Preparing and Talking About Your Graphic Design Portfolio

As a graphic designer a portfolio is essential. While it’s great to have an online one, it’s also a good idea to have a physical one too to take along to meetings and interviews.

Putting together and showing this kind of portfolio of your graphic design work is quite a skill, and the best way to do it gets debated constantly by designers around the world. There is no right way of doing it – there will always be differences in what employers or clients expect, or would like to see. Some simple logic and advice will help you though, and I’m going to share what I have learned both from experience and from reading other articles.

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Breaking Free of Design Crutches

Breaking Free of Design Crutches

by Joshua Johnson on 12th July 2012 with 6 Comments

You don’t want to talk about this topic, you don’t even want to think about it. That’s because, like most of us, you’re probably guilty of using quite a few “crutches” to get you by. Those little things that you default to in almost every design with almost no thought.

Let’s bring them to light. Let’s talk about what I see designers doing again and again and what I struggle with myself. Let’s stop hobbling along and start running towards great design.

How to Design the Perfect Twitter Header Image

How to Design the Perfect Twitter Header Image

by Joshua Johnson on 20th September 2012 with 104 Comments

Twitter recently rolled out an updated design for profile pages, which allows you to insert a new “header photo” that sits on top of your feed, much like Facebook’s timeline cover image.

Today we’re going to dive in and see some examples of good Twitter profile images and discuss how you can design your own. I’ll even toss in a free template so you can get started right away.

6 Famous Logos That Leverage Inconsistent Design

6 Famous Logos That Leverage Inconsistent Design

One of the most powerful tools that you can use to improve any design is repetition. Repeating colors, shapes and other visual elements throughout a design increases consistency and familiarity so that the design feels more attractive.

But what about the flip side of this idea? Is it possible to wield inconsistency in such a way that it improves the quality of a design? It turns out that lots of well known logos use this very tactic. Read on to see what they are.

Understanding the Three Question Limit as a Designer

Understanding the Three Question Limit as a Designer

Have you noticed when you ask someone three questions in a row, their eyes glaze over and they stop paying attention? It’s a psychological defense mechanism to keep our privacy to ourselves. It’s one reason so many people choke up when taking a test.

The human, by nature, is a questioning animal. We question our existence and future but when it comes to giving answers, that’s just not in our biological nature. This is one of the problems with planning a design project. Questions have to be asked – numerous questions. There is, however, a way to ask questions and get all the answers you need…

10 Tips for Effective Creative Brainstorming

10 Tips for Effective Creative Brainstorming

Brainstorming can either be a creative gold mine or a time wasting disaster.

Brainstorming is often discussed in relation to a business environment. In college, nearly every one of my business school textbooks had an entire chapter dedicated to the concept. Though creative brainstorming is in many ways a different beast due to its visual nature, many of the same concepts apply.

Today we’ll take a look at ten tips to consider before you pull your creative team into a brainstorming session. When applied properly, they can drastically increase productivity and quality of results.