Lessons

Lesson Info

Go From Design Work to Portfolio Piece

They're so that had a mock up your pieces, your printed pieces in particular get in the habit of designing your work at actual size. Now, that's just a great habit that I've fallen into. When you do that, it's so easy to test it and to see it in scale. Okay, Because a lot of the times, if you're designing, I'll just do it to, like, 20%. Unless you are designing a large scale billboard, then don't designed to 20%. Because what 10 point will be is gonna be different to be 40 point 50 point, whatever it is. Okay, print your work on the appropriate stock at actual size. Have your blade cutting mat and double sided tape ready to go from away caught tile, Crace, whatever you have to make it. And usually it's a great way to present to your clients as well. Okay, so don't just print out the page. This is how I think it's gonna look. No, Show him how it's looking. Sit back and admire. It will make changes. All right, how to photograph your pieces. Now, I'm just gonna show you a quick video off ...

how you can do it with very basic materials Home set up. But I'll let the video do the talking here and then all move on. So we actually did this in this studio here. I worked very quickly, As you can see, um, I don't know why the video is 22 minutes. Um, so that's bonus material, but I will go through them now because I think it's important, uh, to remove the barrier off cost. And, um, cost is a huge factor. All right, but also ah, that part about I don't know how. Okay. And what if you only have these items? What if you only have Ah, cardboard sheet, a desk lamp in a camera and your cameras? Your IPhone? Well, the good news is, and I dont kept warrior excuses, I can prove that it's there gonna be better than rendering your work. You know, it kind of looks really almost looks real, but you can do this with a simple set up at home. Cost effective. Um, borrow your desk lamp from a mate. If you can watch you two papers only gonna cost you like a dollar 50 or to box. So empty a side of your room, and what you want to do is get so have a clear space, A computer with photo shop and your design pieces ready. Then you need to set up this space. So try Teoh, find ah in indoors area with natural light coming through if you can. That's handy, but not necessary. In fact, you might find that it might not be the way to go in the video. I didn't do that, and it worked out really well. So it just depends on your testing. Place your white Kabul up against the wall, so let it roll up, okay? And adjust that accordingly and then plug your desk lamp in. Then you starts taking photos. Now, of course, if you have a DSLR camera, Amazing. But not everyone has 2000 bucks. We have a much they cost. It's this truth. You know, I have Teoh. You know, I would rather if I'm gonna go that extent, I would rather get the best of the best, you know, and do it properly. But a lot of us don't have that capacity. So get your IPhone, select the focal point and start taking snaps and be guided by your research that you did prior. And don't be afraid to take a ton. You don't have to pick all of them. You're only gonna pick maybe three or four good ones out of maybe 100 that you got to take. So go nuts. Then you need to upload it to a computer, Of course. So plug it into that plug in your device to the computer, retrieve the rule files, saved them, curate them, select the shots you'd like to edit when you found the shot that you like, Begin editing by dragging it into photo shop. And this isn't, by the way, a Photoshopped tutorial or lesson. But I am quickly gonna touch base on how easy it is. Okay, so double click on the photo layout toe. Unlock that. Go to adjustments, panel and levels that looks like this. So I've dropped it in. It's locked. Double click the layer there. It's titled Background and you have your adjustments panel off. You will click the levels that looks like this. Click the levels pilot on adjustments and that expands. You are met on the left hand side here with Black arrow, which is your as many of you know the shadows. Mid tones is the middle one. And on the very far right, right arrow is the highlights. Pull him in just a touch and you'll have the preview, Uh, the I icon default by default. It should be on, so you'll see the difference. Don't go too far with it. Just give it a nice little touch and then the same thing with the adjustment of the hue and saturation. Go in there in that same pellet pump up the color a little bit. Okay, It might be 5%. Might be 10. Might be 15 if it was really dark and dull. Depends on your camera, of course. So then you see those two Les is their levels in Q saturation, Of course. Then you have to save it. So save the PSD format. First on the left hand side. There, it's simply case of going file save as I save the PST so that in case you need to edit it again, you can go back and do that. Then you have to output it for the Web devices because usually that file is insanely huge. And you want Teoh just make it how it's gonna be shown and you want to have minimum loading time so you have to actually go. Don't just go file save as J Pig. Don't be doing that. Go to file. Safe for Web and devices. Very important to small, but it's a big one, so more about that on my bonus material. So how to render your digital pieces now? I'm sure you'll know what this is getting your assets, whether they're free or what not And putting your designs onto them, right? We all know what it is. What I do is I. If you do decide to do this some instances, it will work right. Some instances if you can make it original and mocked up, that's better off course. But just as you saw with some of my mobile device designs, you need to be getting some free ones sourcing them, putting your work on them. So session on Google. I'm sorry. First, save your design as a J pig. Let's say it's a mobile, responsive website that you did such a free PSD markups on Google download it and open it in friendship that could look like this. This is the one that I've downloaded, Okay, This hundreds other. Then you need to edit the size and dimensions off that cause that PS day was 30 megs. Okay, you need toe save another version of that for for Web. So save eyes and say that you can do underscore web whatever you want to call it. Then you open your digital J pig design. Make sure that it's cropped to the same screen size as that phone should be already designed to the screen size off that phone. Right then, right. Click that layer and convert your J peg toe A smart object. This looks like this. So I've reduced that asset to 72 d. P. I and I've made it 1200 pixels just for the purpose of this. And then I've got my, ah design for that mobile device. I've then made sure that it's to the screen size, which is 3 75 by 67 off that device. I'm walking it onto that. Looks like that have created a smart object out of that. You're probably wondering why I'm going to get into why. It's about smart object. That's a Photoshopped tutorial arena. So right click that layer making a smart object. It basically allows you to manipulate it without losing value off that image. Okay, so then we need to drag your you're designed piece into the muck up PSD and ah. Then you need to, right click that design and stop manipulating. Then you save it. So that looks like this now. Dropped it in. There you go. Smart object there. It's always good to label it, which I have not done. So just label that as the design name. Then we go into right clicking that, um, selecting that and you got to do what? What adjustments are necessary. So in this case, had to rotate that, and then I had to skew the edges to fit on ente. And do you? So it is a civil is that on? And obviously, when it's flat, ultra simple banging on so it make decisions and organizing a pieces. Here we go. Go back to these triggers, okay? Relevance, competence, content, quality and potential. So your relevance again has to be suitable inapplicable, right? Yeah. Surely if you're still stuck on this, you must go back to this, then demonstrate work that's competent. The design work must show your cat you're capable. Content quality is the level of craft crafting depth and thinking and your potential side projects, personal interests. We've gone through this in the other segment, but now I'm gonna go through some questions that you might want to write down. These are gonna help you. These is This is what I do when I think about how I'm going to organize my pieces, I think what are my top five projects? If someone said to me only Show me your five. What are they? Only five. Not six. Not not 4.5. Five projects. Sometimes they're gonna have time for three. So it's important to just really get five down solid ones that you're happy with. Next is what is your hero project off those five pinpoint one. Only one, uh, ask yourself, really? Is that hero project meeting the first made relevance and competence? These are the hard questions. But you know what? The ah, the key thing is here is to just decide. You gotta pick one tough cookies, but you have to pick one. All right. Tough five. What's a hero project? Then? We go into Can you group your work into projects to show depth of thinking. An example of that would be a girl I had a consultation with. She had beautiful posters. She had, like a poster with beautiful typography, and then another post are. And then she'll have some stationery and then another Post star and then some packaging and in another poster and I just got confused. So I said to her, Why don't you just group all the posters in one group all the posters we want, so find a way to group things. If you have a lot of work, remember, that's one project. Then they'll have the, ah, beautiful experience of browsing through it. Can you expand some pieces as well into a project by creating additional components? That's the reverse. A lot of people say I'm a brand designer and they're only showing a logo. Well, the logo is not a brand logos and identity, and a brand, in my opinion, is the emotion behind that product or service. And it's the conversations that you and your competitors and your customers are having with the old product or service that is a brand. So if that's a brand, then show me the emotion. How can I show emotion? Well, did I show you some emotion with the ah are so way tough? Why is that? Well, potentially it was because it was human interaction involved. There was it was in situ. So it was. It was relevant in context. It's solved the problem he created cut through to think about it when you are organizing your work, are there some that fall short? Because you feel that I've designed this really cool brand. It's a logo and it goes on a T shirt. Cool doesn't have a website. If so, is that mobile responsive? Now you've ticked off a whole lotta trigger. You've done a cool logo and a cool T shirt and you've taken on the digital space. Have you got some photos of people wearing a T shirt at a festival? Awesome. Then my target audience. Now I can see this guy's thinking about things that's answering the problem. That's what I mean by expanding it. So if you feel that it lacks, create what it's lacking, is there a platform in there that's missing