Working from home can be comforting and easy. If you don’t have a problem with lacking person – to – person interactions, remote is probably the best way to work in 21st. century for you. However, getting a brief and agreeing on budget is not everything. Here is a list of points you should keep your eye on.

1. Define the way of work

People often forget to talk about the way how the collaboration will be conducted. Make sure, you will define the “way of work” which fits everyone. For instance, scheduling regular status meetings via Zoom? Great, but keep eye on timezones, so each member of the team will be able to connect during the daytime, not in the middle of the night.

Keeping communication entirely on Slack or Microsoft Teams? Make sure you have also a “project” platform where all the files and comments will be stored chronologically, chat tools are usually not enough for tracking complex tasks. For instance, Minty is great for illustration projects, but there are also other, more generalist tools out there such as Notion or Asana.

2. Track the number of feedback rounds

Being able to get the idea about the scope of work which has been done is crucial, especially with creative freelancers. Making sure that various feedback rounds are being counted brings transparency each collaboration and therefore fosters the trust among team members. Setting up number of expected feedback rounds upfront is probably best thing to do as the very first step, as it gives clear picture about the scope of expected work for everyone.

Insight: 3 to 5 feedback rounds is the average number, typical for remote work among illustrators. Data collected from 4000 illustrator profiles on tasteminty.com

3. Be nice, take breaks and have fun!

The fact, that you are working remotely from your kitchen or living room does not mean, that you should overwork yourself to the oblivion. Casual work environment actually proves out to be quite dangerous, as we tend to do all the mistakes. Sitting on wrong chair whole day, damaging our retinas with excessive time spend in front of the screen or lack of movement. Working remotely might take a toll on you and your health, so it is important keep on mind the advantages of being not in the office. Have a walk. Exercise whenever you want. Last but not least, don’t forget about social interactions. Try to joke with your virtual coworkers also on that dry company chat, share funny links or install funny backgrounds to Zoom.

Our lovely illustrations for this blog are by Alexandra Turban & Karine Fortier.