Passion Projects (why every designer needs one)
A few months back a we brought a designer friend of mine, David Schwen (owner, DSchwen) into town to speak at our 99u event. He spoke about passion projects. His work is fun and goofy, but still clever and interesting. He has worked for companies like Target and Pepsi and has a few […]
See Type Differently (Conference Talk)
This past week I had the opportunity to speak to designers from the SEE/PRC at their annual conference. SEE is a professional association of communication directors, editors, graphic designers, and webmasters. Their members are employed by state affiliates of the National Education Association. Collectively, they serve more than 3.2 million public school and higher education employees. I spoke to this […]
Stay Relevant
It’s Good to Fail
The Myth of the Right-Brained Designer
If you are a designer, and someone were to ask you if you are right brained or left-brained, chances are that you would answer without hesitation, “right-brained”. Designers are marketed to and told that we are right brained. As a matter of fact, I remember a billboard for the art university I attended had a billboard […]
You Can Be Weird
The Who, What, Where, & Why of Networking
Who cares about networking, right? I mean, it’s just a bunch of schmoozing design snobs drinking and eating strange hors d’oeuvres and bragging about themselves. Who wants to be a part of that? Or maybe the thought of having to meet people you don’t know and talk about yourself just makes you cringe. Well, This […]
Type Matters
Creative Courage & Using Your Fears
So I talk about design on this blog, why would I talk about fear? No one is afraid of design right? Well, not exactly, but sort of. We may not be afraid that the Baskerville capital letter “G” is going to chase us down the street into a dark alley, but we are all afraid […]
Embrace Your Weird
When did weird become a bad thing? I grew up with parents who never discouraged my weirdness so I freely accepted who I was. In fact, when I was in high school I had a bumper sticker (from Hot Topic) that said, “when I grow up I wanna be like me”. I still feel this way now […]
What do graphic designers do and why is it important to EVERYONE?
Design can be a thankless job. It is also kind of an invisible job in a lot of ways. People don’t realize that it is all around them every day and even more than that, not many people consider that someone actually created all the design they use, see, and generally take for granted. So […]
Twelve Habits of a Happy Designer
I talked a few weeks ago about ways you can be sure to kill your design soul. It’s hard work being a designer these days so it’s really easy to focus on the negatives of what we do. But how can we be more content designers? There’s literally close to 100 things I could suggest […]
5 Secrets to Choosing Colors for Your Designs
So what’s so important about color choices? I mean, the trends change so regularly with Pantone releasing new color reports twice a year and choosing a special color to represent every year. So why can’t we just choose colors for our projects based on how we feel about them or based on the trends? […]
Sometimes Things Just Don’t Work (and that’s okay)
Today’s post was supposed to be about some very important things to consider when you’re choosing colors for your designs. Unfortunately, thanks to some unknown ghost in the machine that is my computer (and possibly the internet) most everything I wrote over the course of the past week has been lost. So it looks like […]
How to Use Music to Unlock Your Creativity
Music is my secret weapon in the arsenal of my creative process. As I am writing this post I have music playing in my headphones. My music choices vary dramatically based on what I am doing or where I am in the creative process. From organizing, to creating, to sending something off to the client, I […]
You Should Try to Use Paper
What difference does it make if you actually use paper or if you just start making stuff and fleshing out your ideas directly on the computer or on an app? Tons, trust me on this one.
4 Ways to Kill Your Soul as a Designer
Have you ever finished a project for a client and felt dirty? Not like “Man, I did a ton of pencil sketches and boy are my hands dirty!” More like you hand over the project, they pay you, and you feel used. Have you resented a client and start to think you hate doing design? In […]
Stop Making Excuses
Even after being in the world of graphic design for close to 15years, I still encounter things I don’t know about or don’t know how to do. If you are a student or if you’re new to the graphic design world you probably encounter it even more. When this happens, we all have three basic […]
Embrace Boundaries
If you’ve ever thought that boundaries were restricting, I would suggest you think about them differently. Check out today’s tip on my YouTube channel and see what I think about Boundaries. Thanks for joining me for another Design Tip Tuesday. I’ll see you next week!
Learn Color Theory
So maybe you think you’ve got color theory covered. You know the color wheel, right?…
Why You Should Care About Pantone Color Trends
The purpose of the colors is not just to set a trend. There is so much psychology behind colors and color theory; the reports are meant to represent the zeitgeist (spirit of the time) of the entire world.
Design Tip Tuesday is now on YouTube
Welcome to the future.. of Design Tip Tuesday that is. I’m so happy to announce that my weekly design tip will now be weekly videos available on my new YouTube channel.
Don’t Fall in Love with Your Ideas
The creative process is all about coming up with a ton of ideas, and realizing the most of them will probably not ever see the light of day, and we need to be okay with that. There’s a few reasons why we designers can tend to fall in love with our ideas. But why shouldn’t we?
Design problems don’t have ONE solution
I’ve been asked more times than I can count, “How do i know if i’m going the right direction with my design?” or “What if i chose the wrong idea to go with?” Designers are often more insecure about their design choices than they should be. There’s an infinite number of possibilities when we design […]
Let the Image Guide Your Type
If you are creating a design using photos as your primary backdrop, let the image give you a guide on where to place your type. You can create interesting compositions busing the space allowed by the photograph you are using.