2010 has arrived and I haven’t really had any deep thoughts about any goals or aspirations for the new year. I do not even feel obligated to reflect on 2009 at all. I am really excited to look to the future and I am looking forward to a new year. I have never made a serious new year’s resolution in the past, but with a new decade I figure it is time to put an end to that.


Professional goals for 2010:

1. Find a studio/ firm that I am able to grow with professionally and creatively. I have been freelancing pretty avidly for the past year now and I think it is about time for me to find a company with friendly Creatives so I have the opportunity to learn and grow with others. I can honestly admit that I have never had an in-house job that I enjoyed. I blame myself mostly for just jumping at any job I was offered so that I was able to earn a dollar. This year I promise myself that I will not take up a job just because it is a source of income, but because it is a place where I can see myself succeeding.
2. No more Mrs. Nice Girl. This year I will not let any current/future clients of mine take advantage of my kindness. By this I mean no more chasing payments. When I first started freelancing my biggest mistake was being too nice and working on other peoples time and not my own. 2010 will be my year to completely dig myself out of the hole of mistakes I fell into when I began freelancing full-time a year ago. You learn from your mistakes.
3. I’d like to think of myself as a pretty organized person, but I can never be too organized. I will take the opportunity this new year has brought by reorganizing/updating all of my contracts, proposals, and billing/payment system.
4. Start making schedules. I have never made a schedule in my life. Sure, I do what needs to be done when it needs to be done and on time, but I’d like to take that mentality and one-up it. By scheduling my days I hope to gain more personal time and lose some of the stress that comes with the spontaneous life a freelancer leads.

Personal goals for 2010:

1. Fitness. Since I have been overseas I have fell out of the swing of every day life back in Florida. So, I plan on taking advantage of the beautiful Pacific Ocean and swim at least 4 days a week and if I am not swimming I will be running (which I hate by the way).
2. Health. Many of us go on random health kicks, and I am one of those people. This year I plan on cutting certain things like soda out of my diet, and putting more fruits and vegetables in their place.
3. Put myself into forced uncomfortable situations. Traveling has really opened my eyes and has taken me out of my comfort zone. This year I plan on purposely taking myself outside of my own personal comfort zone in hopes of meeting new people and experiencing things I couldn’t picture myself doing.
4. This is an important one for me. I plan on saving a certain amount of money each week and putting it aside to travel. Being in Australia is my first experience with being overseas. I think it is important for my well-being to get out and see as much of the world as possible why I still young and in good health.

What are some of your professional and personal resolutions and plans for the new decade?

Sydney Harbour Bridge, New Years Eve. (Taken by my iPhone)

This past week I have made the switch from PC to Mac. It was only a matter of time before it happened. I already have an iPhone and an iPod, so 17-inch Macbook Pro was next on the list, right? Right! My decision to switch from PC to Mac was purely based on simplifying my life. One piece of technology that is capable of fitting and organizing my career and my personal life on the go.

I was very excited to get my new notebook, so I tweeted about. After sending out the tweet I was asked if I preferred Mac over PC, especially for web design by @loveforweb. My answer in less than 140 characters was:

“When it comes to design it is purely preference and comfort. Macs don’t make you a better designer. Skill does!”

I would now like to elaborate on that statement in more than just 140 characters. Being a designer is not about what you use to create your work, it is about how you create your work. It is about the knowledge and meaning behind your projects, and the steps you’ve taken to get there. If you are a great designer you can design equally beautiful art on a PC or on a Mac.

So, does it really matter if you are designing on a Mac or a PC? I would say it matters to a certain extent. It matters when it comes to your comfort and what you are familiar with. It matters personally, but it does not matter when it comes to your work. Designing on a Mac does not make your work better. The only thing that can make your designs better is years of experience, knowledge, and a love and passion for what you do.

I think it is important for designers who are just starting off to know that you do not need to purchase expensive accessories in hopes that they will make you a better designer. Simplify your life by only keeping necessities in it.

Here is the temporary setup. I say temporary because as many of you may know, I am currently overseas. So, this is what I will be working with for the next 6 months. A very large setup for such a tiny desk I bought and built from Ikea.



Here are 20 sites and blog posts I’d like to share with you. I keep these resources in my Delicious Bookmarks and often refer to them whenever I need design help, inspiration, or just in the mood to look at something pretty. The internet is such a great way to keep designers of any skill level current in the industry and it’s chuck full of inspiration. If you have any articles that you feel all designers should give a read that you’d like to share, or perhaps a site that always has that special spark to ignite your design sense please leave a comment linking to the site. Enjoy!

1. Minimal Exhibit
2. TYPEInspire
3. Dieter Rams and his 10 Design Commandments
4. How To Improve Your Branding With Your Content
5. 37 Places To Get Free Stock Images
6. 30 Artistic and Creative Résumés
7. 10 Awesome Free Handwritten Fonts
8. Do You Want Fries With That Logo?
9. Ten logo design tips from the field
10. 100 New and Beautiful Seamless Patterns
11. 15 Typography Books To Help You Learn and Love Typography
12. 25+ Inspirational Folded Brochures
13. 30 Interesting Brochure Layout Ideas
14. How to Read the Mind of a Client in 3 Easy Steps
15. Ways and Links to improve the Typography of your Wordpress site
16. 26 Professional Photoshop Retouching Tutorials
17. 10 Ways to Beat the Hell Out of Creative Block
18. Typographic Elegance Letterpress Wedding Cards
19. Hiring a designer: a client’s perspective
20. 20 Retro Wallpapers to Spark Inspiration

There are hundreds of inspirational design galleries available on the internet, but the best design inspiration sites are driven by designers. It is great to find sites that allow users to submit their work and share it with our design community. What better way to be inspired than by other like designers! These sites also allow us to submit our work for critiquing and receive feedback from fellow designers. Please share your favorite design inspiration sites by leaving a comment.

Here are 30 sites that are fueled by user content.

Do you remember your very first school project? How about the first website  you ever made a profit off of? It is a real treat to see a designer transform and evolve into a professional by taking at look back at where they started. Our early work isn’t something we should be ashamed of. It should be used as a visual timeline to monitor our continues growth and gain in our profession.

The following 18 designer’s took a trip down memory lane to dig up old design projects from their archives and were kind enough to share them. The following showcase of design work was created by designers I feel have grown tremendously from their early days and are living proof that time and experience will only better you as a designer and as a professional.

Antonea Nabors, VelvetAnt (@antonea)

This was the 3rd project I ever made in college. It was my 2nd time ever using Illustrator. I drew all of the elements in this project, but clearly had total disregard for typography and readability. By the way, the bolted border is not uneven on purpose.

Colin Wright (@colinismyname)

This was the very first magazine spread I put together, I believe in one of my intro design courses. As you can see, I was very interested in mixing scanned illustration work and computer-based design from early on in my education!

Anthony Sanders, Freelance Designer (@anthonydsanders)

This was (and is STILL live) a website for a record label I did for very cheap about 6-7 years ago.

Rob MacKay (@svgrob)

This was a site I “designed” for a friend a good few years now, who was setting up a monthly bands event for showcasing new talent within churches in the Northwest of England – I’m very, very sorry.

Lauren “LaurenMarie” Krause, Creative Curio (@creativecurio)

Type specimen poster for my Intermediate Graphic Design class, 3rd quarter

Chris Spooner, Spoon Graphics (@chrisspooner)

This magazine page mockup was created back when I worked at a local design studio while studying for my degree. Looking back the design itself isn’t too bad, but there are a few mistakes around the grid layout, margins and typography that I can point out now.

Jacob Cass, Just Creative Design (@justcreative)

Anno Domini Logo & website designed back in 2004 when I was 15 years old for a heavy metal rock band. This was my second ever logo design and the third ever website design

Shannon Farrell (@dolceshan)

This was something I made for Package Design class. We had to create a unique container for an item of our choice. I find this completely laughable now with the shiny cinnamon, horrible shadows, and the fact that the round container looks very flat

Lee Munroe (@leemunroe)

Did this site about 6 years ago (when I was 18) for a local cinema, featuring tables and even a marquee. It’s still going too. www.iveagh.com

Matt Fouty (@mattfouty)

This logo was created in Adobe Illustrator 10 on an old crappy Dell PC laptop. I’m not real proud of it, but it really reminds me of how much I’ve learned since then!

Andy Sowards (@andysowards)

Wow, This post brings back a lot of memories. This is one of the earliest things I can remember creating in Photoshop.I believe I was using Photoshop CS, and I think I was 18 or 19 and in college when this was done. The image was mostly created using Brushes(some of my first attempts at using these) and some crude and simple layering effects with some hue/saturation modifications. I remember this was the first year that I had decided that I wanted to be a web designer/developer as I created many other images similar to this. Although my early work in those days revolved around pictures of myself taken on my camera phone, and sadly most just ended up in my myspace, where I also began showing interest in HTML/CSS. So I guess as much as I hate myspace now (for many reasons) It helped me realize a lot about my interests back in the day when it was still popular . Thanks for the opportunity Antonea, and Thanks to the visitors for reading, hope you found this flashback into my life insightful and interesting and learned a little about where I came from professionally!

Liz Andrade, CMD+Shift Design (@cmdshiftdesign)

Magazine cover for fictitious magazine, Voice. There just seems to be no regard to typography or grid on this, the only thing I actually like is the image concept – but that’s about it.

Andrew Kelsall (@andrewkelsall)

This was a Billboard Design I created back at University, about 9 years ago (when I was 21). The design was part of a D&AD brief, whereby all the students in my class were to create an advertising campaign for a company called “Breeze”—an organisation set in the future who took passengers on holiday to Mars.

I still think that this Billboard Design has a good concept, however, there are many elements I would change. Firstly, I would change the font, I feel it just doesn’t fit well. Secondly, I have no idea why I had chosen to enclose the logo in a white box—and that “exclamation mark” in the top right corner…what’s that all about? Thirdly, I would take away that dire purple border. I now see that it serves no real purpose.

If I were to produce this same design knowing what I know now about design with years of experience, needless to say it would look more professional and straight to the point. I would do-away with the clutter and produce a sleeker, more coherent design.

Jeremy Jaymes, Papertree Design (@jeremyjaymes)

On the left is a drawing from a 9th Grade Art class project in which we had to use grids to recreate a photograph to scale. I believe the photograph I choose came from a National Geographic but I am not 100% sure on that. On the right is a sketch of my hand taken from a sketchbook I have save for years. I would date this sketch sometime during my college years. On a side note I never actually completed a degree. Most of what I studied while attending either fell outside of the Art department or in the areas of Art History and Film.

Kawsar Ali, Desizn Tech (@desizntech)

This the first background I created for my portfolio site http://i-exist.co.cc I just had learned how to use photoshop brush and patterns. I kind “Od’ed ” with the patterns and brush. However, still I was so happy that I created something. I struggled for days just for creating that. I am still learning from all great web designer I meet online and I still feel like I  do not know anything about web design.

Stuart Thursby (@sthursby)

My degree was in history, and one class was so mind-numbingly boring that I did almost anything except pay attention. In one class, I was playing around in Photoshop and came up with this. Pretty garbage now, but hey, that’s the point, right!

Niamh Redmond (@nredmond)

A perspective on being Irish – Digital Imaging project. This was one of the first photographs that I experimented with in PhotoShop when I was 18.

Chad Engle (@chadengle)

An awesome school piece for a newspaper ad.

Thank you all so much for taking the time to participate. I am sure many of you were blowing the dust off of your old external hard drives to dig up some of your outdated work!