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I'm 18 and need help branding myself.

almost 8 years ago from Blake Hawksworth, Filmmaker and occasional writer, always on the move.

  • Kaung Myat Lwin, almost 8 years ago

    Just registered to say this helped me a lot! Yes, I was doing the mistake of revealing my age, and your article stopped me from doing that! I'm 18 as well. By the way, I don't have a portfolio right now. I've worked in a start-up (actually it's bad start-up organized by people with money who don't know the project management) and they forced me to make websites within 5 days or a week. I knew it wasn't a good timing to develop the quality prioritized websites but they bragged me into doing them, which results the quality of the website to be very bad (very very bad). I quit from them. As I'm not even satisfied with the websites I've made, I created my own website which includes a warming header, my brief bio, my design approach, my skills and my contact information. Is that enough based on your experience? Or what shall I do to increase the demand of a client wanting to hire me?

    2 points
    • Devin HalladayDevin Halladay, almost 8 years ago

      I'm glad I could help you out, Kaung! I went through the same phase of revealing my age all over the place a couple years ago and then I was so frustrated when I couldn't get clients or work to build a portfolio. Then I realized a few things, and hopefully my realizations can help you as well:

      1) Forget about your age. Yes, if you're young and very talented, people will take notice and you'll feel great about yourself when they do. But your age is holding you back. Ageism in our industry is a pretty big problem (we need to fix sexism and racism and every other major problem before we can turn our attention to this, though), but you don't have to let it drag you down. Act like you're 26 years old and you've worked great jobs. Act like you know what you're talking about, even if you're not an expert yet.

      2) Make stuff for yourself. Experiment. If you find something you like but you think it can be better, do a little case study about how you'd make it better. Work on side projects. Just do what you do best. That'll get you noticed.

      3) Network with other people inside and outside of our industry. That's just about the only sure-fire way to get noticed. Talk to the people you admire in our industry and keep talking to them. Eventually they might look at your profile, click through to your site, maybe they'll like your work, and maybe they'll turn into a valuable connection.

      4) Just keep iterating on your portfolio, keep doing work for yourself, keep experimenting and posting your findings. The bulk of your portfolio will come along more naturally after you do this, because potential clients will take notice.

      Hope this was helpful for you! If you have any other questions, I'll keep my eye on this post today.

      1 point