I’m about a week late on catching up on blogs and whatnot, and caught this great Creative Freelancer Conference recap from one of my favorite speakers (and people in general), Luke Mysse.

But in reading through to the end, I saw this comment from friend and awesome copywriter Alisa:

The in-between time is the most underrated portion of any conference. Sure, the sessions are good, but that’s just one person sharing their ideas. Lunches, dinners, drinks… those are the places where creative people play off of each other’s genius.

This is why I think it’s important for me to get out there more during the year: less time spent in sessions in hotel basements, and more time talking and collaborating with people all around the country. It’s less conventional but I’m betting that it will be infinitely more inspirational, and better because it’s spread out throughout the year.

How effing brilliant, I thought! And Alisa is dead-on.

I enjoy going to things like CFC and meeting a whole boatload of new people. But what I really enjoy is hanging out on trains, going to restaurants, talking to people on the way to the swag bags, talking to people in line while waiting for coffee. It’s those little sparks put together that sometimes create the larger ideas that move and shake us.

It’s those conversations with people of all kinds of walks of life and business perspectives that help me drive my own business or give me great ideas to implement. I enjoy those smaller groups because you can share things so much easier and the ideas come rapid-fire. Sometimes the encouragement comes rapid-fire, too. But any way you shake it, that tight-knit community is sometimes just as valuable — if not more valuable — than going to the big events and meeting a boatload of new people.

I am a huge fan of the standing date. My friend India and I try to get together every few weeks at a local coffee shop. We talk business, we talk design, we talk life. And I know I walk away feeling inspired and invigorated every time. (It helps that she’s super energetic and ambitious and that in turn, makes me feel like less of an old lump.) We share a lot of ideas and motivate each other. It’s one of the best few hours I spend on myself and away from business every month.

So, I love Alisa’s idea. Go out there and foster your small communities. Find people to collaborate with. Have standing coffee dates. And travel to talk to your friends. (I like to do that too, since I travel a lot and make it a point to get together with as many people as I can in a given city.)

I only hope Alisa makes a stop in my town ’cause I’d love to sit and chat with her too.  ;^)

I’ve just come back from the Creative Freelancer Conference. This was my third conference (my, time flies) and I’ve always come back with some little nuggets of inspiration and information. This was no exception.

There’s always some kind of information overload after these things, but here’s the Cliffs Notes version:

Luke Mysse & Planning
Luke was inspirational and awesome (as he was last year). And he double-dog dared us have some goals and make them happen. Yes, sir! His tips:

• Write down your goals or else you’ll forget them (and they won’t happen).
• Make your goals big and juicy. Stay away from the mundane. Juicy goals provide motivation. And of course they should be audacious.
• Find your core values and strengths. Use those as a guideline for your goals.

Steve Gordon & Being Creative 24/7
As my friend Joanna tweeted during Steve’s presentation: “Steve Gordon has given me permission to play.” Damn straight! I loved Steve and his philosophy and his verve for life. We need more Steves in the world. And I’m glad he’s sort of reinforced a lot of things I do already so I don’t feel bad about it.

• Don’t be afraid to play. In the middle of the day, even. You’ll make it up somewhere. (Maybe I will go on those bike rides I keep lamenting I haven’t had time to do.)
• Leave work to do work. (I do this a lot, going to a local coffee shop when home is distracting. Or when I feel like I have to get stuff done.) Steve takes it to an extreme sometimes, flying out to see friends and work. I like that idea. Maybe if I get my butt in gear and plan well, I should do that!

Von Glitschka & Becoming a Hired Gun
Von Glitschka’s opening line was “don’t suck!” That appealed to the snark in me. And of course, you should never suck. And maybe do a few of these things:

• Don’t wait to get some of the work you really want to do. Do it. Do some personal projects that reflect that work
• Corollary to that: Share the work you’re doing. You never know who’s going to see it. And it might lead to awesome projects that you really, really want to do.
• Challenge yourself creatively.
• Supersize your clients. There’s a lot you can offer them.

Allen Murabayashi & Marketing
I liked Allen’s presentation a lot. It was super informative and funny. He had lots of SEO tips (most of which I won’t rehash here):

• Look at your keywords. You want unsolicited traffic and search hits. And they’re not looking for you by name … they’re looking for what you do. So adjust your keywords accordingly!
• Don’t focus on just your website. Widen your online footprint.

(I guess I should finally start that Facebook fan page my husband has been pestering me to do for ages. “I think it would help you,” he says. “I don’t think you market yourself enough.” Husbands. Such sages.)

That’s kind of it in a nutshell. I’ve definitely got to take some time to distill some information further, but CFC kicked off my thought process for sure!

I also had a terrific time meeting up with friends old and new and finally meeting in person some folks I’ve been collaborating with on projects over the last year (hi Rochelle and Julie!). And those lunches, dinners, train rides and walks have provided a lot of great tips and lots of time to compare business notes and brainstorm and just well, vent. So here’s to a fun and productive time in Chicago!

A few weeks ago, I took a trip to Delaware, where I’d lived for a few years before coming back west to California. (While visiting Delaware might sound weird to you, it was part of an East Coast Nostalgia Tour that included Philadelphia and New York, so hey, it wasn’t that weird.)

It had been almost six years since my husband and I had gone out East, and ever since we thought of making this trip, I had one mission in mind: To find tangible evidence of the very first graphic design project I did seven years ago, a project where I was actually paid to create something!

Backstory: In 2004, I was in a different career. I was a journalist back then. Graphic design was the thing I did on the side because I enjoyed it and liked bending my brain in different ways.

I worked in sports journalism, and through my job, I became friends with Pete DiVito, a sports information assistant at the University of Delaware. Pete eventually moved on to Goldey-Beacom College, a small school in Delaware that at the time, was transitioning from the NAIA to NCAA Division II.

To coincide with the transition, Goldey-Beacom wanted a new athletic logo (pictured here). They had been using the school crest and wanted something simpler and something that screamed Lightning (their nickname). So, that’s what we came up with. I barely knew how to use Illustrator at the time. But it got done, the college liked it, and it was promptly put on t-shirts and a banner that was hung in their gym. Pete gave me a t-shirt with the logo (which I still have and have never worn). I was a wide-eyed kid in awe. That’s my stuff up there! This is freaking cool!

The piece de resistance was going to be the basketball floor. You see, Goldey-Beacom did not have a traditional wood floor at the time. They were going to install one with the new logo on it. I never got to see it. I moved off to California by then. For years, I’d search through photos on their athletic website, hoping to see the floor. No dice.

Fast forward seven years later and the trip to Delaware. I was going to find this damn logo, come hell or high water.

School was out, so the joint was practically empty. I neared the gym. Holy smokes! Banners with my logo! My logo on the floor! However, there were some dudes playing basketball. Luckily, they were playing half-court, so they weren’t all over the middle of the floor, but I admittedly felt a little skeezy going in there and snapping photos while there were people in there.

(So, forgive the quality of the photos. I shot fast and from far away because I didn’t want to look creepy!)

Here’s the logo in lights:

And on a banner near the athletic offices:

And finally, the floor:

Oh, the floor. Such a mild tragedy. As I mentioned before, I knew next to nothing about using Illustrator when I did this project, so I didn’t know about outlining fonts and whatnot. Hence, the floor doesn’t look like everything else. Oh well. I’ve learned a lot since then.

It was neat to jump into the way-back machine and see this stuff. I know I’ve come a long way since then and I’ve grown as a designer in those years. I was just a happy kid back in the day, happy that someone wanted to pay me to make something and then splash it all over their school. And it was nice to see that they were still using it after seven years.

Thanks for the smiles, Goldey-Beacom!

My humble little design enterprise turned one year old a couple of weeks ago. I celebrated the date of my layoff on June 23rd and the start of this crazy, exciting chapter of my life.

I have to say that going solo is one of the most challenging and yet most rewarding things I have ever done. But I’ve made it one year and I’m not broke and I’m not homeless, so something must be going right!

I feel very fortunate in that I found great friends, colleagues and resources along the way. I have been inspired by my fellow solopreneurs and creatives and would not be here without so many people’s support and faith in me.

You usually learn a lot in your first year of business, and this was no exception! I hope to help others as I have been helped, so here goes (in no particular order):

Learn to love the business side.

As a wise person once said, “If you don’t treat it like a business, it’ll always be a hobby.”

Business is hard work. It’s also not always fun. We’re creative folks. We’re all about the drawing, the thinking, the concepts, the colors, the fun stuff. Thinking about marketing and money and taxes and other business-y stuff makes us cringe. But this is the heart and soul of having a sustainable business. Solo folks don’t have marketing departments or accountants behind them. So suck it up, become smart about your business, know how much money you’ve got and that’s how you’ll keep being able to do all the fun stuff.

Organization is a must.

If you ever walked into my studio, you would look me in the face and call me a liar for talking about organization. But really, it’s all about keeping things straight in a way that is comfortable for you. Do you know what all your outstanding projects are? Who you have to follow up with? Where all your reference files are? What all the passwords for the 10 billion sites you’re developing are? What invoices have to get sent out?

I do, despite the fact that my studio is an atrocious mess. I may not look organized, but I know where all the important stuff is. You don’t have to get all OCD about it. Again, find what works for you. I have a nice folder system for all my client work, and I have some checklists on my computer to keep me on track. You know how you think, so take that and run with it.

Put everything in writing.

I learned a lot of expensive lessons because I didn’t put things in writing. Write you proposals and your creative briefs! Make sure your clients understand them! That way, when scope goes out of control or you’re not sure what you were supposed to do weeks later, you have a roadmap (and you can show it to your out-of-control client and try to mitigate some disasters).

Share your knowledge and help others.

I’m not saying you have to give away all your trade secrets. But being helpful is always a plus. First off, you’ll put something in your karma bank. Second, you’ll usually learn something along the way . Third, you can position yourself as an expert in your field and people will come beating down your door if they feel you know what you’re talking about.

I have gotten jobs because someone e-mailed me and said, “I saw you were talking about X on this message board and you really sounded super knowledgeable. Would you be interested in working on this project, doing X?”

Besides, people like working with friendly folks. Helping others shows you’re open to collaboration, which can lead to awesome projects.

Don’t be shy. (Though it’s really hard not to be.)

Most people who know me would scoff at me if I ever said I was shy. But really, I am. I have a confession: I am terrified of the telephone. Nothing gives me the heebie-jeebies more than the thought of making a cold call. (And you wonder how I survived as a sports reporter for five-plus years with this fear of the telephone!) I also feel awkward in a room where I don’t know anyone.

But guess what? You have to swallow your fears and just put yourself out there. How is anyone ever going to know what you do or how awesome you are if you don’t talk to anyone else? Besides, once you find one person to talk to, it doesn’t seem so scary anymore.

I know you don’t want to sound like a shameless self-promoter, but you have to do some promotion. You don’t have to be arrogant. Be friendly and talk about yourself a little. It will get you further than being a wallflower.

Always carry business cards! You never know when your next potential client is going to show up!

True story: I was once at a local event here in Sacramento, volunteering at a booth with my husband. This was not a design-related event at all. But a photographer came up to our journalism-related booth to ask about shooting for small local publications. And he mentioned he was hoping to get a portfolio up. And my friend and my husband who were both in the booth pointed to me and said, “Hey, she’s a web designer.” I didn’t have my new business cards on me (d’oh!), but I luckily had one old one left in my wallet. He contacted me a week later.

You also never know if you’re going to share an elevator with someone important, so be prepared!

It’s going to be hard sometimes. Just accept it.

It sometimes irks me when people say, “Oh, you’re so lucky … you get to roll out of bed and walk 10 feet to your office and work from home. You have such an easy life.”

It’s not easy. There are lots of terrific things about going solo, but lots of things that suck about it. Accept that for what it is and move on. And make sure you have really good friends who don’t mind it when you vent occasionally (or a lot).

No (wo)man is an island.

Having a great support system is key. Whether you need moral support, or have a question or whatever, always remember that you’re not the only one in your boat.

Like the motto of the Creative Freelancer Conference says, “You work solo, but you are not alone.”

Related to this …

You are not Superman (or woman), nor do you ever need to be.

Sure, some of us know how to do a lot of stuff and do it well. But you don’t need to do everything. Some of the best projects I’ve worked on have been with a team. It’s nice to not have to worry about everything for once. It’s also nice when you’re not the main point of contact sometimes.

There’s nothing wrong with collaboration. You might learn a lot of new things along the way. You might push yourself in one skillset because you suddenly don’t have to worry about 10,000 other things. You might wind up with bigger and bigger projects because you don’t know how to do one thing that’s essential to the contract, but you’ve got a buddy who does.

Which leads me to …

Don’t say no immediately.

I’m not saying you should never say no. There are times you have to or you will go insane. But the key is not saying no immediately.

I have a friend who always says, “I can’t do web design.” Bollocks, I say! I always tell her that she can design a website — she’s got solid design skills –  but she just doesn’t know how to code it and put it on the internets. That doesn’t mean she has to say no. She just needs to find a web guru (as I wave my hands wildly). You see what I mean? Saying no off the bat just shut her off to about a million possibilities right there!

A teacher of mine once said, “Don’t say you don’t know how to do something right off the bat. Chances are that when it comes time to actually do the project, you’ll know how to do it … or you’ll know someone who does.”

But on the other side of the coin, be honest about your limitations and that of your partners. If you’ve thought about it and it’s truly impossible, then say no. But if there’s a fighting chance that it is possible, then don’t say no until you’ve explored all the options.

You won’t like everyone you work with, and vice versa. But always be nice about it.

I’m here to make friends sometimes, but not all the time.

If you encounter someone you don’t really like, don’t make it more miserable than it needs to be — for both your sakes. Just smile a lot, always be professional and then go vent to your friends later.

And don’t be offended if someone doesn’t like you. It’s not like you’re working with that person every waking minute. You’re not everyone’s cup of tea. I know, I hate to burst your bubble.

Smile a lot. Be a good person. Be the person you want to work with.

Let’s face it. No one wants to work with Debbie Downer. Or a consistently negative person. Or a consistent slacker.

But if you’re upbeat and friendly and approachable, people will flock to you. I still think one of the highest compliments I have ever received had nothing to do with my design skills or web skills — it was a client who called me and said, “We really enjoyed working with you on a previous project, and we really want to work with you on this bigger project because we just love your attitude and helpfulness.”

Staying positive is not only good for business, it’s good for the rest of your life, too!

Always keep learning.

Read a lot. Talk to your fellow designers. Ask questions. Take a class. It’s the only way to grow as a designer / businessperson / regular human being.

Have an unwavering faith in yourself.

It’s not easy to go solo. Sometimes things go horribly awry and really, there’s no one else that can fix your situation. This is when you have to dig deep down and trust that everything will turn out OK. It’s one thing to have people tell you it’s going to be OK, but you have to truly believe it yourself. So yeah, always have faith in yourself. When you have nothing else to hold on to, at least you’ll have that. And then things start turning around. Honestly.

Enjoy the ride.

Well, there was a reason you went solo in the first place, right? Savor it! Enjoy the good stuff, learn from the not-so-good stuff. You’re already ahead of the game because you decided to ditch working for The Man, so whenever you get down, just remember that and I guarantee it will bring a smile to your face.

Just got back from a whirlwind five days at both the Creative Freelancer Conference and HOW Conference. I mean, wow! What an experience.

This was my second CFC and my first HOW. CFC was a wonderful time and also a mini-reunion with a few of the folks I met last year in San Diego — Tricia Okin, Genevieve Margherio, Jenn Cole, Kirk Roberts. I also finally got to meet many of the people I only knew online through message boards and e-mail groups, so that was neat.

I took away a lot from both conferences — my brain is in near overload right now — but here are the big nuggets. Because the nuggets and highlights are most helpful anyway, no?

The CFC stuff:

* Luke Mysse made a great presentation on the first day about being your own boss. It was inspirational and made me feel so empowered. His big point: Your life balance is on your hands. You can train clients not to call you at odd hours or e-mail you at midnight. You can stop feeling like you need to work until 3 a.m. You’re the one in control. We complain so much about how our clients are all over us or about how we’re sleeping very little, yet we violate our own boundaries. This was very eye-opening. I think I’m going to start taking back my time NOW!

* Samantha Bennett had a great presentation about prioritizing and getting things done. My favorite tip from her — it was directed at the procrastinators that like to say, “oh, I would do this if I had an hour to spare … or two” — was this: Set aside 15 minutes each day to do something. It can be the same thing, or maybe something on your to-do list that got lost in the shuffle the day before. That way, you’ll always have a block of time to get something done.

My 15 minutes will be spent on our exercise bike. I know that’s not a lot of time, but to me, 15 minutes everyday is better than zero. Because I do suffer from the time lament — oh, I wish I had an hour to go swimming. Or walking. Or bike riding. With this, I get something that I want to do done. And I still have the choice to play tennis with the husband, go to the gym or swim later in the day should I be feeling so inclined (or carve out a larger portion of time).

* I always enjoy Dyana Valentine‘s energy and passion in helping people pitch their businesses. It was helpful seeing her do a live demo with one person. And she really got everyone thinking about how we make our clients feel and how we want them to feel when they’re done working with us. And she reminded us that other people are actually our best evangelists. If we get our friends excited, they’ll talk about us excitedly to everyone thy know too.

* Galia Gichon did a presentation about money and managing money (oooh, the scary topic!). I really like that she had very practical advice and broke down such a complex hairball of a topic. Two of my favorite tips: 1) Put all your goals in numbers. They’re much easier to reach that way. (For instance, “I’m going to pay down $2,000 in debt in three months” instead of “I’m going to pay off this credit card.”) 2) Set aside a day each week to deal with your finances. Just pay all your bills, check on all your accounts, do all the money-related things that one day and one time. And then you don’t have to freak out unnecessarily as your bills come in.

Point No. 1 really does work, I have to say. Several years ago, I would make up these crazy Excel spreadsheets listing my debts and how much I was going to pay toward them each month. I would calculate whether I had extra money in the budget and adjust these totals as necessary. It was quite a system. But it really worked. I paid stuff down. And then I got away from it and my finances feel like this giant hairball of a mess. Gotta get back to the old ways.

* Jean Perwin did a presentation of copyrights and contracts, and that was probably the most useful and practical session there was. It was very educational. And I also have a basis from which I can write my contracts!

HOW stuff:

First off, this was my first HOW Conference. It was incredibly daunting at first — and the expo was a madhouse, but the swag was freaking awesome — but I’m glad to say I went. I also enjoyed selling at the Designers’ Marketplace and meeting fellow crafty designers. It was a positive experience and I would definitely consider going again!

* Von Glitschka did a presentation about having the tools to come up with killer concepts. First off, it was a reminder to do all the fun brainstorming exercises that sometimes get lost in the rush to produce, produce, produce. But he also spoke a truth that is very near and dear to me because it was also true in my former life as a journalist — the best designers come up with killer concepts because they’re very well-rounded and well-read and very educated. When you have a broad pool of experiences and reference to draw from, you come up with more (and better) ideas. He emphasized the need to not only be well-read and educated in design, but in other areas too. We sometimes know too much about design and shape and form and color and not enough about why a design speaks to people and moves them to action, or why a design would be offensive to a certain culture or why a design wouldn’t work for a certain client/audience/project. Von was also kind enough to share his presentation and brainstorming ideas here: tinyurl.com/5alarmconcepts.

* My other favorite presentation was from Nancy Duarte, who talked about weaving stories into our presentations. It was a new spin on what makes effective presentations. I mean, she brought in concepts from screenwriting and film, which was cool. She also used the Gettysburg Address as an example of an effective presentation (also something I would have never thought of, but hey, Abraham Lincoln knew how to make a point effectively, no doubt!). Her main message was that your presentations have to transform an audience, and effective ones get them to go out there and either evangelize your idea or buy something you’re selling because they connect with them on a human level. My last favorite point from her was that you know you’ve made an effective speech/presentation when no one is tweeting during the show.

So yes, my head is swimming with stuff. But I’m really excited to put a lot of what I learned into practice!

It’s still fall, not too cold yet (well at least for us on the West Coast).

Went to a friend’s pumpkin patch a little while ago and took my trusty Nikon D60. Sometimes it’s just fun to shoot random things. And pumpkins are very pretty shades of orange. Shot some stuff that I thought might make interesting textures or background images for fall-related things.

Feel free to use these. All I ask is if you do use them in a project, just drop me a line and show me a sample. I like seeing my stuff in action.

Enjoy!

Download all the full-sized textures here.

If you want to see the entire set on Flickr, go here. There are lots of pretty pumpkins like these:

Went to the Creative Freelancer Conference in San Diego last week, and had an amazing time. It couldn’t have come at a better time for me personally, since I decided recently to go solo full-time and was feeling a little scared. I got to meet some awesome and fun people from around the country. And among the valuable business tips and terrific advice came this overarching feeling:

I really can do this.

It was refreshing to see so many creative folks at different stages of going solo. There were people who’d been doing this for 10, 15, 20, 25 years. There were people who just started. There were people who were in my exact boat — going solo because they had been laid off from another job.

It was so nice to look around the room and know that doing this solo venture was possible.

There was a wealth of information — I went to a pricing workshop and that was extremely eye-opening — but some of the great nuggets I heard were:

* Growth is not necessarily about growing your business, but to make it a sustainable practice. (Petrula Vronakis)

* You have to be more than interested, you have to be committed. (Peleg Top, Marketing Mentor)

* We understand our vocation is bigger than our occupation. (Todd Henry, the Accidental Creative)

And perhaps my favorite quote from the entire conference, also from Todd Henry during his talk about staying creative in a demanding profession:

“Cover bands don’t change the world.”

So pithy and so true.

I was thrilled about the conference. Now I feel like I can approach the business side of my business without freaking out. I feel like I have a strategy. And I also have a whole new network to connect with.

I’ll definitely be back next year!

Exactly one month ago, I walked into my office and was greeting with the piece of news that nobody likes to hear:

We’re sorry, we like your work, but we can’t keep you.

That’s essentially how I was laid off from my last job. And then came the expected mild panic: How will I pay the bills? How about insurance? What do I do now?

For me, the bout of panic lasted maybe an hour. I’ve always been one of those people who has Plans A, B, C, D, E and F at the ready. I’d been working as a freelance designer the past five years on the side. Losing my job only meant that I had to move into freelance. Full-time.

After a month, I can honestly say that becoming unemployed may have been the best thing to happen to me this year.

My ultimate goal in life was to go solo. This happening to me gave me the kick in the pants I needed and forced me to take the plunge. It’s been a growing experience.

Taking the plunge as a freelancer is scary. You’ve got to hustle. You’ve got to get yourself out there. You’ve got to balance the books. You have to kick ass. And have I mentioned that you have to design too?

Part of me was a little scared that I didn’t have the connections or the contacts or the client base to really make a go of this. But I think I underestimated myself. I also think I’ve been busier now than I ever was when I had a full-time job.

I’ve had the luxury of time. Time to work on personal projects and nurture my creativity as a designer. I might even get to working on some art projects to keep feeding the inspiration bug.

Of course the luxury of time is sometimes a curse. It’s no secret that time management is probably the hardest part of working on your own schedule. Finding time to finish projects, pursue new projects, meet with people and keep the house from falling apart is the daily challenge. But it gets better as you go on.

I think I’m going to enjoy this journey. And I hope bigger things are in store.

I leave with a picture a friend of mine sent me yesterday. Very apropos. (Shame I don’t know who to attribute it to because it’s lovely.)

In any design job, you face deadlines. Clients want things right this very minute! Or, they needed it yesterday! (My boss likes to throw that one out at me a lot.) But what if you had only 30 minutes to design something … and it was actually kind of fun?

A couple of weeks ago, I got the privilege to participate in the annual Sacramento City College Show-Off Competition in the faculty division. The competition is part of our annual end-of-year student show for the Graphic Communications department at the college. There’s a faculty version, a student version and a 3D rendering version. And yes, it was as much fun to participate as it was to watch.

The faculty version pitted myself; Don Button, department chair and Photoshop whiz; Chris Seddon, my boss at the graphic design lab and an Illustrator whiz; and Tom Cappelletti, teacher of many disciplines in our department.

Our task? We were given a topic on the spot, had 15 minutes to brainstorm and then 30 minutes to design an 11″ x 17″ poster on said topic. Our topic was “Tagging Yourself.” We had to choose five words that described ourselves and design a poster using mainly typography to convey the message.

Don won the competition (winners were determined by popular vote). I came in second by a tiny margin. I was quite honored, as Don was a teacher of mine and is highly respected here in Sacramento. Don also won last year’s competition so he’s an old hand at this.

This was my entry:

This was my brainstorming sketch (you can see that I thought of the concept pretty early … drawing the profile face was the biggest challenge):

This was Don’s winning entry. If you know Don, you’ll know this is very much him:

In all, the whole experience was a blast! There was also a ton of great student work at the show. If you want to read more about it (and see the winning student and 3D entries), visit the GCOM@SCC blog!

[Super thanks to Andrea Diaz-Vaughn, who headed the planning committee (and invited me to participate in the faculty show) and GC Club president Priscilla Garcia)!]

Came across this excellent article by Chris Spooner of SpoonGraphics: 40 Free Tutorials on Advanced Drawing Techniques.

There’s really a lot of good stuff in that post, including drawing manga-style things, drawing actual people, even a great tutorial on drawing eyes (and other specific body parts are covered as well). Some of those tutorials even cover drawing something with pencil and then taking your drawing and inking it in Illustrator (yet another super useful skill).

Now, what’s with the drawing, you ask? Have you managed to get by without really knowing how to draw things? I used to be one of those people who could only draw blobular things. I would often have these concepts for logos or artwork in my head, but couldn’t really sketch them out on paper and would get really frustrated.

I always told people I couldn’t draw to save my life, and always admired the friends who could do it. My boss at Sac City used to do all these intricate drawings in Illustrator and I would just watch in fascination. He’d sometimes solicit ideas from the tutors and then come back a week later with finished drawings in Illustrator. He’d do life-like portraits of people or even weird, whimsical creatures (he once drew a squid wearing a suit because when he solicited an idea, all I said was, “Draw a fantastical squid.”).

So all this time, I would just be jealous of those who could draw. I thought I could get by. But at some point, the frustration over not being able to sketch out or execute certain ideas came to a head and I figured I’d better learn how to draw. So I’m enrolled in a drawing class this semester at Sac City. And while it scared the living daylights out of me, it’s been a lot of fun. And I wondered why I hadn’t done it sooner.

Drawing is a really fundamental skill that all designers should know. I’m not asking you to be the next Leonardo Da Vinci, but knowing some of the basics can help. Like knowing about composition and perspective and shading. I used to be frustrated that I couldn’t make anything that had depth in Illustrator; now that I know a little more about shading and positioning, I’m a little better at it. Drawing cityscapes is easier for me now because I know a little more about two-point perspective and everything doesn’t look so distorted anymore. And so on and so forth.

So if you belong in the I-can’t-draw-to-save-my-life category, maybe you should bite the bullet and learn how! It’s scary but so worth it in the end.