Let’s say you have this multi-column Adobe Illustrator file, and you need to get some text from it. So, you open the file, only to realize… IT’S ALL OUTLINED.
OK… Don’t freak out! You won’t have to re-type all that text. I can show you how to re-text outlined text. It’s quite simple actually.
So you’re ready to hit the pavement running looking for a graphic designer job, but do you know how your design portfolio is going to stand up? A good resume will always make a great impression, but the reality is your portfolio is probably going to be reviewed first. With a portfolio that is designed to win jobs, you’re increasing your chances of getting your foot in the door for an interview.
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Lets face it. Design is borrowing. You can cry rules of balance and negative space all you want, but at the end of the day, it really is just borrowing. We take inspiration from one thing, and apply some of it to another. A very high level copy/paste if you will. Now, don’t pull your hair out Sally, let me explain.
Ideas are created from our experiences. The kid who dropped his churro in front of you. The dirty joke you got from that “inner circle” chain mail you “love”. The way the sun reflects on that flash drive sitting on your desk. All these random and seemingly disconnected stimuli gather in your brain for this super trippy electro-chemical fertility dance that somehow, by some act of what I can only describe as pure wizardry, birth an idea.
But there is a fine line between inspiration, and straight copying. And spare me the whole “ultimate form of flattery” crap. It ain’t flattering to see your design plastered all over a brand, especially when the lint in your pocket isn’t hanging out with a roll of cash. Being copied sucks. As creatives, we’ve got to have the common sense to know the difference between copying and drawing inspiration from something existing. Copying for the sake of riding the coat-tails of an idea that was highly successful is as smart as jumping on a trampoline – seems like a great idea until you’re flying head first to the ground from 15 feet in the air. I mean, how many “Got Milk?” inspired campaigns, (see Brand Strategy: Does it pay to be original?), or “iThings” can we really take until we realize “What the fuck!?”.
Get inspired. Go create. Be original.
As a creative director, a ton of resumes fly across my desk, some are awesome and some are OK, but then there is the vast majority that are straight up bad. If you are applying for a design job, your resume is your foot in the door. This thing needs to have fireworks and horns playing as the person opens it. Now, I don’t mean you need to go all crazy like the business card dude on YouTube, but do keep in mind that this is the decisive moment between getting and not getting the interview.
Your resume needs to not only make sense, but it needs to be designed for good legibility. The goal here is to have the reader go through the whole thing, or at least be able to skim the major points.
The following are a few tips to take into consideration when designing your resume. I will not go into detail as far as the content of your resume, but I do know that it has to make sense, and it needs to be succinct and relevant to the interviewer. For example, don’t put a Telemarketing Phone Attendant position if you are applying for a Graphic Design position.
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Creativity has a mind of its own. You can try to harness it by following rituals and lighting some incense, but at the end of the day, creative thought will come when it wants to. I don’t know what sparks it for me. Maybe someone has figured this out. It happens sometimes at the perfect moment, sometimes in situations that are soon followed by an awkward moment, and sometimes a little too late to make a difference.
I do know this. Never force creativity, because it will come back and kick you in the nuts. I laugh when clients ask me “how soon before you have something?” My answer is usually something along the lines of a vague time or an “I don’t know”. The “I don’t know” is rarely well received. I try never to force creativity. I will not say I’ve never tried to. Some things have come out of these. These forced ideas are usually the rejected ones. I do think that it is good practice to let all your ideas out, no matter how bad they are. If you let out the bad ideas, they make way for the good ideas. And thats what we all want, don’t we? That one good idea?
The smart thing to do is to get into a habit. For me it is turning on some music and getting knee deep into whatever problem I’m trying to solve. And by knee deep I mean research. Get so immersed in the subject matter and do so much research that eventually the solutions start surfacing, and as they do, I write them down.
Of course, some ideas don’t arrive as easy. Some problems are so tough that even brainstorming sessions don’t do much for them but waste a whole teams time. It’s that one problem you can’t figure out how to solve. That one problem that keeps you up at night. The one that makes your stomach fill with anxiety to the point where you can’t eat. The one that makes everyone become irritating, even your cute kid trying to cuddle. Get off of me! Why are you all so happy and jolly? I cant figure this thing out, can’t you see? What the fuck are you looking at? Then it happens. The moment every creative person looks for. It’s like that eight hundred pound silverback has stopped pummeling your stomach. Creative nirvana. You find the idea. An idea so grand, you can’t wait to tap that keg and call your colleagues at 3 a.m. The ONE (cue the choir of angels).
Okay, maybe it’s not that spiritual.
Remember that creativity should never be forced. Find a creative habit that works best for you, and capitalize on it. Budget yourself a reasonable amount of time to get the ideas you need, being mindful of your deadlines, and let creativity happen. It will come thru. It always does.
OK, so I’m back. It has been a minute since my previous blog post, but hey, we’ve got bills to pay. Although I love writing these, clients take precedence.
Enough of that. Today we are talking about optimizing our workflow. Now I am not going to go too deep into how you get your projects done and what kind or project management software you are using to manage your projects.
I want to get a bit more “low-level” with it if you catch my drift. Because it all starts with the basics. Your computer and how you interact with it. Read More
As we all know (hopefully), PDFs have become the standard in just about any field of presenting a digital document. It is cross platform and browser compatible, and it serves as a great tool for presenting a multi-page document, including websites. Of course, Acrobat is much more robust than this of course, with capabilities for form creation, interactive PDFs, video and audio, annotations, digital signatures and even capable of starting a meeting with a slideshow. Unfortunately, we will not being going that deep into Acrobat’s awesomeness, but rather stay with the basics. A PDF to send a file to press.
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At one point or another, we have all encountered this dreaded and nauseating error that Photoshop can lay on us at the last half hour of a sixteen hour work day (wait… don’t you work sixteen hour days?). The problem is that there is no real easy or reliable way to fix this error. There are some solutions out there like the PSD Extract/Repair plugin which lets you open your Photoshop file one layer at a time. This is extremely cumbersome and not always reliable, since with the corruption of the file also comes corrupted layers.
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Currently there is an overabundance of web designers out there that are extremely talented and can create some really cool stuff. But in my twelve years of experience designing for print, on both the Printer and Agency side of things, I have encountered multiple cases where people fall short in the delivery of their creative when it comes to print work, sometimes causing unnecessary charges from the printer to fix their mistakes. Add to that the fact that I have been approached by more than a few of my friends and colleagues with a “deer-in-headlights” demeanor when it comes to creating or delivering stuff for print.
For this, I have compiled a list of good practices and basic guidelines to ensure that your jobs are delivered efficiently. This is, of course, assuming that you are using InDesign as your final delivery vehicle (which I recommend) regardless of which application you used to design the piece.
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