Soofiya

Whether it’s colourful, playful designs, emotive illustrations or zine-making and workshops, Soofiya’s work centres on community and belonging. And in their role as a part-time lecturer at Brighton uni, they’re passing on their knowledge of design culture to the next cohort, alongside offering up practical tips and tricks on freelancing on social media. It’s this balance of steady teaching and a freelance studio practice that’s helped Soofiya find their rhythm. “Ask yourself if you want to freelance full-time”, they advise – it’s not the only way.

What I do

My creative practice
I’m a designer first and foremost, and I also do illustration. That means I get hired by clients, often in the arts and cultural sector, by museums, galleries and publishers, to work on designing zines, editorial illustrations, children's books, publications and visual identities.

Influences and inspiration
I love the city I live in, Brighton: the sea, my friends, cafés, food, the community and people. One of the most inspiring things is working within the local community and seeing my work up in shop windows, museums and amongst local groups. I love that I can walk around town and spot little parts of myself everywhere.

My training
I studied graphic design at uni – not everyone needs to go to uni, but I know I needed it. I learnt so much about the context and culture of design and where it's situated in the world. Understanding design as a canon really helped me figure out what the industry was and how I could build a career in it. Learning technical skills, like software, etc., is just a tiny part of the training.

Favourite recent project
My friend Rasheed recently opened up a beautiful record store, Dream Street Records, in the heart of Brighton’s North Laine. It's a warm, friendly queer utopia of a store. I worked on its visual identity: the logo, website consultation and storefront design, collaborating with local sign painter Rose Walker to bring it to life. It was amazing to work at such a scale and make something so poppy and 80s come to life.

A day in the life
I split my time equally between lecturing in graphic design at the University of Brighton and working on my own projects and studio practice. On a lecturing day, I’m up early to head to the campus design department, where I plan, deliver lectures, facilitate seminars and run practical workshops with our BA students. On a studio day, it can vary between client video calls, admin and design work. I work from home or take my laptop to a local coffee shop, sometimes coworking with my other freelance friends.

A starter pack for my job:

How I got here

Starting my creative journey
I’ve always been in love with making things: visuals, layouts, type, drawings. When I decided I wanted to work in design, I thought about my next steps and chose to do a BA in graphic design. Before, I liked design, but the course helped me to really know design.

Landing my first few jobs, clients and/or commissions
I applied for everything. Back then, Twitter was great: I followed lots of design studios, agencies, designers and other design students; people would post about needing interns, junior designers or freelancers, and I’d get in touch. It was a lot of hustling and applying to stuff; I didn't get most of them, but the ones I did gave me experience, built my portfolio and helped me learn what it means to work as a designer.

Biggest challenges along the way
The challenges change: first it was finding clients and an audience without having a ‘proper portfolio’. During that time, I did a lot of personal projects, small jobs for friends and family, and projects at uni and for activist groups. Bit by bit, this built up my portfolio.

Now I’m really happy with my portfolio and it's full of work I love. The current challenge is that, as a freelancer, work can get quiet and I worry I won't ever have a client again. It’s all about ensuring my freelance business is sustainable and that I keep promoting my work.

My social media and self-promotion vibe is…
I love sharing parts of my life and things I've been working on, from interior design projects I've been doing and events I'm running (I organise a lot of community events and clubs in my city like run club and zine club) to my client work, illustration commissions and design advice. I don't follow trends or algorithms (my stats and engagement are really bad), but I do put out content that I enjoy making – social media is an additional thing and I don’t want it to feel like a chore. I still worry if I'm relevant or if anyone cares, but I think that's normal and healthy in small doses.

Three things I've found useful in my career:

Courses, programmes, initiatives, access schemes or job boards I've found helpful
One thing I put together for my lectures is this big resources Padlet, which is essentially a starter kit for young designers. It's full of links to job boards, podcasts, design galleries and books. I keep adding to it and also regularly use it myself.

My greatest learnings when it comes to making money and supporting myself as a creative:
Whatever you get paid from freelance work, immediately put aside around 20-30%. Over time, this savings pot will build up so that when it comes to paying your self-assessment tax, it's all there. I use anything extra on expenses, such as replacing my laptop or phone, which are non-negotiables for my work.

Advice

My most useful career tips
Try to make the business side of the job feel fun. The admin, invoicing, client and project management side of stuff is hard for me, so I have to find a way to make it work – from colour-coding to using Notion for planning.

What I'd say to someone looking to get into a similar role
If you want to work as a designer or for yourself, focus on building up one project or client at a time – small clients all add up. At the same time, ask yourself if you want to freelance full-time, as it can be hard. I lecture half the week, which gives me the stability to freelance for the other half and allows me to enjoy both. Freelancing can still be an important role while not being full-time. Plus, over time the percentage constantly changes.