2020 Annual Report
UPDATE 2021: Well, it’s 2021 and I’m only posting this annual report now. This is due to many factors, most importantly - the very busy teaching year I had in 2021 between finishing LARC 502 in April and having to completely construct and prepare for a 6-week summer course from July - August. Add in a cross-border move during COVID-19 and some projects, and I just lost track of my blog posting.
I have once more used my reporting data from Freshbooks to prepare the infographic charts for income and expenses seen below.
Areas of Growth
The primary area of growth from 2019 was in teaching with UBC SALA. Starting in January 2020, I began co-instructing the MLA design studio LARC 502 - Change in Common with Fionn Byrne. We finished our studio just a few weeks after campus closed on March 13 and published our studio book shortly thereafter. I also was asked to co-instruct the MLA first year/first semester design studio LARC 501 with Paul Peters starting in September, and design a brand new curriculum for ARCH 515, Design Media 1.
All of the 2020-2021 school year was planned to be online, and during the summer I spent a great deal of time familiarizing myself with Miro, Zoom, Camtasia and Canvas to prepare for the new way of teaching. From my perspective, this was a new opportunity to rethink how design instruction is given. I wanted my classes to not just be things that students would get through, but classes that they thrived in. At the end of 2020, I had 3 courses with 5-star student ratings under my belt and a burgeoning YouTube channel with thousands of followers. So my other area of growth was in online instruction - both my skillshare course and my free videos on YouTube gained a lot of momentum!
I actually did a lot of business in website & graphic design in 2020. I worked on 2 brand identities and websites - for Dr. Jen Parsons, ND in Toronto, and for Robin Plessl of SUKI Creative Studio in Vancouver. I did some discounted charity work for Calgary Legal Guidance, The Brenda Strafford Society, Academics Without Borders, and Earth Apple Organic Farm. This work accounted for around 10% of my fees in 2020.
Areas of Contraction
Life changed a lot in 2020. In March, April and May, as everyone was waiting to see how life would pan out, many projects got put on hold. The Arbutus Greenway, a project I had been contracted to work on throughout 2020, never started back up so I lost out on about $35,000 of anticipated fees. Our planned move to Maine was abruptly halted and we decided to stay put in Vancouver until life got more clarity. Like many others during this time, I went on CERB to supplement the very low freelance income I was making during this time. Thankfully, our landlord allowed us to stay in our house even though we had previously given notice to move.
In April and May I did some project photography for Elevation and Suki Creative Studio. Visualization work did not really pick up again until July, when I got some interesting competition work with my former Berlin employer, Sinai. From September on, I was busy teaching 2 courses (LARC 501 & ARCH 515-002), preparing tutorials for my students, and working on projects non-stop! However, it was still pretty low year compared to 2018 and 2019.
Travel contracted completely in 2020. My last business trip was to Toronto & New York State from March 13-16 to do some artist photography, which was the last possible time to cross the border before it closed. I spent my Monday afternoon in a hotel in a deserted downtown Toronto watching Justin Trudeau give a speech about lockdown. I self-isolated for 14 days after returning home but we were completely cut off from business & pleasure travel after that.
The Moolah
In the spirit of openness and because I believe that transparency for freelancers—especially WOMEN freelancers—is of utmost importance, when you hover over the sections of the graph you’ll see the actual earned income from each portion. In December 2019 I incorporated my business. This means that my fiscal year is shorter - from the date of incorporation to my selected fiscal year end date - October 30. This report therefore covers a little less than 11 months of work.
Going forward, my fiscal year will run October 31 - October 30 so the income reported in this report is slightly less than normal. The total income including teaching for this period was $98,946 CAD (gross before tax & expenses, all currencies converted), a pretty hefty reduction from 2019, but still 1.8x my previous salary as an employee.
2020 saw decreased investment in subscriptions and equipment, and my overall expenses totaled $34,305 including income tax, corporate tax and GST payments. I did not need to renew my Lumion license because it was provided free of charge in thanks for doing an interview with Lumion that they used for their marketing materials. I also didn’t need to upgrade my Rhino license so those were two quite significant expenses that I skipped.
I did, however, purchase a new Dell XPS 15 computer (~$4300) on a monthly business lease to spread out the cost over several years. The lease expenses count as current, so are 100% tax deductible - much better than purchasing equipment outright and listing it on your capital costs. One of my biggest unexpected expenses was data recovery - $1800 - after Keza jumped up on my desk and one of my external harddrives took a heavy spill onto the wood floor. I later realized all of the data had been backed up to my backblaze account, but not after paying a professional to restore all of my data to a new hard drive. Le Sigh!
Anyhoodles, see how it all breaks down below:
Due to my business model, I was fully equipped to embrace the remote work era that COVID-19 brought upon everyone.
As a freelancer who has been working remotely for clients in Canada, the US and Europe for several years, it was pretty easy for me to slide into the WFH revolution. I barely noticed a change in my working conditions except that everyone suddenly wanted to do video calls instead of phone calls. What’s wrong with good old-fashioned phone calls? Not sure, but we’re all doing Zoom/Teams/Meet for everything now. Also, even more clients became comfortable with the idea of hiring someone they had never met to do some work. I think everyone realized that working remotely does not mean slacking off all day, and the design profession quickly adapted to this new way of interacting and connecting with others.
The biggest change for me was transitioning to online instruction, but I hope that I made that as comfortable for the students as I possibly could. In the end, I think they are much better equipped for the era of online work than other cohorts!
2021 Forecast
Clients & Projects:
I gained a few new clients in 2020 who I hope to continue working with in 2021. My old firm Sinai rekindled our business relationship and I could see myself reaching out to other German-based firms to do more competitions. I like this type of work because it is very fast-paced and the CAD files tend to be very very clean, making the landscape easy to build in 3D. I also did some work for EDS Group in Edmonton; they are super nice people doing solid work in Alberta and BC.
Teaching:
I feel incredibly proud of the results from my first year of teaching. My students pulled off wonderful projects and I feel that I was able to help them instill some good graphic skills and habits. Their first studio work was universally applauded as extremely advanced compared to previous years and I like to think I had a hand in preparing them for the future. I got very positive feedback and am looking forward to teaching some of these courses again in the 2021 school year. I have also been asked to develop a summer course - LARC 582J - Design Media III. I will be focusing on advancing drawing, composition & visualization skills and can’t wait to see how it turns out!
Moving:
Since we had to put our move to Maine on hold, we’re considering our options for where to move in 2021. We would definitely still like to take advantage of the visa that Jed qualifies for since he’s already approved for the trainee program. He will be researching positions in the States and we hope that we can make a move in May once I’m finished teaching LARC 502!
Fun Things We Managed To Do in 2020 Despite the Pandemic:
2020 was the year we got into backpacking. We started out with some day hikes like Flatiron via Needle Peak and Watersprite Lake and worked our way up to a few multi-day backcountry trips. We visited 3 Brothers in EC Manning Park and Bedwell Lake in Strathcona Park on Vancouver Island.
We also tried to make the most of our ability to move freely around BC and took an autumn trip to the Sunshine Coast as a staycation.
We made our back deck & patio as amazing as possible to take advantage of having friends over for outside dining.
Spring was extra lovely this year and we tried to take full advantage by walking around our neighborhood every day and enjoying the flowers as they bloomed.
Bedwell Lake Sunset
Future:
Moving to Europe was removed from our options due to a lack of visa options and restrictions due to COVID-19. However, we are currently exploring a pathway to the UK via Ancestry. It would be expensive, but possible.
So - that’s it for this report! I hope that any lurking potential freelancers have found this useful and as always, feel free to send a message my way if you have questions.