» Posts Tagged ‘design’
You may notice things look a little different around here today (if everything looks the same, you might have to hold Shift and click your “refresh” button). Note there are no major aesthetic changes — I switched the titling and typography (I was always more of a sans-serif kind of guy, whatever that means), and there are now Twitter, Facebook, and StumbleUpon badges on single posts. I’ve also created a NoFilmSchool Facebook Page, which now has a home in the sidebar. Many of these changes have been driven by a look inside the analytics of this site, so let’s look at NoFilmSchool’s recent stats: More »
Up until now I’ve never really told the truth about my career as a graphic designer — namely, that it was a complete sham. Sure, I’d dabbled in Photoshop once or twice in college and a few times as a corporate video producer after graduating. But everyone dabbles in Photoshop — I’d certainly never had a job as any kind of designer. In 2005 my main goal was to start a film career in New York — by any means necessary. It’s a long story, but thanks to starting this blog I ended up going from unemployed in NC, living with my parents, to having my own place in Manhattan and working as a graphic designer at MTV. How? MTV was hiring graphic designers, so that’s what I said I did. Now that I don’t work there anymore, I can confess it was a total lie! I created a fake portfolio for the interview, and after I was hired I did Photoshop training on my laptop on the train every day to and from work using Lynda.com. I figured as long as they didn’t give me anything hard in the first two weeks, they’d never know. A year later when I was designing a bunch of high-end web applications as a Senior Designer, no one was the wiser. Suckers!
Just wanted to share how I got myself to New York. Back to your regularly-scheduled content!
For creatives who get their hands on an iPad, the first thought is often, “what kind of app can I develop for this?” I toyed with an iPad at Apple’s 5th Avenue store yesterday and, watching people eagerly touching the screen one after the other, had a different idea.1 However, for those of you who have a concept for a mobile app, the easiest way to mock-up an application is to grab the free iPad PSD; all of the buttons, text, and other elements are separated out into Photoshop layers for you. There’s also a freely available iPhone PSD, which I used for a quick design job for Diversion Media last week. One note of caution: if you’re designing for clients or publicly presenting your app concept, change the time. As you can see, the designer who put together these helpful photoshop files had a little fun with the clock by setting it to the universal stoner time of 4:20. It’s much more subtle in the iPhone version, and I didn’t notice it until the client brought it up on the conference call; oops.
Finally, if you want to create an icon for your theoretical app, here’s the icon PSD; Apple’s design elements are also available as a vector kit.
- Obviously, I didn’t actually do it or I’d be in jail. My first thought was actually to make a joke about anthrax, but wasn’t entirely sure of the current status of habeas corpus. [↩]
One of the most important things I learned on the job as a Senior Designer at MTV was: you don’t have to reinvent the wheel every time. As a graphic designer, assembling a toolkit of brushes, textures, templates, and other elements is a crucial step to maximizing your design capabilities and efficiency. The other thing I learned was: you don’t really have to know what you’re doing! Thanks to thousands of readily available tutorials on the ‘net, if you’re not sure how to achieve a particular look or effect, all you have to do is google it. My favorite resource at the moment for tutorials and resources (including helpful posts like 50 Free UI and Web Design Wireframing Kits, Adobe Illustrator Tutorials – Best Of, and 40+ Excellent Freefonts For Professional Design) is Smashing Magazine. If you’re a graphic designer you probably already know about Smashing, but if you’re a filmmaker who also does some design — and a lot of us do, these days — check out the site (they also have a book).
Link: Smashing Magazine.
One of the main arguments for going to film school is to give you time and separation to focus on the medium during your formative years, as opposed to spending much of your youthful energy on a possibly-unrelated day job. And while my job successfully moved me from North Carolina to New York (a necessary step in this site’s “starts a film career in New York” storyline), it didn’t do so for free: although it paid me monetarily, there’s a cost associated with working a job as opposed to going to school… and that cost is time. More »
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