Seal
Empowering Freelance Designers with Legal Clarity
Suvina Wahane
How might early-career freelance designers protect themselves from exploitation without becoming legal experts? Suvina Wahane's work is driven by the belief that designers can find playful, social, and accessible empowerment in the legal system. Seal challenges intimidating legal tools by embedding legal literacy within creative, community-centered, and emotionally supportive experiences.
"I completed the entire rebrand, and then they ghosted me." This designer's experience isn't unique. Several individuals interviewed in Suvina's research expressed frustration with the vulnerability many freelancers face early in their careers. Freelance designers are creative powerhouses, yet many face daunting legal and financial challenges early in their careers. Despite contributing over $1.3 trillion to the U.S. economy, 71% of freelancers report payment issues, and half of related legal cases involve non-payment. Most new designers have little training in contracts, often signing documents they don’t fully understand-leading to burnout, lost income, and frustration.
Through interviews with designers and legal experts, she uncovered three critical gaps: lack of awareness about negotiable terms, limited access to practical legal learning, and anxiety when confronting client issues. To address these, she developed a layered ecosystem of solutions:
Seal Deal Board Game – A playful, interactive experience where designers navigate real-world client scenarios, exposing common contract pitfalls and building foundational knowledge in a safe setting.
Mobile Resource App – A pocket-sized guide and community hub offering a curated resource library and AI-powered practice scenarios, helping freelancers build negotiation confidence and find support when they need it most.
Seal Contract Co-Pilot – An AI-driven tool that decodes legal jargon, flags risky clauses, and helps designers build or review contracts with clarity and confidence-empowering them to protect their work and their worth.
In this installation, designers interacted with the Red Flag card game and contributed personal advice to a growing community wall, reflecting on freelance challenges and sharing insights from their own experiences.
Seal isn’t just a set of tools, it’s a mindset shift. By meeting freelancers where they are, Seal transforms legal confusion into creative confidence-helping the next generation of designers thrive on their own terms.
Suvina Wahane
Suvina Wahane is an award-winning product designer and a Figma campus leader passionate about design, creative empowerment, and playful systems thinking. She often uses design to bridge gaps between overlooked communities and complex systems by making them feel more human, joyful, and clear.
