Designing a Complete Brand Identity with Sydney Michuda - 1 of 2

[Music] [Music] hello everybody welcome welcome welcome happy wednesday thank you so much for joining us today i think you guys gonna be very very excited we're gonna be doing some logo design with sydney today um i think you guys are gonna be really really happy so sydney tell everybody a little bit about yourself where can they find you all those good things yeah so my name is sydney machuda i'm a letter designer illustrator anything that you kind of want in a designer i run my own one lady design studio suit named super creative i'm based in milwaukee wisconsin so if you're from the milwaukee area or if you visited the area give us a shout out i've been working in the industry for about six years i've worked for a couple local advertising and design agencies but once the pandemic hit it sort of forced me to become a full-time freelancer a little bit sooner than i was expecting so it's been a very interesting journey but all good things it's been great for the most part and while i started freelancing full-time recently i've been doing my own freelance work under my own brand for quite a while i typically work with women very similar to myself where there's small one-person creative companies a decent amount of really cool wedding photographers handmade jewelry ceramics food trucks local events things like that and whenever i do those it's usually for branding purposes because that's generally my specialty um so that's a primary logo secondary logo color palettes typography illustrations things like that so yeah that's what i do by day um other parts of the day and night i run my own good store or design good store so i sell art prints and pins greeting cards notepads things like that and then i also listen to way too many true crime podcasts amazing hang out with my cats and enjoy cocktails whenever possible and you can see more of my work on my website which i have up here you can also follow me along on instagram which is where i post a bit more of my daily happenings more regular work that's posted here a little less tidy but you can also follow me on behance uh and if there are any questions that you have for me that we don't cover today feel free to send me a message uh whether through email or instagram so yeah perfect well that's sydney i'm based in portland she's based in milwaukee i see a bunch of people in chat saying that you guys are from dallas and chicago where else are you guys tuning in from today if you guys are on youtube make sure you come over to behance.net live and interact with us there that's where we're going to be reading chat so like you said uh like sydney said we will be reading your questions we'll try to be answering them real time uh we're pretty open to anything you guys have questions or business things anything you want to discuss about we're here to help answer those and kind of you know get the most out of your viewing experience i love that your work is so um like tangible like i can see all these things not just being great logos but like i can actually you know you have some really great prints and pens and all these other really like awesome pieces and they all kind of feel like handmade like your aesthetic is very cultivated it's gorgeous oh awesome thank you brazil in the house germany india pittsburgh las vegas sweden wow good morning good evening from everybody around the world this is quite quite the scene it's awesome so if you guys also don't remember we have the adobe daily creative challenge this afternoon that we're gonna be going through um if you guys hop into our discord you guys can check it out the link is there check it out bitly ai discord check it out come hang out with us we are doing coasters uh we'll review it critique it help you guys kind of push the needle a little bit further with some of your coaster designs so definitely check it out participate and we'll go through that later on this afternoon uh so sydney you take it from here give us a little run out of what we're gonna be working on today yeah so i am working with a new client that i just signed um she's a super cool rad lady uh that's starting her own uh pottery business where they make diy pottery kits so you'll purchase one and they'll have a full set of instructions and supplies and tools to teach you how to make a mug a candle holder dishes vases what have you um so that's what i'll be working on today um and i did a bit of prep work as you can see i like to be very prepared and as i'm kind of going throughout my discovery process where i find inspiration i just always write down a very clear list of ideas whether it's like something super simple like just the name of a font um or like the idea of using like a scoring texture as a pattern because that's pretty used pretty frequently in ceramics um sometimes you mind zooming in just a tiny bit just so it's a little bit easier for chat there you go perfect i love this this is i think one of the best things you can do whenever you're starting any creative project is like yeah kind of give yourself a little sandbox to play in before you start trying to build the castle for sure well especially since like yeah you can totally if you have that idea you can start executing it right away but for me that kind of takes me out of that discovery realm so i want to stay in that world first so i'll just write it down as fast as i can so i don't forget it absolutely but uh yeah so some of these things make sense some of these things don't um but uh then while i'm doing this i'll also kind of just formulate different directions in my head before they've actually come to fruition yet so i usually have a list of different directions that i want to take the brand in um i love that and i was like i wish i was that organized yeah we all like she even has like clear hierarchy and her type you know like let's show off yeah that's great i always feel like designers are basically like glorified organizers in a sense sometimes so i always want to keep things as organized as possible absolutely i wish my house was as organized as i like to keep my notes but awesome but so i see that you have these items to incorporate are those designated from the client or are these kind of from your own kind of ideas uh kind of a bit of both um when i went when i talked with the client i showed her a bunch of mood boards and there were a few things that really resonated with her um there's not this isn't a full list i think i left a few things off but um just like smaller things that she commented down that she thought were fun or cool or just might like to incorporate into the brand so i just like to write those down so i don't completely forget so do we get to see the mood boards um i was told that we shouldn't exactly show the mood boards but i can totally bring those up if you want it's up to you i mean sometimes i think it helps to frame things a little bit but you don't have to yeah i'll just kind of breeze through them real quickly just um yeah so we kind of went through uh like just a whole bunch of different mood boards um and one thing that would have been my first go-to is to use shapes like these but there's actually a competitor in the realm that uses shapes that are pretty similar so i want to make sure if we go with a direction using these like funky organic shapes that it's definitely separate and differentiates themselves enough so they don't look like they're overlapping visually yeah yeah i i think knowing when to pivot when your competition is doing one thing is a great way to stand up yeah i love this so you have a bunch of really organic shapes and patterns kind of throughout this mood board yeah yeah so just a bit of exploration with type logos colors shapes different things like that um yeah and i did a bunch of sketching beforehand holy moly let's say for the stream this is great these are really cool thank you i like to be prepared for any occasion yeah but uh so some of this is just more freeform uh illustration uh just playing around with different shapes some things that uh are just super basic some things that are more distinctive i wanted to create a good amount of patterns just in case we can incorporate that as a way to make those shapes different from the competitor awesome make it nice and fun and how did you do these sketches did you do them um i did them on yep i did them on my ipad just with a few different brushes usually i just kind of stick with marker type brushes because it it feels nice and organic without feeling too rigid absolutely um but um goes wow sketches yeah these are insane these are so good oh thank you yeah just creating more patterns um but uh i did think that so one of her main the tenants of her brand is that um when you're working with ceramics or pottery or clay you're forced to disconnect from your phone because your hands are all dirty and you don't want to get your phone all dirty so um that tactile uh like the way that this material would be used is so hand focused i thought maybe incorporating a hand might be a fun icon for the brand so i did a few different hand sketches here trying to keep them mostly all in black so i can add color to them later yeah i think i think this is a trap that a lot of like more junior designers kind of fall into when they first start doing branding work is they think like i need to do a logo in color immediately and then they you know you can hide a lot of bad design choices by doing the color too soon right like the color compensates too much so pro tip if you guys are designing at home or starting to your own brand design or low design try it in black first and then eventually do an inverse of it to see kind of how it looks on like what does the negative spaces and things look like but it will help you quickly move through your design phases rather than you know once you eventually have to do it in black finding out that you know those colors didn't work or they were compensating for shading and stuff like that so for sure um and it also helps too because uh what i'll do a little bit later on is i'll create like color mask with this so that since it's in black on white you can basically take just a black raster shape like this and make it into any color you want so totally nice little handy tip that i'll go over later on um but yeah i was trying to kind of explore um because so also i don't know if i mentioned the name of the brand um whoops um it's pottery with a purpose oh okay yeah purpose i kind of took some of her notes over here purpose just covering um function and cause um pottery is a functional purposeful application or material and uh just the intention behind it there's people in earth over profit she has a bit of non-profit qualities mixed into her brand some proceeds will be going to uh mental health causes which is just so amazing yeah um but yeah so um pottery uh pottery with a purpose um i was trying to play with the double p as a monogram just kind of going in different directions um one of my instincts would have been to have this p flipped upside down and tucked underneath there but that's also a thing that a competitor did so i'm not going to do that but uh yeah just kind of playing around with the letter shapes and then i cut a little bit more into abstract shapes thinking that uh just like a bowl or a cup or a um just a semi-circle shape like that is a pretty universal shape within uh the pottery world so i tried playing with that in a few different areas potentially turning that into a pea adding a few other letters there um making some fun still lifes which i think would be a pretty sweet icon for the brand yeah so many little design elements you can kind of pull out an abstract or language throughout the brand awesome and i always try to make a like in the main logo whatever the icon is that can then be taken out of that specific context and then use as patterns or um textures uh like little tiny bits that are overlapping in the corner um just because it just adds so much more to the brand that way rather than just just having a logo you have a whole suite to play with makes it much easier later on totally but yeah all right let's start messing with it so i'm gonna just start playing with a bunch of different type options here kendra asks how do you find that a competitor has a similar design um so usually the client will kind of bring those competitors to your attention um usually when i start out i'll ask them like are there specific competitors in your realm that you either want to stay away from or that you just want me to be aware of luckily this client was very ready with that information which was awesome sometimes in the past i have done like if the uh the thing that they're doing is a bit more niche kind of like this i'll do my own search and kind of just do my own mini or mini competitor analysis yeah um but yeah it's a bit of a mix of both i'd say awesome ooh ricoletta i know i use this for one of my wedding fonts oh nice yeah yeah that's great let's see here i had a few fonts that i knew to use right off the bat but um just trying to find all those they just had these kind of these typefaces are kind of your go-to's yeah they're like sort of um usually one of my go-to's is saa um which is kind of like uh i think it's mimicking the um like the u.s highway typeface um it's one of the fonts that i use in my logo and it's just such a fun uh like sort of vintage but not hitting you over the head vintage um that's awesome greetings from lagos welcome that's awesome i love these typefaces i think have you ever seen those memes that are like graphic designers spend 99 of their time trying to convince themselves not to use gotham again yeah seriously and that's such a real thing that you just kind of get stuck in your certain lane with certain fonts that you want um and it's just such a fine line to toe between having your own style and not kind of just copying yourself i guess absolutely and val loves whenever you say memes instead of memes that's her favorite thing cool lunaval if you don't know her she's an amazing host and creative and incredible artist uh she's here doing some mod work today sounds awesome oh you're bringing up everybody's favorite adobe fonts yeah yeah so i'm gonna try to find a good classic geometric sans typeface because that was something that she mentioned that she kind of likes um and you can't really go wrong with one of those usually it's true it just works for so many things right and if you guys don't know adobe fonts is included with your creative cloud subscription so it has a lot of really great typefaces for you to be able to use throughout all your designs so definitely recommend checking out you can also search directly from the type tool inside of illustrator and adobe val loves it she says alex we'll have words later yep that is all about the memos all right none of those no i have a new kitten that is just running wild behind me so it's hard to like keep my brain on this and not watch him sprint around yeah chase ghost yeah exactly keeping all those ghosts away for us question what are you looking for in your typeface and what is your thought process while selecting a font that will be relevant oh that's a really good question um i honestly would say it's kind of a gut feeling and i'd say that that gut feeling just kind of comes with repetition and experience and just the more you design the more you can kind of get a feel for what you're looking for but specifically right now i'm looking for a good geometric sands that has a little bit of character but not too much um like some of these sans serifs um like this one i really like this font but there's just a bit too much funky characters in there and i'm just not quite looking for that um sophia is a good choice but it's a little bit too like a little bit too bubbly or uh just i don't know i guess not what i'm looking for um yeah i feel like it's tracked out quite a bit like i feel like it might need to if you did use sofia you just take the tracking in a little yeah for sure but yeah i think whenever i'm i think as you experience more graphic design work you get to see kind of like how type was used for certain things whether it's a western or you know like a rustic or vintage like you kind of see like there's characteristics of each typeface and letter and so you can start using those like historical things as you kind of obsessed over type to like right leverage that through your design language as well so for sure and sometimes when i just got it when i get sick of browsing through that whole list i just go to fonts that i've activated so i know that like these are ones that i obviously have liked in the past yeah that's awesome that's such a great way of seeing like what things you have right like i chose these for a reason at one point exactly yeah i i always have to go back to like myfonts.com and like look at my my library for the purchased ones that i've used and i'm like oh that that's right i have that really cool typeface that i didn't use for a project right so maybe i can use it now so funny yeah usually i'll just kind of pull out as many fonts as i can those peas are a little bit weird but i might fix that later on um just that i know basically all the assets that i have at my disposal i like to have them all out in front of me so i can then just assemble everything together like a puzzle absolutely that's kind of fun have you ever uh used the type tool within this to search for adobe fonts uh sorry what's that again so have you used so instead of going to just adobe fonts you can search real time in the like type button like if you just like select that layer of type again and then if you go up to like the character like section click the down arrow and then you have the filters and then it says find more up top oh and then that will activate it it should activate the adobe fonts but that looks like it's struggle-busting right now so never mind right but that's a really that's a really awesome tip i didn't know that it could do that online yeah so you can do that and it will automatically just like kind of show you a render instead of having to go to extra websites and stuff so if you guys are designing along at home do that and maybe you'll have more luck than the initializing issue man that's that's really awesome yeah it's one of my favorite little like easter eggs so then is this showing all the fonts that i have activated on my computer along with uh everything on adobe so right now yeah so you see like the cloud logo next to the the type right there and those all have the clouds that are just in the cloud as the internet says in the cloud and then if you click it it will download it for you so gotcha you have like see on hover it has like the down arrow on the cloud oh yeah that would like activate that typeface for you wow that's really cool so easy peasy yeah whoa type is what ethan says absolutely you guys are welcome it saves you five seconds for going to the website yeah oh wow man i'm definitely going to play with that yeah you get lost like this what designers spend their time on is yeah just looking at type and stuff exactly yeah um i'm just gonna keep going back to my initial list just because again i know that these are my tried and true typefaces that i like to use most frequently absolutely that's kind of fun i have to fix those later on but yeah are there any go-to fonts that everyone else likes to use that's a great question i like tt sans i think that's what it's called let me see if i can find it uh yeah chat what are your favorite typefaces yeah and bonus points if it's comic papyrus or papyrus or comic sans yeah but really it should be comic papyrus right have you seen that beautiful mashup i think so yeah that's great as a graphic designer whenever there's like any goofy graphic design thing uh like something like that or when um there was that snl sketch about papyrus like just all your friends end up sending it to you it's like yep that's what it says sophia so that type piece you're looking at earlier shelley says lotto eric says how bad i could display oh monster rot okay okay yeah monster that's a really good one i heart p22 mechanic an acumen typeface yeah thank you lamont such a cool one yeah it's great um what was that manhole style wings come on welcome in old style is what brandon said nice um that's right papyrus rules thank you carol i appreciate it plus one coolness to carol right i feel like i like a like a wizard in harry potter just assigning random values to houses now yeah plus one minus ten says sounds like you may be looking for ways to organize a project post case study what how do you typically like to organize your users oh so um i don't know it kind of depends on the client i'd say um a lot of it would be um probably uh just whatever i've created during the um the brand x wow that's a very different font in all caps um however i've created the brand boards um usually i'll just take every image within the brand boards and just piece it apart as much as possible so i can make it as long of a case study as i can totally um especially since i work with a lot of small makers um a lot of them don't get as much of a chance to um take really uh beautiful photography um i can't i definitely can't speak to what uh this brand will do with their photography um i'm sure it'll be really awesome anyways but um since it's a bit more customer and retail facing um but yeah i would always love to work with more clients that can incorporate more photography into what i do with them absolutely yeah whenever you can get you know really great shots of your work it's always super helpful for right you know getting more work yeah as a one uh one woman studio that's a little bit difficult sometimes because like when my clients are in california or oregon i'm not exactly gonna fly out there to take some photos of their work but absolutely just bake that into the invoice yeah for sure i need four thousand dollars for a flight so great thank you appreciate it yeah we're almost the end of the list any suggestions on clients that insist on creating a font for their branding that's an interesting question joel that's a kind of a loaded one it's hard yeah um honestly i've never really worked with clients that insist on creating their own typeface but i don't know as a huge type nerd that sounds like a dream i would love to create a whole font for uh for a client um but uh i don't know i guess you could always um start with a font that's in a similar vibe is what the client is looking for and then um you could use that as a placeholder and then later on you could develop that whole font uh together yeah i think it really depends i think there's like two parts of that question that could be answered for joel i think it's yeah you know if it's a custom logo type i think that's pretty straightforward and like kind of easy to do where you know we can modify typefaces or really like drive home characteristics or things like that and make like a custom piece for them and how varied and how custom that is depends on really the project but and then there's the other part is like i've had customer clients go you know we're thinking about doing a complete custom typeface for us for marketing and web and all these other things and then that gets very tricky right for sure but it's yeah i think it depends on your your clients budget and patience because that was like it's tough it's a lot of work to build a custom type face for sure yeah i almost uh had that lined up with a client where she wanted basic so i basically could create a custom lettering for her logo um and i let her know that like this is custom lettering um so you can't really type this out on your computer you can't use this as a font um so i offered to create the whole font for her but i don't think she's just i don't think she's there yet but totally hopefully one day and caitlyn asked what's the projected timeline for this branding ask um so uh for this one i'd say from beginning to end about like two or three like i'd say three weeks um just because i generally have a few other clients going on at the same time um but yeah i'd say this one probably about three weeks christina asked do you use fonts modified fonts for logo design often more often than sketching a logo uh i think it depends on the project yeah um yeah i'd say yeah it really depends on the project um depending on how organic they're looking for something um like i recently did a project for a different uh ceramicist um and her stuff is very organic very uh hand done so with this one i did create this type uh on my own um sorry my my cat jumped on the table um but uh yeah so this one i did create the type on my own uh made it very hand done look making it look like it could have been sculpted out of clay um so this one it was super appropriate but for some other ones um like this one here it felt a little bit better just have it clean and straightforward um really clean font yeah absolutely yeah oh there's the kitty cat on your instagram just in case you guys are wondering what the kitten looks like yeah here actually i'm gonna pull him over really quick oh it's simba what's your cat's name oh gosh his name is poe after one of the uh the star wars characters from the recent series that's great yeah he's super fun and super wild normally he'd be napping right now but he doesn't feel like doing that of course not right how's the wreck exactly steve's asking does it come with the complimentary kitten yeah [Laughter] yeah i think poe's a hit but yeah i have to have poe back on the screen all day nice you can review the uh the new adobe live mascot oh no val just asked if you saw it said star wars okay so if you don't know val is a huge star wars buff like nice hugest heck yeah most huge i would ask her how she feels about the new series but that tends to uh rile a lot of people up oh man i'm not going to speak for val that's awesome yeah okay so i'm feeling pretty good about these for now i think maybe i'll pull some in later yeah looking great so this is your like more refined selection from the other list yeah i like to just basically pull as big of a list as i can that's something that's even moderately appropriate like this one isn't very great but it's nice to just have in there for comparison absolutely um but yeah then i kind of just from this list refine um into a few other or like a yeah more reduced list is it the same one no okay if i pull the same font twice i'd say that's a keeper yeah absolutely i do that all the time like oh wait what did i do here oh i just tracked it all a little bit that's weird and generally i like to get things nice and small so i can just make as many type layouts as possible perfect yeah val said that you guys are gonna have to dm about the the new star wars series yeah so funny and now the uh there's a new season of the mandalorian coming out which is just great seeing baby yoda on screen i feel like they've really upped the amount of screen time baby has been getting and i'm not mad about it right me neither he always reminds me of my cat tooth i'm like oh my god look it's you you're so rambunctious right i really like that that centered type there looks really nice thank you you can see that being used with like a like an instagram post or something like that with the square crop if it's really nicely change out the background color boom yeah easy peasy steve is trying to pick fights with val now about uh driver what's his name adam driver adam driver yeah dude don't get me started don't get me started on adam driver i'm having a long distance relationship right now okay normally i would never put a stroke on a font but sometimes i like to do it just to see the balance and then i'll adjust it later so i just like to put that out as a disclaimer like the variations coming up now like i'm starting to riff i like it yeah um so chad don't forget whenever you're doing these designs that pixels are free so do as many variations as your heart desires right you know we're not having to send things to print anymore just to try things so for sure you can riff as much as you want and then these are some of the tag lines that she had cooking around in her brain so i'd like to just have those close by just so i can toss them into layouts as i see fit absolutely and is she looking to incorporate those in the logo or is it just kind of like how is she thinking about that living i'd say that she's pretty open to it um i generally like to include at least one version of the logo where there is a tagline sitting underneath um just so it's like a full info like all the information that a customer would need in one logo and then different versions where it's more reduced um and then some of these other ones like usable and unique might not be the primary tagline but it might just be a fun type lockup that can be used within the entire brand suite absolutely yeah yeah there's so many really cool nuggets you can have with like a client like this even you were talking about the um the like charity kind of initiatives that she's really interested in as well and those can be like really fun lock-ups or like little badges or graphic elements that could also flush out the brand a little bit more yeah totally super fun i've been dying to use this font for so long and i proposed it at least once before but um it didn't end up happening with that client but i don't know i just love gopher today's the day yeah contrast what are some of your tips on how to price your work for a beginner oh that's a good question um and that's basically something that just takes a while to kind of figure out um when i started out at least i um just did some google searches and tried to kind of figure out what the average price was per hour and then you can basically from there uh figure out um yeah just like what whatever rate you'd like to earn per hour and then kind of judging what project you're working on and how many hours you think that'll take i know there's a lot of debate going on right now with um if pricing per hour is a good idea some people think that it's more of a value thing rather than an hour thing which i kind of like that idea since i tend to work a little bit more slowly um but uh so you're saying that you prefer to the hourly rate correct well that's that's just what i'm doing now um i would like to transition to do more of a pricing system based on value how valuable an identity is or illustrations are um but um yeah and basically usually what i would also do is i would take whatever i was working or making it my full-time job and then charge it up by a cup or a like five or ten dollars maybe just because when you're at a full-time job they have to account for taxes and income tax and health care and all that kind of stuff whereas when you're just your own freelancer you don't always have to worry about all those expenses you do at some point but absolutely as a starter you can just you can charge uh what you think someone of your experience level would make and then charge a few dollars extra i'd say yeah i think the people that don't like hourly because i see a lot of people saying i don't like hourly really is awful yeah uh i love hourly i think if you guys don't like hourly your charging hourly rate's wrong uh so like for my business i charge hourly because i have clients of all different sizes where i don't just do their branding but i will do ongoing work with them so you know once i i think the hardest part for any freelancer is that like getting new clients and things so you don't have to deal with going out and finding new clients and waiting for a new client to come to you but like once you've already done good work with them they typically want you to help them out with the rest of their business right so you know it's smaller with you know smaller businesses don't typically have these like long ongoing projects but i have like a lot of you know marketing design teams at a tech company or whatever who you know they have ongoing needs that they need design support for and they can always tap us and and to see like what's going on and right by them not having to always go and be like oh we need five grand for this project and like having to go through all those approval cycles means like they can just be like oh we just need help with the social media template or something like that where it's just like a one-off project where they're like okay how many hours do you think it'll take and i can tell them how many hours i think and then they're like cool great go at it and then if it goes done faster no problem if they have a bunch of different you know iterations and things i'm fine with that because i'm getting paid for my time for that i think all it takes is like one lump sum project where you're like this is how much your branding is gonna be and then that to go completely out of scope to be like okay you know what actually hourly sounds fine because at the end of the day they can make as many changes as they want and you get paid right so yeah i i'm definitely still trying to like since i just became a full-time freelancer in march i'm still kind of trying to figure out that whole world of how i exactly want to price everything for my business um but yeah i do work with a client that's very strict on their hours and they have very very tight time frames um where they'll say like you have two and a half hours to work on this and it's due tomorrow at 11 a.m which yeah that's tough yeah carol says you're very lucky if you can build by the hourly uh there's huge competition in this kind of work and people do shop by the numbers and i would say people are still shopping by the numbers even if it's not hourly like yeah and i think it's up to you as a creative to get to the point where you're providing value above what the client expects to pay right like if you're saying okay my hourly rate's 30 an hour like how am i providing enough value to that client that you know that 30 is a great deal for them like so i think no matter what your allergy rate is i think finding that balance of value in the eyes of the client is how you have to prove that out but you know if we're sitting in a meeting for an hour and a half with a client just you know tweaking or arguing internally i'm getting paid for that now versus like those times where i used to do fixed fee and then i'm just sitting there like man i can't believe they're you know wasting everybody's time and i'm not getting paid for this or i'm losing it so i don't know yeah we can always have these debates i love them right well yeah as like again as a new full-time freelancer sometimes i feel and i know i shouldn't say this but i feel a little bit bad charging for like all that extra time if there are those revisions um so like right now with my uh the way i have everything i don't charge for extra rounds of revisions partially just because i work with a lot of smaller makers and that can really have an impact on them whereas it might be a little bit different if i had a different kind of client base absolutely absolutely and i know some people are talking about this in chat right now but like do you typically take a percentage up front uh yeah i always require half up front and for them to sign a contract um i've been burned a couple times for that's all it takes yeah it takes like only one time then you're like nope i'm not going to do that anymore i require half up front because i don't want to put in 20 hours worth of work and then have someone back out of their entire business so absolutely i completely agree yeah if you're working especially with a new client make sure you get your 50 or 60 up front uh just so you can and like mark where those pay cycles should come at the end right or like in your contract make it very clear this is when i expect to be paid and this is how the like percentages break down um but yeah especially with new clients yeah and charge a late fee if they don't pay you on time they incurred lead fee that's a good tip because yeah this is this is your livelihood so like it's not fun whenever you have to go like hey guys you owe me a bunch of money right and they're like yeah we'll get to it and you're like no no but actually i already turned in everything right usually um yeah for the most part i don't have too big of an issue uh with people paying late which is really nice um because for the most part i just tell them you're not booked with me until you sign the contract send it back and pay your first payment um and also you're not getting your assets until you pay me the final payment so and carol's just said um sure you can ask for half and do the entire project and get burned for the rest and that's true yeah i would say that that's a fault of your contract so how i typically structure it is you know first 50 is up front and then as we go through i typically break my projects down into four different sections one's like you know mood board and design ideology and research strategy stuff and then it goes into like first concepts and then maybe the rest like and that's like the 50 mark and at that 50 mark i get uh like another whether depending on the client if it's another 25 or another 10 10 10. so like i kind of break it apart by like here at this point at this meeting another payment is due and so we get closer and closer and closer until like that final handoff of files and that's the last like 10 potentially of the project and at that point they typically i find that people don't want to just like cause issues for no reason so right they're not gonna pay you they're you know i'm not gonna pay you up before then yeah if you don't have like 10 or 25 left they typically will probably carry it through and you can kind of tell throughout the process of like how receptive the client's gonna be to that stuff for sure yeah i think a lot of it is just about reading people and knowing like okay this person's a really i don't know they're a really good person they seem really honest um that's probably not the best way to go about it but sometimes you can just kind of tell that a person is going to follow through yeah and i know i've had clients you know who start off really great and then all of a sudden they you know i don't know jackal and hide it a little bit and change personalities completely and right cut it off and that's kind of a risk you run into so make sure that your pricing fairly and that you're pricing like enough to cover your expenses and make sure you have a roadmap of savings so right for sure that's what i'm saying if you guys can get in the good graces with a client early on and then continue to do work with them rather than just flipping up a logo or brand design like if you can figure out a way to work with them on an ongoing basis you're going to be much happier and you'll make sure that your payment cycles and everything are like consistent right well so much of like being a freelancer is based off of recommendations too um so if you do great work for someone they might recommend you to their friend that's also an entrepreneur or if it's also looking for some work or that's starting a business yeah absolutely yeah and and some of the like my best clients you know might not have had work for me after the initial brand and whatever design process but they were so so happy with the results and the work that they go and tell everybody and you know i've had one client that i worked with years ago who essentially sends me like one referral a month and that's pretty huge like that's a huge lead that's awesome uh jackie asked if you charge hourly how do you know how much is 50 and when do you take it uh so if you're charging hourly they typically have an engagement of some sort that they want to hire you for and you can ask for a retainer so instead of saying it's 50 of you know x projects i typically would say i need this amount of money to start working on this stuff with you and then i would invoice them every two weeks so that it's consistent with all my other clients and that way you have like money to fall back on and then in the contract to talk about how you would you know use the retainer to pay for unsettled dues or whatever and then just build on top of that yeah for sure i know this has gotten really deep into like contract and yeah i out of the business right i recently just bought a uh a book um by hutzpah design i think they're called great ladies yeah they um the like freelance and business and stuff or whatever the book is called us yeah um and i'm only like a few pages in because i don't know life happens and you don't always have time to sit down and read but i am so excited to learn more of those um gosh business related aspects of the design world yeah the five last book if you guys haven't read it yet has like kind of a really great outline to things that you need to do for your design career not necessarily design career but the freelance business part of it which is very scary and daunting when you're first starting up and they kind of give you some really actionable great steps and it's written really well because it's infused with the hudspe sister um like personality and that's wonderful yeah and paco said that's about they've been on adobe live a few times they have nice every time they do amazing work yeah they're pretty cool yeah they're right uh what else let's see what other questions we're getting yeah shelley goes question would you consider handwritten style font nice since pottery is uh hand done uh yeah for sure i honestly that kind of would have been my go-to for something like this especially since i i love creating handmade type um but from the initial call with the client um in the mood boards that i showed there was some more handmade type and she just didn't seem as to gel with as much of it so i decided uh on this brand to stay away from that a little bit and then let the illustrations that i'll get to in a little bit uh convey that more like organic handmade quality so absolutely just a bit of a balance and anna asked about how you use artboards and all that jazz yeah so i um every i feel like every designer is super different in how they organize their artboards and stuff like uh like i mentioned earlier i like to have everything out in front of me so it's i can kind of just assemble it like a puzzle um so i will generally have my mood boards on the side on a different monitor then i'll pull together a bunch of different type options and then once that's set i'll usually press shift o so i can hold option down and drag and create another artboard so i have just a fresh clean slate um and once i have a good amount of assets in here which i'll keep working on those um then from there i'll start assembling more of a um like a a branded brand board with colors and backgrounds and textures and things like that awesome yeah excuse me uh christine asked sydney alex how many clients do you usually book per month approximately i'm always scared to book too many at the same time or not enough yeah tips on that man that's just the one of the biggest questions in a for a freelancer's world not overbooking yourself so you have too much to do or nothing at all i don't know i think um i like to use a time tracking software um so that i can use i what's it called i don't have it up i think it's called time i or something like that um it's not the cleanest software but it's free so that's why i use it um but uh yeah so that allows me to kind of block out different hours and times throughout a certain like certain weeks so i know that next week i'm going to be spending at least like 8 to 10 hours on this project i'll also be working on a website a few other things here and there um it is tricky though when you have clients that have a lot of rush work going on so that kind of just throws your entire schedule off kilter a little bit totally val says she uses mondays uh which is a great little project management software tracking thing oh yeah for sure um yeah carol goes too many clients that's a high class problem kudos to you uh yeah i think that's the the hard part and i think that's just kind of one of the like growing pains that you'll eventually have to come realize with like when i first started my design firm it was really tough because i took on every single project because i was afraid that you know the the issues of being afraid that you weren't gonna have enough money down the line or you know those clients will say no to you next month and you won't have anything left uh so it's definitely a phobia thing yeah kind of a comfort zone so take on the clients that you want but the issue is you're going to burn out really quickly through that i think i quickly was doing like 18 hour work days or something pretty close to that and that's oh yeah recipe for disaster and then i eventually got more help and then the firm started to grow more but like i got to the point where i looked at the work that i was getting and it wasn't moving my design firm forward in a way that i wanted to do it right so i ended up cutting a bunch of which is like the scariest part is like saying no to work yeah but giving yourself enough space to do the work that you are passionate about and that gets you more of that work so like your aesthetic is super super defined and really beautiful uh but like whenever i go to your work i can see like the kinds of projects you work on and what you want to do and i think as a client or somebody who's coming looking for designers i can see exactly what to expect from you and you know i think curating and cultivating that requires time and attention to detail and if you're just starting off it's hard to do that without you know burning yourself out working on things you don't want to work on right so finding that balance that's definitely like one of the biggest things that i struggled with like i still struggle with it now but struggle with it really hard i'd say a year and a half ago was burning out really quickly um because basically how i started doing my own stuff was i was working at and like an agency like several agencies ago and they did some pretty cool work but it just wasn't for me so i decided screw it i'm just going to start creating anything i want for myself which is weird that it takes like that kind of weird stagnant feeling to kick yourself to start creating things for yourself but um yeah so i just started illustrating stuff on my desk um and then months and months and months later i had some freelance clients but i was also working full-time at a different agency so everything that i was doing was just like 100 creativity every second every day um working from like 9 00 a.m until 10 pm basically every day and you just burn out so quickly and you just start to really hate everything around you and when you reach that point where you like just hate everyone and everything that's when you need to just take a break and spend several days not working it can happen so easily especially in the design world where everyone expects you to like have the most creative cool hobbies all the time and every aspect of who you are as a person needs to be like super cool and design related yep i agree uh dan asks i noticed she's trying to center the text between two text lines what's the best way to do that you can do the align tool so there's that tool she's on right now this is the horizontal align center it's up in the top where you can throw it under your side widget with your windows option you can center line vertical line horizontal line and you can also distribute the type and that'll help kind of get you where you need to be yeah usually i'm pretty diligent about that but answering questions while you're trying to design is like a lot of things at the same time yeah absolutely uh corey goes hi guys is it difficult to get your foot in the door for your first full-time design job i've been applying since finishing university but not really getting anywhere with it and i would say it's always tough whenever you're like trying to start something like whether it's a new career or a new job or even like changing directions right like i i ended up shifting my design from away from [Music] all this tech silicon valley work and then i moved into physical like hospitality packaging bottling and like that whole industry and that's like a complete shift even though i was experienced as a designer nobody knew that they could hire me for those things and all that stuff so whenever you're trying to either reinvent yourself or get into your foot in the door getting the work in your portfolio and then starting to share that out behance is a great platform for that uh get it on your website start reaching out to people and being like this is what i'm capable of doing i think you need to make sure that your portfolio is really curated and speaks to what you want to work on because that that will show through so make really good portfolio now it sounds so simple but yeah yeah and as as big of a bummer as it is like networking helps so much um absolutely i think every single job that i've ever had except for the one that i just left uh every single one was because of the connection and because of hard work and my portfolio and all those other things but what gets your foot in the door sometimes is that like friend of a friend that works at a place and they just happen to have an opening which can be really great but also again a huge bummer if you don't like networking and going to those events yeah especially absolutely especially with what's happening in the world right now but yeah yeah in a postcode world definitely go do design events or hang out with other people but also like you know whatever experiences you're having with people online i know like a lot of people are playing a lot more video games than they normally do and stuff like that but like just throw your foot out there and just say hey you know what like guys i you know if you're playing video games with somebody just say hey i'm looking for a design job anybody have any work that you know they can throw my way i would love to like get it out there and just try it and learn it and be more professional so you never know who you might know like it could be you'd be in a gas station one day and somebody you meet there can give you a job so right just just say you're available put it out in the world right and one of those things that i always refer back to is um like people don't really know what you're capable of unless they can see what you're capable of um so even if it requires just you creating your entire own like new fake brand or um an entirely fake advertising campaign having that in your portfolio can help so much and also it just shows that you have the drive to want to do that like i know when i applied for a job a while back one of the reasons that got my foot in the door was that they noticed how much side work i did for myself and they saw that that was a really just pretty sweet initiative so yeah i i cannot harp on that enough the the personal side project thing where you just make your own thing or brand or whatever kind of project you want to work on that's the projects that typically get you the work because it shows just how excited you are about the subject or the industry like even i was on adobe live i think three years ago doing like these sorbo tequila bottles and that was a project just for adobe live and i went and i made it i built out the labels put them on bottles photograph the bottles and like put that into my case study and presented it like it's real work even though you can like go through and watch me do and talk about how it's you know just for adobe live and all these other things that project has given me like 99 of my bottle and packaging work since i started my design firm so that's awesome yeah it's it's those side projects that get you like you know they're from the door right so do them yeah do it do it do it you get a nike sponsorship now be great yeah i love that type in the middle there it looks really good oh thanks kind of has like a nice little uh like wood fire oven feeling right now yeah i just like to i mean one of the things that i always do as a um as a designer one of my go-to's is just to have a million different type layouts and lock ups absolutely and one of my introductory stages like this is just to go wild and explore as much as i can um so some of these are definitely not winners but it's just nice to explore and see what the possibilities are with these letters for sure and you don't really know until you start making them exactly yeah biola says my day job has nothing to do with design that's okay you don't have to right like i i've done some mentoring in the bay area where i met a person who was working as like a bank teller which is like the most non-designing job you could ever probably have yeah seriously she came into like a mentor night and showed me her portfolio and i was just like wow this is incredible it was just all work that she did for fun for friends and family members and it was just so inspiring and she was like i just want to get into the design industry i was like you should because yeah girl you're there i'm there you're doing incredible so right you don't have to have a design job to be a designer right just in case you guys didn't know that yeah starting to look like a protractor i like it measure the degrees of the kiln yeah cool what resources do you use for inspiration when starting a new project that's a good question yeah um personally i use just a wide variety um i one of my go-to's is always going to be pinterest since i've been on pinterest for so many years it's really curated for exactly what i want so i don't really see a lot of that like crappy calligraphy or i don't know all those crafts and stuff like that but a lot of mine is really tailored for design um so like i always i don't know if i kittens yes there they are um i always use pinterest oh i'm not logged in right now but everyone knows about that i use behance all the time um just a bunch of different mood boards you can see sometimes my mood boards i appreciate it i was like i've seen all those in mind that's great yeah so like separating them out between branding uh packaging illustration just a whole bunch of different uh mood boards especially behance is always really professional work too whereas sometimes pinterest is a little bit low-fi and not as professional as you might want but behance is great um and and it's gotten even better in like the last week i feel like uh they have the search by similar feature now on certain projects like certain images and you just click that and it does like the whole google images thing where it like brings up similar visuals so if you find a project that you're like i really like the aesthetic of this then you can click the like search by similar and then it will pull up a bunch of projects or images that are visually similar so i've seen i've used it to find like new inspiration pieces or help to find a mood board for me and like it's it's awesome that's really cool yeah it's exciting yeah i feel like with behance a lot of the times what i am shown is like the really really cool professional stuff and there's a little bit less of the um like small time designers i guess um so it'd be really cool to have that search function to see just everything else that's out there too exactly and and sometimes you know you're thinking about how do i you know what does like a clay logo look like or like right but then like by doing a visual search dissimilar you get a completely different type of project and it brings you up with the same aesthetic you're looking for so you can kind of see how it's used which is awesome um let me see here rachel asked how do you show the client where the project is headed or final stages without giving them the assets for payment purchase purposes you mentioned not handing over assets until payment is made yeah so i will actually show you a brand board and hopefully this project will be to the stage by the end of tomorrow's live stream but where's that good mud one what i'll do is create um different brand boards that look like this so primary logo against like a main color background a few different other color options um and then like usually a badge a secondary logo an icon sometimes a mock-up depending on who i'm working with than just different directions [Music] but yeah so generally i'll show things in brand boards like this and then we'll go back and forth on a few edits trying out some other things um she actually just decided to go with this initial first direction which i'm psyched that i didn't have to do a whole lot of edits for that absolutely not that there's anything wrong with clients wanting things to be particular but um yeah so that's that's generally how i show them um and then once they like have officially approved the the brand and their project then i'll just start packaging everything up in um just a whole bunch of different formats so yeah i agree uh that's the best way to do it you put it on a mock-up and i think somebody else asked how do you present a logo to a client by mocking it up it helps the client not just see this like flat photo but it gives them an idea of like how this could live in space or how does it look on a wall how does it look on a coffee mug what is it whatever it is for the business that they can start to see their brand kind of come to life yeah like oh that's actually the most recent one for this client um i first of all this is just such a fun project to work on um but she i could definitely tell that mock-ups were going to be a huge thing for her so i made um like different t-shirt designs stickers like one of those keychains um more t-shirts and pennants um and then since it was a food truck later on i helped with the truck design and helped mock that up um but yeah mock-ups definitely help the client like fully visualize what you're doing instead of just having it on a flat color absolutely and you can easily grab great stock photos from like unsplash for free or you can get like premium ones from adobe stock and those are also just great ways to kind of you know show the environment show the lifestyle to the client it's awesome stuff to do yeah absolutely david asked this might be a question for part two but how do you present your revision stages is it a repeat of how you would present the original concepts or do you change it up a bit um i'd say it's kind of a repeat of what i did the first time just because i don't want to i feel like if i had to redo things it would create more work than is necessary um so generally i'll just um see here just like adjust a few things here and there you can kind of see the colors start to change the brand board start to change so for the most part it'll keep the same assets in place but just change up what the client is requesting whether it's messaging or other things i guess yeah as soon as i switch the tool i get very distracted totally yeah i think it it's it really depends on the client right like i think depending on how far along in the revision it is what type of revision is it like if it's just a small little incremental change like you said just go in there swap it out really quickly and then they're like great that's perfect that's actually exactly what i wanted but if it's a complete like redo or redesign then you're probably going to use different mockups because the the mood may have shifted the lifestyle might not be exactly what you thought it was to begin with so right it really depends which i hate saying that 99 of our jobs is it depends right it right our title should be it dependers exactly designers that's awesome uh robert goes do you use any security protection features in pdf to stop clients from just walking off with your work uh no [Music] i'm not really worried about my clients doing my stuff i'm more worried about like people on the internet yeah so don't do that please if you're watching the stream don't steal people's work yeah that's not good what's my speech today usually i guess i'd say my clients don't really have adobe illustrator so i'm not as worried about them manipulating things um but yeah that's not a situation that i've ever ever encountered which is really nice actually yeah and then if they if they do steal your stuff there's you know legal things that can happen because of that and they don't pay you so right yeah don't that's not such a big thing i think that i think if people aren't going to want to pay you is because they don't like the design and they just want to cut ties right but if they like the work they should they probably also would like to pay you right i don't know maybe that's my naive thing yeah yeah rachel's like i love that this live series is serves as time for sydney to work on actual work yeah the project done it's amazing yeah yeah i think that's the best way to like see work happen real time like seeing professionals do really great work and see how they're trying to solve real client problems totally yeah i honestly always work way better with a brief um what's going on over there um just because i don't know as a graphic designer i am aware of the limitless possibilities in the entire world so that always just helps when i can have a brief and a client to tell me they want something in this category with this style because otherwise i just i can never narrow it down for myself yeah exactly i i think even like if you if you guys are trying to do your own like side projects or like personal projects or whatever at home give yourself constraints that way you can actually have a brief to go against it also helps if you say like whenever you're presenting your case studies these are the constraints that i was working with and this is how i solve these problems right and you can you know as a hiring manager i want to make sure that my designers can defend their creative and they actually have real thought and strategy behind it rather than just making pretty things right for sure yeah whenever i would do my own like side projects i would always try to give myself some sort of rules and guidelines just because yeah without that i just get i just stall basically absolutely yeah it's tough that like you said you just the options are limitless right and uh they asked are you using a pen or a mouse i'm using a mouse right now um i used to use a wacom tablet all the time um but the one that i currently have broke so it's just been like i just haven't gotten around to buying a new one because i'd like to eventually buy a nice fancy one absolutely but yeah right now it's just an apple mouse yeah i typically when i'm working in illustrator i'll use just a mouse and then if i'm doing like photo editing or whatever i'll just use my wacom but i don't know i like the mouse way more for like doing like line work like you're doing i actually work the opposite of what you should probably do i mean before where i would use um the wacom tablet just for everyday stuff like clicking around with the pen tool or type or just literally anything even just scrolling on the internet um but uh yeah when it came to like having to do more painterly stuff my hand and my brain just could not get the two to work um it's much better for me on the ipad when you can like see what your fingers are doing um but absolutely yeah i could never get the tablet to work for my brain in that sense chris olsen says briefbox has some sample briefs that's really cool i didn't even think about that go to the internet for your own little creative brief yeah that sounds like that's awesome and if you're doing your own side project like you could just go down the street i mean depending on how outside you are right now but like you can go see a local business and be like oh if i was to redesign that business and then take before photos and then make a little case study about before and afters by being like oh there's like a laundromat in my neighborhood and this is how they did it here's what a rebrand could look like or you know an ice cream place or whatever for sure yeah and i know that there's a ton of designers out there too like i think lauren hamm has her homework series or whatever where uh i think hers is much more lettering based so if you're interested in getting into more lettering work um she if you subscribe to her newsletter she always has lettering props um so that's always something cool to check out yeah that's awesome um what was i gonna say oh we have 13 minutes till we go into the creative daily creative challenge so make sure you guys are uploading it to the discord so we can check it all out together [Music] and rachel asks how much of your logo work do you do in procreate versus adobe illustrator um i would say about like 75 percent in illustrator um the other 25 and in other ipad apps um just i like to get my like i'll go through the discovery process with the mood boards start making these ideas that i mentioned earlier and then from there i'll just start sketching things that are on either this idea list or that are just coming to me as i'm doing more sketches like i didn't think of this thing initially i just started making it and it was really fun to draw um this would make actually a pretty fun tattoo also um love it let's make everything tattoos yes essentially yeah i have a still life tattoo on my arm and it's it's fun yeah anything can be a tattoo um but uh yeah what was the question again procreate versus illustrator how much time that's right yeah i'd say 75 in illustrator and i will answer that i spend all of it in illustrator zero time appropriate so it's really whatever workflow you guys like i mean yeah you can say you know how much time do you spend in a notebook or you know or anything like that yeah it really depends it depends again based on uh like how much of a drawer you are i know that people are always very concerned that they think that if they don't have goods like sketching or illustration skills they can't be a graphic designer which is completely false um but i mean it doesn't hurt um so if you're just a designer that isn't as inclined to start sketching right away then uh illustrator would probably be your your first choice yeah absolutely i i'm not i am not the biggest sketching fan like i don't do that i just jump straight into illustrator and start riffing i mean i guess again it goes back to it depends but most of my projects are going to start with illustrator and then i'll mess around with the inside of that yeah just helps me get to like good faster versus spending a bunch of time sketching and being like you know all these ideas aren't very great and then if i'd like one then i have to go like trace it so for me it's just quicker that way yeah see for me sometimes i feel the um i feel that way but then also the opposite where sometimes for me sketching if i can just like draw it out real quick i don't have to worry about making shapes in illustrator where it's going to take a little while to really finesse to make it look acceptable exactly so yeah it depends oh david i keep forgetting to ask you a question i'm sorry man uh he wants to know who is your dream client oh um i have always wanted to work with like a local deli um because i i don't know i just i love food like every human being does but i think it would just be really cool to work with a local deli that um you can create their entire brand you can create their signage their social media their advertising make it kind of vintagey but not too over the top make it fun and like a little bit kooky and crazy and witty um have a lot of fun puns rolling around i love a good pun yeah like when it's appropriately timed i love a good pun um but uh yeah and then hopefully they would create their own line of like canned wine or cheeses or something like that so i could help with the packaging too so my ideal client in the future or dream client would be a deli you're getting me hungry just thinking about it yeah like oh think about all these you know meats and cheeses i can design for now right yeah i guess more general dream clients would just be like more small makers that i'm working with i just i love being able to work with um like the main creative person behind their brand because they care so much about it um yeah i think that's one of the great things about like this field is that we are service providers and there's a person on the other end that you know is coming to you for an expertise and at times it's very vulnerable but you have such like a a huge impact for some of these people right like giving them a great brand could be you know a huge lift for their whole family and like yeah you know you're helping a small business people are relying on your work to do good for their business so yeah it's kind of it can be very spiritual at times i feel like yeah absolutely now alex which hand do you prefer this one or that one oh ah i think the the one on the right yeah yeah i think that gap the negative space i think is throwing me off just a tiny bit on the left okay yeah you know where like the thumb kind of like pinches in yeah i think i think it's a little bit more simple on the right yeah i'll go with that one i had to take pictures of my own hands because normally when i try to draw hands like as everyone knows that's a really difficult thing to try to draw um so hard so with these i uh like took pictures of my own hand with my phone um and then placed it into my ipad and then sketched it out from there normally i'm not a big fan of tracing things like that but when it's a hand sometimes you just have to do it and getting all the dimensions correct for a hand like you can make a really wonky looking hand real fast yeah no kidding um jos joseph says when does the project start billing start do you add phone calls meetings emails conversations time to your final project some using timer or do you use math yes math is good uh which adds up all the brainstorming all right so project building so you start as soon as you have your contract set uh the initial calls you typically have with the client i don't bill for um and then as soon as yeah after we have the contract done billing starts for everything from uh for like meetings and stuff i typically don't bill for emails but if you if the client is wanting you know a very in-depth email conversation then i would probably bill for that you know i don't really bill for slack messages either right but sometimes you know sometimes you have a very chatty kathy on the other side and it's going to eat up a whole day right so that's your best judgment right generally what i like to do too is just add hours for project management into your scope that like you're going to four hours on mood boarding uh 15 hours on the first round things like that and then sometimes i'll add in like three hours for project management which the emails and phone calls kind of fall into that realm absolutely yep and sarah asked do you both have social media where we can follow you at i am doing the whole like anti-social media and stuff now but i do have a active behance so you guys can go check it out there um but sydney where can they find you on social media you can find me at supercreative.com for my instagram um this is uh where i just i post a lot of things um more on a daily basis um whether it's just aspects of a project um uh let's see yeah different things that i make for my shop prints and things like that um so yeah you can follow along on my instagram here um generally i'll have a link to my website but um yeah i have my portfolio different like little fun products and stuff um and then also my behance um which i try to update pretty regularly uh like whenever i update my website i'll update my behance as well so absolutely all are good options you guys have less than five minutes to get your projects into the uh daily creative challenge make sure you use voodoo val's link above she reposted it a couple times already to post it in discord so we can check a look at it uh jumpmira says on alex what basis did you decide upon the choice between using your name or sort of an agency name for your freelance business uh i like my last name so i did it i know it's really narcissistic to say that especially because i don't typically like to come at it from that angle with clients but um for me it was like a business decision i didn't want to make up a fake name i think it's just a personal preference it doesn't really matter as long as you make good work and treat your customers right yeah yeah i uh i don't have as badass of a last name as you do what are you talking about your last name is great i don't know people never know how to pronounce it and like i don't mind it either way but um yeah i i definitely uh experimented with like sydney kate design co which is kate is my middle name um but uh i also wanted to do breakfast for dinner design go um and like not have anything to do with breakfast at all just never say anything about it yeah absolutely but that was already taken um but yeah then i went with super creative just because i say the word super all the time um and it just has like kind of a cheery peppy attitude to it um and it's kind of a little dig at myself like oh look at me i'm super creative um so yeah i mean there's so many great agency names and i just felt like i could never top them so i was just like uh i guess my last name will work right it's fine you know like like there's a moniker i think is a wonderful brand design firm and a wonderful name for all the great work that they do uh hybrid sf also another great design firm like there's you know gretel new york like those are awesome wonderful shops but without you know them doing quality work that name would fall flat right yeah and i think that using um like your own name or a brand name it's either are completely acceptable i mean everyone like there's just a huge variety of both in the world um but the reason why i chose a different brand name is because i wanted to sell products so i didn't want like my first name on top of a print or a pin that makes sense not that there's anything wrong with that direction either but i just wanted to create a whole new brand basically yeah that's a great great way to look at it too is yeah what are your goals how do you do it right yeah what are you trying to create with your business yeah and sarah's asking how did you make your portfolio website i built mine in squarespace uh just because it was easy and i was tired of working with wordpress i've done everything else in between webflow is great it was just easier for me to do it all in squarespace how did you build yours i also did squarespace squarespace there you go love squarespace i will love it all the time or every day yeah and if you want like a really good ecommerce solution um why am i blanking right now shopify shopify is great also it's super robust for that stuff but i think if you're using it it is awesome so got a minute left everybody get your coaster designs in yeah hopefully tonight i'll do a bit more work on this so we'll have some like colored backgrounds going on and you can see some of these type lockups that i was creating in these different colors i'll add the icons in there experiment with some of these hands and some of these crazy textures that i created up here um so yeah it'll be really fun to experiment with that tomorrow yeah and robert asks do you use the new online review features in illustrator for feedback during the process um no i don't know about that so i don't use it either right now so not yet i think i'm just still in the like you know my antiquated process stuff so i'm sorry i'm sorry robert i've not used it yet is that like a way for clients to be able to see what you're doing and working on and comment on it uh i think it's like um and i'm not gonna speak to it i don't know enough details to give a clear answer for that i would assume it's like drop drop boxes like paper where you can like comment on sections and review and change things oh okay but maybe not yeah great question robert all right so i know we are at the mark now for design feedback so everybody get your projects in there right now yeah so when we talk about coaster designs so we've got coasters everyone all right make sure you get your coasters in there and we're gonna go review them real quick uh i love the idea of smiley faces smiley faces are one of my favorite things in the world so i love the fact that you use these the coffee cups and the morning good morning sunshine as a coaster um i think i would love to see this as a series of different you know coasters maybe i think this is it's fun it's playful i think yeah i don't know what are your thoughts i i'm in the same boat i love when people can make smiley faces out of slightly unconventional things i was kind of trying to toy around with that in my uh sketching process but um yeah i think this would make a really great series if there were different colors different phrases and then you could always incorporate different parts of the coffee making process too like like the little espresso glasses or the um i don't know just other coffee things i guess yeah i was thinking the one piece for me is that i would probably want it to maybe explore what like you said what other coffee elements are because the eyes for me a little bit hard to read and it took me a while to realize oh that's a smiley face so like maybe you're doing a top-down version of like a latte right where you can have like the swirls or whatever make it like the negative space because right now the top of the eye is kind of where i want the uh the people to be at so i think for me it's just a little hard to to read but i think it's it's a cool concept and i love kind of where it's at oh a little little side side coaster a little unconventional song yeah i like the type a lot is that wisdom script no it's not within script what type is that now i'm going to like think about this all night right um i love you know breakfast foods all that stuff i'm very excited for this um what i would say is that you've got these really really cool characters inside the the type but then you've got just a mono white line i like glow on both the bottom and the top i think if you would use the width tool in illustrator to increase maybe the thickness on one side of the the line weight that would be super helpful just to keep everything being a little bit more consistent throughout yeah i think that's a good call i would also like i would i'd like to see how it would look too with that uh that line extended to kind of meet the edge of the the capital d or the letters in there um not exactly like touching but have a consistent width between the two um so it's a full shape around there but i definitely love the diner aspect i love anything vintage uh inspired design so absolutely and that sun is really fun yeah day two coasters let's go all right breakfast all day so wait are these coasters that are uh like diner breakfast themed they are indeed okay it's breakfast time cool i really like that bottom lock up that's a really fun use of type it's kind of mixed between a burger like that i think yeah yeah yeah man you guys are making me hungry again we just i just forgot about how hungry it was right i like the type all the way around the coaster i think that's a really fun way to bring everything in i would say i would probably want the color palette of the first coaster to have a little bit more consistency with the egg i like maybe more yellow orange instead of just brown but i get that it's pulling in the diner logo so maybe that's fine um i would love to see somebody just at the diner get really confused when they look down in their glass and be like oh my gosh that's that's an egg in the bottom of my mouth in my cup yeah who did that something that'd be really cool with this one too because looking at an egg top down like that kind of looks like a frying pan um so you could add like a little frying pan handle on it granted that would be a die cut so it'd be a little bit more expensive if this is a for a real business but um you can make like a frying pan coaster that would be fun let's put some bacon in there yeah yeah actually yeah you could just use the frying pan texture yeah that's a really good idea well done thank you don't listen to me listen to her all right so um the other thing brian says that the font is parkside regular boom pow parkside regular was that dinner font very nice uh kendra says i didn't know about these creative challenges they're so cool yes they are they are very cool uh very fun i think we're missing the coaster part of this but i think i can envision it and it looks great i think yeah i think for just a consistent parts as part of things i probably leave off the like the copy at the bottom just so it doesn't break the kind of circle motif you've got going um but i think within the crop guides and everything probably be fine now i want coffee too this is funny because i could like actually see this uh coaster being used at like in a hotel like you know like i was gonna say a hotel cafe too yeah i feel like this is everything i see at like you know any anytime you check in a hotel it's perfect yeah it's cool yeah and i think thank you for the sun yeah it's fun i love the even the coffee stain kind of um like texture around the outside is kind of like a nice subtle nod yeah that's great oh this one's cool yeah go ahead uh very like uh vintage 50s 60s nuclear era like uh fallout 4 kind of aesthetic nailed it it was just about to say this gives me lots of fallout vibes oh i love that game yeah i'm i want this now i want like a nuka cola yeah this is wonderful thank you for making us feel a certain way now it's just the treatment on the type is really nice too because you have that shadow behind it which is a really small detail but it adds so much extra stuff to a layout you have that diamond at the bottom which helps balance it um and the banner at the top which plays really well again into that um just inverted shape there absolutely yeah this is really cool yeah all right and you got the neutron going too you you've nailed this good job we can all go home now yeah first time from sarah welcome sarah this is awesome yeah very cool use of the diner motif again throwback retro vibes with the stars and the diamonds uh i love the background pattern kind of coming out from that everybody's nailing the type this is like really impressive it's not easy to do a retro throwback but right everybody's doing awesome well it's nice to see that there's the um just a brief description of what this hypothetical designer would or diner would offer um like the burgers breakfast burritos all day open 24 7. so there's those extra details mixed in there too yeah absolutely kari's creative diner it's a fun little burger boom pow so breakfast all day gets a little hard to read there um so i would say like just bump up the copy a little bit more uh around the corner here you can kind of see how the type kind of almost touches these lines so i would just say make sure that your spacing feels a little bit more even because i think there's a lot of negative space here around the burger but then it's super super tight around the outer ring so just be mindful of those little details but yeah burger i've i'm hungry again ah this is nicer more nice let me pull this up into another window again i think we're still having the same kind of little type issue at the bottom and it might just be the the typeface on every day but it gets a little like pixelated and harder to read on that um i would also say maybe use the shape tool and then do type on path to kind of do an arc over the burger because you have a nice like visual language on the hamburger itself with this kind of like uh semi-circle so if you could reinforce that design language through how the type is warping around it i think you're gonna find that the design feels a little bit like more cohesive yeah i do think that this one makes a little bit better use of the space compared to the first one which is absolutely it's nice to see two different options too so you can kind of see how you went from one point to another and you kind of realize that along your process um one thing that i would say too is that as a rule of thumb i try not to track out lower case letters too much this is lowercase and it is tracked out a little bit further than i would generally do so i would consider with this one maybe switching to an all caps font um maybe something similar to what might be going on down here with the breakfast all day or um just like a good strong clean all caps uh sans serif or something great great great advice yeah it's it's hard to do the the lower case tracked out and i love that valve's like i really love the squiggly lettuce the squiggly lettuce is super playful yep um i think you have a lot of really fun things happening with us yeah another rise and shine let me open this guy up again going into the whole we love smiley faces and how could you not love this this kind of reminds me of those like uh jimmy dean commercials with the sun yeah coming around can't complain i think i think maybe the type could be a little bit bigger or maybe the sun is a little bit less sharp because i think you have like a really bubbly kind of mono weight line type face happening so if you could like incorporate that a little bit more into the piece whether that's like giving the smiley that same treatment of the stroke type where it's like rounded corners and things like that so it's not just a square and then i would probably even take this stroked outside and bump it up to be the consistent kind of thickness of the type as well yeah yeah i'd also i mean again love a smiley face it just puts a smile on your face automatically just seeing it um and with this one i can kind of tell that the sun is a little bit off-center from the larger circle here and i know that that's because you incorporated type above that so you wanted to give the type enough breathing room but i think if the sun was centered and it was scaled down just a little bit then you could even add another layer of text underneath the sun just another phrase that can kind of play along with it like good morning sunshine like glad you're awake i don't know yeah have a great day or whatever you made it to bed i think that's that's really great advice especially whenever you think about like if this is a real coaster they're probably going to be thrown down on the table and you know i i guess i'm probably just immature and i like to mess with my coasters but like you think about like a coaster is never gonna be just perfectly straight on but like you know they spin around you know they're they're never going to be like you know they might be at a 10 degree 15 degree 45 degree angle so if you consider the sun you're not having this the sun kind of rotate and wobble whenever the coaster does spin around so just think about that stuff great advice kitties and cakes gluten-free cat cafe this is incredible i love the background pattern yeah i love the whole concept it's really great mm-hmm wow i wish poe was walking around right now i don't know where he is but he would love this one too yes my kitten right yeah my kitten that i introduced earlier on it's amazing yeah that's really cool i like the idea of like incorporating the coaster to be more than just a circle it's now a ball of yarn i think that's really playful and fun um i think it's probably gonna be a little bit hard to read at smaller sizes like on a table and stuff so maybe there's like an opportunity to like mess with the layout a little bit where maybe the cat goes up and the sun goes up with it as well just kind of center that all on like the coaster itself but really fun playful idea yeah yeah i think stacking with stacking the elements would be a good idea just create a little bit more space but yeah just like you alex i i love the idea that it's like a circular object so you made it made the background pattern into something that is also circular like a ball of yarn that's yeah and it's so clever would be branded so well for a cat cafe yeah exactly and we all know cat cafe is you know you have a very captive very passionate audience that would go there exactly oh huh trying to open original the hi i really like how you did the shadows and the type and i think it goes back to the whole retro vibes that we loved about the fallout but like the starburst you did are really cool with the little strokes on there it gives it so much personality yeah yeah for sure i like that um yeah i think those stars are really effective too because they just add that a little bit of extra like sparkle for lack of a better term um and that the the shape of the uh the exterior shape there is that b which relates to the hive mentality yeah i think it's great i think this is your day one right so not a coaster but i'm excited to see how that looks in a coaster i think if you just wanted to like leverage this color and then the starburst boom simple mic drop done so here good morning everyone jay's coffee cup nice i like the idea of being able to incorporate like you know the coffee and like especially if this coffee cup is actually printed with the logo on there i think that's a really fun like nod to what might be actually on the coffee like on the coaster and i think the colors are very appropriate for a like a coffee coaster too absolutely yeah that's that's great that's a good point um i would say that if you are going to mock up like the logo on top of things just think about the shape right like if you're trying to treat this as a coffee cup maybe warp the the type a little bit to make it feel like it's actually kind of rotating in space a little bit right now it just feels like you've stuck a logo in the middle so if if that's kind of what you want to do with how the logo if you don't want to warp the logo maybe you do a top-down version of the coffee cup rather than a silhouette so that you have the design aesthetic in the language and the coffee colors but then you have the logo just kind of plopped on as like a like a foam decoration or something shift s penguins penguins are so cute is that shift notes command us yeah come on i had to look at my keyboard [Laughter] i'm about computer illiterate that's a really sweet illustration though of that guy yeah yeah absolutely yeah that's a lot of great detail nice to see the highlight kind of going over his back and then along the the legs as well yeah absolutely it's really fun what yeah mess that's how i feel like my my son would be waking up with me yeah what a mess that's how i feel every morning exactly what a mess i i like the like brush stroke aspect of it i think it's a really fun concept i think parts of it need to be tidied up though because i get what you're trying to go for with like the rough brush stroke things but i think sometimes when you go with that aesthetic you need to like it needs to be perfectly imperfect like right now i think there's like a little bit of like um let me zoom in on it those corners yeah just like the the w has like kind of a broken brush you kind of want it to be like one stroke and not like three or four strokes in that one direction or if it is three or four strokes in one direction all of it needs to have three or four strokes in one direction so it's kind of like this like even in the h right here that imperfection like if you're gonna have imperfections like this throughout then this like each ligature needs to have that same approach i think right now it feels like you drew over a sketch instead of it being like intentionally this way mm-hmm and then it would be interesting to see what the coffee cup would look like in that same uh brushstroke style um and again you could add more coffee related elements in that same brushstroke style to kind of create an actual visual mess on the coaster yeah it might be a little bit much but it could be cool yeah and i think what i love about this is also the black on the light coaster like i think that visually is very strong especially for this like painterly effect it almost it feels like a brush stroke on a white canvas so i think carrying that through like she said on the coffee cup would be awesome but visually i think it's really strong it just needs like a little tiny bit of refinement on the mess but maybe you know it's also super intentional because it's what a mess breakfast all day i love seeing all these coffee assets since i'm such a big coffee buff breakfast all day i like the idea of locking up the type kind of at that angle so that the art itself can kind of fill that space i would say maybe you could bump up that coffee cup that's kind of spilling up a little bit more so it takes up it kind of breaks that the circle um [Music] yeah i think that this one creates a lot of really nice movement too like just the movement of the coffee kind of spilling up into the air and then breakfast all day kind of looks like it's coming from that same arc of movement there too yeah i would track out breakfast all day just a tiny little bit to me it looks like it's probably at like negative 20. um so keep it to zero or maybe a little bit higher i love how precise that is it looks like it's negative 20. oh maybe it probably is negative 17 i don't know it's amazing it's so good so yeah go to zero not negative 20. perfect or sometimes the arc can just do that on its own too totally no i think it's great i love the the coffee cup what that movement like you said is awesome toaster coaster oh my gosh we were talking about puns earlier this is brilliant yeah we love good puns yeah now i'm imagining i would like actually like if i had this coaster at home i would actually put my toast on it because i don't want to get a plate dirty yeah absolutely so what what was done really well for this is as we were kind of talking about earlier is like whenever you mock up these assets it helps kind of create the vibe and the lifestyle and so you can use these tricks to kind of make your artwork kind of pop or convey things really nicely so i love the shadow mock-up i love the poster mock-up where it's kind of like showing it being worn and distressed i think that the the for the sake of it being a coaster maybe the like the folded in fours isn't the like correct texture for it just because coasters are pretty thick paper and if they're folded at that extent i think it's probably dead like you'll probably rip the paper because they're so thick so i think love the texture approach with it i love the shadow mock-up i just think like you probably aren't folding a a coaster that's you know two inches by two inches um so maybe just think about that with your mock-ups i love the like the knocked out type and stuff in the background i like the idea of the toaster popping in at the bottom too yeah um yeah i love how the bread overlaps the type that just creates a just an extra level of dimension that wouldn't be there if that toast wasn't there at all i think that's a great addition yeah it's looking real crisp yes i don't know i don't have any other good uh puns so guess what call now perfect all right so that's all of the daily creative challenges i think if you could show us your screen and kind of give us a heads up for what are we gonna be working on tomorrow [Music] oh right all right so tomorrow i'm going to continue working with this brand um today with a lot of just laying out all the puzzle pieces on one surface and then i'm going to do a little bit more work tonight but i'll pretty much decide on two or three different distinct directions and as you can see i started working with these color palettes i'll probably start blocking those out as full on brand boards i'll incorporate some of these illustrations that i made and we can see these come to fruition and if this one doesn't get chosen i'll just get that as a tattoo instead start working with some of these really fun shapes that i didn't get to quite yet and what i really want to do is incorporate some of these patterns in these shapes over here but that will all come tomorrow um so yeah this has been just really amazing hanging out with you guys answering some of your questions um if anyone has any other questions later on that we didn't get to feel free to send me a message through my website again my website is supercreative.com you can click around and view my portfolio you can also find me on instagram at supercreative.com nice and consistent uh urls there and handles and then also on behance yeah that's perfect and if you guys come ready with lots of questions for tomorrow or like she said you can dm her uh but we'll be back here tomorrow we are very excited to show you guys kind of the next steps for this branding project so come with all your business questions all your design questions illustrator questions anything you guys might have uh and we look forward to kind of picking it up from there yeah all right bye guys thanks for hanging [Music] so okay three three [Music] it's three

Channel: Adobe Creative Cloud

Views: 401,855

Rating: 4.956655 out of 5

Keywords: Illustrator, Photoshop, InDesign, graphic design, branding, identity design, how to brand, freelance design, logo design, type design, Adobe, Adobelive, Adobe Live, how to design, how to draw, illustration tips, graphic design tips, five, Alex Lazaris, Sydney Michuda

Id: a4em99bfceM

Length: 116min 50sec (7010 seconds)

Published: Wed Nov 11 2020