How designers find clients

The most important network a designer has is other designers! Over my career, 60 to 80 percent of my clients came through referrals from fellow designers. Be creative. Create new connections whenever you can: message designers on Facebook, in groups and in private. Meet with designers wherever you can. They can become collaborators, trade advice, invite you into projects, and refer work when they are full or when you are the better fit.

Product managers, developers, founders, marketers and business owners run into problems that design can solve. Get to know them, from every industry. Many of my connections are people from different professions who work with product designers regularly. They are easy to find: LinkedIn, the startup groups on Facebook, meetups, the comments under a post that interested you. Just message them, introduce yourself, and start a conversation.

Go to every relevant conference and meetup. Each one is a chance to meet designers, founders and product people. In my career I attended a lot of conferences, and at each one I usually met 20 to 50 new people. Choose the events and communities where the people you want to work with actually are, not only the design ones. In Israel, start with ProductX, the yearly product management conference in Tel Aviv, and watch Meetup and the Facebook groups for the smaller ones. From 2011 to 2014 I was on the management team of the Israel Design Association, helping run its meetups and design contests across the country, and got tons of connections and publicity.

Founders and developers fill these events, and designers are always in short supply. You work side by side with people who may start a company next month. When they need a designer for real, they'll remember you.

A mastermind group is a small group of independent designers who meet regularly. You bring your challenges, trade feedback and referrals, and keep each other going. I was part of a group of 10 product designers for 2 years and it was amazing. We met once a month, shared projects and ideas, and I got many leads from this group during my career. If there is no group around you, start one with three or four designers you trust. It's priceless!

A community of independent designers is a steady source of projects, advice and support. I founded and run a WhatsApp community of more than 160 leading freelance designers in Israel. Members pass projects to each other when they are full, discuss what's new in the field, and share resources. Look for an active group on WhatsApp or Facebook, or start your own, and give before you ask.

Clients who worked with you already know your professionalism, your communication and your process. Keep them updated on what you are doing and when you have room for new projects. An occasional message with your availability, the kind of work you are looking for, and a link to a relevant project is enough. Ask them to refer you to people who might need the same help.

Ask happy clients to write a few words about working with you. Help them be specific: what the challenge was, what it was like to work with you, and what you brought. With their permission, put those words on your website and your professional profiles. A prospective client reads them as proof, not as marketing.

Team up with a developer, a product manager, a researcher, a writer or another designer on something public. Start a side project together: a small tool, an interview series, a joint article, a workshop, a research exercise. While running Creatives, Israel's first social network for designers, we collaborated with colleagues like Sagi Schreiber and Pixel Perfect, with the Israel Design Association, where I was a member, and with Wix, Netcraft and more. All of these helped me a lot with exposure and got me a lot of clients.

Cold outreach lets you choose who you work with, instead of waiting. Build a list of 100 startups and product companies via LinkedIn, and start contacting the relevant personnel: product managers, VP Products, VP Design and principal designers. From 2014 to 2017 at Adoric, we cold-contacted dozens of large companies and closed 40 to 50 clients that way. I know it's a bit hard mentally, but it works amazingly well! Give it a try!

A startup that has just announced a funding round, on Geektime, Calcalist or LinkedIn, is hiring and needs help right now. Follow the announcements and introduce yourself and your services to the right person. I keep a list of popular angels and introduce myself weekly.

Offer product managers a free call to solve one specific problem, or to share a review of their product. Find them on LinkedIn and send them a message they cannot resist :) Many times I mentored small teams and individuals who later on brought me amazing clients.

Choose an industry you want to work in and join its conversations. A designer who wants healthcare products goes to health-tech events, follows the founders and product teams, and writes about the problems of medical interfaces. Someone who wants business software focuses on workflows, complex forms and data-heavy tools.

With Creatives, Israel's first social network for designers, I focused on the design industry and got dozens of leads over a few years.

Open profiles on the sites where businesses look for designers. Upwork and Toptal for freelance projects, Behance and Dribbble to be found through your work, Fiverr and Contra for smaller gigs, XPlace for Israeli clients. I jump-started my whole freelance career on XPlace. It brought me my first clients, one of them a large project company that gave me work for years!

Development companies, consultancies and marketing agencies sometimes have clients who need design, and need help to deliver it. Introduce yourself with relevant examples, and explore referrals or joint work. One good partner can send you a steady stream of projects, as the project company I found on XPlace did for me for years.

Team up with a salesperson or business developer who already talks to companies that need design. They bring you projects, and you pay them a cut of each one. A great way to do it is working in a collaborative space like Mindspace, WeWork, etc. Go work there for 1 to 2 days a week and you'll make great connections.

Google, Facebook and LinkedIn campaigns can reach potential clients. They work only when you have a clear offer and a relevant page to send people to. Start with a small experiment, and check whether it reached the audience you meant.

Offer your design to a nonprofit or a cause you care about. You get a real project for your portfolio, and the people behind it are often well connected. In my early days I helped a few NGOs design their websites. It helped me a lot with connections and exposure.

Build yourself a top-notch portfolio, and treat yourself like a business! Design an amazing logo and branding for yourself (don't just write your name in letters). Create an illustration language for your brand. Buy your own domain, it's worth it. Invest in your online appearance like you're a billion-dollar company.

Don't build your portfolio on closed platforms like Wix, Elementor, Lovable or Base44. They keep your site, your content and your design inside their limits and their monthly fees. Build your own free setup instead, with an AI coding tool like Claude Code or Codex, that allows you to be independent. I built this site myself with Claude Code, on Astro, Keystatic and Cloudflare Pages.

Over the years, LinkedIn brought me many clients and connections. I highly recommend being active there and growing your professional network as much as you can. It's worth it! Add new connections weekly (you can add up to 100 a week).

Create useful posts, it's a great way to get attention and exposure. With a network of 10k connections, each of your posts can reach thousands of viewers. Comment on posts! Help people and assist with your wisdom when needed.

Answer questions from designers, product managers, entrepreneurs and other professionals in the groups and the feed, when you have something useful to say. You help someone, and in return it builds exposure and brings potential clients. I got a 3-year retainer from a big company when one of its founders saw a helpful comment of mine in a Facebook group.

Find an active open-source project that welcomes design help. You might improve onboarding, clarify navigation, design the missing states, organize a component library, or make the documentation easier to read. Talk to the maintainers first and agree on something the project actually needs. Learn how they work and how contributions are reviewed. Document your role and link to the work: real collaboration with developers, visible to anyone.

When a client launches a product you were a part of, it's a valuable time frame to showcase your part in the project, while there is a buzz. Use your social profiles and networks to post about your part in the project.

This is one of the most important tips! Professional content lets people find you, understand your judgment and remember you. Open a blog on your website, or on sites like Medium, and start creating content: Explain a project decision, share a workflow, write a guide, or take apart a recurring UX/UI problem. Then use your social networks to spread the knowledge.

We're in the code free-for-all era. You can build almost anything by yourself! Harness this ability and start building tools that help your daily workflow. Once the tool is in good shape, release it as open source for the global community. Each product you create can get you a lot of exposure as a designer. And each product can be an entire case study in your portfolio. I've built 8 products that I use in my daily work, and I'm planning to release them soon.

Join or host webinars and podcasts about user experience, user interface design, etc. This is a great engine for exposure!

Approach design schools, startup accelerators, coworking communities and professional groups with a focused session you can deliver. Pick a subject that fits the audience: planning the UX of an MVP, reviewing an onboarding flow, designing complex workflows, preparing a product team to work with a designer, building a design system, etc. I gave a few big lectures in recent years, and joined reviews of design students' final projects. It's a great time, and you get new connections that can generate leads.

If you have relevant experience, offer portfolio feedback, career guidance, or help with a specific design skill, through schools and communities. Choose areas where you can really help, and set a level of availability you can keep. It is a contribution to the profession, and it's really fulfilling! I gave consultations to hundreds of designers, and mentored ten designers who couldn't find work after their courses. I helped them rebuild their portfolios and generate new designs, and every one of them found a job.

Press pieces, guest articles on professional sites, or an expert perspective in broader coverage. Each one puts your name and your thinking in front of people who can become future clients.