Addison Hall—Eclectic Yet Related

Jack of all trades?

16 January 2006

Website design in itself involves several disciplines, so if you compound that with the more traditional medium of print, it’s easy to become overwhelmed. I work in both web and print—and that was a purposeful decision when I started my business: I wanted to be open to whatever work came my way.

A truly devoted entrepreneur would have done research to determine a market and what consumers within that market want, but not me—I jumped right in. And so far, I’m hanging in there jumping back and forth from website to brochure to cd-rom to advertisement. This is fine for now, but naturally worries of spreading myself too thin are popping up. I’m now asking myself if I should take what I know after my first year and do some of that research to find out how I could be more effective (and successful).

The trend seems to be moving towards specialization. I’m all for this, but I’m located in a relatively small market: Jackson, Mississippi. I’ve watched ad agencies downsize, design studios struggle, and web shops vanish. Are small markets different? Perhaps they need versatile designers that can perform a variety of tasks—they need a jack of all trades.

Or maybe there is room for specialization. Small businesses want someone easy to work with to help with their website. Small agencies often hire freelance web designers to round out their capabilities without adding someone to the payroll. Even other freelance print designers prefer to hire other freelancers they can trust to help with their clients (without stealing them). Finding a niche on which to focus is usually a good thing, as long as there’s a demand for it.

For now, I’m providing whatever is needed—and along the way I’m taking notes as to what medium is getting the most attention. My initial feeling is that even little ol’ Mississippi has enough interactive/website work to go around, but only time will tell…