Articles

The articles talked about:

- The best ways to present your portfolio; size, format, stock (if printed)

- What to include in your portfolio; your strongest work, your specific area of focus (if you gave one)

- Don’t have too many pieces of work in your portfolio, 15 or under is recommended.

- Categorize your work throughout your portfolio; fine art, logo design, etc.

- Keep your portfolio up to date; always include strong pieces of work that you have completed recently

- Know yourself; know what you are good at (ask friends if you’re not sure)

- Know your strengths and weaknesses; possibly work at your weaknesses so that they become strengths

- Know your own style; be unique and create what you feel (we’re all individuals)

- When brainstorming don’t sit in front of your compute and browse ideas, go for a walk or sit outside and let the ideas come to you.

- Design through experience

- Success can be found in failure, learn to take risks

- Know the software; take time to get to know it, know it well.

- Keep design ideas and concepts clear and concise for your client; explain ‘everything’ clearly.

- Intelligence and energy are the two vital keys for success.

- Make a ‘setting yourself apart’ list to remind you of what you need to be every day to achieve your professional goals:

- • Be honest
• Be friendly
• Be positive
• Be focused
• Be intelligent
• Be respectful
• Be persevering
• Be sales-minded
• Have a sense of humor
• Listen more than speaking
• Be different than everyone else
• Do not take rejection personally
• I am an intelligent colleague who is here to offer help
• Have an engaging conversational tone
• Be relaxed
• Speak clearly and concisely
• Don't use slang or profanity with clients or vendors
• Don't communicate political or religious views in business
• Don't hesitate or procrastinate
• Set goals
• Keep learning
• Be friendly, firm and fair in all your business activities.

- Self-promotion; to promote yourself as a designer, everything has to be ‘your own work’ find your own theme and use it

- To get to know your style/theme write down a few questions and answer the. This will get your mind thinking and the ideas rolling. The more questions you answer, the more the theme distills into a concept, which gives way to clear art direction.

- If your design is successful and honest, your audience, namely potential clients, will create a mental image of you and subconsciously decide if they like you or not — all by interacting with your self-design.

- What procrastination is and why it’s such a bad habit; we procrastinate due to lack of vision, distraction, fear of getting it wrong and lack of confidence, indecision, boring tasks, thinking that the task is overwhelming and that you don’t have time, telling yourself you don’t have a real deadline so its not that important to get done straight away.

- Denial – “I have nothing better to do tonight…maybe I can sway a couple of my colleagues to go have a couple of drinks and hang out – besides, it is so nice out.”
Anger – “You want me to write how many pages in an hour? Isn’t it enough that I got my daughter to school, showed up on time for the staff meeting, got caught up on my emails, and actually organized my desk before 11am?”
Bargaining – “If I spend 45 minutes working on the article, then I deserve to play Tetris for 15 minutes.”
Depression – “There’s too much to do, it is so overwhelming, where do I start, I’ll be up all night…gosh, I’m so tired - I think I’ll take a nap.”
Acceptance – “Why didn’t I start this article sooner? A paycheck would be nice right about now, so I guess I’ll do it.”

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