The Importance of Learning From Your Peers

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.

Relax Riesling

Throughout my graphic design career, both as an in house designer and freelance designer, I’ve found that the simplest graphic design solutions are usually the best. I love this philosophy and when I design I always keep this in mind and get excited when I come across products that embody this concept.

I like to have a glass of wine from time to time with dinner or while hanging out with friends, but I absolutely do not consider myself a wine aficionado and am often swayed by the label design for what wine to purchase. Being a graphic designer, I think I’m more prone to folding to cool packaging and labels.

Relax Rieslings label and packaging embodies simple graphic design solutions and the design really conveys the tone of the brand. I love simple design such as this, and by the way, the wine is very tasty.

Great package design, can you resist?

It’s happened to all of us. Say you’re strolling through the isles of your average grocery/whatever you need store (for me it’s Target) and bam! The packaging of an ordinary item catches your eye. Candy covered peanuts aren’t on your grocery list, but man look at that packaging! So clever and creative that whatever the product is it must be amazing. This happens to me more often then I’d like to admit. I don’t like to be too easily swayed by something as trivial as packaging, but what some consumers might over look, I gravitate too. The “wine juice boxes” below are a recent purchase that was motivated by the package design and novelty.

Just look at them! They’re adorable, and while the wine inside isn’t actually all that good, I was willing to suck it down. That’s the power of great package design. I find myself falling pray to great packaging often, especially beer, candy and other food items. The world is so saturated with stuff, stuff we dont really need, and companies know this so they have to strive harder to make their products more appealing to consumers to stay alive. As I mentioned before, the wine tasted like crap, but the boxes are so cute that I bought them, spent time photographing them, editing the images and uploading then to this blog post. In the end I’ve not only purchased this product, but promoted it!

That’s great package design.

Feels like the first time

Finally! While this is not my first attempt at blogging, this is my first attempt at taking blogging seriously. I have an idea for the direction of this blog, but who knows how it will turn out. With most creative ideas of mine, they usually take on a mind of their own. I want this blog to be informative and fun. I recently started my freelance career and have learned a lot from other bloggers and feel obligated to share my experiences with other freelance graphic designers that are just starting out as well and to impart what I’ve learned over the last few months about freelancing and the graphic design industry.

So stay tuned! I’m still getting this page setup with my graphic design portfolio as well and that will probably be my main focus for now. I’d like for this website to serve as a blog and online precense for myself.  Thanks for stopping by!