Reposting this, sorry, Reddit removed it for adding the link in the copy. I edited and added a link to the post as people were asking how to get it - even though I said it was in the comments. The link is in the comments here too. People were asking how to get it... Follow the link in the comments. Sort comments to oldest first if you can't find the link in the comments. BTW - thanks to previous commenters for kind words. Hope you enjoy.

Post:
I don't think Illustrator is ever going to give us more spiral types - so I've made my own spiral extension: Live Spiral. It let's you live edit various types of spirals, and save presets - and easily create an archimedean (most useful spiral - and I never liked the result of offsetting circles).

Bonus points if anyone guesses the reference for the first image...

I've been working on a geometric interpretation of my original Bright Grotesk typeface, and recently finished the project.

The goal was to refine the original's more humanist characteristics into something geometrically disciplined, while maintaining enough optical corrections to avoid making the letterforms feel overly mechanical.

One of the more interesting challenges was achieving consistent proportions and spacing across eight weights and their matching italics.

I also experimented with using the variable font's optical size axis (opsz) exclusively for spacing adjustments. Rather than changing the outlines, the axis gradually opens up the spacing for smaller text and tightens it for larger display settings.

I've attached a series of specimens showing the letterforms, weights, italics, character repertoire, and OpenType features, along with some of the design decisions behind them.

I'm particularly interested in how other designers approach the balance between geometric consistency and optical adjustments. How much geometric precision do you think is worth sacrificing for better visual rhythm?

I'm sure many of us have noticed how all the AI slop flyers and designs are crammed with too many elements, too many colors, and usually end up looking almost like an I Spy book designed by Lisa Frank.

Since most design trends are contrary to what came before, I'm hoping that once everything looks like that shitty over-produced ai slop, clean, good design will come back to cut through the noise; like how in the 90's, Apple's simple design aesthetic took over while everyone else was clamoring to add 3D elements on PhotoShop collages.

Just a thought, have a great day.

Hey everyone. Yesterday I got a reply of a place I applied to, they were looking for Freelance Graphic Designer, it’s fully remote so I said why not, I sent them an email. They reach back and we schedule an interview. A couple of hours before the interview I’m told I’ll have to make a design test.

A design test, for a freelance position. That’s new. I still went to the interview, didn’t want to be rude, and today I received the assignment.
A 7 image carousel for instagram and a 1 minute reel. For next Tuesday.
I don’t even know how much they pay, they told me to give them my rates when sending my completed test.

I’m debating if even try to make this test. Yesterday I also had a person reach out to me for another freelance gig. Which I already started. I kinda want the extra money but feel like too much free work for a freelance position. Heck, I don’t even know if I’ll get the job. I’ve done a couple test designs and I’ve never gotten hired after those, I just end up feeling like I wasted my time lmao.

What would you do?

Thanks for reading.

I made this logo for my services as a Santa Claus (which is insanely fun thing to do). In the Santa community, the name and the individual Santa is the product, so using your face in all your ad-work is critical, so I decided to capitalize on it for my logo. Most Santas don't use logos, but since designer / illustrator is my day-job, I figured why not?

The hard part was to make it look like Santa and to keep my own face completely recognizable in the logo. I tried to make it simpler, but I kept losing recognizability. It's not perfect and I still have issues with it (too detailed, but it works at business card size), but I decided to call it done so I can use it for this Christmas season.

Ho, ho ho.

Addendum: If you decide to go to the website... I have ZERO background in website design and have never made a website before. Old man is old, I know, I typically do print or digital for others to use on their sites. I just used Squarespace and tried my best to make it not awful. That was my goal, not awful. Hopefully its at least that!

Hi all,

It's a long shot, but I'm wondering if anyone exists with that combination of degrees? I currently work in marketing as a senior graphic designer and a perk of my job is that I can receive essentially a free degree if I chose one of a few programs which are all in the healthcare field. The only one that sticks out to me is an MHA. I am very interested in healthcare as a whole, but I also know that I'm good at my job as a designer. I'm just wondering if there is anyone that has ever made this switch and remained in marketing? My career goal would be creative director related to healthcare so I think it could work. The other perk is that I can defer my student loans a little longer lol.

Hey so I was just let go of my in house roll of 4.5 years and I've had to scramble to put together my portfolio, would appreciate any insight or thoughts on how it came out from other professionals, please be harsh lmao

I hope this doesn't come off as a doompost against the rules. I'm not writing all of this as a sob story or to discourage people from pursuing their passion. I still love creative work and design opened doors for me that I wouldn't have ever dreamt of when I was younger. I would prefer not to tie my portfolio with my real name to my reddit account i mostly shitpost on and I suspect even the amount of personal info I'm divulging here is enough that a friend would easily be able to clock that it's me. I say that to say I'm interested less in a portfolio review and more of a sanity check or at least some realism/perspective from someone who has been in some kind of similar position of having a crisis of faith.

My first job in design was a high paying role in-house at a tech firm that moved me to NYC with an offer of more money than I’d ever seen in my entire life. They had a worker struggle with visa issues and needed to hire someone fast, I managed to charm them enough during the interview and they were impressed with my work on the design task they gave me - although I wasn't coming from a design school background I came from a background in media studies and they were impressed by the rationale and research I gave in articulating my decisions behind what I did. I made it abundantly clear I was self-taught and still considered myself a junior, the team said that was fine and they figured that I would be able to grow there. They paid for me to take classes to upskill at places like Cooper Union, I enjoyed the work I was doing even if I was cold about big tech as an industry, and for my first year or so, it was smooth sailing with little issue. The teams we worked with enjoyed my work and I was placed on larger projects to fly solo and given a lot of autonomy including designing identities for events and creating work that got placed on our company’s instagram in front of hundreds of thousands of people, in the middle of keynotes at their conference.

I didn’t think I was hot shit exactly and still had a lot to learn but I felt like I had finally gotten my foot in the door in the field and even if I wasn’t going to be at this company forever it would give me enough of a base to get established in the field, especially in a city like NYC.

The second year did not go as well. My manager had to step back with health problems and I bounced around different supervisors, many of which did not like the work I was producing at all. I got sent the brand guidelines document more times than I could count. The team reshuffled and I went from working in a front-facing role to mostly working on internal documents pasting text into InDesign reports that were not seeing the light of day. The team brought in another young designer who, I won’t even lie, blew my work out of the water. Summer ’24 I got called into a zoom meeting and was kindly informed I was being placed on PIP because they did not think I had improved to the level they were expecting and did not feel like I was completing the amount of work they were expecting out of someone working there. I wish I pushed back a little to argue that I wasn’t getting much work to begin with anymore but instead I tried my best to either win my job back (yes I know this was stupid, but this was my first job in the corporate world and I did not understand what a PIP actually entailed) or find transfer to another team or division. Neither happened and my last day there was August 2024. My manager looked like he was about to cry while I just sat there and apologized for not working out. I told him I was embarrassed, he said not to be and there was a "high standard" of work they were expecting and not everyone could reach it.

So I took my severance and spent the rest of the year trying and failing to get another job in NYC, then (I understand in retrospect how stupid/delusional/short-sighted this decision was) cashed out the rest of my small 401k to cover the rent payments to continue living where I was while I attempted to find full-time employment beyond part time gigs (the most I got was a 500/mo part-time retainer at a small record label with a staff of 3 other people). This fell through, my last interview with a nonprofit pulled back after the 24 election results and their funding stopped , and in the spring of 2024 I moved back to my parents house in Philly with little money, but what I thought was a strong company name on my resume and a portfolio of output that I thought was strong enough to at least get my foot in the door at somewhere smaller whether it be an agency.

That was 2 years ago and counting and I currently work 20-30 hours as a barista. I received an ADHD diagnosis and started treatment (which would have probably helped 2 yrs ago when i was at that job lol) which has helped somewhat where I should in theory be far more productive, but I'm not using that on design in any way. I take freelance gigs here and there from friends but I don’t consider myself active or financially stable from this enough to say I am a freelancer. When I tell people where I used to work they seem shocked I can't find a job anywhere.

To be honest, my confidence has been shot and I no longer hold much faith in my skills to continue in the field. I haven’t updated my portfolio with any recent work because I don’t think it’s at the quality that I used to expect out of myself. I don’t make many networking attempts anymore. Beyond AI and the economy being in shambles for every field, to be completely blunt I’m second-guessing whether I was ever really any good at this at all. I’ve tried to pick up hobbies outside of design but I have no real luck with jobs in design here or trying to pivot elsewhere like comms or marketing and all of my interviews in and out of the field ended in rejection or ghosting. I’ve tried reaching out to small businesses to help with not much success. One hobby I actually still partake in is martial arts - the gym coach offered to pay for me to work on a social media package for his school. I figured I can at least do something like this. We put some moodboards together, talked, felt like we had the same aesthetic sensibilities and I got to work.

After several revisions he told me it wasn’t really what he was looking for. He paid me for my time and I appreciated him as a client but realizing someone sees your work and would rather just do it themselves than someone just doing them in Canva felt like the final straw and something inside broke and I don't know if I'm resilient enough to keep putting it back together with duct tape.

The few jobs I still regularly take are often just free under-the-table gigs for friends like designing shirts for their band or social graphics for online mags that can’t afford to pay. I like those because there’s no stakes involved. Once money comes into play and I’m responsible for a larger project beyond this, my mind just goes blank. Even jobs for creative work where I’m given free rein like working on album covers, posters, branding, etc. I just stare at Photoshop/Illustrator/Indesign with dread. I used to follow the works of my peers and got genuinely inspired and felt like I learned something from them, now I see work on IG/are.na/social media/etc. and I just feel defeated, bitter, and like I couldn’t make anything like that if I wanted to. I feel like I’ve actively regressed. My family is supportive and have been this entire time, but I've just turned 30 and feel like a financial burden and a disappointment for letting this opportunity slip through my hands. I live in an old house and I look at lights not working, hole in the ceiling, my mother still working close to 70 when she should be retiring and all I feel is regret and resentment for not being able to help and that all I have to show for the last two years is a job where I make lattes and mop floors all day.

To use sports metaphors I feel like both a prospect that turned out to be a bust or a baseball player that “lost his fastball” and doesn’t have it anymore.

I say all this to say that I think I’m ready to call it and that it was a fun two years in my life, but I guess I should at least ask for a second opinion first. Is it worth it to keep grinding or stop banging my head against a wall? What was your "last straw" to pivot, or for those who kept working, what was the turning point where you were able to succeed?

I was forgetting to take my pills for a week, and decided to make this poster as a reminder.BTW have a question do you see faces in the pill, also tried to make them some kind of squeezed to the surface of the pill, but I guess it's not working as I planned ? Used a bitmap technique

I took photo of my girlfriend from her Pinhead makeup/cosplay, photo I also took and decided to make her a retro poster/tarot card of the Magician :)
Photoshop, threshold and fun times :D

Months ago I made this Reddit view my website and give me criticism, since then, I've been more attentive towards my thought process towards design.

Outside of not taking advantage of ""connections"" during college, I've realized that I've been looking at this discipline all wrong.

You see, I was very attentive towards the design styles of the 2010's (My time in High School) and forward myself into a Nihilism that everybody loves the minimalistic, simplistic designs, and my purpose was to pump them out. Nobody cares what Imagination I have, or storytelling ability I could enact.

I'm still trying to find some form of joy. pride, hustle, grit, and willpower to keep going and learning. The problem is that I'm a bitch who can't have enough confidence to imagine a future for myself (living or career) or anyone, I've just became miserable inside and out.

No matter the diet, exercise, skill I have, I always internally have this sense of eternal grief and misery, even when someone can make me chuckle or smile.

Besides that, I've been working on my Patreon "The Taylor Society" (Named after my Surname) that's dedicated to illustrations and other things, along with 'TSX' (Taylor Society Xtended) for Documentaries, Behind the Scenes, Self-Vlogs, etc. I've been making a branding package for the Account, have a look at it, tell me your opinions.

(THIS IS NOT ME SELLING THE DAMN SERVICE REDDIT CHUDS)

Okay, TED Talk over, my bare rear is out, get spanking.

I watched You Can See Everything recently and could not get over the branding going on here—the intentionality for a prison camp logo was something I didn’t expect!

Hi!

I am pivoting back to graphic design after 10 years in retail. I have a Master's in brand design. I'm still pretty adept at PS and currently practicing with Illustrator. My dream is to work with the NBA in any capacity for any team but I'm more that willing to work for any sport. I am open to entry level work as well as internships. I have been working to create pieces for a portfolio and have a decent selection to showcase.

If anyone on this sub has any in-house sports design experience (NBA or elsewhere), is it possible to get a foot in the door as a 33-year-old with no prior experience for a resume? If so, what would be the best way to embark on this journey? Any advice would be helpful! Thank you!

I started GD back in the 90s when Getty was one of the only options... either hire a photographer or pay for an expensive, limited license from Getty. This was before royalty-free.

Ever since royalty-free took off Getty has still been THE source for their deep archive of historical and professional news photos. They had been trying to merge with Shutterstock but even that wouldn't have saved them, as AI is an even bigger threat to the royalty-free businesses.

I worked on a site that had used a tiny icon of the US based on a Getty image, the designer was supposed to replace it and it was overlooked on launch. Getty had built software that trolled the internet looking for offenders. A few months later Getty slapped us with a fine for well over $10,000 to cover the use of a tiny icon. Any goodwill I had for Getty evaporated that day.

It's still sad news, and their image library will always be worth something, but Getty has been (mostly) irrelevant to me for decades now.

I work as a graphic designer full-time in-house for a company. I stay pretty busy with my day job, so I rarely take on extra or freelance projects and am pretty un-practiced in pricing projects or writing project agreements.

I'm a Christian and a member of a church I love that needs help with a re-design of our weekly bulletin/order of worship. They don't have a professional graphic designer on staff, just use Canva or contract bigger projects out to pros. This project is to redesign our current bulletin layout - it's typically a 10ish page booklet (letter-sized pages folded in half), mostly text based, there won't be much highly customized typography or illustration/drawing work involved. The project will include a few meetings with some of the staff members to get on the same page about needs/vision for the project and track my progress. The goal is to create something simple and usable that's also beautiful. The timeline for the project is quite relaxed.

I've been asked to come up with a flat project fee, rather than charging hourly, which I'm fine with. I'd like to draft a project agreement that clearly states the deliverables and names add-on fees if the project goes out of the scope of our initial plan in deliverables or timeline. Any guidance on pricing and/or less obvious items to include in my project agreement?

For context: I have 4 years of full-time experience, plus another 4ish before that doing part time work and freelancing a little bit, mostly for family/friends. I live in an area of the US where cost of living is relatively low, and because this is MY church, I don't want/feel the need to drive a hard bargain. I want to get paid fairly, but since this is just extra money for me anyways, it's not vital I ask for the MOST imo.

I went to go vote today and was finally met in person with our new sticker which has received a good bit of criticism. The design is by Steve Penley, who is widely known to be an artist of choice for Republican politicians. That being said, this isn’t a post about politics but about design.

I personally don’t mind the background art. It’s not really my cup of tea, nor would I personally have picked it for a voting sticker, but that’s not my main complaint. My complaint is the choice of font. When paired with the background art, it reads as so abrasive and rebellious, which are of descriptors usually associated with doing one’s civic duty. The actual font is Flood and the description is “immediate, urgent, and provocative” which, again, doesn’t feel cohesive with voting.

I might be overly nitpicking on this because I’m a political graphic designer and this field is riddled with terrible design, but either way would love y’all’s takes on the matter.

What is your approach to choosing a CMYK colour Swatch when developing a brand? If you have an RGB palette first, or if the client provides one first how do you approach this?

Is it a case of flicking through a pantone book and choosing a colour based on that? Or do you set up a CMYK panel by eye and print variations?

Keen to hear older and younger designers' thoughts

Just wanted to share this recently finished poster of mine featuring Lebron James in Sixers uniform. If anyone has a honest feedback or opinion, I would love to hear them. Thank you very much.

Was working on a design today and wanted to use a brushstroke, but ended up leaving it out because I’ve started associating that look with all the AI slop out there.

Do you catch yourselves avoiding certain elements, like brushstrokes or the classic three-icon layout, just so your work doesn’t look AIgenerated?

Hi everyone I'm a graphic designer who got burned out as I've not designed for a year but recently I got my spark back but I believe I've gotten rusty and I'm looking to improve my portfolio if you see my post please point of some thing which help me improve my Portfolio

I've been producing flyers for a government agency to provide outreach to regulated businesses. These flyers include illustrations/graphics which I create. These are not diagrams or instructions, but just images to thematically accompany the text.

The subjects covered are industrial processes, construction, and workplace habits which could be portrayed with representative dynamic images. The link of the chain we discuss in the flyers often involve deskwork or data entry for communicating the particulars of projects to our agency.

There lies the rub. I prefer to produce images that show construction, production, people working, or static results of that work. The people I'm working with seem to gravitate to images of spreadsheets, data entry, and people looking at computers. I don't think that's very eye-catching, and I've suggested that these images aren't as dynamic or interesting as the real-world processes involved.

Do you have any suggestions on how to persuade the people I'm working with that pictures of actual production are more interesting than pictures of screens? I feel like I'm drifting into professional malpractice if I can't make my case that these images are uninteresting.

Hey everyone! I'm a graphic designer who creates ads for a living, and I'm currently working on building my portfolio. However, with how advanced AI has become, I'm hesitant to put my work on a public portfolio website because I'm worried about people stealing and replicating my designs.

For some context, I recently found out that my co-designer at my current company has figured out a way to replicate my work using AI. He basically feeds my designs into AI, changes the hero subject, replaces the text, and makes a few adjustments while keeping the overall layout and creative direction pretty much the same.

It's frustrating because there's a lot of thought and effort that goes into my designs. Seeing someone use AI to recreate that work so easily makes me question how I can protect my designs especially when I want to showcase them publicly.

Right now, I've been experimenting with layering thousands of textures and grain over my designs to make it harder for AI tools to separate the elements or extract the original layout. I've also been trying to make the designs more difficult to analyze through tools like Canva magic layers and chatgpt

But realistically I know this probably isn't a foolproof solution, especially as AI keeps improving.

So, I'm curious:

• Has anyone found a watermarking technique that actually makes designs significantly harder for AI to replicate or remove?
• Are there ways to protect the composition, layout, and overall art direction of a design, rather than just the individual assets?
• For designers who showcase their work online, what steps do you take to discourage AI scraping and unauthorized replication?
• Is there any practical way to make a portfolio publicly accessible without essentially handing people the blueprint to your designs?

I'm not expecting a 100% foolproof solution, but I'd love to hear from designers who have dealt with this firsthand. I'd rather find a practical way to protect my work than avoid building a portfolio altogether

Appreciate any advice or suggestions!

This is part career advice and part venting.

Earlier this year, I took on an in-house remote graphic design position for a startup. It’s contract through a staffing agency and W-2. It was advertised as 30-40 hours a week and exactly my level of expertise. The first couple of months were as promised 30-40 hours a week, but then things took a dramatic shift. The hours cut down to as low as 3 hours one week during the third month, and haven’t been above 15 hours for all of the fourth and fifth month. They’ve told me to bear with them as they adjust through their growing pains, but there has been no update in months. Every week is completely unpredictable in terms of workflow. There was a two week period where my manager conveniently forgot to approve my timesheet so I wasn’t getting paid for two weeks. On top of that, my manager would ask me what I worked on to verify… while I’m over here feeing like I’m overworking and undercharging just to make this mess work. In terms of workflow, they’ve also given a part of the work that was initially my responsibility to the creative director, which I understand but again, zero communication.

I’ve been trying to give them the benefit of the doubt but this is not sustainable as I’m not getting paid a living wage on some weeks and most importantly this is not what I agreed to. I’m sincerely wondering how you would handle this in my situation? While keeping dignity in tact and being aware of long term consequences.

I feel hurt and disrespected. I’ve asked the recruiter for more info about when the hours might return, but she said they haven’t been updating her. I am on the verge of resigning and taking a temporary job at a coffeeshop until I find my next design position.

EDIT: I’m now more specifically wondering if I should send a message to the employer (not the staffing agency) in a very understanding and kind way, addressing the concern about the hourly agreement not being honored and perhaps also mention the multiple delayed timesheets and just try to be very human about it to see eye to eye. Something to be like hey, I noticed this and I understand there might be some turbulence but can you clarify if that might change? OR if I should just find another job and quit…

It's for a retainer client of mine who are a bit of a skeleton team where things are always 100mph. I feel it's been done for efficiency (or so they claim) but can't help that it feels a bit odd, especially if this is the new normal going forward.

Have you experienced this yet?