Design Free
Should I offer my graphic design skills for free to gain clients?
I am a graphic design student working on building a portfolio. I am wondering if I should design for free to gain more pieces to choose for my final folio.
Mail me your brief and I will design your piece free of charge, no gimmicks lol. Just need some work. 
Thanks
I agree with the above poster, but to an extent. You shouldn’t offer free design work to gain clients, because then they will always expect it to be free or cheap, which then goes back into this vicious cycle that I dont really want to go deep into.
But I am a recent graduate and I am in the same boat as you. I didn’t have enough work to build a proper, yet strong portfolio… so I felt like sinking down and offering design work for free.
As a student, employers know that you aren’t going to have a lot of experience, so they can’t exactly expect the moon and the stars from you. What you can do, instead of just offering free work for random people is finding volunteer work, like a local non-profit or maybe some clubs/bands on campus that you would actually like to do some posters/fliers/postcards for. You can also try redesigning work that is currently on display. With the right research combined with beautiful design, it’ll show that you took some initiative to create the redesign and are a proven self-starter!
Edit: I also found this link when I was looking at some forums about leave behinds… http://www.graphicdesignforum.com/forum/showthread.php?t=23924
Free Design – Love You