Passion projects are, by definition:
a piece of work that someone gets involved in because they love it or feel it is very good and important, not in order to make money.
Cambridge Dictionary
But, in the freelancing world, they are a great way to attract clients that you really want to work with and projects that you want to be a part of.
As an example, one of the leading muralists and letterers in the US, Lauren Hom, built her entire career through creating passion projects.
Each of her projects helped her gain massive exposure and resulted in paid projects for big clients like Adobe, Vans, Google, Starbucks, YouTube, and SkillShare. She even created the artwork for Kamala Harris’ vice-president campaign!
But it all started with doing unpaid, personal projects – which were the projects that she dreamed of doing professionally.

Passion projects are a great way to show your expertise in a specific niche
The debate about whether you should focus on a certain niche or not will always remain open, simply because there is no one right answer. For some professionals, narrowing down and focussing on one niche is the right move, while for others a different approach will work.
Generally the deeper and more specific you can go, the more you will be able to position yourself as an expert, and the ‘go-to’ person for that niche. You can essentially be a big fish in a much smaller pond.
Many people work generally throughout their careers – and if that’s what you want to do, perhaps you enjoy the variety, there is no problem there.
The issue for many freelancers is that they want to niche down more, but they also need to earn money – so they end up working generally and never manage to focus in on what they want to do.
This is also fine – as long as you have a plan in place to shift towards your desired niche, if that’s the way you want to go.
How passion projects can help you transition from general to niched work
If there is an area that you want to attract more work in – but you also can’t afford to exclude more general work while you make that switch – passion projects can be a fantastic way to transition.
For example, if you are a writer who wants to focus on a specific topic, say music production – start regularly writing and publishing articles about them for the joy of it. The joy of passion projects like this is that you don’t have to turn down your regular work, which might be more general journalism while you do this.
If you are an illustrator who wants to do more travel-themed illustrations, start creating artwork, like city maps, – anything that you enjoy, which will put you on the radar in that niche.
Remember that you are likely to attract more of the same work that you feature in your portfolio and on your website. So if you want to move to more of a niche that you are passionate about, you need to build up a portfolio of work that you can display.
Working on passion projects will help you do this.
How to come up with a passion project idea
Whether you are just starting with your freelance journey and need to build a portfolio, or you have been freelancing for a while – passion projects can help you get to where you want to be and, eventually, bring in the work that you genuinely want to do.
I think many established freelancers view any kind of unpaid work as something for amateurs. In reality, these projects are where you will push yourself, and can grow and learn new skills.
The tricky part can be coming up with the right passion projects to pursue. It’s very easy to feel like everything has already been done, and you need to come up with something innovative in order to stand out.
But that’s far from the truth – these projects should be a result of the combination of your personal passions, they will therefore be unique by design.
We can share the same passions, but the way we will present them is unique to all of us.
The other danger is that you can procrastinate and waste a lot of time attempting to come up with the perfect idea for your project. This is why you need to define a clear brief to yourself, that has clear limits to it.
We have structured a simple process that you can follow to find a passion project to work on. Not only will it save you time, but it will help you generate a heap of great ideas.
But before we start….
Be honest with yourself, and write everything down.
Let’s go back to Lauren Hom and her passion projects. The reason why they were all so successful and helped her skyrocket her career was that each of them was thought through and planned.
But, most importantly, they were a perfect combination of her genuine passions – her passion for lettering, food, travelling – and she found a way to express them using her skills.
So, be honest with yourself and write everything that you can think of that you are passionate about – no matter how silly it sounds at first. Weird ideas often lead to great projects!
Now, open a note-taking app or grab a piece of paper, and let’s go through the following steps together:
Step 1: Define a skill you want to get paid for
The first step to coming up with passion projects ideas is choosing one skill that you want to hone, work in long-term and eventually get paid for.
If you are learning a new skill, this can be an opportunity to put it into practice and gain confidence. Or, if you want to switch your focus – or emphasise a skill you are already confident about but aren’t getting paid work for – this is also a time to do that.
Just have in mind that, in the end, the goal of a passion project is to help you get work that you want to do – so choose a skill that you can see yourself doing a lot over in the future.
As an example to show you this process, we will use Digital Illustration:

Step 2: My favourite something…
Now write down some categories of things you like – they can be anything, there are no rights or wrongs here.
For example, I like food, coffee, music, nature – so I will list these:

Now, under each category, write down your favourite thing about that category and/or any association you get – look at our example:

While doing this step, remember what we said above – write everything down, even if it doesn’t make any sense at the moment or it feels like it’s impossible to turn into a project.
Write as many categories as you want, and as many favourites as you have – just get everything out from your mind and onto paper – you can easily delete things later if it’s not leading anywhere.
Step 3: Start connecting the dots
Now it’s brainstorming time!
Start by picking one item from one category, and one item from a different category. See how you can combine them into a project – mix and match until you get some good ideas out.

Creativity is often simply taking an existing idea from one context and translating it to a different one. That’s the principle that makes this technique so effective.
You can experiment here as much as you want – mix items from more than two categories, mix items just from one category – connect the dots in any way you want – as long as you come up with an idea for a project that you feel excited about. You should also be able to clarify the idea by writing it into the form of a one-sentence brief.
In our example, we might combine coffee and music, with our skill of illustration. The outcome from this might be to create a series of custom artworks for albums of music that are designed to set the right mood in a brand of cafe.
So the brief we invent might be to: create five different cover arts for coffee shop music albums. We will make one for five different music genres – jazz, lo-fi, classical music, pop and rock.
It’s important not to rush this step. Give your mind time and space to let the creative juices flow. If you feel stuck, leave it, go for a walk and come back to it later with a fresh mind.
Also, try to come up with as many combinations as you can – eventually, you will come up with a winning one that feels right.
Take your passion projects seriously and share them proudly
Create and work as if your dream client has already commissioned you, and give that work as much exposure as you can. If you are just starting out and don’t have a website, or big following on social media – don’t let that be an excuse!
You can write and publish articles for free on Medium, submit your photos on Unsplash, share your personal projects on Facebook and LinkedIn groups, where your dream clients hang out, and even pitch to big, relevant publications.
Amber Share, an illustrator and designer from the USA, combined her skills with her love for the outdoors and created a personal passion project Subpar Park, which ended up featured in BuzzFeed, just because she pitched to them. Of course, not only did she attract her dream clients after that, but her entire career took off.
So proudly show off your work and don’t be afraid to make bold moves, at the end of the day – you have nothing to lose, only to gain!
As Austin Kleon, the author of “How to steal like an artist”, would say:
“Share what you love, and the people who love the same things will find you.”
Austin Kleon, author
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