Looking Ahead to 2024

Hullo and Happy New Year! If you’re reading this, then I’m pleased to say you’ve made it through the rough year that was 2023. Hopefully you enjoyed the end of year holiday break, had a great Christmas (if you celebrate), and are well-rested and raring to go for 2024.

I thought I’d kick off the new year with a journal post commiserating 2023, and talking about what I’m planning to get up to in the coming year.

Farewell to 2023… and Good Riddance!

I don’t think I’m alone in saying that 2023 has been a particularly tough year – certainly one of the toughest I’ve had to live through. Last year was rough for just about everyone I know, with family, friends, clients and peers all having a lot heaped on their plates – business closures, stressful working environments, job losses, family troubles, financial difficulties and so much more. I’ve had my own share of personal health issues to deal with, and my flatmate and I had a difficult December with our dog Luca having some health trouble – thankfully she’s doing better now!

On the whole, it feels as though the world has been in absolute turmoil this past year, with more volatile weather conditions and the looming consequences of climate change, Twitter (X continues to be a terrible name) continuing to freefall as Musk dismantles one of the most valuable public spaces of the internet, politics here in the UK and across the wider world descending into farce while millions suffer, and wars and atrocities cause untold heartbreak and harm.

And (at least in the UK) just about everyone has had to tighten belts, struggled to make ends meet as bills have crept up and income has stalled. I can’t help but notice that work has been thinner on the ground this year than any other time since I started working freelance, which has impacted me and several of my peers across the creative industries (not to mention the damage that NFTs and now generative AI have been causing).

Despite all this, I’ve had the pleasure of working with some wonderful new clients, and some of the projects I’ve contributed to this year are – I think – some of the best work I’ve produced. Keep an eye out for those the next time I update my portfolio – more on that below!

Look Ahead to 2024

So what’s on the agenda for the year ahead? To start with, there’s a few things I’ve been putting off for a while that I’d like to finally get around to.

Portfolio update

First of all, with all the chaos that freelancing entails, my portfolio has been getting neglected for a while. Since I officially went self-employed I’ve worked on plenty of design projects that I’d be proud to feature in my portfolio, but I just haven’t had the time to get around to publishing them. Getting projects from 2022(!) and 2023 into my portfolio is priority number one for this year.

Website refresh

Since the current version of my website went live in 2022 it’s been left pretty much untouched. Part of that is due to lack of content (as noted above I’ve been procrastinating on my portfolio) and partly due to a less-than-ideal backend setup. This year, I’d like to dust off the cobwebs and revamp my website, with new content published more regularly, a visual facelift to freshen up the design, and a reworking of the site’s backend tools to make keeping things up to date easier going forward.

Journalling

Alongside updating my website and updating my portfolio, I’d like to start writing journal posts (like this one!) on a regular basis. The current plan is to write a few posts a year, focusing on design-related topics that would be of interest to my clients and maybe to my peers as well.

Rejig home working space

Since I started working freelance I’ve been based out of my home office, which quite frankly has gone unchanged for a while. The space is starting to get a bit too cluttered and just doesn’t feel like the creative space it should be, so I’m planning on rearranging the room and giving the place a clearout and refresh to make it better suited to my needs going forward.

New projects

And of course, 2024 will hopefully bring some exciting new projects from clients familiar and new! I’m currently available to work on larger projects from the end of January, and I always have some space in my diary for smaller projects too. If you’re planning a new project in 2024 that could use some design expertise, why not get in touch?