Articles Written for my First year FMP
Welcome to the Autumn 2017 issue of Digitally Creative, a magazine designed to inspire and guide young designers on their journey in this digitally creative world. Digitally Creative is a seasonal magazine which focuses on one design aspect for each issue, with high quality information – making sure you get your money's worth.
In this issue the focus has been put on image manipulation, a key skill that every designer needs to improve upon in order to produce their best work. As every good designer knows and quickly learns, there is always room for improvement so, this issue is filled with tips and tricks that you can apply to your own projects.
Here at Digitally Creative, we pride ourselves in having a great relationship with you, our prized audience, so we jumped on the band-wagon and created an Instagram account. I know right, we’ve become the cool kids! To keep up to date with the forthcoming publication details and to see some extra witty content find us on Instagram, Twitter or check out our website. Do so quickly and quietly, this is purely hush, hush, between you and us. Our secret!
7 do’s for a good portfolio - (design page like a checklist?)
1. Start strong, end strong. People remember best what was first and last in a sequence so select only your best work, what you’re proud of. Think are you showing too much or not enough?
2. Get feedback on portfolio - ask friends/peers, family, professors, anybody and everybody.
3. Continue updating your portfolio, don’t just forget about it. People want to know you’re still working on it and improving your skills. Include personal projects, it shows that you’re not just tied to businesses and that you can problem solve without a companies feedback.
4. Add context to your visuals, what would the viewer want to know about the visual? What time frame did you have? Was the client happy? What was the brief? Don’t just have the finished product include visuals of planning, this will show potential clients that thought went into the projects and they weren’t rushed or half-assed.
5. Check out what other people have done with their portfolio’s, get inspired.
6. Include a small bio or a CV or even a cover letter. Show your face, it will build trust between you and the potential client.
7. Navigation should be simple and don’t make your contact details hard to find. Remember to make sure your contact details are appropriate and professional.
Why Criticism Is Your Best Friend
First things first, if you're only becoming a designer for the money, you are in the wrong place. Being a designer and getting paid the big bucks is no easy feat. It takes loads of energy, a lot of hard work and a few truckloads of patience.
In this world, criticism is going to be your best friend especially if it comes from someone you have respect for. As lovely as praise is, it can’t show you where your weak points are, it can’t teach you or motivate you to improve, however, constructive criticism can. A lesson you need to learn and live by is that no matter how good you are, there will always be room to improve. You really will learn something new everyday. When you're starting out it's unlikely that you will know many people in the business but this is the perfect time to reach out and get some contacts. Every designer has been in your position before, so most would gladly help out and offer some constructive criticism although, you don't need to ask other designers, family and friends will be good enough.
While talking about criticism it's important to note that there is a difference between constructive criticism (the criticism that you want) and plain criticism. Constructive criticism is exactly as it sounds, it is beneficial to those who are looking to improve themselves and their skill sets. However, you need to be able to find a balance between listening to feedback and developing your style. If you know you have something unique that would work in your favour then keep at it, sooner or later other people will acknowledge it as well.
We asked Mollie Quirk, a semi-professional designer who is also an undergraduate about constructive criticism. Here are her thoughts.
Q1. How and where would you suggest a young designer start looking for constructive criticism?
A1. Any young designer should if at college or university, ask for constructive criticism from their tutors first and then they should explore the general public's' views and perceptions of their work. Holding focus groups with the general public or target demographic would be a good way to obtain peoples' thoughts on the designs. Another great way to showcase your work and obtain feedback would be to start an online portfolio in the form of a blog, Pinterest board, Instagram page or website.
Q2. Why has seeking constructive criticism been important to you as someone who has had a huge role in creating a successful publication?
A2. When producing a successful publication such as Tag 2017, constructive criticism is incredibly important, especially when producing such an impactful product for a specific target demographic. Holding focus groups and sending out questionnaires regarding the designs within the magazine, both before production, during production and post-production, really helped us to gain an understanding as to where we were going right and where we were going wrong. An example of this would be when the front cover was in the early stages of being designed, many people thought that it was "too girly" and "feminine" due to the mauve typography, so we made the decision to change this from mauve to white, so that it appealed to a wider section of our target demographic.
Q3. How did you feel about receiving criticism on your work the first time compared to now?
A3.When I first submitted some designs at college, my tutor gave me some great feedback and pointers, some of which I still remember to use to this day! I find it to be incredibly insightful and extremely helpful, especially when the comments give me pointers as to where I went wrong and how I can improve specific aspects of my work.
5 Things You Need To Know: Before Starting A Graphic Design Business
It's never easy to start a business of any sort, so here is some advice you're going to need if you want your own graphic design business.
Right off the bat, you're going to need a good portfolio. Graphic designers are typically expected to be able to design a wide variety of marketing media types so be sure to add some of the following examples to your portfolio: business cards, stationery, logos, typography , certificates, menus, invitations, response slips, print advertisement, and branding/packaging designs. It will also do you good to show that you can design the layout of web pages and website banners. Clients are more likely to come to you if they know you’ve done work outside of personal projects, so you should consider pro-bono work and take some up when you can.
Create an account on LinkedIn, it’s an effective platform for networking with clients and fellow designers. Go to events, talk to people and make a good impression. First impressions are everything. Be courteous, ask questions, make small talk. When talking about yourself, remain modest, do not, oversell yourself. As well as talking to people, give them your business card, it’ll show that you’re serious and in return accept business cards you get offered. You can follow up with them on social media, these small acts can lead to big things like a collaboration, mentorship and maybe even a long-term partnership.
You need to think carefully about what aspect of design you can do best. It’s going to become your niche because realistically you’re not going to be able to cover all aspects of graphic design. Keeping facts about your target audience in mind will help you. You should be reminding yourself constantly of who your audience are, what they need and what their budget is like.
As a student or a recent graduate, finance is going to be your biggest problem. However, if you have recently graduated then there are usually a variety of government-backed schemes designed to help you start your own business. Of course, it’ll be best if you research what you need to do/have in order to be eligible well in advance before applying.
It will be beneficial to research local design businesses, especially if they have a similar target audience as you. You should check how much they charge, and allow that to influence your own price list for your services. However, what you have to decide yourself is how you’re going to charge your clients. Are you going to charge an hourly rate or a project rate? Naturally, both have their pros and cons. Quick jobs are best for a set project rate whereas, long-term jobs are usually better suited for an hourly charge. Perhaps think about mixing the pricing, quite a few freelancers do this. Two other things you should check when researching your competitors is whether or not they have financial incentives such as a discount for loyal customers and how, where and when do they advertise. Take notes because if your advertisement isn’t sufficient then you’re not going to have many, if any, clients. Regularly check on your competitors as it’s a good business tactic; efficient businesses frequently do this to refine their strategy ensuring the best service for their clients.
About Photoshop Actions where, how
For Graphic Designers and Photographers, Photoshop Actions are a great time-saving tool. Photoshop Actions come in the ATN. format, meaning that they cannot only be opened on the computer that recorded them but also any computer that downloads the file. Photoshop Actions are a compilation of steps in Adobe Photoshop that have been recorded by their creator so that they can be reapplied to different images again and again; as a shortcut. Because Actions are a time-saver they speed up your workflow and make things easier for novices by encouraging them to learn from people with expertise instead of becoming frustrated trying to do it all by themselves. With Photoshop Actions you can even look through the steps to see what the designer did when creating the action and learn for yourself how to recreate the action independently.
To find Photoshop Actions you need not look much further than here, here I will share with you a few sites where you can find Actions. When choosing which Actions to download you should be aware that you’ll often need to purchase them, but that’s okay it’ll be worth it in the long run. Besides a Google search, you can find links to great Actions on Pinterest.com. Some of those links may be to the following sites: Creativemarket.com, Graphicriver.net, Creativebloq.com and even on Deviantart.com.
Installing Photoshop Actions is a pretty simple process although, it can be daunting if you’ve never used an Action before, for example, when you download an action it won’t be in the ATN format, instead it’ll be in a ZIP file which you’ll first need to open. When you’ve opened it the action will appear in the correct format which you’ll then need to load into Photoshop. To do this you can just go to your Actions panel in the software where you can select ‘Load Actions’ from the option box in the top right corner.
Here is an example of a Photoshop Action, you can find this Animation Glitch Action on Graphicriver.net.
First, load an image as you normally would. To test the action it would be best to use a small square image, we recommend 600x600 pixels. For the action to work the image must be square, the original background layer, in RGB colour mode and 8 bits/channel. Another thing you need to do is make sure that the checkbox ‘‘add “copy” to Copied Layers and Groups’ in Panel Options is checked.
Since this is an animation action, you’ll need to open a timeline. Now that, that’s done, you can select which action you want to use; in this case, the ‘Animated Glitch’, then just click the play button to apply the action.
Once the action has finished applying itself, a ‘Render Complete’ message should appear.
Next, you need to export it, although when opening the export Dropbox you need to select ‘Render Video’. After that, you can just choose where you want it to be saved like normal.
The Light Leaker Action that is shown below is from a ‘Vintage Pack’ that was found on Brusheezy.com, which also came with a few ‘Retro’ filters (shown below).
