Okay, before you get the wrong idea:  Andrea Mignolo does not literally design for beer. (Not anymore, anyway.)

She is not hurting for clients, nor does she work cheap. If you want her to design your web site or software front end, it will cost you way more than a case of some amber-bottled beverage.

Andrea Mignolo, Designer: "Paddling one's own canoe can be very rewarding even if it feels, at first, like you don't have a paddle, let alone a canoe."

The beer reference is just a line on her website (which she no doubt regrets by now).  “If the project is right, I’ve also been known to work for beer. Good beer.”

It’s simply Andrea’s way of saying she loves design.  She aches to do it.

Which is precisely why she ended up a freelance.

Her story. After a few years doing design and sysadmin work for Free Speech TV, Andrea moved with her husband to Japan, where she took a job teaching English to executives at Japanese corporations like Yamaha and Suzuki. She was, apparently, masterful at it.

But to pass the time on the long drives between company campuses — long drives on the left side of the road, no less — she took to listening to podcasts on design. Continue . . . »

When you’re sitting there in a cubicle, daydreaming about breaking out on your own, the wish list usually goes something like this:

Laura Silverman, Writer: "Take the leap. I believe the universe rewards risk."

Chuck the job and flee all the noise and nonsense. Maybe to a serene place in ski country. Check.

Work for big-name clients who want you. And on relatively classy projects. Yes.

Take a lot of vacations. Places like, oh, Iceland, Italy, Morocco. Okay.

Have the spare time to write a book, build a blog, go hiking whenever. Check.

Oh, and have a spouse who is also freelance, and also has time for all of the above. Double check.

That, a tad over-simplified, describes the life that Laura Silverman has crafted for herself, as a self-employed writer in creative marketing.

Continue . . . »