Designers, let's talk terminology.

Outside of full-time employment there's a bewildering array of banners we work under and I think we're confusing ourselves with them.

Bobby works from home. His clients find him through Dribbble or via word of mouth. He charges by hour, day or by project; he doesn't necessarily work exclusively on one client's work at a time though.

Karen is a 'freelancer'. She goes into client offices a week or a month at a time, charges by a daily rate (wouldn't a project rate seem weird in this circumstance?). Her clients expect her to have her own equipment but work from their office with their team.

Josef runs his own 'studio' - Design By Josef. Between jobs he's never 'unemployed' — he's just 'not working on client projects at the moment'. He might use ambiguous wording on his website — 'WE deliver beautiful & engaging experiences; WE work with cutting-edge technology'. But it's just him. In his living room.

Freelancer, gun-for-hire, contractor, independent, 'I run my own studio'. All similar terms with slightly different connotations.

I've worked as & worked with independent designers from across this bizarre spectrum of names. Now as I go out on my own again, I wonder what's right for me.

What do you call yourself? Can you be a studio if it's just you?

My biggest tip would be to not make yourself 'seem' bigger than you are, people buy into personal, they want to get to know you. I dont agree with using the term 'we' if its just a single person, If you have a bunch of awesome people you bring in to work on things, let the client know.

You can be a single person studio, It leaves room to expand, and if you work with others a lot on your projects it can work well. Just dont pretend to be 5 guys in a studio.

If you are a one man studio you are still a freelancer, you can say you 'run a studio' but in my view & employment status you are still a freelancer. its more of a technical term.

If all else fails, Ninja code monkey pirate is about as applicable if you plan to work with startups.

At the end of the day, no one will give this anywhere near as much thought as you when looking to hire you. so just pick something you like.

Also if you are building your own products, built by [studio name] will provide a better visual weight imo.

When I talk to people, I say i'm a freelancer, but my portfolio says 'small web development studio'. I only work as a dev for design agencies, they seem to lik being able to say to their clients that the project has gone to a partner agency to be built. That said, it makes no difference to the client what I call myself, freelancer, agency, or busker.

No where on my site does it say 'we' though, I am alway open and honest about how I operate, rates, where I live & work and so on.

I agree with James that running a small 'studio' leaves toom to expand, which I intend to do, then the 'I' can become 'we'.

I'll close by adding that treating my own freelance business as an agency, I think i'm making more business focused decisions rather than trying to take on everything I can. I also have it all set up so that if I die tomorrow, all my projects, documents & comms are all accessible by anyone and they can pick up where I left off. Also means I can bring extra people into project as the drop of a hat. That might just be good practice though.

Oh lastly, James is right again. 'Built by X' does look better, especially if it's a paid for product. Most people won't know X is just a guy writing code whilst simultaneously taking a dump.

James hit the nail on the head in a lot of ways. It's hard.

Work out a plan. Do you want to contract (safer), do you want want to run projects and outsource some parts (riskier)? Do you want to be a single person on a project or run the whole thing, basically?

Superheroes: I do exactly what James hates. At any given time I have at least 2 or 3 contractors working, who I work with regularly but I push hard to be seen as a small studio. I don't have partners, though I was looking for one, and a front-end hire, so I project what I want to be seen as - which I know I can do and do do in a slightly varied way.

Put simply; what are your goals? :) That defines things like this.

Although it's a decision that feels incredible personal. It's still a business and marketing decision you can apply design thinking to. It depends on your current experience and context and the work you are looking to acquire.

When I started my company I made the decision to incorporate my own name because if the reputation I've built working on open source community projects. I didn't want to loose the visibility I already had bult over several years by standing behind a new one.

I also chose not to use my real name as no one can pronounce it correctly, and because I've been seeking a partner. :)

It's the nature of designers to brand and package themselves. Why give the unedited details to clients (I work half of the day on my couch and take breaks to play with my cat) when the very skill you are selling them is your ability to create a narrative around a product or service? I think it's fine to sell yourself. Client's motivations vary, but skill and quality of work is only one factor they look for.

I think in general the entire industry is tending toward independence. I think you are going to start to see massive project that traditionally were beyond the reach of independent creatives being handled by ad hoc teams of independent super specialists. I wrote a little piece about it a while back:
blog.keenancummings.com