The Holiday Penguin says “Happy Holidays!” Everyone have a safe and happy holiday. Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do. ;)

I’ve been working a 3-6 month on-site contract position since May. It’s been a great learning experience but as with most great things, they must come to an end. As of January, my contract will be up and I’ll be available for more freelance work and full-time graphic design opportunities (plug, plug).

I’m excited for the future! During this transition I’m updating my marketing materials including my resume, portfolio and business cards. It’s important to maintain your marketing materials even if you’re working full-time and it’s vital if your freelancing. In addition to marketing, maintain your networking chops. Meet new people, join creative organizations and use your resources. Social media is a powerful tool when looking for work, but also utilize your friends and family. Let everyone you know what kind of work your in the market for, and it never hurts to ask your creative friends for a referral!

Luckily I’ve made some great contacts at this contract job and I’m optimistic that I’ll only grow and build on my career from here. When things like this happen it’s easy to get discouraged, but look on the bright side. There’s always more work out there, be creative!

I’m ashamed to say it, but it’s been years since I’ve done any hardcore updating on my blog. I worked for so long to get the back-end functionality the way I wanted it (plug-ins, widgets and tweaking the CSS, oh my!), I pretty much ignored the front-end. I liked the look and feel of my website but it was time for a change.  As I start to dust off the cobwebs and venture out on yet another side project…

I’m keeping these suggestions in mind:

• Changing the design of your blog or website is one thing, changing the vision is another. Changing your look can invariably change the attitude and audience of any blog, which are two areas I’m not interested in altering right now. Rule #1 is, don’t overtly confuse your users. More on that below.

• When making a drastic redesign of your site, do it swiftly. If your blog has a high readership, broken links, busted navigation’s and 404 errors will not be well received by your readers. Let readers know your blog will be down or undergoing maintenance via blog post and/or social media, they will appreciate it.

• Don’t change the design a million times. Do your research and find the best design solution for your blog or website. Rushing into one redesign after another until you’re satisfied will not only confuse your readers, it will piss them off. Keeping a consistent web presence is important.

• Have fun! Refreshing your website with a new design or snazzy feature is exciting and the more fun you have with it the more satisfying the process will be.

Wrapping it up

As you can see, I’ve updated my site with a new theme and I love it! I’m still working on a few details, but that’s all part of the process. The theme is simple and has the similar style of the old design while fitting in with my personality. I’m entering into a whole new re-branding process for myself and this is just the first of many changes I’m making to my personal brand. Reason being, I’m probably going to be making a job change (more on that later) in the near future and want a fresh look to my marketing materials. Re-branding yourself or company is a big deal, but have fun and keeping the above suggestions in mind will help ease the process.

I’ve always been interested in passive income, but who hasn’t? Making money while you’re sleeping is the American Dream. I’ve often thought of setting up an Etsy.com store selling greeting cards or trying to sell some of my (less than professional) photography on stock photo sites. Etsy is a big investment if you factor in printing costs and there’s of course no guarantee people are going to buy my stuff, same with stock photo sites.

Another option is Envato. Selling digital art and making a passive income is a no brainier. No printing costs, no real overhead, it’s perfect. However, the competition at Envato is steep and getting your file accepted seems like an act of God. These thoughts held me back for awhile, but if you’re reading this, one of my files is now for sale on GraphicRiver! Yes, I finally told my brain to can it and created a small collection of Twitter backgrounds to sell. Was it challenging? Yes. Figuring out what I wanted to do was. I first thought about doing print materials like business cards or newsletter and brochure templates. However, when it comes down to it, if I was going to gamble and spend the time designing something that might not even get past the review process, I had to design something I would enjoy. Something web related seemed to be the way to go. Twitter backgrounds don’t seem to be an overly saturated market on GraphicRiver, so I sat down and got to work one evening and really enjoyed myself. Being in more of a production role at my 9-5, having total creative freedom felt awesome and reignited a spark for design that I haven’t felt in awhile.

You can view my file on GraphicRiver here, more to come!

I’ve been trying to become proficient in HTML/CSS for a few years now. Time and frustration usually got in the way, but I’ve made strides in my adventure to learn these languages in the past few months. I’ve done tutorials, analyzed sites I like with Firebug and offered to take on pro bono web design and development projects to further my knowledge. What spurred this quest? Quotes like this:

“A designer who does not write markup and css is not designing for the web, but drawing pictures.”

— Andy Rutledge (2011)

I’ve been hearing this for years. A person who considers themselves a web designer should be able to code their designs. I started learning code because I heard this everywhere. Look at the postings for graphic designers on chances are they will be expected to have expert knowledge in InDesign, Illustrator, Photoshop, Flash, Dreamweaver, HTML, CSS, Javascript, PHP, C#…the list goes on (maybe I exaggerated, but you get the idea). News flash employers, this isn’t the a job posting for a graphic designer or even a developer. Why not seek out employees that are experts in their chosen fields of development and graphic design, instead of one person who is mediocre at all the qualifications you seek? I thought to myself, ‘well, I can’t just be a good designer, I have to learn code in order to eat too!’ This isn’t the case. The current company I’m contracting for has a team of developers and a smaller team of graphic designers and they understand that the project will fail if they don’t have people working in positions that fit their skill set.  Companies looking for graphic design “ninja” with a working knowledge of a million coding languages is either cutting corners or out of the loop about how a design TEAM should function.

I’m ranting a little but my point is a graphic designer/web designer might benefit themselves from being at least knowledgeable of html/css, but we shouldn’t be expected to be able to code a 40 screen e-commerce site. That being said, since I’ve started learning how to code, I’ve found that I really enjoy it and being able to code will help make my transition away from print and into web design. That’s just me, it’s not for everyone. If you’re happy and making a living not relying on HTML/CSS knowledge, more power to you! Partner with a developer you trust and the sky is the limit.

Conclusion

My point here is to not get discouraged if you pride yourself on being strictly a graphic designer. There are still companies out there that are looking for graphic/web designers to just design. However it never hurts to learn something new. Never limit yourself.

Check out these articles/the inspiration for this post/rant:

http://ignorethecode.net/blog/2009/03/10/designers-are-not-programmers/
http://intenseminimalism.com/2011/designers-shouldnt-code-the-digital-duo/

Life has been crazy this spring/summer and I just wanted to check in and say that this blog is still alive and ready for more of my ramblings…I just haven’t had a lot of time to ramble lately.  Sunshine and grilling on my patio is, at this point in time, more appealing than sitting at my Mac and blogging about the random graphic design ideas the pop into my head. However, with the start of a new personal project, I’m sure I’ll be more inclined to write about that process and what I learn from it. What’s this mysterious project? It’s too soon to tell where it will lead me but I’m excited.

I encourage you to get outside in the sun. It’s beautiful here in the midwest and I plan to soak it up while I can. If it’s warm where you are take advantage of this summer weather and make use of that sketchbook (nature is a great source of inspiration).

More to come!

We have all of our favorite bands and music genres, especially we creative types. Most of us listen to music while we ‘re working on client work, personal projects and in an effort to ignite our creative inspiration. Is there a certain type of music you listen to that lulls your brain into the work day, entrancing and bending your productivity and creativity to its every crescendo and refrain (I was a band nerd)? Certain types of music really do it for me, but it depends on my mood. If I have an intense project I’m working on that involves a lot of problem solving, I’ll reach for a movie soundtrack or something my brain can ignore when it needs to focus solely on the task at hand. Recently, my soundtrack of choice has been The Social Network. It’s just the right mix of wordless grit and melody to keep me interested in the music while working, but also allows me to zone out of the music and immerse myself into the task at hand.

If I’m working on something relatively easy or fun, I tune into one of my favorite bands. Recently I’ve been listening to a lot of Adele and Florence and The Machine (do yourself a favor and buy their albums). If you know me at all, you know my favorite band of all time is the Dave Matthews Band (haters, zip it) but I can’t get a thing done while it’s coursing through my ear buds because I’ve been a fan since high school, have seen them a dozen times and I know all of the words to every song and I can’t focus on my work at all. I’ll start singing along to So Much To Say, despite my work and coworkers ears, and it’s all over. It’s a fact of my life.

No matter your motivations, music probably encompasses your day to day activities like it does mine. So, what do you like to listen to while you work? Techno? Classical? Radio Disney? I have my share of guilty pleasures, but I draw the line at Radio Disney, but whatever floats your boat.

I’m not someone who sits around stewing in my own creative juices 24/7. Instead I have fits of creativity and inspiration, usually spawned by something I’m reading or watching. Recently I watched the Helvetica documentary and became so inspired I had to open up Evernote and my sketchbook and start recording doodles, thoughts, quotes from the movie and making lists of creative endeavors I wanted to pursue because of this film. This doesn’t happen often, but when it does, I become a volcano of ideas spewing forth and writing everything down so I can look back on it when I’m feeling like an idiot or self-conscious about my ability as a designer. 90% of the time I never look at these notes again, but I revel in the solace that these creative outpourings of my psyche exist for me to reflect on if I so choose. These schizophrenic doodles and notes are a creative security blanket for me. My Moleskine sketches or sporadic ramblings would surely qualify me as a prime patient for the loony bin, but I’m willing to share a few of my coherent thoughts while watching Helvetica now.

It began with the interview with graphic designer David Carson and these quotes:

Just because something is legible doesn’t mean it communicates.

There is a very thin line between simple and clean and powerful, and simple and clean and boring.

From there I just started to write and sketch for the rest of movie. Here’s a snippit of my reaction to these quotes:

These quotes really resonate with me because as a designer, I feel like I am always dancing on the line of clean and boring. This is derived from my fear and confidence as a graphic designer (that is to say, my lack of confidence). Hearing these words from a designer that has made himself successful by going against the grain and breaking all the rules is both incredibly inspiring and frightening. Such great success does not come without immense failure. We’re all afraid to fail but making mistakes and learning from them is the only real way that we grow as humans, not just designers.

Yeah yeah, I totally admit I’m not the most confident designer here (which I’m working on), but this is all in the interest of being honest. I wrote three additional paragraphs on this subject and sketched and sketched and sketched. Those sketches will remain a mystery to the interwebs because like I said, they’re crazy, but they are all mine.

Conclusion

What’s the point of this post you might be wondering. The point its always be open and on the look out for inspiration and ways to get inspired. More importantly, always be ready to record the source of that inspiration. If nature is your source of inspiration, don’t forget that sketchbook the next time you take a stroll or go hiking.  If there’s a blogger or designer you find squee worthy, save blog entries and links to inspirational pieces of work. You never know what you might discover about the world around you, or yourself. This all sounds pretty self explanatory doesn’t it? You’d be surprised to find how many people working in creative fields don’t do this, or even sketch for that matter. Maybe they’re confident enough not to be burdened with looking for inspirational resources, but confidence and passion are two different animals. Those passionate about their careers have oodles of notes and sketches laying around and they are creating the most inspiring work out there.

I try to learn something new everyday. With the internet and a seemingly endless supply of tutorials out there to teach anything about Photoshop, Illustrator and CSS that you’d every want to know, it’s not hard to fill every corner of your mind with new information. The internet is undoubtedly a great resource for learning new things about graphic and web design, but for me, learning from others in the field is much more powerful than any tutorial I’ve ever completed.

It wasn’t easy for me to head back to the cube, but when I made the decision to do so, I promised myself I would make the most of it and try to learn as much as possible from the team of designers I’d be working with. Luckily, my fellow designers and developers I work with feel the same. We’ve started holding “classes” dealing with HTML/CSS (taught by our developer) and Photoshop (taught by me and two other graphic designers).  So far our adventure has been fruitful and I feel like we’re all building a better foundation of knowledge regarding our topics of interest. Our first class was taught by our developer, dealing with IDs, classes and the general set up of an HTML and CSS document, in turn we taught him about the lovely Photoshop pen tool. The pen tool can be a bear to master for a newbie, so we felt this was a good place to start since it’s one of the harder PS tools to grasp. Another topic we tackled was freelancing and dealing with difficult clients. We’ve all done some level of freelance work, whether it be designing for friends and family or big clients, and we would all like to continue learning from each others experiences and using each other as a resource in this endeavor.

Conclusion

Never stop learning. Never. The day you’ve decided you’ve done it all, quit, leave your graphic design career in the dust. and move on to something else. Deeming yourself an expert in this industry is the day the industry will pass you by. Graphic and web design is always changing and keeping your skills and knowledge in tip top shape is incredibly important, so learn where you can. The internet offers an infinite (and overwhelming) number of resources for designers and developers to learn, but always take the opportunity to learn from your peers and superiors. In my experience, those working and thriving in the design field offer the most valuable knowledge and expertise.

Tis the season to get creative with your freelance business marketing tactics. You’re probably planning on sending out holiday cards to friends and family anyway, why not send some out to your valued clients. Chances are your small business clients are sending cards out taking the opportunity to remind their valued customers about their business, so take the opportunity to do so yourself. A package of 14 holiday cards are, at most, ten dollars. Throw a few business cards in with your cards and you have a seasonal marketing tool that your clients are sure to appreciate. Better yet, design your own holiday cards or postcards to really make an impact on your clients. Creating a custom marketing piece to send to clients can jump-start the process of starting a new project and help remind your clients of that graphic design project they’ve had on the back-burner for the last few months.

Conclusion

If you have the time and money, create your own custom holiday cards to send to your valued clients. If your tight on time and money, purchase a cheap (but pretty) package of prefab holiday cards, throw a few business cards in with them and send them on their way. Remember to keep your greeting cards fairly holiday unspecific. Most of your clients may celebrate Christmas, but you can never be sure. In the freelance business, you can never assume anything, so keep your holiday card as generic as possible to avoid offending a valued client.