Get a 6 month contract job, that pays enough that you’d consider a year’s salary. Not easy but doable. Won’t have any extra benefits or anything, but will have half the year to do what you want.
As others said, sure why not, the hard part would be if you actually mean you want to make a normal year’s worth of income but only work half the year.
Which could get into how much you work. If you could manage it, you could take far more work in less time, but that wouldn’t be compatible for everyone.
It really depends – the first things I’d ask are what are your overheads/responsibilities like? What kind of lifestyle do you see yourself having?
My current job started off as a 6 month, fully remote contract covering another designer’s maternity leave. The company pays well (though it’s worth noting that I have 15 years experience, I’ve no idea what they pay junior designers, for example) – if you’re just starting out and if I was single i could support myself for a year on what I earned in those six months, so long as I was pretty frugal. However, I’ve got a wife, 3 kids, a mortgage, 2 kids, a car loan, and a certain level of comfort I want to help maintain (my wife works too) for all of us, so when the opportunity for more work came, I took it.
But if it’s just you and your rent/expenses are low, you could probably do it. I’d be surprised if a company is willing to guarantee you six months on and six months off every year. I’d suggest looking for companies that have surge periods – for example, I once worked for a publisher that doubled their design team every summer to prep their Christmas range. Above all, when you do find somewhere make sure you get a reputation there for being dependable and consistent – you can be the most artistically gifted designer in the world but for the sort of thing I think you’re asking for, it’s the ones that can be counted on for solid work that get asked back.
I worked for 2.5 years as a remote graphic designer, worked on entire website designs as well as branding projects. Plus all the other flyers, posters, billboards, ads, ect. It is for sure possible but things tend to take a bit longer, just have to focus on communication a lot more than usual
Yeah probably, if your rates/prices are high enough (and work is good enough to command those rates/prices), and you’re able to line up enough work in that specific 5-6 month timeframe to earn what you consider to be a year’s salary.
I work for myself, and when I look at my total hours for the year, if I viewed them as solid 40 hour work weeks, then I would have only worked like 24-25 weeks to earn what is considered a fairly standard going rate for someone with my job title. I just personally work fewer hours a week, or the busier times will cover the slow times throughout the year, so you’d just really have to get the timing down and make those 5-6 months count. But I think it’s probably doable with the right clients/projects.
Graphic design is something that you get better at the more you work on it. It requires a lot of practice. Specifically, paid projects because they contain all of the challenges that make good graphic design difficult.
With that said, can you imagine being a professional baseball player and not hitting for six months? Can you imaging how much better the players that do continue hitting will be in comparison?
IMHO, you shouldn’t waste time developing your graphic design skills. I tried to do it myself, only to find out that to become really good at it you will need about 4 years of practice. So it was a waste of time. Because I had to feed myself during those years, and graphic design wasn’t bringing me any money. And even if I keep learning and practicing now, I am not guaranteed to get a job. But even if I do, (I live in the country of Georgia), the salary for a graphic designer here is 300–400 USD, which you can’t survive off of, and if I try to apply for remote vacancies from Western companies, the situation is the same – around 300–400 USD. That’s why they outsource these vacancies to 3rd world countries in the first place. So I decided to use ClickDesigns.
It’s way easier to use than Adobe Illustrator and you don’t need any skills to create a unique and professional logo or illustration. And it’s WAY faster. Where I spend weeks to create a logo like this,
in clickdesigns I can do that in minutes. And it’s cheaper than Adobe Illustrator too, it’s just a one-time purchase as opposed to a subscription model for Adobe. Hope this helps.
Yea. Just find 5-6 months of work
Get a 6 month contract job, that pays enough that you’d consider a year’s salary. Not easy but doable. Won’t have any extra benefits or anything, but will have half the year to do what you want.
Yup. Contractors do it all the time.
As others said, sure why not, the hard part would be if you actually mean you want to make a normal year’s worth of income but only work half the year.
Which could get into how much you work. If you could manage it, you could take far more work in less time, but that wouldn’t be compatible for everyone.
almost everything is possible. but likely? nope. still, you can try
Do you like rice and beans?
Depends. What kind of graphic design work are you doing?
It really depends – the first things I’d ask are what are your overheads/responsibilities like? What kind of lifestyle do you see yourself having?
My current job started off as a 6 month, fully remote contract covering another designer’s maternity leave. The company pays well (though it’s worth noting that I have 15 years experience, I’ve no idea what they pay junior designers, for example) – if you’re just starting out and if I was single i could support myself for a year on what I earned in those six months, so long as I was pretty frugal. However, I’ve got a wife, 3 kids, a mortgage, 2 kids, a car loan, and a certain level of comfort I want to help maintain (my wife works too) for all of us, so when the opportunity for more work came, I took it.
But if it’s just you and your rent/expenses are low, you could probably do it. I’d be surprised if a company is willing to guarantee you six months on and six months off every year. I’d suggest looking for companies that have surge periods – for example, I once worked for a publisher that doubled their design team every summer to prep their Christmas range. Above all, when you do find somewhere make sure you get a reputation there for being dependable and consistent – you can be the most artistically gifted designer in the world but for the sort of thing I think you’re asking for, it’s the ones that can be counted on for solid work that get asked back.
I worked for 2.5 years as a remote graphic designer, worked on entire website designs as well as branding projects. Plus all the other flyers, posters, billboards, ads, ect. It is for sure possible but things tend to take a bit longer, just have to focus on communication a lot more than usual
Yeah probably, if your rates/prices are high enough (and work is good enough to command those rates/prices), and you’re able to line up enough work in that specific 5-6 month timeframe to earn what you consider to be a year’s salary.
I work for myself, and when I look at my total hours for the year, if I viewed them as solid 40 hour work weeks, then I would have only worked like 24-25 weeks to earn what is considered a fairly standard going rate for someone with my job title. I just personally work fewer hours a week, or the busier times will cover the slow times throughout the year, so you’d just really have to get the timing down and make those 5-6 months count. But I think it’s probably doable with the right clients/projects.
…do you want to make a years worth of salary in that time? If so, I’m pretty sure all of us want “that” job. Lol.
Anything is possible. I managed to do a 4 month contract, not remote, and made enough to
Cover 12 months salary.
Worked remotely freelance for the last 5 years, feel free to dm me
Graphic design is something that you get better at the more you work on it. It requires a lot of practice. Specifically, paid projects because they contain all of the challenges that make good graphic design difficult.
With that said, can you imagine being a professional baseball player and not hitting for six months? Can you imaging how much better the players that do continue hitting will be in comparison?
IMHO, you shouldn’t waste time developing your graphic design skills. I tried to do it myself, only to find out that to become really good at it you will need about 4 years of practice. So it was a waste of time. Because I had to feed myself during those years, and graphic design wasn’t bringing me any money. And even if I keep learning and practicing now, I am not guaranteed to get a job. But even if I do, (I live in the country of Georgia), the salary for a graphic designer here is 300–400 USD, which you can’t survive off of, and if I try to apply for remote vacancies from Western companies, the situation is the same – around 300–400 USD. That’s why they outsource these vacancies to 3rd world countries in the first place. So I decided to use ClickDesigns.
https://bit.ly/3YITArR
It’s way easier to use than Adobe Illustrator and you don’t need any skills to create a unique and professional logo or illustration. And it’s WAY faster. Where I spend weeks to create a logo like this,
https://imgur.com/a/ZVH7F11
in clickdesigns I can do that in minutes. And it’s cheaper than Adobe Illustrator too, it’s just a one-time purchase as opposed to a subscription model for Adobe. Hope this helps.