Why do you have a Twitter? Is it because Ashton Kutcher has one or because you are actually interested in taking advantage of it’s networking capabilities?

I wish I could tell you why I signed up for Twitter over a year ago, but to be honest the best answer I have was to see what all the hype was about. I didn’t “get” Twitter and that is because I wasn’t utilizing it properly.

Twitter is not a popularity contest. It is not about how many followers you have or how many people are following you. In fact, the more people you follow the more useful tweets you are missing out on due to a Twitter stream overload. Before you decide to follow someone back or follow someone new take the time to read a few of their tweets and ask yourself the following:

1. Are their tweets useful?
2. Are their tweets interesting?
3. Could their tweets help you in your personal and professional life?

Even though Twitter is not about how many followers you have, a healthy amount of followers is helpful. How do you get other interesting people besides your mom to follow you on Twitter?

Easy, ask the same three questions we asked about people who you should follow about yourself.

1. Are your tweets useful?
2. Are your tweets interesting?
3. Could your tweets help others in their personal and professional life?

Social networking is about…being social. So for a lack of wit:

• BE SOCIAL.
• Retweet others tweets that your find useful.
• Start conversations to get others talking.
• Try your best to answer any questions others may tweet you about.
• Be friendly.
• Give your tweets personality so people know you are more than just a computer.

Should you keep separate personal and professional Twitter accounts?

I give this idea a massive NO. Some would argue that some tweeters give some of their tweets TOO MUCH personality and think it could hurt their business. I believe if you can find the right balance between your personal and professional life, go for it. Many people enjoy seeing a companies personality reflected through their tweets.

You can and should judge a person by their tweets. Sweet tweets!

Ways to find interesting people to follow:

1. Mr. Tweet. Mr. Tweet takes your interests and the interests of people you follow to compile a new list of people you may be interested in following.
2. Find the twitters of blogs you frequent.
3. Have a look through the people who you currently follow followers.
4. Check out peoples twitters who you see being retweeted by the people you currently follow.

ONE. There is more than just one direction.
There is always more than one right way to approach and tackle design obstacles. If certain techniques aren’t working for you, look for a new solution.

TWO. Strangers can offer good advice.
The most unbiased advice can come from a stranger. Online design communities are a great place to find help when you may be suffering from so-called “designers block”

THREE. When you’re lost ask for help.
If you’re not sure you are on the right track never be too afraid to ask a fellow designer for help. I always find myself asking other designers for help. Sometimes the smallest suggestion can make a massive difference.

FOUR. Beauty is in the detail
Never skimp on detail, especially if you are a designer. We make things look pretty for a living. When you choose to look over “tiny” details it can make a huge impact.

FIVE. Grids make busy beautiful
Designing using a grid is not for everyone, but designing on a grid can help make a designer’s busy canvas look well-organized

So you’ve just graduate college and you’re ready to jump into the real world and start your life as a professional designer. Exciting, isn’t it! Something that can really put a damper on your excitement is reading the position qualifications under a job listing in hitting every point on the head, but the one reading: must have x years of experience in the industry. So how does one gain years of experience without having experience?

One way to gain real world experience is to freelance. Whether it be in-house freelance work or working from home with clients you’ve found on your own. Freelancing is a great way to learn how to deal with clients and a better understanding of the design process.

Intern. Many designers try to avoid interning after college, but sometimes it’s the only way to gain the experience you need to get one step closer to finding your dream job. Not all interning is bad! There are many internship out there that pay.

Do not be picky. Even though optimizing images in Photoshop doesn’t sound like a thrill, entry level tasks like this need to be done and in most cases are given to new designers. Almost all of us have done crappy jobs like that to get where we are.

No matter what kind of entry level job you find always know that you are valuable. Even if you are optimizing images in Photoshop or renaming files, someone has to do it. Your position will always be essential to finishing a project.

Do not become discouraged. It can really take a lot out of a person to send out 15 applications a day and at the end of a month MAYBE receiving one email saying they are not suitable for the position. It is totally normal to not hear back from a company you’ve applied for a position once. Like I said early, they are receiving hundreds of emails. If most companies had the time they would almost all rey letting you know why you weren’t chosen for a position.

Never stop learning. A massive part of gaining experience is always being educated on the latest software and design trends. Having a recent education is The biggest advantage a new designer has over someone who graduated on adobe 7.

Last but certainly not least, FOLLOW UP for any position you apply for! Just sending one email application for a position is almost in most cases not enough. I’ve landed positions and have gotten interviews from my follow up emails. When you see a job listing on the internet, you’re not the only one seeing it. Companies are receiving a very high volume of resumes at the same time, so by following up you have a greater chance of really having your resume read over instead of being quickly glanced at.

For those of you who have been in the industry for awhile, how did you land your first job, and what advice can you offer to design graduates who do not have enough or any real world experience?

You’re your own worst critic. I think we have all heard this one, and it has never been anymore true. Designing for yourself may bring on some of the hardest projects you will face during your life as a professional designer. If you’re good enough to design for others, you’re good enough to design for yourself!

I thought I’d address four  points that will help you when creating your own personal brand or rebrand.

Don’t take advantage of your own skill set and talent

One of the biggest problems when designing for yourself is taking advantage of your own skill set and talent. Our personal brand is our public image and we want it to attract potential clients, but there comes a time in the design process where we just need stop and reflect on what we are capable of and how we want to market ourselves. If you are a designer off all trades, but you choose to focus on developing CSS websites, don’t go above and beyond by designing your site in Flash just because it’s cool and interactive.  A designer should offer themselves what they are willing to offer to their clients.

Don’t compare yourself to other designers

This is a hard one to abide by but it is important to realize all designers are different. All designers have a different forte and different strengths. It is always nice to browse online design showcases to spark inspiration, but when you’re rebranding yourself it is hard to look at design showcases and not think “wow, that logo is better than mine.” When you start to compare your work to another designers work it can really damage your creativity. Remember, you are designing for yourself, you are not designing for a competition. There is meaning behind a brand, and another designers brand is not better than yours, it is only different.

Design for yourself as you would a client

Sometimes it is hard to be your own boss. If you only offer your clients 3 design templates to choose from and a limited amount of design revisions, do the same for yourself. When you allow yourself to scrap your designs and start over you will start to ruin your initial vision. Take yourself back to high school testing and remember your first answer is probably the right one. This means your initial designs are most likely your best ones because you have gone into them with a virgin mind. As soon as you start critiquing and questioning your designs is the moment you start destroying them.

Why you should rebrand?

You should never rebrand just because you are tired of looking at the same website or the same logo. I do think it is important to refresh your presence yearly just to keep things moving, but sometimes a rebrand is a bad decision. We can all take a lesson from the 2009 Tropicana rebrand. Before rebranding you must take a look at your statistics and reassess why you feel the need to rebrand and decide whether a rebrand or just an update is the correct solution.

If your clientele is slipping and your website is getting fewer hits it just may be time to rebrand yourself to let people know your’re still alive and you are back stronger than ever. If you still have a strong clientele, but you seem to be getting more web clients than print, reassess your strategy and make an effort to change certain things to enforce this boom in web clients. Make it easier for potential clients to approach you about the possibility of a new website they have in mind and showcase more of your web design and development in your portfolio.

Designing for yourself is difficult, but it doesn’t always have to be. Always keep in mind that we do what we do because we love it. Designing for yourself should be a fun and relaxed experience, don’t make it more difficult than it needs to be.

Even though designers don’t have traditional degrees like journalism or business it is still important for us to be able to spot grammatical and commonsense mistakes. It is truly up to us to be 110% positive that we deliver flawless final projects to our clients. I’ll be the first to admit that I’m not always the best speller and I don’t always use proper punctuation, and that’s why I am spell checks #1 fan.

I’ve compiled a list of 5 quick tips to makes sure you tie up all your lose ends before finishing your design projects up when working in InDesign.

Extra spaces can cost you
Find/Change is truly one of the simplest InDesign features. There are ways to utitlize Find/ Change so that it benefits you every time you are finishing up a design project. It is very easy to accidentally add extra and unwanted spaces to your document. So, what I like to do is open Find/ Change and tap the spacebar twice into the find field and type one space into the replace field. InDesign will automatically pick up any double spaces that you’ve mistakenly keyed into your document and replace it with a single space.

Hidden characters
It can get a little distracting working with your hidden characters turned on but it is good to give your document a couple of final proof reads with them turned on. Hidden characters will help you locate and unwanted paragraph breaks, spaces, tabs, etc.

Colors
Before I even think of starting my design project I take the liberty of deleting all of the default color swatches from my library. By doing this I don’t allow myself to mistakenly use any colors besides the ones I manual create. A big no no is sampling colors from other images or elements using the eyedropper tool. When you sample color in InDesign and then use that sampled color it usually samples in RGB and is never an exact match of a chosen color swatch.

Image PPI and color space
Another handy little feature InDesign offers is Preflight. By going to File > Preflight you are presented with a column of preferences to click through. You can check your fonts, links, colors, and a few other elements that are present in your document. By clicking on Links and Images you will be able to scroll through all of the links and images in your document and view what type of element they are, what their effective ppi is (effective ppi is what’s important here not actual ppi) and what color space they are using. This is a fast way to make sure all of your elements are the proper size, type, and using the right color space. (Usually if you’re working in InDesign you want all of your images to be in CMYK given that you are using InDesign for its print purpose.)

Last, but not least, Spell Check
Spell check is very important. Of course spell check doesn’t always offer the right word to change a misspelled word to (if it is even misspelled) nor does it always offer you the correct grammatical suggestions and that is why it is important for you to read over your document as well and not to 100% rely on spell check. Spell check will catch all of your misspelled words and perhaps offer proper grammatical suggestions, but it is up to you to make sure that you use your knowledge to catch anything spell check doesn’t.