How free side projects turn into paid dream client work
Side projects are a way to test an industry, and sometimes they become the client work. In this clip from You’re Not the Audience, Parliament Creative Director Calvin Ross Carl describes how Parliament, after years of big tech work as Microsoft Store’s agency of record, deliberately pivoted toward outdoor and lifestyle brands by doing free shoots and building a separate outdoor brand, which led to Olympia, Pabst, and Rainier Beer. He explains why clients hire for a predictable outcome, then points to Designers Republic and Sagmeister & Walsh as proof that personal work can define a career. It’s from the You’re Not the Audience episode on side projects, Why Every Designer Needs a Side Project.
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Outline
Summary
Picking up a viewer’s point that side projects help you find out whether you want to work in an industry, Calvin Ross Carl shares how Parliament made an intentional shift years ago. After a long run of big tech work, including Microsoft Store, the agency targeted outdoor and lifestyle adventure brands with free work: shooting products, setting up shoots, and launching a separate outdoor-focused brand.
That investment led to work with Olympia, then Pabst and Rainier Beer. Calvin’s broader point is that clients want a somewhat predictable outcome, so they hire people whose work already looks like where they’re headed. Showing who you truly are gets you hired for who you are.
He closes with two studios defined by personal work: Designers Republic, approaching its 40th anniversary, and Stefan Sagmeister, whose side projects were successful enough that he retired from client work.
Highlights
Side projects let you test whether you want to work in an industry.
Parliament used free outdoor work to pivot toward lifestyle brands.
That shift led to Olympia, Pabst, and Rainier Beer.
Clients hire for a predictable outcome.
Designers Republic and Sagmeister are defined by their personal work.
Key insights
Make the work you want to be hired for
Parliament didn’t wait for outdoor clients to find it. It created outdoor work first, and the clients followed.
Predictability drives hiring
Just as you hire an illustrator for their style, big clients look for partners who already look capable of delivering their direction.
Showing who you are attracts the right work
When designers and agencies put their true interests forward, they get hired for those interests rather than for whatever is in their current portfolio.
Personal work can outgrow client work
Sagmeister’s art installations and exhibitions show that personal projects can eventually become a designer’s entire practice.
Detailed analysis
The clip offers a rare inside look at how Parliament repositioned itself. Instead of pitching outdoor brands with tech case studies, the agency built proof in the category it wanted to enter. That proof made Parliament a predictable choice for beer and lifestyle clients, illustrating Calvin’s point about why clients hire who they hire.
The studio examples widen the lens. Designers Republic’s posters and Sagmeister’s bridge between design and art show that self-initiated work isn’t just a marketing tactic; it can become the core of a creative identity.
Conclusion
The work you do for free can turn into the work you’re known for. Calvin’s advice is to show who you are, because that’s who clients will hire.
Transcript
And the other side of this, too, that I think is important for side projects: Ryan says they’re a great way to see if you actually want to work in or with a particular industry. Oh, absolutely. Yeah. I mean, even at Parliament we did that some years ago. It was a really intentional shift. At Parliament, once upon a time, we did a ton of work for Microsoft, big tech work. We did all the Microsoft Store work. And after that all stopped, we did this really hard pivot to really target outdoor industries and that kind of lifestyle adventure brand.
And we did a ton of free work. We would just take products out, shoot them, offer them up to companies, and we would just go on adventures and photograph it and set up shoots, basically. And we then created a whole separate brand for Parliament that revolved around doing these outdoor adventures. And that ended up leading to us getting work in that industry and attracting other clients. Doing all that outdoor work that we did was how we eventually started working with Olympia Beer, and that led us to Pabst Beer and Rainier Beer and all of those things. It was just because we were like, this is a world we really want to get into.
And so I think that’s kind of my next point, absolutely: at some point, side projects can become the client work. And I think that’s because clients and people most often hire you based on—they never like to say this, but they really want to have somewhat of a predictable outcome. It’s the same reason that if you’re hiring an illustrator, you look for an illustrator that can deliver the style you’re looking for. Big clients end up looking for companies that look like they might be able to deliver on the direction that they’re heading as a business. And so as a designer, or as an agency even, I think if you start showing who you truly are, you then get hired for who you are.
And that’s worked for tons of folks. I feel like we don’t necessarily think of this, but I just pulled up some. There are tons of agencies and designers where all their side projects are what came to define them. Their personal work has absolutely been everything that defines their careers. The work they do for free turns into the work that they actually get known for. So, yeah, let’s actually talk through some of those.
So, the first one that I’ve got on my list is an agency that is absolutely defined by their side projects, because damn near everything they do feels like a side project. And we’ve talked about these folks a lot. This is Designers Republic. We talked about them back on the branding episode about Wipeout, the video game. They’ve come up a couple times. Ian Anderson, the main guy of Designers Republic, has been doing a bunch of interviews lately because they’re at their 40th anniversary as an agency, which reminds me that Parliament, I think, is 20 years right now. So, we’ve got only 20 more to go. Aaron, if you’re in the chat, 20 more. We’ve got to hang on 20 more years.
But everything that Designers Republic does started as just—I mean, this image right here is a classic poster of theirs that they did years ago, and it leads to work. This is just a poster that’s their own perspective. So they’ve nailed it. Aaron says, “I’m here for 20 more.” All right, 20 more. Let’s do it.
So, Designers Republic is the greatest. Another person who I think is incredible, who we know because of their side projects, is Sagmeister. Sagmeister & Walsh. It turned into Sagmeister & Walsh at one point. Walsh separated, so now it’s &Walsh, when Sagmeister kind of retired from client work. I mean, his side projects were so successful, he retired from client work, and now he’s done all of these various art installations in museums and things like this. And I think he’s actually one of the few designers who’s bridged that gap between design and art in a fairly meaningful way.
Maybe that’s a whole other discussion for another day, how I think design is not art and art is not design. That’ll be a hot take episode. But I think Sagmeister has done a really good job at bridging that gap and is now just fully known for all of his various side projects and art exhibitions that he’s done.