We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Ariel Walter a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Ariel, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today How do you feel about asking friends and family to support your business? What’s appropriate, what’s not? Where do you draw the line?

I’m currently at the beginning stages of my career, and I find no issues with taking on my family and friends as clientele. In fact, some of my very first clients were friends and family. At first, I was hesitant to work with my friends and family because I’ve been told that it is hard to separate family from business, but I haven’t had any issues with it. I treat all of my clients equally and non of them have treated me any differently when working with me.

Initially, I had issues with working with them because I found it difficult to speak up when a project wasn’t going in the direction I wanted it to but over time I’ve gotten better about it.

Ariel, love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?

My name is Ariel Walter and I am a freelance graphic designer and illustrator. I have experience in brand design, product design, book illustrations, social media graphics, UX/ UI design, and I am eager to learn so much more. I started my journey as a traditional artist. My main discipline was watercolor, but I’ve always had an interest in digital art and graphic design. I decided to take a few graphic design courses at my university and instantly fell in love with it. I remember working on projects for hours and I wouldn’t really mind it because I enjoyed it so much. At this time I hadn’t settled on a major yet so I decided to try and apply for the graphic design program at my university.
Unfortunately, I did not get into the program. I was really disappointed, but I knew that just because I wasn’t in the program doesn’t mean I’m not a good designer it just meant that the professors who reviewed my portfolio at the time did not think I was ready to be in the program.
The week I submitted my portfolio for review was the same week COVID put the whole world on lockdown. I remember submitting my portfolio from home and thinking I’d be back in school by next fall, but as we all know that didn’t quite happen. During this time is when I decided to take on a few independent projects and that is how I started my freelancing business. I illustrated a couple of children’s books and created a podcast cover during this time.
People often reach out to me for the creative aspects of their business or when they want to bring a fresh new look to some of their marketing material. For instance, I recently created a logo for a tutoring business targeting stem students. The project I’m most proud of is the book I illustrated for a client called “Marlee and His Hair Go to School”. Even though the book was never published, it was fun to work on a project that was personal to me. The book was about a little Jamaican boy with dread locs and I am Jamaican.

Where do you think you get most of your clients from?

So far the best source of new clients for me has been through word of mouth. I have gotten most of my clients so far by talking about my work or through my clients talking about the work we’ve done together and recommending me to their friends. I recognize social media as a great tool to showcase my work and gain new clients, but I have not poured enough time into developing my social media pages and growing a following. That will be my next project.

We’d love to hear a story of resilience from your journey.

A story I like to use to demonstrate my resilience is a client I had a few years ago and the project we worked on. Truthfully the project was very limiting and I didn’t have a lot of creative freedom when working with the client. This client came with their own logo and color schemes and was not willing to deviate from these original designs. I tried my best to give my input for this project but the client already had made up their mind about what they wanted. I still stuck with the client and was able to deliver what they wanted, but I didn’t like the end result of my work. From this experience, I learned that at the end of the day what the client wants is more important than what I want. I also learned to speak up for myself more. Moving forward with other clients I am more direct when discussing the best decisions when creating their deliverables. That way we both walk away with an end result that we like. Since this client, I have been a lot more satisfied with the work that I produce and my clients also walk away with something that they are happy with and eager to share.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.arielwalter.com/
• Instagram: https://instagram.com/ariel.as.walter?igshid=YmMyMTA2M2Y=
• Linkedin: linkedin.com/in/ariel-walter-765790173

Image Credits
Richard Charles aka RCRealness