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Elizabeth Silver is a Surface Pattern designer and a course creator. Elizabeth started her career 18 years ago in New York designing bedding in house, and next the apparel industry. Elizabeth of course absolutely loved her job designing for Baby Gap too.

8 years ago Elizabeth moved to her suburban dream and dove head first into running her own business. She ranched out from textile design and now spends her days creating art for all kinds of industries, including stationery, dinnerware, stamps and socks. Working with clients to come up with trend forward illustrations and prints.

We discuss all of nitty gritty details about freelance life- agency’s, trade shows, client work and the biggest subject - contacts and money!

We also cover self-care, Elizabeth says ‘having a great boss can make all the difference in your career, and even though designers often dream of being their own boss- when we do make the jump to being self-employed, we're often far too demanding on our favourite employee (ourselves)’

We talk about freelance life, the pros and cons to having an agent.

Find Elizabeth

Elizabethsilver.com

Elizabeth’s Takeaways

1.When you’re juggling a lot as a freelancer, client work, personal and agency work remember they all have a function work hand in hand did you helping each part grow. However, it is important to be organised and to keep re assisting though and Maintain a balance as much as you can.

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2.Just sticking to one of these paths, client work for example will be good to grow but you might feel uninspired, and maybe not developing new styles. If this is the case, maybe set a personal project or a collaboration this will help push you through and keep you motivated

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3.Check with your agent and your clients to see if they offer any other contracts they might offer different ones now.

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4.Remember if you don’t hear back from a studio don’t worry they could just be in the kiddie of a huge deadline, send out a newsletter the following month. Also be mindful of trade shoes and hooray seasons.

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5.Don’t be the bad boss to yourself, no one expects you to work 19 hour days.

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6.Set your boundaries, turn off your notifications.

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7.Celebrate your wins! Buy yourself a gift!

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8.Remind your clients a few weeks before if you’re taking a break, this organisation goes a long way.

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9.Don’t get overwhelmed when forecasting next year’s trends, remember big looks stay around for many seasons. Look at unicorns and Cacti’s, if you think an icon is still going to be big, look at what moves it in? Is the colour way or the technique, are rainbows now painterly or tonal this season for example?

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10.Creatives are a lot more in tune with trends and forecasts than the general public, so don’t overthink it, go on what you feel is coming through, start noting what you've seen a few times you won’t be wrong.

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11.Just because you’ve seen a new fresh trend this year it will still be coming through next year on the high street it will go from couture high end to further down. Cards and stationary are normally season behind homeware for example.