1
Online Courses

LETTERING + GRAPHIC
DESIGN LEARNING

logo
mobile-logo
HomePosts Tagged "advice"

advice Tag

Personal, Resources, Roundups

We have ALL been there. Days, weeks, or projects where there’s just nothing to grip onto upstairs. You scour the internet for inspiration, create mind maps and doodle out ideas, but find them all predictable; maybe even a little cliché. You start to question if creativity will ever locate you again, or worse – whether you ever had it to begin with. Oh, and this helpless feeling of creative block always happens at *the* worst possible time. Because it just wouldn’t make sense otherwise. Obviously.

So what can you do? Read on for 5 tips Spence and I have relied on throughout our creative careers to lift ourselves out of that inevitable rut.

Continue reading
5 Comments
Courses, Hand Lettering, Personal

2016 was a really intense work year for both Spence and I. I sat in front of my computer more than I didn’t, but it led to a lot of self growth which I’m immensely thankful for. While I hope (and plan!) to pull myself away from my desk more this year, I wanted to share the ways I hit my design + lettering goals in 2016 and steps I’ll take in 2017. I hope this can be a motivator if you’re just digging into lettering or graphic design, but you aren’t quite sure where to begin.

Continue reading
28 Comments
Personal

Ever battled self doubt as a graphic designer or as a creative in general? I’m going to go ahead and assume the answer is yes to that one 😉 It’s definitely one of the most common emotions we go through on our creative journeys, though when we’re in the thick of it, it’s easy to feel like we’re the only ones. If you’ve ever thought about throwing in the towel, wondered if this is the right path, or thought that maybe you just aren’t creative enough to keep chasing the dream, this post is for you.

Continue reading
93 Comments
Hand Lettering, Resources, Roundups, Typography

This coming Monday, I’ll be publishing my next Skillshare class, Lettering Layouts. Since we went over typing on a path in Illustrator on Tuesday, I thought it’d be fun to mix the concept of custom baselines with purely typographic layouts. The results are pretty incredible and can for sure seem intimidating to try yourself. This week, on top of a roundup of 6 stunning typographic layouts, I’m breaking each layout down. By doing this, it’s far easier to see how each layout was achieved and how you can begin incorporating similar methods, techniques and design elements into your own layouts moving forward. If you’ll be joining me in Monday’s class, this post is a big head start. Read on for more!

Continue reading
6 Comments
Branding, Resources, Roundups

In Full Time Graphic Design, we go over how a self promotion (a small sendable/gift or leave behind to briefly show the quality and style of your work) can take you far with influencing a potential employer to set up an interview or even get you hired. When I started my very first job out of college, on my very first day of work, the COO stopped by my desk, complimented my work and said he still had the promo I handed them at the job fair I attended months earlier (you can see the self promo I made in this video). So yea, definitely a powerful tool if you can fit it into your budget!

If creating a self promo is something you’re interested in, this week I wanted to share 5 unique and inspiring self promos that all work in different ways to get a designer’s style, skills and personality across quickly to the right person. Along with each piece, I’ve also included a tip to help your own self promos along. See them all below and click on any image to be brought to its source!

Continue reading
0 Comments
Business, Resources, Tutorials

Welcome to the 3rd and final part of the Every-Tuesday Tips + Advice Portfolio Series! Over the last couple of weeks, we went over choosing the right work for your portfolio, what to include for each project and how to order all of your projects together. Now that you have a solid body of work to show, it can be overwhelming figuring out how to get it all noticed.

In this week’s video, I take you through a few easy steps to get you on your way, as well as sharing how I got my own work noticed when I was just starting out. For a more in depth look and actionable step-by-steps, check out Full Time Graphic Design where my ebook on getting a job just launched! Part 3 video below!

Continue reading
4 Comments
Business, Products, Resources

Today is a pretty gigantic day over here at every-tuesday. After 6 months in the making (and an entire last week on very little sleep), I’m excited to announce the Full Time Graphic Design ebook is finally available! This was a big project – the ebook itself is 74 pages long, and there are countless bonuses (even one including a full portfolio review + evaluation by me personally!).

What started as a basic guide evolved into a deep dive with little clips of my own experiences, from being hired – and hiring – and super specific tips (like the exact days and times which are best to send a cold email). Once I got going, I couldn’t stop myself from thinking of more and more little nuggets I had to include 🙂 Check out all the details here, and a full outline below!

Continue reading
2 Comments
Business, Tutorials

Welcome to week 2 of the Every-Tuesday graphic design portfolio tips + advice series! Last week, we went over how to select the right projects to include in your portfolio based on your personal skillset strengths. This week, we’ll go over proper formatting for your projects, how many projects to include in your portfolio and what order to put them in to leave a memorable impression on an interviewer. These tips will contribute to graphic design portfolio best practices that you’ll be able to apply to your portfolio – no matter how much it changes – over the course of your career.

The Full Time Graphic Design ebook is less than a week away from being available! You’ll want to pick up your free portfolio project checklist to accompany this week’s video here and you’ll automatically be put on a list to be notified when the ebook (packed with tips + advice for getting a full time graphic design job) goes live 🙂

Continue reading
6 Comments
Business, Tutorials

Last week, I mentioned a new portfolio tips + advice series starting today and leading up to an ebook being released later this month called Full Time Graphic Design. In this week’s video, we’ll walk through how to pick out the right design projects to put in your portfolio and craft it in a way that highlights your strengths as a designer and sets you up for an interview with intention, rather than a general collection of work that spans every discipline of graphic design. Choosing the right work for your portfolio will play a pivotal role in not only reaching out to potential employers to land an interview, but for the interview itself. Watch below to see all of my tips!

Continue reading
5 Comments
Business, Personal

If you’re an every-tuesday email subscriber, you’re already aware my ebook on tips and advice for obtaining a full time graphic design job will become officially available later this month. In preparation of its launch, I wanted to dedicate this month’s Tuesdays to sharing portfolio tips I’ve learned from my own experiences in a free portfolio tips video series. The first video will be next Tuesday’s post, but this week, I wanted to start things off by sharing my own graphic design story.

I’ve had a few comments and emails asking how I got started, how I knew graphic design was the right major for me, and what I would tell people who might be on the fence about a career in graphic design (and if jobs are available for graphic designers) today. I sat down in front of my computer in a very non-typical/non-screen-only recording this week to answer all of those, so it could be like we were sitting down together, just having a conversation as friends. So here it is, from beginning to now, along with some tips I picked up on the way 🙂

Continue reading
9 Comments
Tutorials, Web Design

So let’s talk about websites. As graphic designers – talking primarily print here – we spend a lot of time making really beautiful art that can be hung on walls, printed in magazines, embroidered on polos, or foil stamped on business cards. We make a lot of work in a digital age for a lot of analog applications. For a print designer, getting our work online always seemed like a necessary evil; and a popular necessary evil at that- so much so that Behance did something about it for us. So did Squarespace. Dribbble didn’t try to be, but has become an uncanny solution, too. And those are great for portfolios, but what if you don’t need just a portfolio? What if you want to bedazzle a potential employer with something other than the 20th Behance link they’ve seen today? What if you want a blog, an ecommerce shop to sell your sweet designs, or what if your mom called in a favor for you to make a website for your great aunt Sue’s cake business? We might not be programmers or considered web designers, but we’re smart enough to know we have options. Cue in WordPress: one solution for everything. This is the first video in what will become (what I’m predicting will be) a 3 part video series on how to get your own kick ass wordpress website up from start to finish. This first video goes over everything to look for when picking out the right wordpress website theme for your purpose (be it a blog, ecommerce, portfolio, etc). Read on for all of the tips + tricks I use when getting started.

Continue reading
7 Comments
Roundups, Web Design

I’m preparing to update/redo my entire portfolio site, so I’ve been on the hunt for the perfect theme for quite awhile now. The problem is, so many themes I come across are full of flashy parallax driven gimmicks. Don’t get me wrong; an unexpected smooth moving parallax effect still gives me the ooo’s and ahh’s, but it’s been tough finding ‘the one’ that doesn’t completely overdo it for me. I don’t think it’s that I’m too picky, I actually think it’s because with all of the options to get funky, it’s harder to get simple.

Continue reading
2 Comments
GDPR Icon

Your Privacy Matters

We use cookies to customize and create content that’s most important to you. We’ll never share the info we collect.

View Privacy Policy
Got it