The Complete Case Study

I can remember just starting out as a freelance designer. I was struggling to make ends meet and I was just trying to find anyone who would pay me to create. Those were tough times.

I remember whenever someone asked me for my website or portfolio. I would give them the link or send them the PDF… then follow it up with a whole list of excuses:

• My site’s down right now, we’re just going through a rebrand
• We’ve been so busy, we haven’t been able to update things in a while
• Just a heads up: most of the work up there is student work

Any of those sound familiar?

Every once in a while, I’d crack open my portfolio website to update things and add new projects… and sit staring at the blank text window, wondering what to write. Or I’d open the project-final-FINAL-r23 folder, and wonder how the hell I was supposed to share the client-butchered results with the world. Especially when my first attempts were so much better.

To be honest, I wasn’t the sharpest tool in the shed back in those days. In fact, I’m still far from perfect.

But I’ve learned a few things since then, albeit from the school of hard knocks, which I’m dying to share with you. Minus the hard knocks, of course.

I used to think that if I did great work for clients, more work would follow. That if I just did my best and focused on my craft, that bigger clients would eventually find me.

Boy, was I wrong.

I tried my best to present client work that sometimes I wasn’t even proud of. But my portfolio looked like a dirty laundry basket full of random, mismatched projects.

And the project pages themselves? They came off boring at best. Just a page full of dull imagery, isolated logos, and a basic description.

I struggled with the consequences of my portfolio for years:

• Losing jobs that should have been mine
• Not getting past the first phone call
• Not hearing back after sending my portfolio to new leads
• Never winning jobs on oDesk (Upwork) or other job sites

I was close to throwing in the towel and getting a job. I wanted to quit. And then I realized something that changed everything.

I realized that most clients can’t see.

I mean they’re not blind (usually), but when it comes to analyzing aesthetics and determining who’s work is better than the rest… they can’t do it. At least not well.

You see, they’re not trained professionals like you and I. They don’t spend their time studying what craftmanship looks like.

And if they don’t see something in your portfolio that’s pretty damn close to what they’re looking for, they move on.

Unless we present our work differently.

Story, process, and assurance are more powerful than aesthetics, styles, and trends. So when we share our work, we need to:

• capture their attention with a compelling story of solving a unique problem,
• help them envision working with you as an amazing experience they will love
• assure them that the end result will achieve the real results they’re after

The best way to hit all three? A compelling case study. Case studies are the way we can present our work by telling the story of the project.

This is the framework that I’ve developed over the years of writing case studies: it’s a fast, flexible, and easy framework that you can use to craft case studies that help you land bigger clients.

When you’re finished with this guidebook, you won’t just have great case studies. You’ll know how to use them. But best of all, you will uncover insights about your own process and clients.

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