Self Education
Since leaving university, I have been trying to find different ways to improve my skills. The opportunity to study design in university was something I am grateful for but I knew I had the responsibility of continuing to educate myself. There are so many resources on the internet to use and it definitely got very overwhelming for me.
Here’s a broad compiled list of resources I have found the most useful recently. All these designers and resources do a great job in covering the practical and technical sides of being a freelance designer.
The Futur. / https://thefutur.com/
This platform has been one of the best resources I have found and wish I knew about it earlier. As much as I despised lectures in university, I really enjoy watching and listening to the talks on their YouTube channel and Spotify. The talks are easy to understand and the conversational tone helps it stay interesting. They explore a lot of topics around how to help creatives make a living out of what they do. This includes pricing, motivation, portfolio work and advice on running a creative business.
Stefan Kunz / https://stefankunz.com/links
As mentioned before on my previous blog, Stefan Kunz has been a great influence in improving my lettering skills. I have followed a few of his live streams which have been really enjoyable and informative. He breaks down how to use composition and grids according to different styles of lettering and typography in a simple manner.
Jasmine Dowling / https://www.jasminedowling.com/
I have been following Jasmine for a very long time since her work is very similar to the work I create. She shares a lot about her mental process on Instagram and posts blogs about how she overcomes challenges as a freelance designer. I really like how her work is influenced by her personal lifestyle which I believe is very important in establishing your own identity.
Will Paterson / https://willpaterson.design/
Will is a great logo and branding designer to check out as he shares a lot of insight into his creative and technical process. I have particularly been watching his content to watch him review online portfolios and a couple of his logo tutorials as well. The way he delivers his content is very straight forward, informative and easy to watch.
I hope this helps anyone else who feels stuck with understanding how to improve their own design knowledge and skills beyond their formal education. A useful video I recently watched to help me overcome being overloaded with too much information is this talk between Chris Do and Melinda Livsey. I highly recommend watching this video which has also been turned into a podcast on The Futur’s account.
Feeling Overwhelmed— Information Overload ep. 6 w/ Melinda Livsey
To narrow down what kind of skills you want to learn, ask yourself what you specifically want to know about. The ideas I had in mind were usually too broad and unstructured. I was always too ambitious about what I wanted to learn at one time. This usually ended up with only not being able to remember much because all the content I looked into were disconnected. I also didn’t give myself time to practise the concepts too which is really important for retaining and understanding information. I will be posting about what resources I have used to target specific goals in the near future. If you have any recommendations on resources to check out, please let me know as well!
Take care
— S
Favourite Letters
Just typing these letters makes me really excited and I have no shame in saying so. I’m sure many designers share the same thoughts about having letters or words that they extremely enjoy experimenting with. There are other letters I enjoy working with but to keep me from dwelling too much on this post, I will only be working with four letters.
My favourite letters are; B S Y A .
I have been following letterer/designer Stefan Kunz (@stefankunz) on how to improve my lettering and working outside my comfort zone through trying different styles. There were a lot of simple tips he recommended that I was surprised I didn’t think of applying earlier. One of the main tips I will religiously use from now on is to use a grid to strictly guide all my work. Eyeing the work is just lazy which is something I am guilty of practising.
The most difficult part of creating this blog post was just deciding on which parts I wanted to share. By far, the words Bacon and Avalanche were the most enjoyable to create in this post but I also decided to upload some examples that weren’t as polished to show my process.
— Sylvia.
Least Favourite Letters
As much as I love hand lettering, there are always some letters that I always have trouble writing in a way that looks cohesive and aesthetic.
My least favourite letters to write are; F P X V.
Sometimes I try to avoid words that have those letters but I am going to challenge myself to practice writing these letters. I realised that I can’t just reject projects because they’re going to ask me to use words with a specific letter that I don’t enjoy writing. Hypothetically if Facebook needed hand lettering, I can’t just say sorry I don’t want to write F words.
Here are some sketches showing how I have been trying to make friends with these letters. It’s safe to say that I definitely dislike writing them a lot less. As with everything, you need to practice in order to understand and appreciate it. Does anyone else have letters they dislike using?
— Sylvia.
Never Ready,
After a lot of contemplation, I have finally published my website! There were many excuses I made to stop myself from publishing my website. Those excuses included self doubt, lack of time, not enough portfolio work, too time consuming, too tired, and the list goes on. I kept reminding myself that if I truly wanted to pursue design then I would do something to help me develop and share my practice. So here I am.
If I had to be completely honest, I still feel scared and vulnerable about sharing my work when I really should have no reason to be. It’s natural to question our own work and get into the mindset of considering whether it’s good enough but I’m still working on believing in myself more.
I hope I will use this space to share my creative growth on the interwebs. Wish me luck!
— Sylvia.