Senior Level Designers are very much sought after, and they are greatly admired in the design community. It’s a coveted status that not all achieve. These master are capable of not only producing amazing work, usually for high profile clients, but are able to do an amazing volume of work in a short period of time.

There is a reason Senior Designers make the big bucks, simply put they are worth it. What they are able to bring to a project, a team, and a company is of considerable value. They are often able to accomplish task in a fraction of the time of their counterparts and can give genuinely useful insight into the needs of a project. Today I will reveal a few of their coveted secrets.

Senior Designers Know Shortcuts and Use them.
One thing that becomes immediately obvious when watching a Senior Designer work is that they know the shortcuts for whatever program they are working in. They don’t usually have to second guess or fiddle with menus or panels to do simple or repetitive task, within a few clicks they have exactly what they wanted.

This is something that Art Directors and Creative Directors at Agencies have a tendency to see right away and it carriers more weight than you can imagine. Why is it so important? Time is the one commodity that can’t be replaced, and learning the keyboard shortcuts means you valued enough of your time to where saving even a few seconds is worth it to you. It tells them a lot about your maturity and experience.

Senior Designers Have Thousands of Assets.
Senior Designers usually have been working for years and in that time have likely accumulated a massive stockpile of photographs, brushes, fonts and other resources. This means that there is usually less time and expense for them to work on a project as they don’t have to do stock photo research outside their own library too often, and they have likely even created many of their resources from scratch.

Senior Designers Have Mastered Bridge and Acrobat.
Organizing your assets, tagging them, making them easy to find is extremely important. Bridge also has several useful tools like the ability to make PDF’s of your image assets for reference purposes or selecting images from a photo shoot in literally just a few clicks. This can also be used when you need to send out a series of material for someone to evaluate.  It is also vital to have mastery of Acrobat and the PDF format which is still today the most accepted format. Its a very universal format and Acrobat Reader is free, making the review process easier, and it is the format most printers expect to work with.

Senior Designers Use The Core Design Principles.
Senior Designers use and breath the Gestalt Uniforming Principles. When you look at their work there is sense of unity, focus, you can see the use of texture, proper application of contrast and color usage; they control your eye direction, there is obvious depth and they take advantage of texture in subtle ways. All this is done seamlessly and flawlessly in their work and it is what sets the bar for other designers.

Senior Designers Have Mastered the Adobe Design Trinity.
Photoshop, InDesign and Illustrator. Senior Designers more often than not can tell you what more than 80% of the tools in each of the programs does and whether it would be appropriate to use it or not. That is what is meant by mastery of the application, not the result they are able to achieve with those tools.

A “one trick pony” could be could with the tools necessary for Vector Illustration, yet know nothing about how to bring that same artwork into Photoshop as a Smart Object and know how to polish it and take it even further. Beyond master the individual tools and software, Senior Designers know how to use the Design Trinity in combinations to get the best out of their work, and do task more efficiently and when to use what tools and software for the result they want.

Bonus:

Senior Designers Use Work-flows.
Having an established work-flow, or a standard for how you perform certain task every time is very important. Knowing exactly what you have to do, and how to do it cuts down the time things take and is the reason Senior Designers can produce 10 comps when other designers can only do 3 comps in the same amount of time.

Defining your own process or rituals for how you approach aspects of your projects is important because you won’t waste time floundering. Since you will always find yourself “prepared to work” you can focus on doing things rather than figuring out how to approach them. A primary example is having an established work flow for retouching your stock photos. Terry White has 5 things he does to every photograph he’s going to use.

I hope you have a much better insight into some of the things that Senior Designers have that separate them from everyone else. If you’re a Senior Designer reading this feel free to share any of your secrets or advice in the comments below! Everyone else can feel free to comment as well!

Marketing and self promotion today is pretty straight forward. Think about what you do in your everyday life when its time to make an informed decision. Personally if I want to find the best deal on computer hardware, I do a Google Search. If I need a plumber or painter, I ask friends for recommendations and I still do a Google Search on the people they suggest.

I then go to their website and try to find information on their services, rates and what people are saying about them.

This is how most people qualify their buying decisions in the technology age. And hiring and investing in you “is a buying decision” and you need to think of it that way to market yourself effectively in 2012.

An online presence of your own, as well as being visible in Search, Local Search, Review Sites, and Social Media, are all an essential part of success for businesses going forward. Today’s consumer is more savvy and more connected than ever before.

9 Ways to Market Yourself in 2012

1.  Be accessible: Website, Email, Skype, Mobile.
   Your customers and clients need to be able to reach and touch you! They need to be able to have that feel that you are literally only a click away. If you can make yourself easier to reach, they have less trouble to go through to give you their business.
2.  Be searchable: Can I find you in Google, Bing, Yahoo?
   Most people today like to make informed buying decisions. They also believe that any business worthwhile knows that they are searching
3.  Be Social and Socialable:
   Are you on Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter? Are People saying good things about you? Who do you know? Who have you Worked with?
4.  Show Your Work, Your Best Work, Everywhere and Often:
   Seeing is believing, show me results! Make sure your best work is available to be seen in every possible way and talk about it.
5.  A Face I Can Trust:
   Use real, flattering, current pictures online, even a video introduction to who you are and what you do! If at all possible have the head shot done by an ameteure photographer or photography student, using a tripod and good lighting. For video do all video with a tripod in decent lighting in a quite environment, like a conference room in the library, or a home office.
6.  Always be ready for success. Be ready to present 100% of the time:
   Business cards, info and pictures of your work on your mobile phone. Be ready to direct people to your website, easy to remember email addresses. I keep a presentation on my smart phone all the time for a REAL ELEVATOR PITCH IN AN ELEVATOR.
7.  Offer yourself as a solution to a series of problems:
   Communicate your understanding of certain problems, and how your skills, knowledge or resources can resolved those problems. This is the core of your marketing message. Don’t sell yourself as just another vendor or contractor, become your clients “partner”.
8.  Define yourself as an Expert:
   Credibility is everything. By being vocal in some online format and draw attention to yourself and your knowledge of your industry, even from people that may be more prominent than yourself. This can show clients that they can trust your information and rely on it.
9.  Constantly build your Network:
   Networking may be one of the most important and overlooked facets of good marketing. Increasing your number of valuable contacts and becoming as useful to them and generous with your time as possible, they will do your marketing for you and bring you new business.

Yesterday on October 5, 2011 several things happened. The sun rose in the east, my sister turned 13 years old, and the world lost a great visionary. Steve Jobs was more than a man, he was a symbol of what creatives can accomplish. And now we must all move forward into future he helped change for the better.

Steve Jobs is one of several individuals that demonstrates what can be accomplished through out of the box thinking, determination to succeed, putting creativity first and of course great leadership. After being ousted from the company he co-founded, he triumphantly returned and revitalized the company and changed several industries forever, and in a few instances created whole new industries along the way! Jobs has served as an inspiration for designers, but also for his strongest critics and competitors. I think that fact is very telling and shows that despite your point of view its very difficult to argue with success.

The Future of Apple
I think many people are concerned with Apple’s future without Steve Jobs. I for one am not. I’ve learned many lessons from Steve, and one of the most important things I learned from him is that we all have a finite amount of time and we should get used to the idea. I have no doubt he has been preparing the company for what was inevitable, and that its future and legacy is secure. I also believe Steve had an eye for talent and his ability to “see the future” didn’t extend only to product development.

I’m sure that his successor Tim Cook was picked not for any level of creativity, but based on Steve’s prediction that in the wake of his passing the company would need a firm hand, and someone stable that won’t be goaded into radical reactionary changes that could have a long term negative impact. I think Tim was picked for his ability to “stay the course” and keep the company steady. Innovations will come from within based on the talent pool at Apple. Something I’m sure Steve personally ensured.

Steve Jobs Legacy
The legacy of Steve Jobs lives in creatives, in entrepreneurs and anyone who isn’t a follower. He truly influenced and changed the world, I believe for the better. I believe we will be feeling the impact of his contributions for many decades to come. Rest in peace Steve, and thank you for everything.

With all the all of the buzz this past week surrounding Apple’s latest iPhone, one can only recognize how much mobile is dominating our attention and our spending right now. Several major players have attempted to expand into this territory, and many who you would think could ultimately succeed have in fact failed. But the thought, and more importantly the investment was there.

Designers need to invest in the future of this market as well. The need for print designer’s continues to shrink with every new devices that is capable of enabling media and ad delivery. A huge shift to digital media buying has been taking place for the past 5 years and show’s no sign of slowing.

Here are the main reasons as a Designer you should make the shift over to mobile design as soon as possible.

1) Mobile Design is Not That Hard
Contrary to what you have been lead to believe, designing for mobile is not hard at all. Programming and developing for mobile is a horse of another color, but if you’ve been doing Photoshop mockups of sites already or simple front end web design coding, this won’t be difficult for you at all. If you have Adobe Dreamweaver CS5.5 its easier than ever and there are several tools including Jquery that can make you look like a master.

2) You Can Finally Have an Edge
In a somewhat saturated market of designers and digital artist, having a unique selling position or an edge is really hard. Almost all of us know the same applications have decent hardware and the same bag of tricks now-a-days, and your “style” may not be enough to cut it. Many designers can now do web design as well so its not as unique of an edge as it was 10 years ago to be able to design across both print and web/digital. But…if you can design for mobile devices and can present work on them that looks amazing and works well with the small screen, you become a commodity!

3) There is a Demand for Mobile Design
With all of the mobile apps being developed daily in an attempt to be the next angry birds. There is a huge need for app developers to work with designers and artist. Beyond that many sites are having to transition to building separate mobile sites in order not to loose customers that want to use their site in that way, such as retailers and online stores. There is a high demand and far fewer players in this market than in traditional web design or even print design. Making an impact and a name for yourself as far as the Mobile Design niche is actually relatively easy right now.

Have mobile devices killed print? Yes and No.

As long as they there is print media there is print advertising. I believe the market and value of print advertising however is shifting completely and that traditional way its been done.

Print ads should be used toward the goal of brand or product awareness, and you should be sure to include icons for your social media accounts and your website address.

To qualify conversions you should use a separate phone number for the ad specifically and track the incoming calls to that number so you know what the interest in the advertisement is, additionally you use promo codes tied to the ad so if they visit the website as a result of the ad you know that based on the promo code.

This is the best way I know of to qualify the ROI of print media, its obviously easier online. You can also specifically use print to drive people to your website or download your App.

At this point I would say the majority of your marketing budget should go into Online Advertising. ROI: views, view time, conversions, follow up leads, are all easier to get, maintain, track and archive using online advertising. You also get a huge diversity at a significantly lower cost. Particularly I’m more a fan of Run of Site Advertising or even CPM vs PPC, CPA is also a good model. PPC is my least favorite model, but its probably the most used because its the most offered, since it makes the ad networks the most money. Best ROI is usually Run of Site, CPM and CPA.

The Case for Mobile Adevertising

The issue becomes that with the development and usages of mobile devices expanding every year, advertisers are steering away from print because they can finally reach you wherever you are, right there in your pocket, without having to worry about whether or not you pick up a particular paper or magazine. Added to that they know when you looked, how long you looked at their ad, how often, and whether or not you actually bought anything from them within the month because of it. Print just can’t offer that. Not to mention in some cases the ad can be “personalized” based on who you are.

Mobile hasn’t killed print yet, but its mortally wounded.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UjgbishbMSk

In this video I talk about what Graphic Design is in 2011 and how the industry has changed and grown over the years. I cover everything from new careers, expectations, changes in software and hardware and more.

Roberto Blake TRON Legacy Text Effect

I’ve seen many different typography effects on the web, and one of my favorites is always when I see one from the movie TRON Legacy. Today I decided to share my own text effect and the assets for it, FREE!

In the links below I’ve setup the PSD file I used to create the image you see above, and a direct link to the Layer Style effects so you can use them in your own work any time you like. The effects actually work on shapes as well as type and I may do a tutorial in the future showing you how to use this effect on a person.

FREE TRON LEGACY TEXT EFFECT PSD FILE
FREE TRON LEGACY LAYER STYLE ASL FILE 

New and old designers, photographers, and photoshopers of all flavors at some point come to ask “What kind of machine will run Photoshop the best?” To answer that question you have to understand what Photohsop needs from a computer. You can actually have a great Photoshop machine depending on your needs for as little as $400. Don’t believe me? Read on and be amazed!

What does Photoshop Need?
To run efficiently in most cases this is all Photoshop really needs:

• Dual Core 2.4Ghz or better Processors
• 4GB of RAM or more
• 500 GB Hard Drive 7200 RPM

This will be more than enough for you and if you and Photoshop will launch in under 5 seconds. I know because this is the work station I use for Creative Suite CS5 everyday at the office. With this build you can edit images for print and web in 8Bit mode without much lag or delay at all.

You can also optimize Photoshop to take full advantage of this build. This build cost $199 on Newegg.com as DIY kit. Yes you have to put it together yourself and install Windows. You also have to put in another $20 for a SATA DVD Burner since it doesn’t come with an optical drive. Even if you have to buy a new copy of windows this Photoshop machine cost less than $400!

The Most Powerful Photoshop Machine I Can Get Under $1500 (Non Mac)
If you are doing some “Serious Photoshop” and I mean you are editing images from a 18MP or higher Canon or Nikon Camera, at 300DPI 16Bit color, to produce print posters or something then you can still do that and not break the bank…

• 4x 3.2Gh Processors or Better
• 16GB RAM
• 1x Solid State Drive 60GB or Better
• 3x 1TB Hard Drive or Better
• 1GB 256Bit Video Card Open GL 4 or Better

I can get most of this in DIY build from new egg for less than $600 as far as 1 of the Hard Drives, the Processors, 4GB of the RAM, including the casing and power supply, all I would need with this kit to “plug it in” is a copy of Windows. Maxing out the rest of these specs brings it out to about $1200 unless like me you want to throw in a Blu-Ray Burner and a good monitor. I tried building this machine in the Apple store and it would cost over $4000 without some of the specs like the Blu-Ray Burner and Solid State Drive.

Super Photoshop Hard Drives….
You are going to need at least 3 “Hard Drive Leves”, here is how I’ve broken it down:

• Application Level > Windows OS, Photoshop, Other Applications:  1x 1TB Hard Drive (2 Partitions)
• Storage Level> All files and data from applications: 2x 1.5TB Hard Drives ($70 each)
• Scratch Disk Level> Dedicated Scratch Disk: 1x 9 GB Solid State Drive (SSD- $160)

So why are we using 3 Hard Drive levels and 4 Hard Dives (minimum)? Photoshop performs faster when it multitask across these different drives and use their separate bandwidth. So having your application, files, and temporary files, all on separate disk using separate resources is essential to maximum Photoshop Performance. Solid State Drives for the scratch disk take that performance to a whole new level. Also if you are doing major work like we talked about you know that it is possible to get a 1GB or larger Photoshop file, the max file size for PSD is 2GB, you can exceed that in a PSB, not that I would want to…

Is 16GB Of RAM Enough For You and Photoshop?
The answer to the  question above should be yes. I can’t imagine what you would have to do to exceed 16GB of RAM but once you do that is what scratch disk are there for. With this much ram their should be no issues as far as performance. And this is only the physical RAM, you can obviously use some of your hard drive space (you have enough of it with these specs) for Virtual RAM.

If you are worried about the price, that’s the beauty of it 16GB of GSKILL RAM only cost $150 and is the best way to get maximum performance out of Photoshop. Just make sure you are running the 64 Bit Version of Photoshop and Windows so you don’t waste your time and money on RAM it won’t use otherwise. You could just upgrade the RAM and forget everything else here and see great performance…

Photoshop Video Card
Your video card doesn’t effect Photoshop performance as much outside the fact that you can use resources from it that are being covered by our 16GB of RAM. What a great video card does allow you is greater rendering speed and quality when working with Photoshop’s 3D tools and Video Editing capabilities.  If you’re looking to get everything you can out of Photoshop $160 on your video card is well worth it.

Conclusions:
You don’t have to break the bank to build your ultimate Photoshop machine, you can start with a modest DIY Kit that fits your immediate needs for less than $600, and just price your upgrades and do them one at a time, I would start with the RAM since its one of the cheaper items and will give you the biggest increase in performance. I would probably do the Solid State Drive next and then the Hard Drives and the Video Card last, since the video that comes onboard nowadays is decent.

I’ve used both PC and Mac, I had to be Mac exclusive for nearly a year, plus it was what we used when I was in college. Performance wise their is no difference as long as you are in a 64Bit environment. Mac has exclusive rights to some programs, but so does windows. That’s the difference. If you are a designer or a digital artist, you can build a PC machine literally 4X more powerful than your Mac out of the box at a 4th of the price or better.

Optimizing Photoshop (CS5 or otherwise) is something that many designers overlook. Just because you have a great computer to run Photoshop, doesn’t mean you’re taking full advantage of your setup and getting all the speed and power out of it you can. Today I’m going to talk about how you take your Photoshop experience to the next level.

How much RAM can Photoshop use?
Most of you probably think that Photoshop already is using all of your RAM just because you have 4GB or more. It’s not! By default Photoshop is only using 70% of the available RAM (not including RAM needed for the OS). Also depending on whether you are running a 32bit or 64bit version of Photoshop and/or your operating system, will also determine how much RAM Photoshop can use. Here are the RAM specs for Photoshop CS5:

• CS5 32 Bit Version, Windows OS 32 Bit Version: Max RAM 1.7 GB
• CS5 32 Bit Version, Windows OS 64 Bit Version: Max RAM 3.2 GB
• CS5 64 Bit Version, Windows OS 64 Bit Version: Max RAM As Much As Your Computer Has!
• CS5 32 Bit Version, Mac OS: Max RAM 2.1
• CS5 64 Bit Version, Mac OS: Max RAM As Much As Your Computer Has!

The info above defeats the argument of Mac’s Being Better than PC’s for Graphic Design, also known as the Mac Myth. In a 64 Bit environment it is completely irrelevant and have no baring on performance.

Photoshop Hard Drive and Scratch Disk
Photoshop reads and writes image information while working on an image, the faster the scratch disk or the disk that contains the image, the faster Photoshop can process image information. To improve Photoshop performance, use a disk with a fast data transfer rate, such as an internal hard disk.

If you’re going to use a dedicated scratch disk, (which I highly recommend) the a Solid State Disk (SSD) is your best bet. Their performance and read/write speeds are better than the average Hard Disk and will work even better if you use more than one and setup a RAID 0 array.

Processing Power
Just get a machine with multi-core processors running over 2GHz, 3GHz or higher is best, Dual core is enough but you don’t need more than Quad Core to work with Photoshop, most of its heavy lifting is done in RAM and Hard Disk space and speed.

Notes:
There is an “Efficiency Indicator” in Photoshop toward the bottom left hand corner of the screen. If it displays less than 90% Efficiency try enhancing your performance setting in Edit > Preferences > Performance… this will let you control what Scratch Disk are being used, in what order, and how much RAM Photoshop is using.

Roberto-Blake-Solid Soul (click to enlarge)

Solid Soul is a new piece of art that gets back to roots of my style,  (which has many elements that define it) and I feel that this really takes me back to the core of what I like doing with my art. With my art, I prefer to challenge myself to use as much of Photoshop as possible and not just stick to simple tools or even the ones I’m most comfortable with. I think this is important and something people take for granted. Photoshop is a $699-999 piece of software. I can’t justify only using $200 worth of it!

Making Selections in Photoshop
For Solid Soul I had to use most of the selection tools at some point, and sometimes in combination. For the model I used a combination of the pen tool, quick selection tool, and refine edge tool.

Retouching the Model
The photo retouching the model was a bit of a challenge, but a lot of fun at the same time. I wanted to create this other worldly/angelic figure and I had to really think about the lighting. In addition to the doge and burn tools that I used to build up contrast and definition, I had to do some color painting to the skin and use different blend modes. I also used curves and levels as adjustment layers to really push in the right direction.

Creating Shapes in Photoshop
In Solid Soul there were a lot of things that I had to do from scratch. All the shapes I used were build from scratch with the pen tool and then layer style effects and brushwork. I had to use custom setting on the layer effects to make the crystals and the glass in this image come out “just right”. It was something that require me think of the details and how I wanted to present the effect.

Wrap Up
Solid Soul is a great piece for my portfolio this year, I’m really satisfied with how it came out, and I think it represents a level of improvement in my abilities both mechanically and conception-wise. I actually received praise from one of my own personal heroes- Rob Shields on this piece of art, so I was really excited by that! Looking forward to any comments and feedback on this image.

Fotolia may very well be one of the most diverse and high quality stock resources I’ve come across yet! As many of you know like many designers and artist I utilize stock photography for my images, from sites like Fotolia, iStock, and Deviantart. Today I will be reviewing my experience with Fotolia as a stock photo resource.

Quality
The overall quality of most of these images are fantastic. Fotolia seems to get images from some of the best photographers out there. In fact the overall quality these images makes them remarkably easy to work with when I need to do masking, and require only the minimal amount of retouch work in most cases. The images are also taken at up to 18MP, a little pricey but worth it!

Variety
Not only does Fotolia offer great photographs across a range of categories, but they also offer amazing vector work and stock video footage as well. The vector work especially the work based in Typography was extremely impressive and works really well for an instant marketing solution or article header.

Pricing
Fotolia’s pricing is competitive with other stock houses out there, though I will say I feel you get more for your money with Fotolia . Their pricing is on par with iStockphoto and they have some very reasonable subscription plans.

Special Features
When you purchase an image with Fotolia you have 72 Hours to download that image, which is really convenient if you are in a hurry and don’t have time to do it before rushing out the door. Also if you have multiple images in your cart you can download them as a zip.

Similia, a technology that Fotolia uses exclusively, gives you recommended images based on your search behavior; making it easier to put together a group of images with similar themes and symbols.

Rating: 4/5 Stars
Fotolia is a great resource for any designer or artist looking for great quality images at a great price. The only reason it lost a star for me was that the interface of the website could have been a little better and easier to navigate, I would also have liked less steps in the buying process, just for ease of use. Other than that I have only good things to say about them.

Anyone one out there, I would love your comments on Fotolia or any stock photo sites you use and what you liked about them.

*This post was not paid for or compensated monetarily.

Recently someone encouraged me to be more vocal about a personal decision I made toward the end of last year. My reasons for not being vocal about it up to this point and not using this blog to promote this stance, is that I truly do feel it is a “personal decision” that one has to make for themselves. However I feel that it would be fine for me to talk about why I decided to become a “Green Designer” what it means, and how it has effected my work.

Let me tell you an interesting story… I was purchasing a new monitor at Best Buy and the young woman helping me pointed out that there was a model with exactly the same features and specs for $20 less. I pointed out that the cheaper monitor wasn’t energy star compliant, and that I was fine with the $20 difference.

She went on to ask me how important that was to me when buying electronics. I hadn’t thought to hard about it, but in that moment I realized that I had been buying that way for the past 2 years, and that most of my purchases revolved around that fact.

I told her that it was something that was important to me and that it would probably be the overall deciding factor between me buying one product vs another. I hadn’t considered myself an “environmentalist” up until this point, but I found that I had been holding myself to many of the standards. I mostly use recycled paper for my general printing needs, almost all of my devices are energy star compliant or have an 80 Plus certification (meaning they are at least 80% energy efficient) and most of the companies that I use for services or as vendors are also “Green Companies”.

Now I make an active effort to use green products and services as a designer whenever I can and encourage others to do the same. It’s a personal choice, so I try not be forceful when approaching people with this. I think that designers have a great deal of influence in the market place, and I feel we can use it to accomplish something positive.

Ways You Can Become a Green Designer

• Try to avoid printing whenever possible to conserver paper and ink
• When printing use recycled paper and print with low VOC inks
• Use vendors that have made an effort to go green, like GotPrint and Uprint
• Encourage clients to go green or keep sustainability in mind for their projects.