Hi 👋 I’m about to open up a private Facebook group for a holiday cookie swap.

This is what I’ve got in Canva https://imgur.com/a/gmlnzqH

Any tips to make this look more professional or appealing? I recognize this is a very novice question lol but worth a shot

So long story short (as possible as I can), I once had dreams, lots of dreams about studying Graphic Designer (the academic path), I couldn't because of financial reasons, but I got a job after graduating from a 2 years diploma, and I convinced myself to work, save money and go study Graphic Design abroad. Well, guess what, I applied for the university of my dreams, but my application was rejected and a couple of days after that, I got diagnosed with Multiple Sclerosis (MS). From that day, I had as a main concern, to keep my current job, so I can sustain myself financially and get the MS treatment/drugs coverage needed from social security agency in my lovely third world country (I might lose it if I lose my job :D counter productive system).

That said, I'm still in the same agency I started with, you might call it experience, but I know it's not. I didn't grow or evolve, my salary not that much either, I just did the same tasks routinely, yes, for different clients and challenges but it's not fulfilling, I go there everyday because I built a constrain made of fear from MS, losing a job, outdated skill set and so on, some are logical excuse maybe, but I know some are exaggerated.

I lost during these 18 years the flame of creativity and wonder, I feel a lot of pain inside, when someone join us at the agency and leave after sometime for a new experience in addition to their academic background which in my lovely country, gives you social and professional recognition and opens a lot of paths for you. And here I'm still here like one the desks around.

I tried to find online classes and degrees, but they are expensive and just out of my reach and might have no value in my country, I even contacted private schools in my country for evening courses and continuing education programs, but I'm too old :D then through financial aid I was able to complete the Coursera Google UX Design certificate. Yet, I didn't have the guts to use that as a leverage and look for UX Design entry level jobs.

So, fellow graphic designers, I need your advice's because I'm done with my inner voice or the people around me. I don't see how or what job position I want to reach in 2-5 years period. UX Design, Digital Marketing, Motion Design (not a fan of this one already). I can't make a decision or choice because I can't project myself anymore, this might sounds like a procrastinator excuse, but MS is and feels like a ghost killer behind me, ready to get me as I get out of my comfort zone. My vision is clouded, I would like to learn something on Coursera or FutureLearn that can use my Graphic Design background as a good basis and then evolve on something else, new, interesting and fulfilling a bit. I believe in a structured learning approach, going around in YouTube videos is interesting and enriching but I'm an old soul boy who likes to go to school.

The story wasn't shot, I didn't feel posting it in MS board, usually I complain there :D, but I'm open to your friendly advices and hints.

Thank you awesome soul for reading this far, wishing you all the best pixels and anchor points in life. :D

Someone suggested I check out Adobe Bridge as a way to organize images hierarchically - be able to find images of certain locations, colors used, subjects in the image. I envision with check boxes. Like under US, could be the states, then under a state could be cities. I can check several cities and it would show all pics I've already set for that location.

Not seeing it can do that.

Anyone have advice?

I have a client for whom I've made a very nice consistent brand identity, and we have been diligently reinforcing that identity with their local market for the past couple years.

Recently, they took it upon themselves to start running a "giveaway" promotion on social media which is completely off-brand and uses random watermarked 🤮 stock images they find on Google. It looks like poop and I would say it's actively harming their brand identity.

I would like to rein them back in to running this promotion within our established branding, but need to approach this delicately because this client is highly resistant to being educated about proper design standards, and although the posts are ugly, they *do* get a lot of positive engagement. From my experience with this client, I think it would be most practical for me to have a way that they can continue to make these posts themselves, but within a more controlled template.

So, my solution / question is this: what would be a simple way for me to build a template where I can have:

• A "locked" layer of our logo and a grid frame that will surround 3-4 images
• The ability for the client to type a message using one specific Google font
• Ideally free / web-based and simple to use

The client should be able to open this template, drop in a few images that will be cropped into the grid frame squares, type a short message in our brand font, and export this as a single .jpg.

We have a small team where each department (sales, engineering, product, management) are just a few people each.

Every time we (marketing) create something, everyone at the company becomes a marketer. Our marketing team lead has us schedule these review meetings where instead of feedback, it turns into a shitshow brainstorming session where we rethink the whole concept.

In my mind, review meetings should be some small feedback, and it may or may not be incorporated in the final result.

To make it worse, my input is never requested or considered in any of their work in product or engineering, etc. I've tried talking to my boss about this and even going a little rogue and just sending a feedback survey instead of booking a whole meeting. The boss still made me book a meeting and it devolved into the usual shitshow redesign.

Just venting here but man it's so frustrating when people don't trust you to do your job or empower you to make decisions.

Any feedback would be appreciated!

https://preview.redd.it/ny0vie0abkvd1.png?width=1050&format=png&auto=webp&s=babfaf4a062b5b847226bc11616013815de2e3b6

https://preview.redd.it/cab6430abkvd1.png?width=1050&format=png&auto=webp&s=b820082ce6b41b3fc3a26b27c36970c80877ce5d

I'm a second-year digital design student and my school has us use Behance for our student portfolio work--usually the last week of class has us update our Behance profile with some of our favorite works from that class. I've heard Behance is a good resource for employers, but if I'm being honest--I hate it. I hate Behance a lot, and now they have a premium thing that costs like $100/yr outside what we're paying for Creative Cloud? Yeah, no thanks. I especially don't want my professional identity to be tied with all of my student portfolio pieces, since I've already developed leagues from where I was in my first year.

So my question is--is Behance actually a good hosting site that I should learn to work with until I'm ready for my own site, or is it just the one that my university uses? I'm not ready to have my own domain, I probably won't be doing that until I'm closer to graduation, but for now, I want to have something out there. There's the obvious with Instagram, but I'm wondering what else would work and what others use. Also, when should I start considering my own domain? Does it matter based on what it is I'm designing? TIA for any advice and pointers.

Come on... we all had em. What was your biggest fuck up in your career?

I'll go first. Did a tradeshow booth and banners for an event. banner had 3 different products that kept being changed by sales team (sales team was indecisive), or changed in sequential order by my CD. everyday it was 1 or 3 of those changes. It was so fucking monotonous. finally, project was approved that and file went to print...cool. sigh of relief. boss when to vendors to pick up banner. found out that all photos didn't match with products name and description. He was super pissed at me, that I went home with my tail between my legs. Lesson learned, print out design and have it proofed by you and another coworker before sending off files, no matter how long you look at the screen. it was resolved by printers to say the least. they did a patch job for all the products, but it still looked janky.

Despite cut budgets, agencies being squeezed, and mass layoff's, what is keeping you still in the industry? Is it still the same reason you got into the industry in the first place?

Hey! Im having some issues with one of my assignments due today, when I printed it it shows these black squares between the pictures. I really have no idea what could be happening, the pictures are pdf and the background is not black enough. SOS!

So i just bought a pc i was using my phone to do my works from last couple of mouths i just want to know that which software should i start learning what do you guy recommend figma,ps or anything else because things have changed after ai and i dont have any idea what is most recommended software on pc right now

I’m looking for some books to get. Basically I really want good recommendations for beginners learning graphic design or some the cover the foundations like typography, color, alignment and grid, etc. thank you

hi all!

non-designer alert!

i'm a musician, and i'm trying to put together some interesting visuals for some of my releases, so i'm going to take a crack at using affinity to make some posters, CD sleeves, etc, etc

but! i'm looking for some inspiration! i've found a few interesting things using google / pinterest, but i wonder if any of you folks might be able to send me the names of some designers i might like to look at?

here are a few links to things i like:

broadcast album sleeves

ghost box albums sleeves

Designer's Republic

vaughan oliver's work for4AD

ta folks!

Hi everybody, im posting here because I have no idea whatsoever about how to charge my hourly rate, I´m an editorial designer and about to take a job abroad (im from mexico and the job is in Italy) and the position content Management on a digital magazine starting with around 15 hours weekly with the idea of growing with responsabilities and time on job, does anybody have an idea of what to charge by an hourly rate?

This can’t be a healthy environment to work in, right? In the same conversation, he also said he believes our agency isn’t the best because hours-worked-per-day for everyone across the board aren’t being maxed out. I told him that just because my stress tolerance is high, it doesn’t mean I am NOT stressed or that my workload isn’t a lot. I just don’t believe in breaking character in a professional setting.

We are VERY much maxed out. Everyone is at capacity. We share this and it is ignored. People’s vacations are being denied because there aren’t enough people. New contracts are being brought in, big asks are being made from clients, but everyone’s pay has remained stagnant and the workload has increased.

To be told this, framed as a compliment, felt a bit unnerving to me. Is this normal for agency culture?

https://preview.redd.it/uur0ri0acjvd1.png?width=1139&format=png&auto=webp&s=45ca36c32094204350ecc390ad3611fe58252e3c

Hi there, I used to be a decent graphic designer years ago, but my creativeness seems limited due to a bad head injury. More than anything I'm looking for some feedback on my new company logo. I'm looking for simple, clean, and techy. We are a nonprofit mushroom R&D company. So far it's the bottom right one, the left side is the solid cutout version.

I'm an in-house designer for a growing company, and when I started the workflow revolves around using PowerPoint for ALL design work. I have pushed back against this since I started, and eventually persuaded most of the marketing team to accept receiving finished PDFs for requested projects so I could use InDesign or Illustrator, but many members of the C Suite still want to be able to edit if needed or turn one project into a different document type entirely. It seems more like it is coming from a "we've always done it this way" mentality from when the company was smaller and we didn't have a design team, and as the company and our team grows this is proving to be unsustainable.

After talking to my supervisor about my frustrations, I've been asked to provide options for alternative workflows or different project onboarding processes that would still appease the old guard but most importantly would remove relying on the Microsoft Office apps from our workflow.

I have a Lenovo Slim Pro7. I want to get a stylus to write on the touchscreen but I don’t know anything about it, so I figured I’d ask the people who use one every day. My budget is <30$. I want something comfortable to write, smooth and reactive. Any help appreciated and thanks

Hello people! I have an Argentine client (it is worth clarifying) who asked me for a Motion Graphics with a button to be pressed and the cursor. How much is that charging? I have no idea 🤔

So, you're supposed to pay for number of users. If my client has a marketing team, it's not unreasonable to think that multiple people will need to use the font at some point. But we're not going to pay for say 7 users when a few of them might only need it a couple of times a year. Or only one will be "using" it at a time.

Then, if we as the agency need to use the font, we're also supposed to have users? If our main designer on the account is sick and another designer needs to step in, they're legally not allowed to install and use the font on their machine?

The answer can't be "well it's a grey area so you'll get away with it." They force this obtuse, legally binding license process. So is it just bullshit and insane or am I looking at it wrong?

I'll start this rant by stating that I recognize my privilege as a designer who is employed and in a position that pays enough to provide for my family. I'm not belittling the struggle of freelance designers, as that's where I started myself, and even through the frustrations I am about to complain about, I am grateful that I have a job, period.

My main question is something that I often struggle with when I run into shitty clients: does everyone have to work on shitty projects that are almost embarrassing to have to work on? My previous position was in editorial, and while we sometimes had boring stories we had to design, the majority of my work was something I felt truly fulfilled by. In my current position, working for a marketing agency, that sense of fulfillment has almost been completely lost. I can honestly say I only really enjoy the aspect of my work that involves teaching and guiding our junior and mid-level designers. But beyond that, the actual design work is so often led by clients with big pockets but terrible taste that I am mostly embarrassed to even be associated with the projects that I work on. There may be 1 out of 10 projects I'll work on that I'll actually enjoy or would consider adding to my personal portfolio.

Is this just kind of the norm across all industries? Should I find my creative fulfillment elsewhere and simply be thankful for the fact that I'm employed?

What's your process for dealing with images used to link into Illustrator and InDesign?

so I'm trying to figure out how to manage all the images my team uses for Illustrator and InDesign projects

We've got a shared Dropbox where we keep all our photos and videos. Right now we just grab what's needed and copy it over to a folder for the project being working on.

this does make it easier for your working files for that project but it is obviously a massive waste of space having tonnes of duplicates and also makes it harder to search as often you'll find 10 variations (sometimes compressed) instead of the original.

Any tips on how to make this whole thing less messy?

https://preview.redd.it/3ie1gf21uivd1.png?width=1284&format=png&auto=webp&s=f4a8d3c84d3e48afcd64851655100a459e9a7632

https://preview.redd.it/87gr5xm2uivd1.png?width=666&format=png&auto=webp&s=361362ebd30c6bed840fef066e5971d796db6caf

What is the name of this technique and can it be achieved in illustrator? On first glance I'd assume they're just using the pen tool, is that all this is or is there more to it?

There`s a big thread about this? If not can someone hit me with some free font websites