myself going to client meetings in lunch breaks, working in the corner of my screen on two different things, one for work and one for myself, doing feedback during lunch, and I just decided to just give it a try. And it's been a year and a bit and it's been great. It's been absolutely fantastic.
Steve Folland: You were freelancing on the side whilst working for the grooming company. Where were you getting that work from?
Kingsley Nebechi: It was mostly Instagram and also previous clients I was working with. I feel like a lot of my work started off music related projects, so it would be artwork for singles and music. Then it kind of started going into book covers and podcast artwork, which I still do, which I sketched the ideas for BBC This Morning. It's kind of really, really organic growth where initially I was kind of like, okay, I'll just do it on the side as I'm working. And then it came to a point when I would just wake up early in the morning to make sure things were done on the freelance side of things and then coming to work and go back home to continue it. I feel like it's kind of came from word of mouth and posting stuff on Instagram, and people still having a look on my website as well, and seeing lots of the different things I was doing at the time.
Steve Folland: And quite a lot of work that you do then is quite, yes, you are a graphic designer, but as you say, you're an illustrator, you're an artist. A lot of it is, I don't know, I guess, your style, is it? Quite identifiable?
Kingsley Nebechi: Yeah, I feel like because I went to uni in Portsmouth studying graphic design, I didn't realize how I would include a lot of typography in my work that I would design. I would sketch like an idea or a quick artwork and then I would just work on typography separately. And I really enjoyed doing it. And then an art director was like, "Oh, can you do the typography for the book cover that you designed as well if you don't mind because I could see that you like typography." And I had a really, really long thing about it. I was like, I think I really do. I think it's my graphic design degree that's just dying to come out. I'd like to kind of just do both. I consider myself an illustrator, but I also use my design skills to make sure I can offer my clients more than illustration, in a sense.
Steve Folland: Some people were finding you because of what you were sharing on Instagram. How often were you putting stuff out and what kind of stuff was it? Was it behind the scenes, was it finished work, do you do stories? What was that like?
Kingsley Nebechi: It was mostly finished work. Every now and then I'll post sketches because I think when I start the process, I'm very into my head, inside my head and thoughts and it's hard sometimes to stop and be like, "Okay, let me just show this." Usually it's like the finished thing and then a few sketches leading up to it, unless I want to sort of revisit some of the sketches. I usually keep the ones I'm thinking, the ones that I like, the ones I'm kind of thinking like, "Oh, I could sort of take this further with something else," but usually I like to just show the final thing and here's other options that maybe didn't make it or the options leading up to the final thing. It was quite often, it's quite often, so whenever I could.
Steve Folland: You mentioned the BBC and I think you've had quite a lot of high profile clients. Did they just find you on Instagram or do you have an agent or how have you got those sorts of clients?
Kingsley Nebechi: In 2017, I want to say, I started doing a lot of podcast artwork for upcoming podcasts and a few of them became pretty big. And the BBC started posting a lot of these podcasts so some of the artworks I did for different organizations, sometimes they would take them in and then redraw the artwork for themselves. But a lot of the BBC's thing was to slightly change it and get me to change my own artwork, in a sense. I think a lot of the people there just saw what I was doing and then commissioned me to do other podcasts that they had going on, so things from Radio One to BBC1 Extra. It felt like it was just going from one department to the next. One day it would be like the Asian Network and the other day would be Radio One or... It was quite interesting. It's been pretty fun to meet a lot of the people from different departments.
Steve Folland: That's so cool. Yeah, it started with smaller podcasts and then once that foot was in the door, everybody kept seeing your work, showing it and-
Kingsley Nebechi: Yeah.
Steve Folland: When you decided to go freelance, how did you know... I mean, you said the first time you went freelance, you weren't sure about the business side of things, but how did you get around that and knowing what to charge? And I don't know whether, even within that, do you think how long something's going to take you or are you thinking about how big the client is? How have you got around all of those various questions that pop up?
Kingsley Nebechi: Initially, it was I was really unsure and especially coming from the culture I come from, my parents didn't quite understand that side of things. They didn't understand how you would leave such a good job to, in a sense, take a chance, in their eyes. Even though my dad is an architect and works for himself, which is the strangest thing. He understands his own thing but was like, "Why would you leave a job for just doing what you do?"
Kingsley Nebechi: Initially, it was really strange, but the thing about me is that I feel like when I have an idea or I have some sort of goal, my brain seems to not leave me alone until I actually take action. I just kept feeling it and feeling it. And I feel like the fact that my boss at the time was just giving me a headache every single day didn't help at all. I thought, you know what, I'll set myself a date, I'll also kind of write down my dream clients, and then I'll go and chase them after the date is up. And the strange thing is that I ticked off a lot of those dream clients before I left. I think one of them was Nike and by the second time I got to work with them, I said, "I can't stay here any longer. I can't stay in this job any longer. I just want to be home." Focused all my energy on creating the best artwork I can for things like this.
Kingsley Nebechi: Initially, it was a little bit scary, but after a while, I felt like I was really taking an active approach following what I wanted to do.
Steve Folland: Yeah. When you wrote that list of dream clients, how did you go about getting them?
Kingsley Nebechi: For example, I always wanted to do work for Nike because when I was working in Portsmouth for the design agency, we did a lot of artwork for them and I used to just look at it and be like, "Oh, this is not going to have my name on it. No one's going to know I drew three people in this illustration." My colleagues do the rest. No one's going to know, there isn't credits or anything.
Kingsley Nebechi: I did an exhibition in 2017, my first solo exhibition, and I constructed these shoe boxes and drew on top of the shoe boxes. Essentially, the idea was to not limit myself to paper or Photoshop and just use a surface of shoe boxes to create a bigger piece. I think it was an advertisement agency saw it, through I think posting it on Instagram and stuff, and they got me to do a custom set of shoe boxes that they were giving YouTubers, at the time. That kind of led to more work for Nike, which was incredible. I couldn't believe it.
Steve Folland: That's so cool.
Kingsley Nebechi: Thank you.
Steve Folland: A couple of things I'm thinking there though, you did your own exhibition, an exhibition of your own artwork. And placing it in time, was that when you were at the grooming company?
Kingsley Nebechi: Yes, yes, yes. I remember, because my colleagues knew I was freelancing on the side, but my boss didn't, so he would come into work sometimes and be like, "Oh, your work is really good. You should promote yourself more, you're untapped talent," and I used to just sit there and be like, "Okay, do I tell him or do I just ..." Yeah, I just took a week off to set up and invited everyone in the office and told them not to bring the boss. I didn't want him to see all the things I was doing at the same time as doing work.
Steve Folland: What did you do? Did you hire a space or a certain-
Kingsley Nebechi: Initially, I found the space through, because I used to go on walks during my lunchtime and I came across the gallery, walked around the gallery and I was like, "Oh this will be a great space if I wanted to do an exhibition one day." And I just sat there, I was like, "One day? Why one day when it's just here?" So I got in touch with the gallery owner. Super, super great guy. I was originally born in Italy and the owner was half-Italian so we just sat there, and spoke Italian and drank coffee. And I think that was a great introduction, and yeah, he just gave me access to this space for a week. This two floors' space. I did, the top floor of the exhibition was prints and artworks created digitally on a computer and downstairs was all these pieces that I created, illustration on drums, canvases, shopping bags, where I would draw characters on top of shopping bags. And it was pretty good, it was pretty good fun.
Steve Folland: How did you capitalize on that? Yes, you invited the people in your office, but you had the place for weeks. How did you make the most out of that?
Kingsley Nebechi: Initially, it was more of a challenge because I like to do this thing where it's like a me versus me thing. I looked at what I've done previously, I'm like, how can I double the outcome? And I had the space for a week and I just looked around and see how I could interact with the walls or the available space. I thought, okay, it would be cool, because I like to just draw of a computer a lot but I also to just physically make things. Whether it was like drawing on canvases or drawing on shoe boxes or glass or actual people, as I've done before. I thought of separating the two and how people would interact with it. And I think overall looking back at it was really, really great because a lot of the prints sold and I've also managed to sell a table I drew on.
Kingsley Nebechi: And someone also inquired about the Nike shoebox thing that I did, but I decided to keep it because it meant so much to me. I was like this is pretty much what allowed me to work with my dream client so it's in my bedroom at the moment.
Steve Folland: I take it side projects are presumably important to you, not just working on client work but working on your own stuff?
Kingsley Nebechi: Absolutely, yeah. I think that's where I get a lot of my ideas is like, even last week for example, I decided to just not do any client work for three days and just sit around and draw all the things that'll come to mind. And I feel like two of those things I drew last week are already making their way into my current client work. It's kind of like they feed off of each other, in a sense. One thing takes one thing and sometimes I'll create something for client work and I'm like, oh, that type of texture or shading would be great for this thing I'm working on on the side. Yeah, it's like one helps the other in a sense.
Steve Folland: How about the way you work, as in normally, let's put aside the whole lockdown thing. Do you work from home? Do you have a studio space? What's it like for you?
Kingsley Nebechi: Yeah, so I work from home, so when the news we're like, "Oh, we're going to be on lockdown." I was like, well, nothing changes for me I guess. And my girlfriend was like, "Oh, we're going to have to stay indoors," I'm like, okay. Okay. Yeah, it's just, I have a studio space at the back of my house so it's a separate room where I just lock myself up in there for the whole day because I used to sort of try and work from my living room sometimes and answer my emails. But one thing I've learned is that your brain associates it to work so you can never sort of feel completely relaxed when you're in an environment where you usually create work. I'm just literally restricted to that room now.
Steve Folland: Do you work certain hours or just when it takes you?
Kingsley Nebechi: See that's the funny thing that I've been trying to work out is like sometimes I get, in a sense, bursts of energy where I just want to draw things and it could be two o'clock in the morning or it could be two o'clock in the afternoon. I kind of just like to run with it. But I try to have between nine and six every day, if possible. Sometimes I start a little bit later, I finish a bit later. But usually it's when the idea strikes, I like to just note it down before it leaves me, in a sense.
Steve Folland: When it comes to your weekends or your evenings?
Kingsley Nebechi: I try my hardest to keep it free from work, but depends on the deadlines. Sometimes I would have a full schedule and I'd have like a client I really like and they'll be like, "Well, we need it in two days." So I prefer to get the artwork done as soon as possible so it doesn't interfere with other things, which sometimes means working over the weekend or evenings. But I'm also very kind to myself. I find that working Saturday and Sunday, I just take it easy Monday and Tuesday, to kind of give myself a little bit of balance.
Steve Folland: And when you take, like you said, you took three days to work on your own stuff. Do you have to tell people you're not available for work or is it simply that-
Kingsley Nebechi: Especially with the three days, I tried to plan it in a week where my deadlines were very spaced out. I was thinking about it for a while before I did it and I was thinking, what would I do, what would I draw and stuff. It kind of happened in a way where a lot of the deadlines were at the end of the week, so I thought, okay, Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday I would just do those things, still answer my emails and send minor feedback for certain things, but I wouldn't necessarily start anything new, client-based. I would just focus on these things I'm creating. And then when the time is over, obviously, I would have a lot to catch up on, but at least I've learned something new.
Steve Folland: And you were obviously somebody who, you had those goals, you wrote your goals down. How about now? Now that you've got a load of dream clients, do you now create new goals? What drives you forward now?
Kingsley Nebechi: All the time. I find that constantly setting goals keeps me pushing for more. It's weird. It's almost the designer that doesn't take the deadline serious until it's like the day before and don't have nothing, so now you're frantically like working on stuff when you have a bit more focus because you're panicking. I find that my own personality is like, if I don't have anything that I'm chasing or working towards that I just go in loop, in a way. I try to just constantly set things. My goal for the year, this year, was finding an agent and I did. But then I realized I didn't want one, so I was like, okay, I'll just leave it. But it felt good that I set a goal for myself and I managed to just find one and then I'm like, okay, I'm capable of that. I'll focus on something else now, and then sort of keep the thing going, in a way.
Steve Folland: What made you not want the agent?
Kingsley Nebechi: I felt like I was getting a lot of clients I really liked on my own and involving an agent would mean that a lot of the clients would go through them, rather than me. And I just wasn't quite ready for that idea yet. Even though I understand, obviously agents will bring in really good clients too, but I felt like I just wanted to be on my own for a little bit longer and sort of see how far I can push it.
Steve Folland: Is that part of that because actually you enjoy the client relationship?
Kingsley Nebechi: I do, I really do. And I think I really noticed until you've mentioned it just now. When I think about it, I actually do. I really do.
Steve Folland: Because some people don't, some people who are artistic, who would rather just concentrate on the art, as it were, in quotation marks.
Kingsley Nebechi: Very true. I felt like I was like that. But over the past couple of months, I'm realizing that I really enjoy getting in touch with them, sending them ideas, discussing ideas and discussing feedback. I really enjoy that side of things. However, sometimes on some jobs I would love for someone to be in between so they can get a bit more clarity on the difficult ones. But overall I really enjoy it.
Steve Folland: And I guess an agent would deal with the finance side of things as well.
Kingsley Nebechi: Yes, yes.
Steve Folland: Are you okay with doing that now?
Kingsley Nebechi: Sometimes it does get a bit confusing. For example, if it's quoting for something, some of the clients might not explain the full extent of what you're going to be working on. You might give a specific quote and then realize that this artwork is going to be on here, here and here and you're just like, I'm going to have to go back on my word and have a whole discussion, which takes away from the creativity sometimes. It's almost kind of like you're so excited to discuss the ideas like, "Yes, we're going to draw this, this and this and that's going to look like this. It's going to be amazing." And then the money side of things comes, the sort of vibe goes a bit low. That side of things, I would love for someone to be there to be like, okay, we're going to discuss this and blah, blah, blah. And then I can just keep the joy of artworking side of things.
Kingsley Nebechi: But at the same time it's like, what the last job I had did for is that it made me comfortable discussing finances with clients and stuff, to the point where I wouldn't have to be like shy and all embarrassed to ask for more or not agree on a fee that's being proposed.
Steve Folland: We mentioned Nike, but you have worked with sports stars, very high profile music artists and things.
Kingsley Nebechi: Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Steve Folland: Has that all come about through people seeing your work on Instagram or do you send things out and approach people?
Kingsley Nebechi: I find it's like word of mouth. I think my personal motto is to give a hundred percent on everything I'm working on. And it came from a really strange night where I was just listening to music on different blogs, a while ago. And then someone commented on someone's song and was like, "This dude never gives less than a hundred percent on every song he makes." And I remember reading that comment thinking, I want someone to talk about my work like that. And from that night on I was like, anything I'm working on I want to give him a hundred percent, which means it's like whether it's a smaller job or a bigger job, I feel like a lot of the smaller jobs is like, it's almost like investing in somebody because that person might get picked up by BBC and then now your work gets moved with their thing and you grow with your clients.
Kingsley Nebechi: I feel like from smaller jobs even for example, doing the logo for Stormzy, it came from a smaller job. They saw it and they were like, "Oh, you'd be great to pitch ideas for this thing." And it kind of is all like a snowball effect, that starts with something really tiny and then become something really big, which is great.
Steve Folland: It's really cool. Something I wanted to ask you about was when I got an email from you, I think at the bottom it says A Soulful Mind and I've noticed that on your Instagram as well, the URL, A Soulful Mind. And yet when I click that it goes through to a URL, which is your name, so Kingsley Nebechi. It got me thinking, well, did you trade as A Soulful Mind then decide just to be yourself? Yeah, explain. Explain yourself.
Kingsley Nebechi: Yeah, so A Soulful Mind was the name of my first exhibition and the idea behind it was I wanted things to feel really soulful. And a lot of the music I listened to, I love, all kinds of feels very soulful. And it's the same type of music that I listen to when I'm creating artwork. And from then, I decided to just make clothes with the tagline and possibly thinking about having it as a signature and stuff. But I also really liked the idea of having my own name, be attached to my name. I didn't want to completely fade out my name to the point where it will be a fun fact for people to be like, "Oh, you're name is Kingsley." I didn't I want it to be like that. I kind of wanted both. Hence why it's kind of, one URL leads to the other. But ultimately I would love to just make the full transition at some point, when I get over the fact that I want my name to be everywhere.
Steve Folland: And so would that be Nebechi everywhere or would it be Kingsley?
Kingsley Nebechi: Oh yeah. The little signature I put on my artwork is K. Nebechi. I didn't want to put my full name on things. I kind of want it to be more like a hint, as I try to put my logo on all the artwork I make. But usually, my surname as well. And that thing is more for my dad because he initially, had no clue what I was doing. It would be like, what is it that you're doing? And when I left Portsmouth to come back to London, he was really annoyed because he was like, "Why would you leave a whole job to come back here and sit in my house?" But eventually, I drew an illustrative piece for Arsenal and a charity company, which was an illustration of Thierry Henry and he signed it, and we sold 10 prints for charity.
Kingsley Nebechi: And then when he saw it, he saw it on a newspaper. The Evening Standard put the actual illustration on the newspaper and that's when he understood what I was doing. My whole thing of using my name is kind of to, in a way kind, to honor my family surname, I'm making them proud, in a way.
Steve Folland: Man, that's nice. If you could tell your younger self one thing about being freelance, what would that be?
Kingsley Nebechi: I would say stop overthinking and just work hard, and just do it. I was worrying about it so much to the point where I didn't really look at what was in front of me and once I just let myself just go with it, it became, I kind of felt like myself. I was listening to one of your episodes with a lettering artist and she was saying how she felt like she was herself by isolating herself and working, because she doesn't really deal well with working with other people and stuff. And I feel like that's kind of me as well. I feel like I'm being true to myself by following this idea that I had, rather than just putting it off out of fear.
Steve Folland: Julia Broughton, that Lone Wolf.
Kingsley Nebechi: That's the one, yes. That's the one yeah.
Steve Folland: I know we're running out of time, and I don't really want to dwell on the whole Coronavirus thing because the fact is, we've been doing this podcast for five years and people still listen to the episodes from five years ago. I'm hoping, at some point in the future, people will be like, "Oh yeah, that time in 2020 when that thing happened."
Kingsley Nebechi: Yeah.
Steve Folland: Equally, I don't want to totally ignore it because how has it affected your business?
Kingsley Nebechi: The thing is, it's affected things to do with events. I often do artwork for a company called GSMA. Pardon my stuttering, two languages will do this to you. And I do a lot of conference artwork. They will have events and then I'll get to dress up the whole event. And I've also done some stuff for MTV, which they were planning to sort of interview a few artists and have some of my illustrations animated around the artists and stuff. So things like that are not going forward anymore, which is really annoying. But at the same time I feel like a lot of the print and digital stuff is still going on and stuff. I've been doing a lot of book covers, weirdly enough, and a lot of editorial illustrations. I feel like it was effected it because a lot of the cool things I wanted to do are not happening anymore, but at the same time, it's like there's a lot of other things that I've had the pleasure of working on, which made me really grateful.
Steve Folland: I guess that's where you've got that diverse range of things that you work on, I guess.
Kingsley Nebechi: Yeah, my father has always said to me like, obviously he didn't understand what was there, but as an architect, he goes to me, "Just always apply yourself to different things and experiment with things." And I felt like ever since I was a child, since he said that, I've always kept that in the of the back of my mind. And it's pretty much done me well ever since.
Steve Folland: Kingsley, thank you so much and really, really great to chat to you. All the best being freelance.
Kingsley Nebechi: Thank you.