Daniel HristovOver the past several years, the number of freelance contractors all over the world grew by millions and design professionals enjoy the widest customer base among all. With millions spent on freelance platforms across the globe, for both design professionals and business owners crafting good contract is becoming essential.
Since successful freelancing involves great deal of customer relationship management, so it’s up to the professional to determine the exact terms for the project. So what’s important to keep in mind before accepting any design related work? Here are my top tips to follow:
- Written Contract is a Must
For many freelance design professionals crafting a contract prior to beginning work on particular project is optional. Since freelancing and especially design involves a lot of risk, I can’t find words to stress out how important a detailed contract is.
While its best to hire a lawyer for crafting the design project contract, this can be quite expensive venture. Fortunately, there are plenty of templates available online from Microsoft, Legal Zoom, The Contract Guys and US Legal Forms. It’s important to make sure the terms listed in the particular template match the legislation requirements in the area where you reside.
- Assign Rights After Clearing ALL Payments
The most common mistake freelance design professionals make is to assign rights to complete work before clearing all payments related with it. It’s needless to say that this leaves the door open to tons of problems in the future and the freelance design contract is the only way to prevent this. Include terms not only when the rights for the complete work will be provided, but the entire procedure of assigning ownership to the intellectual property.
- Include Project Termination Fee
In the design field it’s not uncommon for clients to terminate their projects without previous notice due to unexpected circumstances or simply change their mind about the work that needs to be done. Every well-crafted freelance design contract must include cancellation clause, where terms of handling such cases are clearly defined. It’s also important to ensure that the project termination fee comes with written proof of previous deliverables or milestones reached.
- Clarify Your Work Statement
If you do a survey among freelance design professionals, I am pretty sure more than half of them will say that at some point they had to deal with project way out of scope due to poor work statement clarification. The best way to approach it is to be as clear as possible about every task related with the project and specific requirements about handling additional customer requests.
- Professional Appeal
While legal documents are typically boring to read, your freelance design contract doesn’t have to be. It not only creates basic framework for handling work for the entire project, but also greatly contributes to branding. Believe it or not, your professionally prepared freelance design contract is able to make more impact than any business card you can come up with!
- Get Legal Consultations
No matter whether you decide to craft your contract from scratch or use existing template, getting advice from lawyer is a must in many cases. Since he will be the one handling all disputes following the contract, its best to seek professional advice before sending a copy to your customers.
*This post in no way constitutes legal advice.
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