Droppin' Gems: Cindy Hernandez Keeps It Real About Freelancing
This Art Director gives you the scoop about how to make it big as a freelancer. She's a real one for that.
Gather around kiddos, it’s story time.
Imagine it’s 5:30 PM and you’re slowly inching towards the salvation that is your office’s elevator. Is that a rumble you hear? It’s your stomach — you haven’t eaten all day. As you make dinner plans, you hear a yell from the office. It’s your Creative Director asking if you’ll stay for a little while longer to knock out a brief. They posed it as a question — but you know it’s a demand. You slink back towards the office planning to be out of it 30 minutes later. You don’t leave until 1AM.
Everyone’s heard about these kinds of stories in the advertising industry. Either they’ve heard of them, or they’ve told them to their friends. Full-time creatives sometimes get chained to their desks, demanded to do what higher-ups want, all for the sake of a steady paycheck and health insurance — depending on whether you work at an agency that respects your time or one that believes you’re just another cog in the wheel.
Art Director Cindy Hernandez, who believes freelancing can be a better alternative to dealing with this kind of intensity, hasn’t experienced anything like the above made up story — but she’s seen things just as wild in one of her previous full-time gigs. “I’ve cried before, and I’ve literally watched every single person on a team that I was on bawl their eyes out at least once due to being overwhelmed,” she says.
Hernandez was born an Art Director, basically. Instead of asking for new toys when she went to the store with her family, she wanted pens and paper. Graphic design was a no brainer activity for her in high school; she signed up for the class and never looked back. She’d go on to study advertising at the School of Visual Arts in New York and both work on class projects and intern for Droga 5, Bustle, InStyle, and the Foundry.
Entering into the industry, Hernandez has had a couple of full-time and freelance stints at agencies and she’s got a few opinions about the benefits of freelancing. Currently, she’s a creative at DumDum —an augmented intelligence app — and its other half, Technology Humans And Taste — a digital creative agency that’s worked with clients like Nike, Walmart, and Google — and loves what she does and how she does it. But for others who aren’t so lucky, she encourages them to step away from toxic agencies and focus on themselves. “Sticking to freelancing can really work because the flexibility and control you can have over your life is amazing,” she says.
Here’s Hernandez on freelancing, full-time experiences, and more.
I saw that you started graphic design in high school. How did you get into that?
From as far back as I can remember, I’ve always been drawing. My mom even tells me that I wouldn't ask for toys — just pens, paper, and creative utensils. In high school, luckily I was at an institution that had a large number of classes that you could take to discover yourself.
I loved being a creative. I wanted to get paid for it. But everyone always tells you that you can love making things, but you won’t make money. You’ll die broke. So I got into graphic design to see where it would take me. If it wasn't for that class, I truly don't know how I would've gotten my start.
Based on your time spent freelancing in different agencies over the last few years, what did you learn about being successful in the industry?
I feel like I’ve taken different things away from each agency I’ve worked with. There’s this pressure that you have to be able to handle to wear a lot of different hats and do different things simultaneously. It’s made me more efficient, flexible, and independent as a result. It feels really good when I don't need to outsource different tasks and I get the chance to do them on my own.
So, what I just said was what I took away from smaller shops. Freelancing for bigger agencies is another deal entirely. It’s really about learning communication, the formalities of advertising, how to work well with clients, and how to make decks to the agencies’ standards. I’ve picked up industry secrets, lingo, and other small stuff. You can’t find an ad book that’ll teach you those (that I know of).
In an industry that’s often about climbing the ladder in full-time roles, you’ve focused on freelancing instead. What would you say is your ultimate goal in the industry then? Going higher or something different entirely?
I have no real interest in climbing any ladder per se, or making my own shop. My goal in this industry is to make work that I think my younger self would have loved to see. It’s for people that both look like me and don’t. For people that look and feel different, like they don’t fall in line with what’s out there.
That’s so inspiring. What work has inspired you to feel like that? It doesn’t necessarily have to be advertising related.
Well, what comes to mind because it's so fresh is the Barbie movie. I went in thinking this is going to be something that’s just fucking crazy fun, and not necessarily something serious. I kid you not — I was fighting back tears so many times in that theater.
I was surprised by how self-aware the movie was. I vividly remember as a kid when I had those thoughts about wanting to be Barbie. The blond hair, the different skin, just looking different than what I looked like…I felt it all because the beauty of Barbie dolls was blasted into my face because of advertising. To come back as an adult and see the company forced to take accountability and speak on its past messaging was so gratifying.
It made me want to be a part of something like that, where a brand takes accountability. I want to be part of the solution of a project that holds clients accountable.
Freelancing is no easy business. What’s your secret for finding steady work?
I tell every person who comes to me wondering how to find work is to just ask for it. Make a post and tell the world that you need work. You want to know what has given me the most opportunities? I put a post on LinkedIn — a poster that I designed myself announcing that I was unemployed with a little bio about myself. I still get responses from that one post and I haven't needed to ask for more work again because of it. The announcement may not be enough — but making it cute will be. Put some effort into it.
Another thing is to just make stuff proactively. Whatever you have time and a space for, make shit and put it out there as fast as you can because that work, whatever you put out, that’s going to come to you. The kind of offers are going to come to you that relate to that, if that makes sense.
My last question for you is just asking about personal projects. So how do you decide what you do and what keeps you going?
When I’m not creating work for myself, I literally feel frustrated. What keeps me wanting to make more work is that I'm just truly obsessed with it. I find it really beautiful when people can create things that are so quintessentially them and you can see them in the work and that's really what I'm trying to do.