typographasaurus

HI! Again sorry for taking so long to answer this question, my brain has been all over the place this month. 

I definitely know the fear that comes with seeing other people’s work, but keep in mind that everyone has to start somewhere. What you’re seeing (if you’re just looking at other people’s portfolios online) is that some of these people have been working with the tools for a lot longer or have a different background with design than you do and that’s okay! 

This is going back to my core advice for design is just:

research and copy styles you like you’ll learn a lot about design and the tools you’re working with by doing this! is this something you’ll put in a final portfolio? probably not, but you’ll get a feel for certain style choices as you do this and begin to develop your eye for design even further!!

but also to branch from this is another tip from writing to share with you: 

I always find I’m the worst at trying to explain how the design process happens for me because I’m such a mess?? It usually just comes down to how much information/specifics I need to cover and then spending 3 hours in a rabbit hole looking at design online and dumping resources into a folder/on my canvas. 

Right now I’m working on a prospective donor brochure for a local museum and their restoration of an old farmhouse and I was literally given a 5 page basic bare powerpoint presentation and three photos and then handed an example big information booklet and was told ‘make it like that’ with no other direction which was.....really fun lmao....  

So I opened up InDesign, organized the text into a couple different pages and cropped some of the images/color corrected them in PS to look better than a grainy cellphone photo and then had to go dig through the other material I’ve done for them in the past (information, more photos) and began dragging and dropping them into InDesign and just kept moving text around and repositioning/recropping photos until there was a layout that made sense to me and displayed the information in a way that makes sense. 

I think that’s really what’s important, but tough to conceptualize when you start with a design is just trying to figure out ‘okay what’s important to highlight here, what hierarchy makes sense, what shapes and colors match the clients brand but also is interesting enough to create something visually appealing?’ and working within those parameters. 

Another example was I was asked to help do an introduction ‘presentation’ for some of our freelancers who interact with us every day on a digital level but don’t know us personally. So I literally spent an hour searching different variations of ‘about me pages’ ‘about me presentations’ ‘biography page presentation’ ‘biography graphic pages’ and taking ideas from those image searches and mashing it with our company’s current brand and sprinkled in a little from an example template my coworker referenced that they had used many years previously (that looked absolutely awful, I might add xD) 

From that, I created a title page and an example page with an example bio of me and gave it to the coworker who requested it. (It’s currently sitting in my inbox being asked to pare it down and fit two people on one page instead of using one page for each person, which I have no idea how to do by keeping the same fun feel she loved from the ‘one page-one person’ version but  ¯\_(ツ)_/¯)

And overthinking and anxiety always sit with me while I’m working too... I always deal with it, by telling myself to do like five wildly different versions, and then the lazy part of me gives up by version 2 and I go back to version 1 and implement what I liked in the first 20% of version 2 and then tweak it until I’m like WELP GOOD ENOUGH, LET’S SEE WHAT THEY THINK and then let the client feedback guide me from there. 

ugh it’s so cliche but like bebas neue and brush script fonts always fuckin get me

ANYTHING WITH HIGH CONTRAST IS JUST *chefs kiss*

like a slab serif font and a thin sans serif font? excellent

serif fonts contrasted with the softness of thin cursive handwriting? fantastic

In like publications and stuff it should probably be more simple than that but ye just that high contrast of like thick serif headers and sans serif body text? stuff like that? excellent. 

ok actually tho i also get nervous about what i’m making and i create like 10 different versions of everything even if i only end up showing the client 2 versions

again i just say not everything has to have a reason! sometimes! it can just be because it looks good to you! trust your design sense! throw some shapes on the page. put some text in there. just make it not a blank page~

this is actually advice from another hobby i have, which is writing: 

you can’t edit a blank page

give yourself something to work with! start with the information you have to include in the design and just play with it until something catches your eye, drag things around, play with the sizing and shape of your design

does your business card have to be 2″x3″? what if it’s a square 3″x3″ or a circle? 

google is your best friend and just keep trying things you see from other designs until you find something that’s right even if that means you have to try 10, 20, 50, 100 different versions of your design! 

2/2 i’m always so scared b/c i dont how to start a project like i said but i think your advice will help to just copy things you like so you can develop a style for what you like & what you know looks good! i get scared to do random projects b/c in interviews i’m always scared they’re going to ask why did you do this way & i’m just like “idk i like the look of it” i feel like you have to have a reason for every decision made & it’s scary when you’re not smart & have no sense of good design

thank you!! it is super tough because design is something that’s so.... open to interpretation and therefore can be hard to teach/hard to learn. It’s not like math where it’s like ‘here are a one or two ways to find your solution and it’s correct and you can move on’

with design there’s A MILLION different ways to tackle things.

here are a few resources I was able to find that might help you!

pixel perfect precision

this is kind of more about UX/UI and website design but short and sweet and includes a lot of good principles are touched on here that can apply to any project!

graphic design basics 6th ed.

this is a TEXTBOOK textbook but cover some good stuff from flipping through it, from history to basic principles

basic designs: design thinking

this actually was a textbook for one of my courses once upon a time, it’s a little more graphically interesting to look at and scroll through... some of it’s a little bland but there’s some good stuff in there!

in your hypothetical about creating a flyer for a gym the first thing i’d start with is the pre-existing brand of the gym and what’s been done before and follow from there. what have previous flyers looked like? what are you advertising? what platform are you advertising on? will it be a print only flyer or something to be viewed on facebook for instance? if it’s print, is it going to be a fold out flyer? there’s so many places you can go with an existing brand.

if you’re starting a brand from scratch: that’s another beast. but even then you can start with: what do the competing gyms branding look like? what audience are you trying to reach? how is your brand going to stand out over other options your customer has?

you’re welcome to take a look through my portfolio! it hasn’t been updated in a hot minute but maybe it’ll help you build your own portfolio?

I RESONATE SO MUCH THOUGH WITH THE ‘why did you do it this way?’ ‘it looks good’ BECAUSE THAT’S HOW I DESIGN TOO!!

when you’re still learning, you don’t have to have an answer for everything! in fact, my answer for how to approach those kinds of questions: BULLSHIT ANSWERS. just make something up. learn design terms and look at your own work as if you’re an outsider and come up with reasons why you did something.

“I wanted to highlight this bit of information because I think this is an important message to communicate...” (i found this cool font and this bit of information stood out to me) or “I chose this color because it lends a certain energy to the brand...” (i just like that color and it looks good with the rest of the design) or “The hierarchy here leads your eye through the design...” (the layout just looked right to me)

i can’t tell you how many times i’ve been told i have a successful design and internally i’m like ‘cool i didn’t even think of that but yeah i guess it is successful because of that’ and there might be some truth to your bullshit answers! when you are forced to talk about your designs you realize subconsciously there are reasons why you do things.

maybe you’d find the rubber duck method that programmers useful to you! have a rubber duck (or whatever!) on your desk and as you make design decisions just explain them to the duck like you’re talking to a client and why this design is successful for their brand.

yeah no problem! I’m happy some of my rambling was helpful!

that is tough to find a starting point for teaching yourself the actual design part of graphic design... I think the programs I was in did some like color theory and graphic design basics like typography which were helpful in someways, but honestly I hardly ever touched my textbooks. 

(If you want a place to start with, try your local library and search for graphic design books, there are a lot out there! or instead of books, ditch lynda and byol--which are great for technical tutorials!--and just peruse youtube and find people who do design/art/layout kind of tutorials that are less technical and more about the actual design process! I don’t know if there’s many good resources like that out there, but it’s the internet, you can find lots of stuff! -- That being said, still be critical of all the design work you see or watch, hahah.) 

it’s kind of a tough question about whether or not you need to be creative to be a designer... I think in some aspects you do? but like i don’t see myself as like an artist since I’m not awesome at like traditional artwork? 

hi there!! blank pages are actually the worst and scare the heck out of me too!

it is tough to look at inspiration and not feel like ‘god i’m just copying this design’ but i would say COPY THOSE DESIGNS! copy them as an exercise! you’ll learn more about what your software can do if you’re trying to copy a design. Once you have a better understanding of your software I feel the crafting part of the design comes easier because it starts to take shape as I think about ‘oh I did this one technique on this project one time, i’m gonna do that here, but tweak it so it matches this’ 

on that note, set yourself some projects! SOME FUN PROJECTS. You mentioned your school didn’t teach you much. I was fortunate enough to go through two different design programs (a community college and then a four year online program) so the amount of design projects I ended up with at the end of my last degree was ridiculous. And they were really open with what we were able to do with our projects! A good chunk of my assignments ended up being fandom related because that’s what excited me. If that’s your jam create a publication you might see in world, create fan made posters. If it isn’t your jam, find something you’re passionate about. Like history? Create an infographic of your favorite time period or historic event. Space fascinates you? Make a magazine spread about your favorite moon of Jupiter. (No one’s reading it. You can use Lorem Ipsum as your text!) 

spend time researching similar spreads, infographics, posters etc. Open at least five of them that you like. Take layout from one, take color scheme from another, and frankenstein your design until you’re tweaking it to what you want the final design to look like! 

also spend your time looking through free resources and collecting stuff to help you along! suck at making patterns? download some cool stuff at vecteezy! not a photographer? find some beautiful free shots at pexels! 

I’ll leave ya with a quote one of my instructors told our class from designer Paul Rand: “Don't try to be original; just try to be good.”