Leave a Comment to Win!

Dribbble is an invite-only design network, that allows you post snapshots ( ‘Dribbbles’ ) of your current work.  They’re a maximum of 400×300 pixels, which allows you throw your work out there quickly, even unfinished designs can get feedback.

Those of you who have heard of Dribbble should be psyched to know that my account was given an invite. If you haven’t heard of it, I encourage you to check Dribbble out.  It’s surprisingly tons of fun, and I’ve seen hundreds of amazing artists using the service.  It’s a great way to connect with active designers, and one of the only ways to see works in progress from so many of our peers.

Here’s a quick look at the service. Each piece you upload can be viewed, commented on, or liked. It’s an amazing way to get almost instant feedback on what you’re working on.  Need an opinion on a website navigation? Dribbble it. Need to hear some criticism on a texture you used on a poster? Dribbble it. Think of it like Twitter, excepts with images, and everybody is kickass. Plus I’m on there too, I guess.

I was given one invite, which allows me to make anyone a ‘Draftee’. And I’m giving that away here!

Rules:

1. Comment on this post!

2. Leave your URL or a link to your portfolio.

3. Tell us something about yourself.

4. DEADLINE – FRIDAY AT MIDNIGHT. JULY 30th 2010.

I’ll pick somebody awesome from the comments after Friday, and they can join me on Dribbble! Even if you don’t win, feel free to check out everybody’s portfolios in the comments. That way everybody can get some feedback and fresh eyes on their work, which is always good.

So what are you waiting for? Comment!

If you know me personally, or follow me on twitter, you may have noticed that I’ve been working on a big personal project recently. This project is actually much more than just a website, I’ve actually shifted entirely away from freelancing and now own my own design company. I co-own the venture with my incredibly talented design partner, Lisa Bun.

Plans for starting this studio began in 2009, or possibly in 2008 when Lisa and I worked together at a small web design firm. It wasn’t until early 2010, after having both freelancers for quite some time (and going a tad insane after being home alone 24/7), that our discussions reached a fever pitch and we decided to just roll with it. Lisa is super smart and independent, and I’m not comfortable unless I radically change my entire life every 12 months or so.

Our official name is Collision Labs, Inc. and we’ve technically been operational since March of this year. We’ve even had few great projects already come through our door, all before launching our website. As we all know, personal projects can suck every ounce of time and energy that you have for what seems like forever. Fortunately, forever is over:

You can visit Collision at www.CollisionLabs.com

Collision is a full service design studio, or more accurately: an awesome world where I’ll get to continue my graphic design, web design, photography, and motion work… except in a kickass office. An office where I recently drew a T-Rex DJ:

I’ll keep writing articles on Fringe Focus about freelancing, but it’s really interesting to learn the ins and outs of owning a real business.  I’ll give you a hint, it’s boring! Well, the paperwork is boring, the work is fun as hell.

By the way, if you’re in Chicago, come pay us a visit.  We have a killer office with brick walls and such.

Let me know what you think in the comments!

Kill It With Fire.

You already know what I’m going to say. You’re thinking about that work you did two years ago, that project you just had to throw up onto your portfolio. You might have thought “This isn’t the best website/logo/poster/thing I’ve ever done, but it’s alright.  Besides, I need more work to show clients.” Or maybe your first thought was “This is awesome, everyone will want to see this.” Except a few months or years later, you can point out a dozen things you could have done better. Maybe the shadows are too dark, maybe the textures are weak, maybe your attention to typographic details was lacking; for whatever reason, this just isn’t your best piece of work.

I want you take that work and place it carefully into your arms. Embrace it tenderly. Take it out back, and whisper “I’ve never loved anybody but you.” Then shoot it in the back of the head. Burn the evidence. If anybody ever asks you about that work again, just say “What work? I never made anything like that” or move to Canada as a fugitive.

Portfolios & Donuts. A Dozen is Enough.

You wouldn’t walk into Krispy Kreme and ask for 29 different donuts. Your clients won’t visit your website and look at 29 different projects.  12 is often enough.

The amount of work any freelancer or company should display is also dependent on your field. A motion graphics artist might get away with five or six pieces, due to both the length of time it takes to produce them, and having the luxury of compressing work into a 30 second to 2 minute demo reel. A print designer, however, could get away with 15 or 16 pieces, if some were smaller projects like business cards or flyers. Ideally, small pieces of larger projects should be combined. If you designed business cards, letterhead, and condom wrappers for a client; show them all in one shot or page. Ultimately, 12 projects should suffice.

Why?

Let’s say you had 29 projects.  A potential employer or client might spend time taking an honest look at five or six of them before either deciding to contact you or moving onto another designer’s portfolio.  What if that person were to look at your WORST five or six projects? Sure they’re probably not terrible, but you want to increase the likelihood that they’ll view your best projects.  So cut it down.

Killing the One.

Most of your portfolios are likely already a good size.  If you have a broad range of services, you may need 12-15.  If you’re a specialist you could show 6-8. The subject of this post is about finding the single, worst piece of work you currently have online (or on paper), and killing it in cold blood.

You most likely already know which piece I’m talking about.  If not, look at your portfolio right now. One of those pieces is lacking behind the others. It could be old work that doesn’t reflect your current skill level, or new work that just doesn’t feel right, or was rushed.

Delete it.

If you have an easily updatable website (Wordpress, Squarespace, Cargo Collective, anything with a CMS) this should be easy. And if you built something more complicated from scratch, don’t worry about building a whole new portfolio right now.  Just spend time today deleting the images, the page, and every link or reference to it.  Never speak of it again.

Remember!

Just because you deleted a page, doesn’t mean the internet has forgotten.  There may be blogs, websites, or tweets linking to your project! If you remove a linked page, be sure to set up a 301 redirect for it. If you don’t know what that is, it essentially is a bit of code you place on your site that automatically redirects users on missing pages to a proper one.  So if they click a link to the old project they’d be redirected to your homepage (or portfolio page, etc.)

You could also simply delete links or reference to the project, but LEAVE the actual page intact. No new visitors would see it, but old links wouldn’t be broken.  But it would be like being haunted by the ghost of your dead project.

Enjoy the Funeral.

Delete the project (or rip that page out of your printed portfolio), and feel better knowing that the rest of your portfolio has just improved. Finally freed of the scourge that was a kind of shitty project, your new portfolio will soar to grand new heights of… whatever, thanks for reading. Have fun killing.

Tell us what you killed! Leave a comment!

I love this piece because it’s the kind of work I get to do when a client says: “Do whatever you want, I’m sure it will look awesome.“

This is a poster I designed for a long-term client of mine last week. I’ve actually been working with them for a whole year, and it has been nothing short of a pleasure.  I designed their website, did all the backend Wordpress work, and designed their business cards and flyers, so when Mike Houser approached me to design a poster I jumped at the oppurtunity.

The branding direction I chose for their blog is centered around a rainbow of colors, heavily treated with grunge effects. I always try to portray Los Angeles in these pieces as warm and exciting, yet uniquely urban.  LA Music Blog focuses on the artists of southern California, and most importantly on the live concert scene.  I designed this poster in order to evoke the feeling of a sun recently setting, with the logo acting as a bright light on a summer night… or whatever.

The normal rainbow palette is extremely subtle here.  I used 3D techniques, painting in perspective, and dozens upon dozens of textures to complete the final look. This poster is being printed at 27″ x 40″ which means it’s an absolutely gigantic file. Ultimately it will be framed and hung in their offices, serving no other purpose other than to look sweet as hell.  And that’s the best any artist can ask for, right?

Some additional notes: The original logo is not my design, but if you’re wondering, it’s several weights of Futura stacked on top each other.  And the bottom area of this poster might be used for written copy later, hence the large blank area. You can check out LA Music Blog at www.LAMusicBlog.com

What do you think of this poster? I’m eager to make more in this style, maybe even a tutorial someday; drop me a line in the comments!

You’re sitting there, in a remarkably comfortable office chair that you wish was your own. You’re thinking about how many business cards you’ll need to hand out, and whether or not any of them were accidentally bent in your wallet. You’ve brought your laptop, but have no idea if it was necessary to bring it along. Suddenly, two guys dressed a lot more casually than you are enter the room. You’re told: “So you’re a designer, tell me about yourself.”

Job interviews are always a challenge, and they’re made even worse in the current economy, where dozens of applicants are interviewing for the same position. Designers may have an even harder time, with thousands of new design graduates each year and only a handful of positions.

Not every aspiring designer will land a job. In fact, many will give up and move onto other career paths. Fortunately for you, you’re reading my blog, so here’s some tips to help you land that killer job. These apply to job-seekers, interns, and freelancers alike.

1. Don’t be nervous, nerd.

Maybe it’s your first interview, or maybe it’s your twentieth: either way the process can be pretty stressful. You never know if you’ll be speaking to one person or five, if you’ll need to answer questions about your work, or your favorite font; you may even be asked to draw something on the spot. The bottom line is that there’s a lot to think about, which leads to a lot of anxiety.  Here’s the good news: having given a few interviews, I can tell you this: We care a lot less about this interview than you do. If it’s before 12, we’re thinking about lunch… if it’s after 12, we’re thinking about what we already ate for lunch. Job interviews are probably the most relaxing part of the day for your interviewer.

Employers are used to lackluster interviews; they’re used to sitting through a lineup of mediocre talent, and they’re  waiting for someone interesting to come along.  So be interesting! Express your opinions, project your voice, make jokes, make it an interesting conversation. The fact that you’re in the room at all means they liked your portfolio, you just need to show you’re smart and capable. So be yourself, pretend you’re talking to your friends. Handle yourself the way you would if you were working there on a day-to-day basis, because that’s what they need to see. If you have fun with it, and you work is good, you may have just landed yourself a job.

2. Have a website

This should be obvious, and the fact that you’re even getting an interview means somebody probably went through your website already. But perhaps you don’t have a website and you simply wrote a good cover letter, or you were a referral from a friend, or they saw a specific piece of yours out in the wild.

I know this is more of a tip to help you get an interview than it is to help once you’re there, but I’ve been to plenty of interviews where they’ll throw your website up on a projector or laptop. If you’ve put together a great collection of your work online, and they ask to see it in the interview, then you’ve scored a solid 10 minutes where you have a lot of great things to talk about. Let’s face it, we’re all very visual people,  so the more time you can spend talking about yourself with a visual aid, the better.

A lot of these ideas apply to print portfolios as well, but honestly, most people would rather browse your website than flip through a booklet.

If you’re not a web designer, don’t worry. All you need is a clean collection of your work online. Use a Wordpress theme, or try Squarespace. There are also  quite popular and easy to use portfolio services such as Krop, Cargo Collective, or Indexhibit.

3. Tell stories

Simply answering questions in rapid succession is a good way to make your interview go fast, but it’s not a good way to get hired. Opening up and telling a story is a good way to avoid awkward silences, and it can usually help you loosen up.

Obviously you shouldn’t just go on about anything; try to think of an interesting story with a past client or project. Maybe it was a  past mistake of yours—maybe something really funny happened to one of your websites—just think of something that can keep people interested for a few minutes.  And while you have their attention (this is important part), make sure you include plenty of details that show your mastery of your craft.  If you’re a UI designer, tell a story about how you solved some crazy e-commerce checkout problem. If you’re print designer, talk about how you fixed a bunch of files with a ridiculous deadline because the client’s printer was a huge problem.

Telling a story allows you to be interesting and intelligent at the same time, which is always a good thing. Plus, a good story can reveal things about you or your work than your interviewer may have never known otherwise.  Remember, those who are hiring you are often not expert recruiters—they’re just trying to get a handle on who you are. They might not always ask the best or most pertinent questions. It’s up to you to make sure they hear everything they need to hear, and stories are a great way guide that conversation. Just don’t talk too long.

4. Care about the company

We already know you enjoy Facebook stalking your friends—here’s where that pays off. Google your potential employer, look through everything in their portfolio, read about their clients, and definitely read their ‘About Us’ section.  Reading about the history of the company can give you a good understanding of their values—and more importantly, the kind of people they’d like to work with.

Ultimately the purpose of an interview is about determining whether or not you’re a good fit. Stalk everyone’s LinkedIn profiles, check out the company’s Yelp rating (if it actually has one), be as creepy as you need to be. Just make sure you don’t walk in only knowing the company’s name. The more you know about what they do, the more you’re able to tailor your conversation to what they’re looking for.

The unfortunate drawback to this step is that after Googling your potential employer for a while, you might find that you do not want to actually work in that environment. This could result in you cancelling your interview, but I would highly suggest going to speak with them anyway.  You never know if a company’s website is a gross misrepresentation of who they are.

(That’s me. You should get those glasses.)

5. Dress like a designer

If you wear a suit, you’re going to feel awfully out of place. You can wear a tie, but only if it’s a really sweet tie that you actually enjoy wearing. If you feel out of your element, this can affect your demeanor, and lead to an awkward interview. Ladies, this means don’t dress like Hillary Clinton… not that I’ve ever seen anyone come in dressed in a pant suit anyway.

Ultimately, it’s all about honesty. Dress like you normally would, talk about real projects, and care about the company if you genuinely like them.  If you’re a talented and cool person, you’ll go far in this industry.

Have any other tips for interviews, or thoughts on the design industry? Leave a comment!