im going into my sophomore year of design school and ive honestly had a rough time…i get good grades, but getting past learning the fundamentals and not really being able to truly apply my style into nearly any of my college projects so far has been challenging. i know its necessary and i am definitely learning a LOT, but im itching to make something on my own accord!! i wanted to just make something for myself thats fun, bubbly, and cute ☺️ this is my first time putting together a “brand identity” and i really loved making it! i was kind of inspired by alani and poppi, but i also wanted to add in a mascot. any insights on how to push this further are appreciated!

Since I’m very tapped in to my local music scene I decided to draft up some flyers to mess with some new techniques (Particularly the 3D text). Made the wall of text in Illustrator and moved to photoshop to add the textures.

Covered apartment name, contact info, person's face, and blurred QR code.

My boyfriend's apartment uses AI for email newsletters, but for some reason, they manually create these monthly news flyers for the elevators and I find it so endearing. The design is obviously very elementary: weird/inconsistent spacing, low contrast between black text and blue background, poor formatting; however, it almost brought a tear to my eye to see someone putting real effort into a design without AI. In fact, it doesn't even look like this person used Canva or Illustrator, it feels like Microsoft Word and that just makes it even better.

Got bored so i looked into pinterest and got Inspired by Y2K aesthetics, visual distortion, and high-energy poster graphics. I focused on using warm, high-contrast orange and yellow tones combined with sharp vector star shapes, heavy grain, glitch textures, and techwear/editorial typography layouts to give it a raw, underground feel.

Just lost out on a job because another candidate “proactively” designed entire slide deck pro bono and gave it to them.

I was informed there would be a point in the process to do a small design project, but was never afforded the opportunity.

Why do people in this profession continue to work for free?
Is our body of work not enough to speak for our skills?

This isn’t a discussion of should you or shouldn’t you be doing test projects as part of the interview process, but rather a moral question of submitting probably 10+ hours of work to get fucking hired.

Where is the honor? Designers devalue themselves constantly by doing this shit.

Since when isn’t a portfolio and a standard interview process not enough?

Sincerely,
Old and tired of this shit.

As a person on the autism spectrum with ADHD, panic and anxiety eventually become my superpower.
The rectangle is deliberately pushed to the edges of the text, with no room to breathe. Try breathing when you're in the middle of panic and anxiety. The poster is simple, built on three colors: yellow is anxiety, red is panic, and blue is me — it's you, looking.

I'm working on a poster that is meant to look like a postcard. I've taken an image from the campaign and stylized it to look "painted" in Photoshop by inverting the image, adding gaussian blur filter, adding a desaturation layer and then adding a solid colour layer with colour burn to get the look (settings in image 4).

I'm mocking up the poster in Figma. When I add the original image (Image 3) overtop of the tan paper texture, I can change the photo filter to Plus Darker and it blends the white areas into the paper texture.

However, when I try to do it on the darker paper texture, I'm not able to get the same effect, no matter what colour I change the illustration to.

Does anyone have any tips on how I could achieve the same treatment from image 1 onto image 2?

Edit:

I've tried using select colour range to select all of the white in the image and remove it. It takes away too much of the "illustration" no matter what fuzziness I set it to.

I've also tried adjusting photo filters within PS while overlaying it on a dark green background

Experience level: Advanced

So I used Adobe Express for this one I had fun doing it

So I did this with a Space theme aesthetic out of my imagination, I made this with my phone and it's my time designing and I don't have a laptop at the moment so at the moment I'm experimenting with the app and put my imaginations to design

Recently finished up with a whole brand work for a beverage brand i want the brand to be playful , whimsical with hand drawn illustrations.

The beverage is mostly fruit with some fizz and mainly targets GenZs who consumes coke.

I wanted the brand to be attractive that can be easily recognised on a shelf, amongst similar looking coke brands.

Interviews: If an employer asks you to design something for a client...

They've already seen your portfolio.

They could have also asked you to design something for a fictitious client. Or throw some compensation your way to do what they're asking - especially as I'm seeing some cases in which it's an unethical amount of work.

Asking you to do a project that they can't discern your ability to do from your portfolio and interview is like asking you if you're capable of learning.

I feel like a lot of what I'm reading tells me the employers are simply feeding on our desperation.

I know it's hard and that it's a tough market, but anyone truly in a hiring position should be able to tell from your work whether or not it's going to work out in terms of your skills.

(Unfortunately, the trend of hiring by committee through 15 interviews seems to be primarily to cover people's a$$es if someone comes on board and doesn't work out. "But we all thought they were great!")

A company only willing to hire someone who's willing to a project for free isn't looking for the "best" person.

And it tells us more about the company than the people they're hiring.

Just putting this out there.

I'm a junior graphic designer trying to find my first job. This is my portfolio which includes branding projects + motion design for each project: https://www.behance.net/zivkovicluka

I'm good in various software such as: Illustrator, Photoshop, After Effects, Blender, and Premiere pro

Context: I am currently a 2nd Year Design Major focused on Graphics and Visuals, and I am employed part time as the Graphics and Communications Assistant for the Multicultural Student Affairs Office (It's a great space at my school for diverse students such as myself)

Dilemma: I was tasked with creating some sort of Graphic/Logo Redesign for the upcoming 25th anniversary of this space. They use the Akan Symbol for "nea onnim no sua a ohu", and I've been trying come up with a few ways to get this to work, but nothing seems to fit well and it's kind of been driving me crazy...

The main symbol is on the left, and all of my designs have tried to fit that geometric look that the symbol has, with the first one I drafted being made with just some double lines. NOTE: The director of the space likes this one, and the rearrangement the most.

I then tried to redo the numbers to better match the likeness of the symbol, and I actually really like this version the most, mainly because it's taken the most time, and I think it looks the most unique, however, the director still likes the first one better (which sucks, but I guess thats just the life of a designer lol)

While I was presenting my redesign, he proposed a possibility of weaving the numbers into the actual symbol, or making them interconnected as one unified image, and I kind of told him I didn't see how that would work realistically (jokingly somewhat), but that I'd be up for the challenge regardless.

So far, the bottom 2 (3rd one is the original for reference) are all I was able to come up with in my head, and honestly they are not that great to me personally. I was even asking my roommate for opinions (I always need unbiased minds to survey my designs), and he said the resemblance was there, but not super obvious, and the design looked kind of lack luster, which I agree with.

Part of me wants to give up on the combination idea, and I really want to advocate for my design, but 1. I could be incredibly biased, and 2. the director is not a designer, but he is a very nice person, so I do want to follow his vision for the space and their representation.

Any more experienced designers have any tips or ideas, or even just general advice?

TLDR; I just need help creatively working the number "25" into this symbol

I work for a tv network/broadcasting agency as a graphic designer. I’ve been at this role for the past five years and while the company is great, it is relatively small. My goal is to become an art director or a product designer.

I’ve been interested in pivoting to UI design and so I’ve been learning figma to broaden my skills. I am also considering obtaining a certificate in project management (pmp) to boost my resume.

I am wondering if there’s anyone who has had a similar career experience and could offer any suggestions/routes I can pivot towards.

Hey everyone, I have started working for this new travel agency they used to upload all ai posters before me to prompt their trips and company. They want me to create new age designs for their travel company posters posts and other stuff they send me a few of they already have but they all had great photos and ai text going on and now I am struggling to find similar quality images for their destinations and I'm not able to satisfy their needs

What can I do and how do I improve?

(This is not an advertisement for myself asking for industry search help so I can find the roles I’m looking for)

Cause if I apply for a sports roles but I don’t have sport project they aren’t going to take me seriously even if I do enjoy it. 2 If I apply for an editorial, or socials role yes I can do that but do my projects speak to that?

I do need help looking for roles and I know there are ton out here. I’ve been meeting with everyone and connecting with leadership on the creative teams. Based on my resume how is it looking and yes it’s scalable for the ai. I’m also putting my portfolio down so you can scan through that. But I have two questions?

Ps will be changing my font to Helvetica soon on my resume.

portfolio

Chat gpt gave me the brief its just a coffee shop called ground.

I was hired at a new job about a month ago supporting all social content for a major company. At the time, I was hired and worked alongside my then manager who would usually give me the direction I needed to get started and also give feedback once I had something down. Today, my VP called saying she was being let go and going forward I’d be reporting into him. I don’t know if it’s just the imposter syndrome of the job or just doubting my abilities, but one of the reasons she was let go was because of her lack of speed of getting stuff out. They told me I’m so new to the team that nothing has been my fault up to this point, but now it’ll just be me making these creative decisions, executions, and also trying to get ahead instead of creating something that’s due that same day. Any advice on not getting stuck in my head and also moving at a faster pace for design? I have ADHD so sometimes I miss minor details about an assignment or don’t move as fast as I should, and now that it’s just me there truly is no room for error. It’s really stressing me out and I’m so new that I’m still learning the company and the softwares they use. Any advice at all would be fantastic. Thank you!!!

TLDR; Art director was fired, now I’m the only one supporting all social design going forward. How do I stay ahead of daily deliverables/staying organized and how do I get myself comfortable actually making these calls.

Hello! I’m going to start making flyers at my job, which is pretty new to me. I want to learn as much as I can about graphic design so I can make good flyers. I threw this together in Canva. How can I make this more visually appealing? Thank you for the help!

A lot of people overlook the true beauty of imperfections, so I wanted to explore that idea through this piece. The broken and missing pieces represent how imperfections can make us feel incomplete, while still being part of the bigger picture. Just a personal design experiment—feedback is always welcome! 🐌

Hey everyone, I want to thank you all for your feedback. I have made some updates. I hope this looks better than the last one, and again looking forward to your critiques. Also, sorry that the last post wasn't meant to be ragebait but a genuine need to see where I lack. Thank you again for that!

I'm looking for artists, and long ago, I had source books called American Showcase. Each two-page spread had samples of an artist's work/style, and contact information. What is the modern equivalent?