In the age of web 2.0, life for the web designer has never been better. The once-curious “web log” (remember that word?) is now a robust CMS concept powering the architecture of entire communities. Web-savvy individuals previously kept together by guestbook comments and handmade forums can now seal the relationship with a mutual follow on Twitter. An explanation for that neat CSS fading trick can be found only a few clicks away on a StackOverflow thread, where someone miraculously asked your exact question. All in all, wheel-reinventing has been all but eliminated from the developer’s to-do lis­­t.

Since so little from-scratch work is needed anymore, the way we execute websites has changed, in many ways for the better. But the changing execution also changed the design process that comes before it – the phase responsible for answering questions such as “What is this website supposed to do?” “What do we most want the visitor to click on once they’re on the main page?” “How will our brand be embodied in the website, outside the About page?”

Think of it like a chef. A chef must first know the menu, the occasion, the size of the group, what tastes to satisfy and food allergies to consider, and so on. Only then can she go on the hunt for the needed meats, vegetables, spices, and utensils needed to create the dish.

This decision-making process demands a significant time investment, sometimes even more so than the execution. But, especially with the race towards resources-minimizing and compatibility that agencies must strive to win, the question “What does the design need? can easily be stunted to “What do I have to work with?” Continue Reading →

Before illustrators were professional artists working on deadline and caffeine, they were once painstakingly trying to figure out how to make a nose look right, how to make the brush leave the marks they wanted, how to make fur look like fur without drawing every single hair. Though with time and effort their skills will render the nose, the fur, and the paintbrush half the challenges they once were, the question of “how do I draw?” will follow illustrators into their careers, even after many technical aspects of drawing are hardly a problem.

While every illustration presents a unique creative challenge, sometimes a project is also sufficiently outside the illustrator’s usual “alley.” And that’s when things get interesting — an unfamiliar subject means the illustrator cannot rely on many of the well-rehearsed tricks in their bag.

…which is actually primally terrifying. The “bag of tricks” is a parachute in a world in which there is often no time to risk or mess up. But it’s okay — there is nothing illustrators love more than terror, stress, and sleep-deprivation, else we wouldn’t be in the field! Onward!

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Post-graduation.

Our professors and advisors warned us to think ahead and be prepared for it, but there was no time to. There were too many thumbnails to sketch, too many emails to read, too many content dummies to print out and bind, too much sleep to catch up on. It almost didn’t matter to us, sleep-deprived and over-caffeinated 3^rd year art students, what was going to be going on in our lives two years from now in the thing called the “real world.” Some of us knew what we would like to be doing after college, but most of us had yet to figure out what we liked to draw best. Besides, two years away was still too far away. If college so far taught us anything, it was that about 43 minutes is enough for everything to change anyway.

But now it’s happened. Suddenly, my student ID doesn’t let me into my home the studio building anymore, I must pay the full price for student-discount art supplies, and the only new email in my inbox is the automated ad from GradPhotos hassling me to purchase the overexposed photo of me holding my BFA degree.

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