The Simplest Way to Work Through A Design

            Sometimes starting a project is the hardest part, especially when we have no idea what the final product is going to look like. Having no requirements or restraints can make a designer feel completely lost. This happens to me way too often. I cannot seem to find a creative thought in my mind and there are no requirements in place to push me in any starting direction, yet I still have a deadline to meet.

            The first thing I do when given a project with very little information is scroll through Pinterest. Let’s use invites for a Halloween party for example. I would type “Halloween invite” into the search bar to find a slew of cute and unique invites show up on the screen. I start scrolling to find two or three that I like and when I do I figure out which elements I like about each.

            Now that I have a basic idea of what I want my invite to look like, I can pull up an Illustrator artboard and start designing. I can draw out the elements I want from one card and a couple from another, while also playing with the fonts and layout.

            The biggest part to remember when looking for inspiration, is to know that what we design does not have to look like the perfect Pinterest picture because it is real and our own. The images we see on websites like Pinterest seem to shift towards the trends. Today, that means cute yet simple and modern. Not everyone’s style is the same, but we should always stick to our own individual style as designers. Coming up with ideas is hard when being creative sounds like the hardest task in the world. So do not be afraid to look to others for inspiration, just do not lose yourself in the process.

How Volleyball Posters Gave Me A Year-Round Job

This past August I was asked by the 2022 senior class volleyball players at my old high school to make their senior sports posters. This was meant to just be for the girls. They knew the teacher who had been doing them in recent years was not very good at them and they also knew I have the skills to make a great poster. They just wanted great posters and I just needed the money. Little did I know I’d end up doing posters for all of fall sports and the seasons to come.

The girls had their pictures taken and sent my way. I spent three hours one Sunday afternoon getting the basic design of the poster down. It was unique, but still gave the intense feel that a sports poster needs to give. Once I got the design down, I sent just one for the girls to look at. They loved it.

The next step was sending it to the administration to get approved so all ten posters could be hung on the gym wall. I emailed the athletic director the poster and he loved it to. He asked me if I would be willing to do posters for football, cross country, band, and cheer for the fall season and I said yes. I had just agreed to designing over 50 posters and he said if they were done well, I can do them for the rest of the school year for every other sport.

Just through knowing the right people, I managed to land a designing job receiving nearly 500 dollars every three months. This may not seem like a ton of money, but it’s not my main job. It’s a job to get a little extra money on the side as a broke college student.

So from now on I will continue to know the right people, share my work, and take any small opportunities that come my way. Who knows what the possibilities can be?

The Simplest Design Trends of 2021

With a new generation coming into the workforce came many new trends of catching people’s eyes. The year 2021 has seen many new artistic styles being used in digital media. Brands like Burger King, Fisher-Price, and even Adobe Creative Cloud have rebranded over the past year, along with so many others. The “modernizing” of logos includes a more retro yet simplistic style.

One of the biggest design trends we have seen this past year has been empty lines. This trend includes organic shapes without an outline and often just enough detail. It lacks the details that can be unnecessary in the design. The empty line trend typically contains bright contrasting colors.

The empty line trend leads itself right into color blocking. Color blocking has been a massive trend not only in the digital design industry, but also the fashion industry. To achieve a good color blocked design, one simply needs a good understanding of color theory and the color wheel. The use of analogous, complementary, or even triadic color schemes makes color blocking a simple and easily accomplishable design trend. Therefore, many brands have used it to their advantage.

These are just the most prominent design trends we have seen over the year of 2021. Color blocking and empty lines are often used together as brands go back to their old logos with a modern twist. The design trends with always be changing, but these simple ones are here to stay.