As some will know, about a year and a half ago my life had a major change. After almost 20 years working for other people in architectural offices, I began to work exclusively on my own behalf.
Building a name, a brand, find our own space, on top of a deeply negative conjuncture, is a big challenge, but can also be an opportunity. And it has costs even as we try to consolidate our way step by step, in a stoic and minimalist way.
The immediate consequence is that we have to learn to perform tasks that we traditionally would trust to others, especially if we were still working on a larger company. In my case this need, that has resulted in several specific cases, made me get down to business in the most focused and skillful way. Before presenting those examples and for the sake of honesty I must refer one of the main advantages of working for yourself: Time management is easier, ie we're on our own to decide how much time we devote to each task and when to perform it. Basically, we set our priorities. And of course, willingly or not, we can make decisions with complete autonomy.
I present some steps that constituted major challenges but not fewer opportunities:
Brand - After the initial priceless help of a team of corporate marketing consultants (whom I would earnestly recommend), that helped me establish my placement, to identify what distinguishes me and set the values I should transmit, the image of my office was designed by me. It was a hard and invisible work. Believe me, if something looks simple, it's likely to have given a lot more work than meets the eye.
Website - Until a few months ago I considered myself completely incapable of building a website. I knew the appearance that I wanted, but I always thought it was an inscrutable work aimed at cryptic experts. However, there are currently plenty of tools, mostly free, which dramatically simplify this task. It's still very laborious to reach an outcome that satisfies us, but It's also a possible task. The golden rule is, in my view, to religiously follow the "KISS principle" (look for the meaning on the net if don't know what this means. It's a pleasure to be pedagogic, in addition...) It's also easy to have a bilingual site. Just do a site identical to the 1st, introduce the 2nd language content and create links between them.
Social Networking and its integration - Here's an area in which I had, until less than a year ago, a heartbreaking ignorance. And if the first steps were timid, I'm now a convinced and active user of Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Flickr, About me, Architizer, BranchOut, Foursquare, Startracker, I'm registered in Klout, Digg, Disqus and keep a few blogs, in addition to a website. It's important to relate all these tools together, gaining critical mass and feed them with content interesting enough for other users to want to follow our route. An important note: I swear that all these applications do exist!
Site maintenance and promotion – To create a website is, today, relatively quick and easy, in particular, I suppose, for those who are not obsessed with the graphic look of the thing. However, maintaining it is also tricky, especially if we want it to appear well placed in searches done on search engines like Google. A blog is important and continuously updating the site with new content also helps, but it's essential to learn a little about SEO (Search Engine Optimization). Just look on the web. And it's this easy to transform a light and pleasant to read text into a nerd and encrypted moment! But for a self-made man to be, life isn't only made of pleasures ...
Promotion and publicity on other channels - for an architect, as I suppose that for other professionals, it's important that his work is disseminated among potential customers. In addition to all that we can do on the Internet - and we can do much – we have, in my point of view, two options: We can sit back waiting for someone to notice the unsurpassed qualities of our portfolio or we can roll up our sleeves and promote its dissemination on publications, general or from our area of influence, where we're interested to be disclosed. It costs nothing, apart from some sporadic stabs at our self-esteem, largely compensated by the times that our effort is fruitful.
A sound bet is also to hire a photographer specialized in architectural photography. Nowadays, at least in Portugal, the dissemination and promotion of photographed projects is part of the contracted service. When the photographer's agenda isn't compatible with the window of opportunity to photograph the project, a good option is to rent the photographic material that we lack (as a proper lens for interiors), get a solid tripod and throw ourselves into this task.
What I can say is that we value things differently when we do them ourselves ... and no doubt that we enrich and improve our skills on the course. And we can still be quite pleased with the results!
Building a name, a brand, find our own space, on top of a deeply negative conjuncture, is a big challenge, but can also be an opportunity. And it has costs even as we try to consolidate our way step by step, in a stoic and minimalist way.
The immediate consequence is that we have to learn to perform tasks that we traditionally would trust to others, especially if we were still working on a larger company. In my case this need, that has resulted in several specific cases, made me get down to business in the most focused and skillful way. Before presenting those examples and for the sake of honesty I must refer one of the main advantages of working for yourself: Time management is easier, ie we're on our own to decide how much time we devote to each task and when to perform it. Basically, we set our priorities. And of course, willingly or not, we can make decisions with complete autonomy.
I present some steps that constituted major challenges but not fewer opportunities:
Brand - After the initial priceless help of a team of corporate marketing consultants (whom I would earnestly recommend), that helped me establish my placement, to identify what distinguishes me and set the values I should transmit, the image of my office was designed by me. It was a hard and invisible work. Believe me, if something looks simple, it's likely to have given a lot more work than meets the eye.
Website - Until a few months ago I considered myself completely incapable of building a website. I knew the appearance that I wanted, but I always thought it was an inscrutable work aimed at cryptic experts. However, there are currently plenty of tools, mostly free, which dramatically simplify this task. It's still very laborious to reach an outcome that satisfies us, but It's also a possible task. The golden rule is, in my view, to religiously follow the "KISS principle" (look for the meaning on the net if don't know what this means. It's a pleasure to be pedagogic, in addition...) It's also easy to have a bilingual site. Just do a site identical to the 1st, introduce the 2nd language content and create links between them.
Social Networking and its integration - Here's an area in which I had, until less than a year ago, a heartbreaking ignorance. And if the first steps were timid, I'm now a convinced and active user of Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Flickr, About me, Architizer, BranchOut, Foursquare, Startracker, I'm registered in Klout, Digg, Disqus and keep a few blogs, in addition to a website. It's important to relate all these tools together, gaining critical mass and feed them with content interesting enough for other users to want to follow our route. An important note: I swear that all these applications do exist!
Site maintenance and promotion – To create a website is, today, relatively quick and easy, in particular, I suppose, for those who are not obsessed with the graphic look of the thing. However, maintaining it is also tricky, especially if we want it to appear well placed in searches done on search engines like Google. A blog is important and continuously updating the site with new content also helps, but it's essential to learn a little about SEO (Search Engine Optimization). Just look on the web. And it's this easy to transform a light and pleasant to read text into a nerd and encrypted moment! But for a self-made man to be, life isn't only made of pleasures ...
Promotion and publicity on other channels - for an architect, as I suppose that for other professionals, it's important that his work is disseminated among potential customers. In addition to all that we can do on the Internet - and we can do much – we have, in my point of view, two options: We can sit back waiting for someone to notice the unsurpassed qualities of our portfolio or we can roll up our sleeves and promote its dissemination on publications, general or from our area of influence, where we're interested to be disclosed. It costs nothing, apart from some sporadic stabs at our self-esteem, largely compensated by the times that our effort is fruitful.
A sound bet is also to hire a photographer specialized in architectural photography. Nowadays, at least in Portugal, the dissemination and promotion of photographed projects is part of the contracted service. When the photographer's agenda isn't compatible with the window of opportunity to photograph the project, a good option is to rent the photographic material that we lack (as a proper lens for interiors), get a solid tripod and throw ourselves into this task.
What I can say is that we value things differently when we do them ourselves ... and no doubt that we enrich and improve our skills on the course. And we can still be quite pleased with the results!
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