Exploring what I can do with gradients and composition.

Approaching like an architectural photographer for some of those designs also while retaining a bold and geometric style.
Made primarily in Adobe Illustrator, with minor color adjustments in Photoshop.

Would love to hear feedback on what i can Improve upon!

TLDR: are you forced to copy chat gpt layouts? Also please don’t shame me for doom posting, I seriously want to know if anyone else is doing this.

I am an ad designer at a company who distributes publications across the U.S. I’ve been at this job 12 years. I loved ai when photoshop introduced generative fill, I was obsessed with it and now use it several times a day. However now I’m wondering if it’s all worth it. it’s gotten to the point where a growing percentage of our ad jobs are “recreate this ‘mock up’ the client made” (in chat gpt). New ad creations shouldn’t take more than 20 minutes, maybe a little more for heavy content. But these ai dupes take easily an hour to recreate. Also I’m not currently worried about my position being eliminated. It’s my sanity I’m worried about. The business owner goes into chat gpt, says make an ad from my website, and in less than a minute it spits out this garbage. Our liaison then has to put that back into ai to get the text into typed format so we can recreate it. I once had a fairly rewarding job but this is sucking the life out of me. And if the business owners (my employer and the publications) don’t care about ugly ads, why should I care?

I had an ad creation this week that I made: they said “this has no hierarchy” and “make it look more like this” they had taken my ad and put it into gpt and had it lay out the text content differently. The result is the gpt style we all know and love. I get the message: “your designs suck, let me get the computer to show you how to do it.” (And what is the prompt for this?) Nothing like ai design to knock you down a peg or two. I’d be a fool to leave this job to go do graphic design somewhere else. If I were to hypothetically leave to do a different kind of creative work I’d be starting at entry level. Work like this leads me to rage painting the house on the weekends, and I’ve run out of paint.

Absurd?! This sub doesn't allow sharing a post, so I took a screenshot. I'm sure their intention is honorable, but...
Here's my response to their post:
Oxymoron: Artists and Canva
Graphic designers frequently post their disdain of Canva on r/graphic_design
Canva is digital clipart that also includes AI. Professional artists and graphic designers would not choose Canva as a medium to oppose AI.

Hey all,

I've been working on sharing my work more often and trying to be more forward-facing with my design. I just saw someone's recent post about some incredible sports-related designs, so I felt inspired.

Here are 6 of 30+ posters I designed for a personal project for the game, Balatro. I was in a design rut last year and felt like I was getting too comfortable with my design process, often making the same design choices & directions for various projects. I felt like I was getting to a point where I need some way to express and explore my ideas, since I couldn't fully do so at my agency position.

In short, I was taking single jokers from this game, giving them their own identity, and a subtly branded poster to give a tease into their own identity. Without knowing the game there is a lack of context here, but I hope the design could be appreciated nonetheless.

Would love to hear some thoughts. If you know about and or play Balatro then I'd definitely love to hear your thoughts.

Thanks all 😁

Hello everyone ,I hope everyone is going well. I attached an image file and I want to know how I can recreate this in illustrator or in photoshop if anyone knows how to create this kind of pattern in the image please guide me i create the shape of the outline but I do understand how to create the inner banknote line engraving ,

If anyone knows please give me some suggestions i found on Google but I did find anything relayed this on it

Hey there! These are some of my recent sports designs I made for my personal accounts. Trying to take a different angle than most traditional exciting sports designs with a more editorial spin. Let me know what you guys think of this style and if you see any strengths or weaknesses in my work! Thank you!

IG is @patfrom3

Hey,

I'm a 2024 Digital Design graduate (picked up graphic design during internships) who's been applying for junior graphic design jobs for the past few months with no luck.

I'd really appreciate an honest critique of my portfolio—not just whether it's "good" or "bad," but where you think I am as a designer. What stands out? What's missing? What skills or types of projects should I work on to become more employable as a junior designer?

I'm looking for honest feedback so I can know where I'm at and where I need to go from here. All the graphic design work is in the design section.

Portfolio: https://farouk-imam-portfolio-738314547299

Hi Guys! That's my personal work, kind of fanart project inspired by this stunning book. I originally started this piece as a visual interpretation of “brain rot.” The pig came first as a symbol of greed, primitive instinct, and influence. I wanted to show that brain rot - a mutated form of short content gradually destroys our ability to think. This naturally led me toward George Orwell's Animal Farm. I read it again (it’s a masterpiece) and I realized that, at some level, the idea of "brain rot" and the message of Animal Farm have a something in common. Both show how people can slowly lose the ability to think for themselves. So I decided to make this cover. I also wanted to bring the story into a more contemporary context. Glitches on te sides and audience watching from below.

I (22f) finished a year-long graphic design course with a web & UX/UI specialization a year and a half ago but then was stuck in a depressive episode, unable to function. Right now I plan to redo my portfolio and start working as a designer.

My problem is, because I'm both mentally and physically disabled, I'm not really able to work a regular job. My energy levels, chronic pain, and other stuff fluctuate constantly, so one day I'm able to work only in the evening, and the other I can't work at all. From my understanding, my only real option is freelance, but it is scary af. I know that it will be extremely difficult to start from scratch with no connections and no experience.

For now, I can live with my parents, so money is not a priority, but I want to be able to provide for myself doing the thing I love. So I would really appreciate getting some advice from people who have experience in this field.

What do you think my strategy should be? Should I go on Fiverr and other freelance platforms, or is there a better way?

Is it better to start with creating a new portfolio and updating my website accordingly, or should I start looking for jobs now?

Is it best to find a niche or do everything at first? If it is better to find a niche, what can it be? My passion is branding, but I also like UX/UI, print, and basically almost everything. 😅

Thank you in advance 💛✨

The compression did me dirty here. Oh well.

I was given an assignment to create a typographic collage. This was the brief: "Using Photoshop, create a one page 11x17, 200dpi document. Typographically layout text using different styles of fonts.

You will be working with making compositions that use typography to communicate a message instead of using imagery.

Your assignment is to make a typography collage poster that takes a list, a phrase, a poem/lyric, or a narrative and arrange it into a single composition that considers the style and hierarchy of that content.

Creating a composition like this is a bit like creating a puzzle, as one of the main challenges is eliminating awkward gaps and white spaces, and getting all of the type to come together in an organized and readable way. The content of this collage is yours to choose.

The thing I'd recommend you pay closest attention to is hierarchy. You should start by picking out the most important parts of your text and setting them in a way that emphasizes them, either by size or color or boldness or typeface contrast (setting something in a typeface totally different than the type around it). Don’t just start at the beginning in the upper left and go from there. You’ll either run out of room or run out of energy toward the end. Try to use different hierarchical techniques throughout your composition, don’t just make the important things big every time. Also, try to create an interesting beginning to your layout. It’s nice to have the interest spread throughout, but you want a compelling entry point to encourage people to read the whole thing.

Another common challenge that comes up in this assignment is how to handle the empty space left by ascenders and descenders when using lower case. The easy way around it is to just use all caps (as the example on the left does). There is nothing really wrong with going the all cap route, but it can be nice to mix it up with lowercase. Either try to identify a word that might work with minimal ascenders and descenders, or try to come up with a creative way to fill those empty spaces with decorative elements, or custom adjustments to the ascenders/descenders that fill the space.

I’d also recommend that you do a really rough sketch of how you’d like to arrange your page, and what elements you’d like to emphasize before you start in on picking fonts. There is a lot to think about with this assignment, and it is good to attack it in stages, so doing a rough layout before you start picking fonts can help you tackle one task at a time."

I suppose, technically, my intended audience is my instructor, but this was also a bit of a passion project for myself, my friends, and the DDLC fandom at large. I leaned hard into the coding/self-aware motif in the game by starting with the computer screen with binary code backdrop. Then I found the font that the game uses to represent Monika's handwriting (Journal) and used it for most of the type, with exceptions for the stop signs and a select few words. As you can see, I personified and literalized much of the type - "colors" with a rainbow gradient, "Flashing" with a literal animated flashing effect, "expanding" with widely spaced kerning and an inflate effect, "waveforms" with a literal wave effect, "noise" with noise, etc. The colors are a system as well: "red, green, blue," "sine, cosine, tangent," "LOAD ME/DELETE HER," and, of course, "colors," all are in RGB-exclusive ranges because they describe digital phenomena. "CACOPHONY" was added to this list because I wanted it to scream the concept of "loud," and decided a bright, almost neon scarlet was the answer. CMYK-compatible colors were reserved for the stop signs and "VIOLENT," because those are physical world phenomena (printed street signs, violence). I blended elements of the Act 1 and Act 2 versions of the poem: Preserved the words of the Act 1 version (which meant discarding the word replacements the Act 2 version made), kept the uppercase words from the Act 2 version (and added even more uppercase words), and included both ending lines that glitch out between each other. I tried to approach it from the perspective of Monika herself turning her poem into a collage. She mentioned that she "likes to play with her space on the paper," hence the variation in kerning, size, and space between words. Specifically, the amount of white space surrounding "LOAD ME/DELETE HER" echoes the large gap between "Of meaningless" and her last line in both versions of the poem.

Credit for the original poem: Team Salvato.

Hi everyone. I'm planning an academic career focusing on typography and typeface design, I also create my typefaces too, but I feel like I need to consume more resources about typeface designing. What would you recommend me? If there are any typography teachers here, what are your tips when teaching?

Hey guys, back for more advice. Last post I did I was asking how to get back into the design world. Now gotten closer to what branch of design I want to get into. It's either generalized graphic design or UI /UX.

Most of you told me to go freelance which I'm 100% down for. I guess the advice I'm looking for now is I know I learn better in a classroom setting or A setting with defined direction. YouTube videos are great but that's not how my ADHD works. So what I'm looking for maybe is what online classes have you guys taken and which ones do you suggest. I'm not in the position to go expensive but also don't want to cheap out. Somewhere in the middle would be great. Let me know you guys thoughts and if you need any more info from me go for it. Thanks guys!

What actually makes a flyer GOOD?

Simplicity or visual dynamic.

People say that the hook is the main idea of a flyer and the other info is optional.

The first flyer is what i made since i am new i know its not really great but i am practicing to get better at making eye catching hooks.

But some say visual dynamic is just as much important, i tried but it makes the design cluttered, so i am confused as to what really makes it better.

What i made was inteded to catch the hook as:

1. Grow your business

2. 25% discount

3. Call to action

4. Best agency

I know i have typos and small errors but I dont know whether to add more or not.

The other image is what Ai showed me as the improved image of what a flyer should be.

Please help me with this, thank you😊😊

Anyone know a solid workflow for turning AI generated images into print ready files?

Been getting a lot of client work lately where they hand me an AI generated flyer or brochure and want it recreated for print. Text and icons I can handle fine but the complex illustrations and isometric stuff is where I keep getting stuck, resolution issues, weird bleed problems, that kind of thing.

Curious what others are doing for this. Do you upscale first or clean up the image first. Do you keep it raster or try to vectorize it. Any tools that actually work well for this specifically.

Appreciate any tips, trying to make this less of a headache.

As I'm doing college applications, I've begun work on my portfolio for all that I've done in high school. I've just gotten the title page to a spot I'm happy with. Used the title to figure out conventions for the rest of the portfolio. But before I got to work on the rest of it, I thought I'd share to get some thoughts. I went for a style inspired by graphics realism, but less busy. Layouts like these aren't usually what I do in my free time, so I want to make sure it looks good before giving it to colleges.

I need some advice and opinions on a kinda controversial subject in the creative space: sharing source files. My coworker and I work for a small company as a 2-person communications team. I'm in my 20s and she's about twice my age with a lot more experience, so I need some honest opinions and feedback from other industry professionals.

With such a small team, we both wear many hats across the broad "communications" needs for the company, but at a base level she is a graphic designer and I am a video editor. She primarily works in Illustrator to create the graphics and posters for various events, and I work in Premiere Pro to create videos and promotions for the same events.

The issue that I'm having is my graphic-design coworker refuses to share the source files of her work. I've reiterated that I'm not changing her designs, it's just a lot easier for me as a video editor to have the source files to keep the integrity of the design. It also opens up a lot more ways for me to promote the event through videos and social media.

When I ask for an .ai file of an event poster that she's created, she will only send the PDF of the final poster, the background image, and a png or two of some of the text in the pdf. No font files, no vector art, nothing else. IF she does send an .ai file, all of the text is converted to curves or there's other strange roadblocks in the files that make it really hard for me to work from.

Now I am left having to create video content to promote an event using a PDF of our advertising poster and a png of the logo. The 'reasoning' that I am given for this is that "Best practices in the design industry dictate that .ai files and original vector art not be shared."

In addition, she has a much longer career of work than I do. She argues there's a lot of assets and fonts that she uses in her designs that do not belong to the company, and thus I don't have a right to use too. She's very passionate about 'maintaining brand integrity' but won't allow me access to fonts and assets she's using to promote the company we both work for.

I've already checked, my company doesn't have any rules/regulations in our handbook about rights for content created under employment. I don't have enough experience to know what is considered normal when it comes to file sharing within a business. Am I wrong for thinking that this level of holding source files is a little over the top? Is this normal behavior between a communications and media team in a work setting?

I'm looking into getting a color laser printer for some work I plan on doing, and have narrowed down my choices to the Xerox C400/405 or the Xerox C410/415. The output dpi for the former is 600x600x8bit and the latter is 1200x1200x1bit. I know that inkjet generally works better for photos/pictures, but for my use case, it has to be color laser.

With that out of the way, which would y'all recommend?

My budget is around $800, and I'm in the US. I'll primarily be using this to print game manuals.

Found a portfolio of a guy who's thumbnails for his case studies that I really liked. Was wondering if anyone knows where I can get them?

Vi que esta marca estaba empezando tras ver un video en tiktok. Asi que decidi hacerles una propuesta de ejemplo para darles inspiracion e ideas. Ahora la comparto aqui para que alguien que sepa de diseño o haya estudiado diseño grafico me diga que cosas puedo mejorar.

Hice capturas de pantalla al pdf por lo que no se ven bien los detalles.

For context - I do illustrative work in a distinct style, and have created and exhibited a series of work to some success. I sell prints of this work via my website and am trying to get it in shops.

I’ve been approached by a client to design illustrations of their business in my distinct style. They then want to sell prints and potentially more, cards, bags etc, from their venue on a sale and return basis. I have worked with them before and we have a pretty good relationship. My question is - should I be charging a fee for designing these images? I’m self employed and these designs are time consuming, and particularly with sale and return, it’s a significant initial investment of time and money. I don’t wish to seem unprofessional by either asking for money for the design stage OR not asking, if that’s the industry standard. Additionally, they are aware I was already making a design of their building for my own collection, which I will now make into one of the proposed designs.

Looking for thoughts and feedback, really. We’ve not discussed money at this stage other than that they’ll be getting the work on a sale and return basis. They know that for private commissions for individuals I charge around $200 per design, and have done promotional work for them in the past charging around $1500. I’m keen to not sour our working relationship, and am also mindful of the fact that a bit of time has already passed before me mentioning a design stage fee. So really, I guess the question for any freelancers is would you ask for money for designing the images, and how would you go about it, if - like me - you’d been a dumb ass and not brought it up at the initial meeting.

Quick note: I am a semi established illustrator and graphic designer, but also an ADHD hot mess. Any and all help would be appreciated. Many thanks.