Client work or product design. Which one is better?

Looking over a client project I created for Autodesk and Instructables.com

If you’re a freelance designer, or any creative professional, chances are you’re very familiar with doing client work on a per-project basis. This is generally the career path we take by default as we dive into the creative field. But, have you ever considered the alternative route of designing and selling your own products?

Before I list the pros and cons of each category let’s begin by first defining both for the context of this article.

Client Work  —  you are commissioned to provide creative services for companies or individuals on a per-project basis.

Product Design  —  your self-initiated effort to create digital or tangible goods, which you sell and distribute to local or international customers.
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Right, now let’s explore the top five positives and negatives of these two vastly different paths. I’ll provide these strictly from nearly a decade of personal experience with both.


Client Work
Pros

• You can work with amazing companies and brands.
• You will have great networking opportunities, meet and work with industry experts, and possibly do some interesting project related travels along the way.
• You will receive a large total sum payment for completing the project.
• Your work may receive a large amount of exposure through the client’s promotional efforts.
• The project will be a nice addition to your portfolio and resume when seeking new work.

Cons

• You will work within restrictive deadlines generally set by your client.
• Unless you work through an agency, you will deal with all the not so fun business stuff like proposals, agreements, billing, etc. 
• In most cases, the client will own all copyrights to your work.
• More often than not, you will wait for payments, then send reminders, then wait some more…
• In rare cases, when you choose to work with the wrong client, you will not be compensated for your work.

Product Design
Pros

• You can work on exactly the project you want, when you want.
• You have full rights and ownership of the work you create.
• Your products are provided to customers after payment is received.
• With a great product, your number of customers can grow significantly over time.
• The product sells while you sleep, or go on vacation, making the revenue stream indefinitely active.

Cons

• You will need to stand out and survive in a very competitive market.
• You will need sales data over long periods of time to determine profits.
• You will experience theft and fraud.
• You will need to provide customer support frequently.
• You will need to innovate and promote regularly to keep customer interest and engagement.

Back to the question ‘which one is better’. Depending on who you are and what you’re pursuing in your career, the answer is entirely up to you. If you love to work hard for a period of time on a big project for a big brand name, then take a three month vacation, focus on client work. If you’d rather lock yourself away in a basement to whip out a product, publish it to the world and wait for the revenue stream to trickle in over time, go for product design.

Throughout my design career path since 2004, I’ve done my fair share of client commissions and personal product design. Personally, with my personality type and life structure, I have found product design work to be more fulfilling. However, the product design work I’ve done has resulted in some amazing client spin-off projects which were such great opportunities that I couldn’t say no.

My advice is, try both and see which path seems more fulfilling to you. If you’re really clever, figure out a way to blend the two and reap the benefits of both worlds.
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Taras at VisualSpicer.com