Today’s a good day to shout out one of my anchor clients. As a new designer circa 20 years ago I learned that even design agencies don’t always get or do the kinds of work they seek. Same with freelancing; I nominally do map design but I’m not above doing other types of design work for the right client or project.
Good Jobs First is both. A friend who works there asked nicely for design help with the nonprofit work they do (tracking irresponsible spending on, and deals with, corporations by governments). My work started with logos for their “violation tracker” databases and quickly moved to publication layout for their research reports.
I’ve done tons of publication layout in my design career (magazines, reports, books), and unlike, say, website development, it’s a design skill that’s remained important to me and worth maintaining. For Good Jobs First, it involves getting their raw research and hammering it into accessible print and digital formats.
Aside from the income, this specific report design work helps me keep my skills sharp for map-related jobs or passion projects. Much of it’s also been rush work, which can be challenging regardless of project, but thanks to some boundaries (a set brand style template for colors/fonts/etc., a fair price for overtime) it’s never impossible.
The previous Good Jobs reports I’ve designed are: Electric Vehicle Study (Oct. 2022), Price-Fixing Study (Apr. 2023), Nursing Homes Report (Nov. 2023), and “Trillion Dollar” Report (Apr. 2024). New this week is my 5th report design in 4 years: a study examining the spending transparency practices of 200+ small-to-midsize U.S. cities. It’s an absolute beast (a 38-page report with 70ish pages of appendices) which I tackled in about 5 days over the past 3 weeks.
Working with Good Jobs First cemented two good lessons: 1) be practical about aesthetics when execution matters more (design snobbery is unhelpful, and doing non-flashy stuff is fine), and 2) life’s too short to work without mutual respect (so choose clients who align with your values). It’s nice to get consistent freelance work during a weird time in my creative career.
