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Tips for improving your online design portfolio. Buy Great Design Resources: http://bit.ly/1QniFxp Subscribe: http://bit.ly/1Rdrutp Follow Me on Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/mattborchert

This video goes over some simple tips on how to improve your online design portfolio. While some of these tips may seem to be very straightforward, it's important not to overlook any of the small things when you're trying to get a job.

This video also gives examples of a few excellent online portfolios that you can use as a general guide for best practices when creating your own portfolio.

Example Sites from the Video: http://nickskinarnia.dribbble.com/ http://ollymoss.com/ http://turnislefthome.com/ http://studio.telegramme.co.uk/

Free Portfolio Sites: https://www.behance.net/ https://cargocollective.com/

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How to pick the best laptop for your design work. Buy Great Design Resources: http://bit.ly/1QniFxp Subscribe: http://bit.ly/1Rdrutp Follow Me on Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/mattborchert

This video covers how you can pick the best laptop for you for whatever your design goals may be.

Whether it be an Apple Macbook Pro, an Asus Zenbook Pro, Dell XPS, or whatever else you decide on, picking hardware that matches your personal needs as well as your budget is an important thing to consider.

I go through what many of the common specifications are for laptops to hopefully help you become more informed when reading about the different laptops out there and making the best choice for you.

Ultimately great designers make great designs regardless of the hardware that they are using. Picking the perfect specialized laptop for you is more the icing on the cake to help you work faster. Apple or Windows operating systems won't make you great, and I don't want this video to be about that discussion.

Apple's Laptop Lineup: http://www.apple.com/shop/buy-mac/macbook-pro Asus Zenbook Pro: http://store.asus.com/us/item/201604AM060000092/A26128-ASUS+ZENBOOK+Pro+UX501VW-XS74T+Intel+i7+16GB+512GB+SSD+GTX+960M+Touchscreen+Windows+10+Pro+Laptop Microsoft Surface: https://www.microsoftstore.com/store/msusa/en_US/pdp/Surface-Book-with-Performance-Base/productID.5074012200?icid=Surface_Cat_ModB_NEWSurfaceBook_31117 Cheaper Asus Laptop: http://store.asus.com/us/item/201701AM130000002/A17602-ASUS+VivoBook+Pro+N552VW-DS79+15.6%E2%80%9D+4K+UHD+Intel%C2%AE+Core%E2%84%A2+i7-6700HQ+2.6+GHz+8GB+DDR4+NVIDIA+GTX+960M+1TB+HDD+Windows+10

Have any additional questions? Feel free to toss them into the comments section! :)

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How to load brushes in Adobe Illustrator Tutorial Buy Great Design Resources: http://bit.ly/1QniFxp Subscribe: http://bit.ly/1Rdrutp Follow Me on Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/mattborchert

This tutorial is perfect for beginners as it goes over how to load brushes (or pretty much anything else) inside Adobe Illustrator.

Using new Illustrator brushes can totally change the way your work looks, and the impacts of using different brushes can be huge for beginners and super advanced users alike.

Have any additional questions or comments? Feel free to leave them below! :)

(via https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Xlh4EUjwD4)

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Elsie Font: https://www.fontsquirrel.com/fonts/elsie

This tutorial for Adobe Illustrator goes over how to create sliced text using the pathfinder window. This effect is actually pretty darn easy to create once you know how to do it, and the end result can add quite a bit of visual flair to your typography project.

This video covers creating the line to cut your text with, using divide in the pathfinder window to cut the text, different methods for stylizing and working with your type, and how to fine tune the finishing touches.

I try not to skip over any of the major parts of creating this effect to hopefully make this Adobe Illustrator tutorial beginner friendly.

Have any additional questions or comments? Feel free to leave them below! :)

(via https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uCb18wT8V-I)

Free 30 Day Illustrator Trial: http://bit.ly/mb-illustrator-trial Buy Great Design Resources: http://bit.ly/1QniFxp

Monoton Font: https://www.fontsquirrel.com/fonts/monoton Arvo Font: https://www.fontsquirrel.com/fonts/arvo

This tutorial for Adobe Illustrator goes over how to create a retro inspired 3D type piece using the appearance window. The appearance window allows you to easily create awesome 3D extrudes in a way that allows the type to still be fully live and able to be further changed and customized.

I also go over things such as using swatches to add colors, and adjusting the miter join limits inside of Illustrator to prevent strange distortions from happening on certain parts of fonts.

I try not to skip over any of the major parts of creating this effect to hopefully make this Adobe Illustrator tutorial beginner friendly.

Have any additional questions or comments? Feel free to leave them below! :)

(via https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GCm23NDIxF8)

Free 30 Day Illustrator Trial: http://bit.ly/mb-illustrator-trial Buy Great Design Resources: http://bit.ly/1QniFxp Passion One Fonts: https://www.fontsquirrel.com/fonts/passion-one

This tutorial for Adobe Illustrator goes over how to create screenprinting style overprints. Overprints are traditionally used as a way to save the use of an additional cover when using ink based printing methods, but they can also create some really powerful and interesting visual effects.

This video covers using the appearance window inside Illustrator to make that happen, as well as covering some of the built in swatches that work great for this effect, and some potential color interactions that you can make happen.

Questions or comments? Feel free to leave them below! :)

(via https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DGsblCMIp1w)

Free 30 Day Illustrator Trial: http://bit.ly/mb-illustrator-trial Buy Great Design Resources: http://bit.ly/1QniFxp

This tutorial for Adobe Illustrator goes over how to scale patterns in order to make the actual pattern larger or smaller to best fit your project.

You may have noticed that when you try to scale an object in Illustrator that has a pattern inside of it, the object will typically get larger or smaller, but the pattern itself will stay the same size. This tutorial shows how to fix that problem.

This video also covers how to access and use the different pattern libraries in Adobe Illustrator - some of which are super useful.

Questions or comments? Feel free to leave them below! :)

(via https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DErqXzQ3Qkw)

Free 30 Day Photoshop Trial: http://bit.ly/mb-photoshop-trial Buy Great Design Resources: http://bit.ly/1QniFxp Subscribe: http://bit.ly/1Rdrutp

Brick Wall Photo: https://unsplash.com/search/brick-wall?photo=sX4lxBWV0-A Einstein Grafitti Photo: https://unsplash.com/search/einstein?photo=PoD5OldJQMQ Lobster Font: https://www.fontsquirrel.com/fonts/lobster

This Photoshop tutorial goes over how to use displacement maps in quite a bit of depth.

Creating displacement maps is a fairly easy process, but the really fun part is really diving in and playing around with different blending modes, creating custom layer masks to refine the appearance of the displacement maps, and making sure that your work looks as good as it can on the surface in question.

This video covers a ton of Adobe Photoshop tips and tricks all in one, so hopefully it will be as useful to people who are new to Photoshop as it is to people who are veterans.

Fun fact: My cat attacked me several times during the recording of this video.

Have any additional questions? Feel free to ask in the comments section!

(via https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yH2L_d3E-tk) Buy Great Design Resources: http://bit.ly/1QniFxp Follow Me on Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/mattborchert

This video goes over a method for customizing and refining fonts in order to personalize them a bit more to you and your style.This video is a little bit long, but it covers a diverse amount of Illustrator tips ranging from using layers, brushes, the pen tool, and general theories for how to approach customizing type. 

I did my best not to skip over how to specifically do anything in order to make this fairly beginner friendly. I do suggest watching the below pen tool tutorials before doing this video if you are unfamiliar with the pen tool.

Pacifico Font: https://www.fontsquirrel.com/fonts/pacifico Pen Tool Tutorial (Easy Overview): https://youtu.be/0B_IQK7hMo0 Pen Tool Tutorial (Professional Way): https://youtu.be/vpOCt6k7Oqg

The tutorial also covers ways inside Adobe Illustrator to tweak and refine free fonts that are often a little bit rough and need some extra attention. When quality fonts are available for free, often times they are used quite a lot and as such can make any project that picks them feel a little bit generic. This method is a great way to get around that by allowing you to take some stylistic control over what the final result will look like.

(via https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gzQJ-hwxLgA)

Automatically save multiple images from a single file in Photoshop. Subscribe: http://bit.ly/1Rdrutp Buy Great Design Resources: http://bit.ly/1QniFxp

This Photoshop tutorial is a huge time saver because it shows you how you can easily and automatically save several different images from a single Photoshop file.

This tool to do this is called Generate Image Assets. It's easy to use and built into Photoshop!

This is super useful for creating a multitude of differently sized assets with a single common background image for something like an online ad campaign. This method allows you to save your files out as .jpg .png and .gif which makes it primarily awesome for web uses.

Have any questions? Feel free to ask in the comments section!

(via https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e7eD5Ct5toI)

Sometimes creating simple rules can help fuel your designs. Subscribe: http://bit.ly/1Rdrutp Buy Great Design Resources: http://bit.ly/1QniFxp

This video is something a little bit different because it's all about creating simple rule sets to actually help give order and structure to your designs which in turn helps fuel new creative ideas.

Sometimes when faced with a problem with no real constraints it can be very difficult to focus down and figure out ways to solve for the problem at hand. By creating simple rule sets to how you approach a problem you can then start to figure out specific solutions much quicker and easier because you're able to approach a problem in a brand new way.

I personally find this way of working to be super helpful, but let me know your thoughts in the comments section!

(via https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sT6os-KPFtE)

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Aller Display Font: https://www.fontsquirrel.com/fonts/Aller

This tutorial covers how to make the popular "speed line" effect inside Adobe Illustrator. This video covers both how to actually crate the lines in a seamless way that blends well with the text or illustration you add them too, and also covers some basics over how to create them in a way that looks good.

Overall the process is fairly straightforward once you have the basics of creating the lines down, and the end result leaves a lot of room to style them to your personal preference. Plus going through this tutorial you'll hopefully learn some other cool tips and tricks to help with your workflow as an added bonus.

Any questions? Feel free to leave them in the comments section - and leave in any images that you've created using this method as well!

(via https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wYgim_y3TJ0)

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This tutorial covers a brand new feature in Adobe Photoshop CC 2015.5 and it's a pretty awesome time saver!

The Match Font feature allows you to highlight a section of type inside Photoshop, and then Photoshop will automatically attempt to find a close match of it for you to use in your projects.

This feature is very similar to the well known (and often ineffective) WhatTheFont! feature on MyFonts. The cool thing about this is you can do it all inside your Photoshop workflow and actually preview that font in your project in real time. Anything that saves a little bit of time inside Photoshop is a huge thumbs up from me!

Have questions or comments? Be sure to leave comments on this video. :)

(via https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tG9y5oyPnK8)

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This tutorial goes over how to add colorful noise overlays to photos (or designs and illustrations) inside Adobe Photoshop.

Also be sure to watch the final part that goes over how to create noise gradients. These have a really unique look and I actually figured out how to make them shortly before making the video.

This method of adding noise overlays to images is a great way to make photos match the color theme of your designs or to knock down complex photos to make them a little bit less busy if you want to do something like add text on top.

Have questions or comments? Be sure to leave comments on this video. :)

(via https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=njuqCfXWQAE)

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This video goes over how to make a honeycomb photo grid (hexagon grid) inside Adobe Illustrator. This video also swaps between Photoshop and Illustrator to give two different ways to handle the masking of your photos once the initial grid has been made.

The Illustrator tutorial begins by showing how to make a honeycomb photo grid out of hexagon shapes, and also shows an easy way to make sure everything is evenly spaced before you start masking in your photos.

Once the grid building part of the tutorial is complete the video covers an easy way to layer your final product inside Illustrator and then export it to Photoshop in a way that preserves the layers to make it super easy to mask up everything inside Photoshop.

The whole process is fairly straightforward and the end result is super versatile in terms of the potential uses.

Hopefully it was helpful and if you have any additional questions feel free to ask in the comments section.

(via https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AA0SlyhWvzs)

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Touch Type Tool Tutorial: https://youtu.be/BtgV_chqplk

This tutorial covers the basics of using the character panel inside Adobe Illustrator. The character panel has tools for basically everything you need to do to your type in Illustrator including changing the size, weight, tracking, kerning, leading, baselines, and much more!

This tutorial is aimed at beginners, but hopefully it also has some additional tips that some more advanced users can get some use out of.

(via https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LsMh2xlD7Ao)

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https://www.fontsquirrel.com/ https://www.google.com/fonts https://creativemarket.com/free-goods?u=mattborchert https://www.theleagueofmoveabletype.com/ http://www.losttype.com/browse/ http://www.fontfabric.com/category/free/

This video covers 6 awesome spots to grab free commercial use fonts - at least in most of the examples.

When you're working on a project and everything is feeling good except the fonts you're using, that's when you'll find yourself wishing that you had a bigger font selection to pick from, or knew a few extra spots to grab some sweet free spots. This way you're totally covered! :)

Most of the examples linked above are free for commercial use, but always check out that font's specific licensing before using a font on a paid commercial project. Better safe than sorry! Nevertheless the above links will give you hundreds (if not thousands) of free fonts to check out so start looking and find all your favorites.

Also feel free to link your favorite spots in the comments below, just don't link any piracy websites or other questionable sources or I'll have to remove your comment. I like to see people who work hard on making fonts get paid for them (when they choose to sell them anyways!).