Designers building side hustles
Where do I go from here? As we (and our careers) mature, designers often question their longevity. Partly because our skill level – our ability to add value – can outstrip our client’s wants and needs. It’s difficult to partner with, and be answerable to, a client whose risk profile isn’t the same as ours. That’s when many designers build a side hustle.
Another reason is because service industries are often less profitable than product-based industries. Where creative businesses have an average annual profit of 12-15%, other industries are more profitable, and more easily scalable.
The problem is service businesses (like studios and agencies) often depend on the talents and expertise of just one person. Where product-based businesses grow by expanding their product range there are just so many hours per week service-businesses can offer. Sure, there are ways around that – like raising your hourly or project rate — but there’s always a danger you’ll price yourself right out of the market.
This means your service business has a profit ceiling — a ceiling that may not allow you to make the income you need. One solution is to change your revenue model and add a side hustle.
The Australian design industry
Talking broadly (because figures are hard to verity) there are approx 13,000 creative businesses registered in Australia. Most studios employ between 1–5 designers. So, it’s safe to assume there at least 40,000 designers in salaried or freelance employment.
In Victoria around 2,000 degree and advanced diploma graphic design students graduate each year. It makes employment difficult for graduates, and a crowded marketplace for the rest of us. Often the next step, when a designer can’t find a salaried job or has outgrown their current position, is to start their own creative business, either with a colleague or as a solopreneur.
An alternative often not explored is to buy an existing (non-design) business and morphing it into a design-led business.
The more utilitarian a business, the higher impact design thinking can make. That’s because in the more ‘traditional’ industries, management decisions are often based on precedent rather than innovation. And it means small changes can make huge impacts.
Case study: using design in the auto-industry
A few years ago DBC consulted to a business in the automotive industry. One of the executive team was a design graduate keen to get Greg involved in the management team. With a six-month timeline they used our Design Value Chain Analysis to identify where design thinking could add value throughout the business.
The results were genuinely amazing, to morale and profitability. Design made an impact to the physical layout of the factory (saving time between tasks), to the inbound and outbound logistics (packaging and moving the deliveries) and to the servicing of clients. And that’s not counting the more obvious areas of branding and collateral.
Applying a new way of thinking separated this business from their competitors.
Design thinking is still their unfair advantage.
Designers with side hustles
Of course, this isn’t new thinking. We’ve designers in our network using their skills to build an income outside to their studios:
- David Ansett, founder of Truly Deeply co-founded Etto, an italian pasta bar in five locations around Melbourne.
- Jenna Hipgrave, founder of Hungry Workshop designs and produces sustainable notebooks through an aligned business Off-line supply company. (Many of the illustrations on this site are drawn in these beautiful notebooks.)
- Rolf Preston, founder of Tangent Design put his money where his mouth was, showing clients how to do it with his side hustle selling aptly named, well designed camping chairs: TuffArse
- Charlie Ryan— co-founder of Five Creative — is an accomplished artist selling his own fine art prints, and closer to home
- Greg and I write and sell publications about design, including the Business of Design – still the only Australian book about founding, managing and growing a design studio. Writing was designed to be a passive income while we built a DBC mentoring client base.
Takeaway
Everywhere I look there are non-design businesses that could benefit from having a founder/partner with design thinking skills.
There’s just one caveat. Side hustles, while sometimes called passive incomes, are not passive at all. They need an extraordinary amount of time and effort to get them off the ground. The good thing is many of the traditional start-up costs of branding, websites, content creation and marketing are foundational skills for designers. We can help a business hit the ground running and then build strength as a design-led business.
Want to continue the discussion? Email Carol.
Carol Mackay
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About Carol
After 30+ years running a design studio, I accumulated a pretty special network of fellow designers. One thing most have in common: a dislike for the ‘business’ side of design. Most are impatient with any task competing for time spent doing what they love – designing.
Not me. I love that intersection between design and business. I built a career working with Ombudsman schemes, the Emergency Services sector and the Courts. My special power has always been an ability to use design to translate the difficult to understand or the unpalatable message.
I now use exactly the same skills with creative business owners. I translate the indigestible into bite-sized chunks of information. I share insights, introduce tools and embed processes to help others build confidence business decision-making skills. More confidence makes it easier to grasp opportunities. More confidence makes it easier to recognise a good client from the bad.
Outside DBC I have mentored with Womentor, AGDA and most recently with The Aunties.
And I’m a proud board member of Never Not Creative. Ask me about internships 
Always happy to chat, I can be contacted here.
For a short while, an archive of my design work at mbdesign.com.au.
My current work can be viewed at designbusinesscouncil.com and designbusinessschool.com.au.
