Designing Happiness...

I've been redesigning my portfolio and it's got me thinking a lot about my career lately. I understand that I've become a multi-talented individual who's worked with many clients over the years. It's made me think about what that all boils down to.

I'm now in this position where I've acquired all the possible skills I could ever need to thrive in this industry for the next 20-30 years and possibly won't acquire any new ones. How do I take over ten years of being in this industry and distil that into a portfolio that explains my value to prospective clients?

I have this ethos I've been following ever since I started my career. It came about organically through the many interactions I've had with past clients: If the client is not happy with my work, they'll get a refund.

Sticking to that ethos, over a ten-year period, I've only ever had to perform a refund once. The value of a happy client, to me, is far more important than getting paid because of this simple formula:

A HAPPY client = A RETURNING client = More PAID work

I realised this six years into my design career, happiness is the key here. Before that realisation, I had been working for free for a range of clients, just because I loved doing what I was doing. With each new project, I'd fall in love with design all over again. Those times were some of the happiest moments of my life.

Juxtaposed to that were the client's reactions. Whether on a phone call, in person, or through a text message. Nothing quite matches the expression from a client once they see what you've delivered on the project.

Sometimes it's torn, sometimes a scream, but the one I love the most is the smile 😊. It's infectious and addictive, I realised that is happiness and that is what I want to convey to all the future clients I work with.

But how do you design happiness? How do you bring that into existence through a portfolio?

Well, I'm inviting all who stumble onto my website to come on this journey with me to design happiness and help me figure this out.

Let's get started, shall we...