*Transcription Disclaimer: the following transcription was automatically generated, and may have errors, or lack context.*
Alex Lazaris:
Hello. Hello. Welcome, everyone. We are very, very excited to get into some logo design today. Sydney is my partner in crime. Sydney's partner in crime. Sydney is super talented, and I'll let her explain who she is really quickly.
Sydney Michuda:
Yeah. So my name is Sydney Michuda. I'm a graphic designer, letterer and illustrator based out of Milwaukee, Wisconsin. I run my own one lady design studio named Super Creative, and yesterday we worked on some logo design for a new company that I'm working with called Pottery With a Purpose. And today we're going to pick back up and keep designing those brands.
Alex Lazaris:
Yeah. I'm super excited to see where you take this today I see Colby in Chat, Carol asked for more Adobe Dimension work, which I don't know if you have that available, and you want to go through that today, but cool. Voodoo Val is here. Sarah. Hello. Hello, everybody. Welcome, welcome. So excited to see you guys again. So, yeah, walk us through really quickly where we got to yesterday, some of the iterations, and then kind of explain where we're going to hope to get to by the end of today's term.
Sydney Michuda:
Yeah. So yesterday, I basically started off with all these notes. I like to keep things very nice and organized and make sure that I have, like I said yesterday, have all my puzzle pieces laid out for me so I can just assemble the puzzle with all the pieces. Later on, I went through a bunch of different type options, kind of just playing with anything that I think might be useful. Then from there, I did several different just type lockups. We have the taglines over here on the right. Then I started working with some color palettes this morning, so there's a few new things here. I picked a few color palettes, picked a few logos with marks. Nothing is refined yet, so I want to add some color to these, add some texture, and then create some larger full bleed patterns. Do some mockups on T shirts and bags, things like that. Maybe create some business card layouts and secondary logos. Just really trying to round at least one or two, maybe three of these directions out together for presentation.
Alex Lazaris:
Perfect. Well, before we get into that, I want to remind everybody in Chat if you are designing along or just wanting to do the Daily Creative Challenge, the Illustrator Daily Creative Challenge is doing a menu design, and it's really, really exciting. Everybody's doing some diner themes right now, so if you want to go up there to aid Discord, go check it out. We will be reviewing everybody's design work inside the challenge thread, so make sure you're participating. And from there, we will jump back into designing now.
Sydney Michuda:
Yeah. So I decided to add this little still life icon to the funky font. Gopher.
Alex Lazaris:
Sweet.
Sydney Michuda:
But I want to add some color to it. And then I also made some of these earlier, which are kind of fun.
Alex Lazaris:
Those are really fun.
Sydney Michuda:
Yeah. Just as, like, potential secondary options for the brand.
Alex Lazaris:
And you did all these sketches just to remind Chat or because I know there's probably a lot of new people. You did a bunch of sketching out on your iPad before and brought that into Illustrator and then traced some of it, and then it looks like maybe even did Image trace of some of them as well. Yep.
Sydney Michuda:
On the more abstract shapes, I did Live Trace just because they're supposed to be funky and organic, and when I use the pen tool, it tends to be a little bit too. So, yeah, Live Trace gives me a.
Alex Lazaris:
Nice, rough shapes, and Sarah asks, how did you go about picking color?
Sydney Michuda:
Oh, good question. Let's see. I kind of take what I've seen in the mood boards, and then I kind of gauge what the client likes. So just as a start, I know that she mentioned that she does like some of these more earthy clay colors, so I wanted to make sure that there's at least something representative of Terracotta in each palette, or close to it at least. And then from there, I just kind of go with colors that I am really liking at the moment. I try to make sure, too, that there's a full good amount of contrast within the palette so it's not just all, like, the same flat tone.
Alex Lazaris:
Absolutely.
Sydney Michuda:
Yeah. Because sometimes this pink and this yellow are pretty similar, so I wouldn't want to have a full palette of colors that are in that same saturation level, because that would be a huge bummer. But yeah, I like to just browse around through my mood boards, figure out what the client likes, and kind of go from there.
Alex Lazaris:
Totally. And I think that's awesome way to start doing your color palettes, especially if you know that the brand strategy is we're going to be doing very earthy, handmade things. You want a color palette that will reflect that. Sometimes it works to also contrast that in the space and say, what is all of our competition doing, and how do we change that? So that kind of gives you a rough ballpark to play in as a creative look at that. That's looking really nice already. And yesterday you said that this would be a tattoo if they don't go with this direction. Is that correct?
Sydney Michuda:
Sorry, what's that?
Alex Lazaris:
You said that you'll get this as a tattoo if the client doesn't actually choose it.
Sydney Michuda:
Yeah, perfect. I already have one still life tattoo, so why not get another?
Alex Lazaris:
Yeah, exactly.
Sydney Michuda:
Yeah. I kind of like this just as.
Alex Lazaris:
The outline as well as really nice.
Sydney Michuda:
Yeah, I'll just keep that as a secondary option.
Alex Lazaris:
Absolutely. Those pixels are free, right?
Sydney Michuda:
Exactly. And that's why it's so nice that Illustrator has all the space to work with, because I just end up filling up the entire area.
Alex Lazaris:
Again, everybody was commenting yesterday about how organized you are, and it truly is baffling because I'll just press, like, command shift H and just have all white space, and then I'll just throw my logos everywhere. Yeah, it's just a mess.
Sydney Michuda:
See, I have to keep things organized, otherwise I'll forget everything. So it's more of like, I don't know. It's a good habit to be into, but it is also kind of an act of desperation because otherwise I won't get anything done.
Alex Lazaris:
Totally. And the way that you've set up your artboards is intentional, and iterative right. It shows that you've had a lot of experience doing work like this, you know? Okay, I'm going to take these four mood boards or four directions. I'm going to apply a color palette to it. I'm going to look at secondary elements. I'm going to see how the space works with these type and everything. It's really clean and methodical and intentional.
Sydney Michuda:
It's great.
Alex Lazaris:
Thank you.
Sydney Michuda:
Yeah.
Alex Lazaris:
How can you not love these secondary elements, right.
Sydney Michuda:
Just so playful that's, like, I always want anything that I make to just as cheesy as it sounds to just make people happy or bring a little bit of joy to someone's world because you can have a sophisticated brand but still have it be fun. Not everything has to be super serious and black and white or yeah. I don't know. There's so much variety with graphic design. You can really do anything that you want.
Alex Lazaris:
It's funny because Audra goes, can you tell us how you stay organized? What's your secret? And I think it goes back to our theme of yesterday's stream, which I'm sure will be today's theme as well. It depends. It depends, yeah, depends on where you are in the process and project. I think you've done the exploration phase, so now you're being very intentional about, here's the next three things I need to do. And it's mock up the collateral, put secondary elements, and figure out color palettes. Right. So it's like you've created purposeful mood boards or artboards for each of those to be self contained.
Sydney Michuda:
Yeah. I think just so much of it is just practice and getting used to how you work, what your process is. Like. I am a very methodical, organized person by nature, partly because that's how I am. And then as weird as it sounds, it's kind of almost like, out of necessity that I don't want to lose anything. Like I said before, I'm afraid that I'll forget something, so I make sure that I keep everything as organized as possible so it doesn't completely get lost, because we've all been there where our Illustrator crashes or we completely lose an account or something like that, trying to make sure that stuff doesn't happen. I just don't want to forget anything, so I just write everything down, and I have a million to do lists written all over the place. I have one in my email draft that's just like, design tasks, my shop tasks, my home tasks, my grocery list, my ideas for the future.
Alex Lazaris:
Just so good.
Sydney Michuda:
A million things.
Alex Lazaris:
So that's a really good behind the scenes into how you think through things, and that's awesome.
Sydney Michuda:
Very linear, very list like.
Alex Lazaris:
Exactly. So if you're very list oriented, follow what she did, because it's perfect.
Sydney Michuda:
Yeah.
Alex Lazaris:
These colors really work really nicely together.
Sydney Michuda:
Thank you. I always try, again, really hard to just pick really cool colors, but things that are also a little bit unexpected, because I don't know if I've really ever seen lavender mixed with this rust color.
Alex Lazaris:
Yeah, that's true. But it's like a nice little palette cleanser, right? You're just kind of like, oh, that's refreshing. I can see that.
Sydney Michuda:
And I also apologize for my super Midwestern accent. I know it's really apparent when I say lavender. I've heard that. Yeah. Lavender. It's so hard to turn off.
Alex Lazaris:
Awesome.
Sydney Michuda:
Now I'm trying to make a badge here because for me, no brand is complete until they have a badge option.
Alex Lazaris:
Yeah, I mean, badges are so just I think everybody kind of expects to have a badge or a secondary logo these days.
Sydney Michuda:
Yeah, pretty much.
Alex Lazaris:
The whole idea of responsive brand systems and things like that is really taken off with the digital era, where you got to work for how style work with an Instagram icon or a favicon for your website, and then what does it look like for merch and what does the lifestyle look like?
Sydney Michuda:
You can't just have that main primary logo and just leave it at that. You have to have a whole system working.
Alex Lazaris:
Absolutely. Because I love the WISCO accent. I can't speak today. This is a great start.
Sydney Michuda:
Yeah.
Alex Lazaris:
Jennifer says yes. Shibuya, Wisconsin.
Sydney Michuda:
Heck yeah. Wisconsin. Speaking of the Wisconsin people, one thing that we always say is Ope. I don't know, it's just Ope, and it's the weirdest regional dialect, and people just realized that it was a thing maybe, like, two years ago, and now it's all over the place. People think it's hilarious, and I already did one of those earlier.
Alex Lazaris:
That's so funny. You're making, like, a little abstract. Okay, I like that.
Sydney Michuda:
I'm going to put these inside this badge. Yeah, that one might be kind of hard since it's got that right angle.
Alex Lazaris:
Oh, there it is. Thank you. Kate Eden asked, what does it mean?
Sydney Michuda:
I think it's like a shortened version of saying Oops. Something like oops. Sorry. We'll go oops. Sorry.
Alex Lazaris:
There you go.
Sydney Michuda:
Yeah, because Westerners are notoriously polite, so we always got to say oops and apologize for anything.
Alex Lazaris:
Absolutely.
Sydney Michuda:
I definitely want to add some texture to these shapes later on too, because that's something that I mentioned yesterday that that's one thing that we can do to separate ourselves from one of the competitors brands who uses similar abstract shapes. But I just want to get these other pieces in here first.
Alex Lazaris:
Allison says some of my best selling merch has Ope on it?
Sydney Michuda:
Yep.
Alex Lazaris:
That's amazing.
Sydney Michuda:
Yeah. I've always wanted to make some sort of merch piece that says Ope, but now I feel like I kind of missed out on it. And all the good stuff that says Ope is already I'll just I'll wait for the next thing that we realize is weird about our state.
Alex Lazaris:
No, I think you could totally do that. You can absolutely make your own cool version of I mean, I'm originally from Texas, so Y'all is, like the merch thing that everybody's doing now, but that's been around for so long.
Sydney Michuda:
That's true.
Alex Lazaris:
And Y'all is absolutely the best thing ever. I find myself writing emails with, like, six Y'alls in one paragraph.
Sydney Michuda:
And it's I think it's funny, too, now that people that aren't even from the south say Y'all instead of saying an updated version of saying you guys, because that can be a little exclusionary every once in a while. So Y'all has become the new just English. Hey, everybody.
Alex Lazaris:
Yeah, exactly. You all yeah. Way faster, right? Roman says, I love the color combination. Did you use adobe color?
Sydney Michuda:
No, I didn't.
Alex Lazaris:
Have you used Adobe color?
Sydney Michuda:
I have not used adobe color. I'm usually not one to go with, and I don't mean this to sound negative in any way, but, like, generated color palettes. I don't know. I just like to be able to pick it for myself. Color is a big thing for me, and I love the process of finding those palettes on my own.
Alex Lazaris:
That's fair. I think there's some really cool things you can do with Adobe Color, like upload your images or a photo that you took or whatever and be like, okay, that was a really cool sunset I took a photo of. And then it pulls. Know it's still creative, but it's different than if you were to just take the photo and then throw it into Photoshop and then just grab an eyedropper tool, which is kind of nice.
Sydney Michuda:
Totally.
Alex Lazaris:
Carol goes, use guys.
Sydney Michuda:
Yeah, that's kind of fun. Now, Alex, do you have a preference between this monogram and this monogram?
Alex Lazaris:
I think, like you said, there's a lot of secondary elements, so I think I could see both of them being used depending on what it's in. Right. Like, I could see in a square lockup of some sort, so say the client really push for watermark on an Instagram post or something. I could see that being locked up in the bottom right corner or bottom left corner, which is nicely in there. Yeah, and that way it's like not obtrusive, but they still get their watermark. And then the PP I can see on merch or a sleeve hit or something like that, like on a T shirt.
Sydney Michuda:
Yeah, a lot of things. That's a good call.
Alex Lazaris:
More is more in this situation, I feel like.
Sydney Michuda:
Yeah, basically. Because then, especially if you're the designer that's going to be working with this stuff later on. The more assets you create on the upfront, the easier all that creation process is going to be later on. So you're not just sitting with a new brand saying, like, well, I don't know, how do I make this cool or fun? Or how do I make the layout interesting?
Alex Lazaris:
Yeah. And I think the great thing about it is that both of those versions you have are so different from each other that it allows them to live on the same universe without competing against each other. I think if you did a vertical stack version of your horizontal PP, that would be maybe too conflicting, or maybe that's just an iteration.
Sydney Michuda:
Yeah.
Alex Lazaris:
I don't know.
Sydney Michuda:
Yeah. Cool. Now I'm going to try to add some of that texture.
Alex Lazaris:
And you did those textures through on your iPad as well, correct?
Sydney Michuda:
Yes. Yeah, just kind of using a few different brushes to apply those.
Alex Lazaris:
And Audra says you probably talked about this yesterday, but what do you think about when choosing brand elements or color brand elements.
Sydney Michuda:
Brand elements or color brand colors for brand elements. Okay. I just kind of gauge the general vibe that the brand is going for, I guess. So this one, she wanted it to be light and playful, but not, like, too on the end of too young, I guess, so she wanted it to be cool, fun, and playful. So I wanted to make sure that there were some pastels in there, because pastels always add that lighter quality since they're lighter colors. And this lavender tried not to go for my accent lavender. This lavender color is pretty upbeat and light hearted and fun, so that I think, fits perfectly, and it's a pretty rocking color right now. Yeah, I think it's mostly just about gauging what the client has already kind of said within their creative brief, what they're interested in, and then kind of just going from there and using my best judgment.
Alex Lazaris:
Yeah, I think that's spot on. Sweet. And the great thing is, because you have such great diversity in your colors, that you're choosing from, if the client did need to tweak something, you can go with your recolor in Illustrator, the Adobe Recolor Tool, and quickly swap things around and explore different color palettes. So if you guys are in Chat and you're constantly trying to figure out new color palettes or new ways to look at your work, you can recolor your art really easily with Cory. Cory, that's a great question. I think Chat, I want to hear what you have for to say, but I also want to know what you have to say. Sydney, what's your favorite thing to watch or listen to while you're working?
Sydney Michuda:
Oh, my God. I listen to way too much true crime. Way too much true crime. And it's a good thing that I don't live alone, because otherwise I'd be very afraid. But yeah, a lot of my favorite murder. Last podcast on the left. Yeah, just as many of those as I can. Whenever there's, like, new serial ones where there's, like, an entire new crime that they're developing or they're unfolding, I like to dive really deep into those. Yeah. Sometimes it's American life. I will sometimes put rewatching things on TV. I am a really bad rewatcher, so I'll rewatch Game of Thrones just over and over and over again.
Alex Lazaris:
Do you stop before the last season?
Sydney Michuda:
No, I still do it because it's still part of the series. It's still part of the show. George R. Martin had, like, told them that's how he wanted it to end, so I respect that.
Alex Lazaris:
No. All right. I'll forgive you. Oh, man, we are getting along so well. The last season was so bad.
Sydney Michuda:
I know, but it's still part of it. Can't leave it unresolved. What do you like to watch or listen to it?
Alex Lazaris:
Depends on what I'm doing. I think if I'm doing a lot of emails or a lot of strategy stuff, I'll do something more chill and ambient. I think some people in Chat have said lo fi. Lo Fi is a good classic, but if I'm really in the design mode, I'll do something more upbeat to keep my mind going faster. So typically, like, hip hop or dance or something. And then also a lot of podcasts as well. Just day in and day out.
Sydney Michuda:
Yeah. I guess I should say if I need to really put my head down and concentrate because it's a concentration task, then I'll definitely just go for music or something like that instead. But if it's a bit more of a technical task, then I'll pop on a podcast or something.
Alex Lazaris:
Yeah. And Voodoo Val is like alex reacting right now is like when people tell me they like, the new Star Wars. Also, Solo was the best Star Wars film ever.
Sydney Michuda:
No.
Alex Lazaris:
Get do not at me.
Sydney Michuda:
No. Rogue One. Rogue One is the best Star Wars film.
Alex Lazaris:
No.
Sydney Michuda:
Yes.
Alex Lazaris:
No.
Sydney Michuda:
Yes.
Alex Lazaris:
Pakistan. Rogue One. No.
Sydney Michuda:
Yes.
Alex Lazaris:
Solo. Okay. Rogue One is second. Okay. Second. Fine. All right, I'll concede. Rogue one's good.
Sydney Michuda:
Rogue One is amazing.
Alex Lazaris:
Voodoo. Val says Rogue One counts as good star wars. I don't think you can't just say new and then Val no. You can't be anti new Star Wars and then be like, well, that new one was good, so it's fine. What?
Sydney Michuda:
I think she probably means the new series.
Alex Lazaris:
Oh, yeah.
Sydney Michuda:
Because the new series is hotly debated if it's worth it or not.
Alex Lazaris:
That's true. That's fair. I don't want to throw fights yet. Mandalorian is great. Okay. We can go there. It's good. I guess. It's beautiful.
Sydney Michuda:
It's a space western.
Alex Lazaris:
Exactly. It's space western. It's cute, baby. Yoda's. Got plenty of screen time.
Sydney Michuda:
It's great. I think my mouse died.
Alex Lazaris:
Oh, no. You have to trackpad it.
Sydney Michuda:
Yeah, exactly. That's what we got trackpads for.
Alex Lazaris:
Yeah. Can we talk about how poorly designed the magic mouse is with its dead cockroach style, like, charging this way.
Sydney Michuda:
Right? It's actually this one has batteries at least, though, so I don't have to plug it in.
Alex Lazaris:
Totally.
Sydney Michuda:
There we go.
Alex Lazaris:
I love how technical Voodoo Val is about her Star Wars. She's, like, not a prequels, original, or sequel. All caps, by the way. So good. If you ever want a spicy chat with Voodoo Val, you always just bring up Star Wars. I was going to say that Voodoo Val probably just watches, like, driver, like, compilations while she's working for inspiration.
Sydney Michuda:
Heck yes. There's nothing wrong with that.
Alex Lazaris:
True.
Sydney Michuda:
Adam. Driver is wonderful and great.
Alex Lazaris:
Exactly. Yeah. Like Pakistan. So true. Literally need to stop working to charge. Yeah, it's the like, what am I supposed to do with my mouse now?
Sydney Michuda:
Right?
Alex Lazaris:
I do have to take a break and pretend that everything Alex said in the last five minutes never happened. So we can stay friends. That's fine. Val's amazing. I would never want to lose her friendship. Oh, anna keeps asking. Sorry, Anna, I missed your question tips on organizing your workspace, your physical workspace.
Sydney Michuda:
Oh, boy.
Alex Lazaris:
Because I feel like if you're disorganized in your artboards, your life is probably pretty organized as well.
Sydney Michuda:
Oh, boy, I wish that was true. It's not at all. I do like to try a little bit every morning when I wake up, before I take a shower, before I get ready. Just, like, walk around the house and just pick up that wine glass that I left on the coffee table last night. Or just like random clutter. I like to just take 15 minutes every morning and just put that stuff away so the rest of my day doesn't feel as weighed down and cluttered. So I guess I would apply then to also your workspace. Or if you're working in an office at an office or in your living room or in your dining room, like I am right now. Yeah. I'd say just carving out that time every day to just tidy up a little bit is so valuable.
Alex Lazaris:
The fact that you have time allocated to tidy up is pretty telling already.
Sydney Michuda:
It's more of like a habit that I just realized that I was doing once someone else pointed it out, I was like, oh, you're right.
Alex Lazaris:
Yeah, I love that. You're just like, yeah, I don't really do that. And then all of a sudden, no, I've got, like, 45 minutes allocated every day.
Sydney Michuda:
Yeah. Sometimes it just takes that other person to call out what you're doing totally. Things a certain way.
Alex Lazaris:
And that's great. And I love it if you look at chefs. Right. I think there's a lot of similarities with being a chef and a designer or a creative, because, let's be real, they are very creative. But the whole mantra of just, like, messing plus, where it's like, you have everything tidy and organized and you do all the meal prep and the chopping of the vegetables and the prepping of the meat and everything before you start to create is something that I think creatives could stand to benefit from. So what you've done with your artboards is you've got all your ingredients and all those strategy things on the side and then you start to prep little nuggets of some textures you've built and some typefaces that you have. And then whenever you start sitting down to actually create it, you're just assembling ingredients and kind of creating your own little masterpieces.
Sydney Michuda:
Right.
Alex Lazaris:
So I think having a clean desk base that goes all back to the physical thing. If you have a clean desk, you have nothing to distract you from. You can just sit down and focus.
Sydney Michuda:
Right. I honestly feel like it saves you time too. And I think that's honestly a little bit of why I am so organized is because I feel like if I get everything all out in the open at the onset, then I can just assemble things more quickly rather than just like toiling away with certain letters or something like that.
Alex Lazaris:
Absolutely.
Sydney Michuda:
Early on, it's like when you're drawing something like if you want to draw a human figure, you're not going to start super close in with the eyes. You're going to draw the entire form first. Like the skeleton sketch or whatever.
Alex Lazaris:
Yeah. You're going to start like Napoleon Dynamite. Like I spent 3 hours shading her upper lip. Oh my God.
Sydney Michuda:
Yeah.
Alex Lazaris:
You don't start with that.
Sydney Michuda:
Wow.
Alex Lazaris:
You know, that exact oh, it's because that's how I used to do my upper lip sketches.
Sydney Michuda:
Oh, nice.
Alex Lazaris:
Dan says tidying up my design somehow clears my mind for more creativity. Absolutely. I think sometimes it's so therapeutic to even editing photos and things like getting into the task that's not so necessarily brain heavy, but just getting in there and brushstroking or editing something where it can be a little bit more just flow and you can free your mind up for other super helpful.
Sydney Michuda:
Yeah, absolutely.
Alex Lazaris:
Can you speak to Jamie? Jamie, jamie. Jamie is bringing the heat with the questions. Can you speak to how you decide how many options you give a client along with how many extra elements? Are these predetermined amounts or do you wait to see what you come up with?
Sydney Michuda:
That's an extremely good question and I basically figured it out after a lot of trial and error. Basically what I do when I sign clients on, I have three different brand packages. So someone either could take the small one, the medium, or the large. The large always has like three fully complete brand directions. If someone signs on for medium, it's generally two. If someone signs on for small, it's just one on like a predetermined direction that we know. Like, okay, you want a logo that's going to have mountains in it and it's going to have some script font. That's what you want so we're going to do that and that's what you're going to get. So it's pretty stripped down, but it's still totally valuable for some of those smaller makers that don't have as wide of a budget. That's sort of how I determine things. I think some people have a debate as to whether you should even provide multiple directions because I don't know, it's just one of those contested things in the design world.
Alex Lazaris:
I have feels about that.
Sydney Michuda:
And then with the amount of brand assets, it's again, kind of depending on what their pay scale is like, if they sign up for a large package, they're going to get the full works. And then I just kind of, as a default, have figured out that I work best when I provide a primary logo, secondary logos, monograms and a badge. Then those extra little bits, which I just say other brand assets, because that's kind of hard to determine because not everyone's going to get a pattern, but they might get, I don't know, a full illustration set or something like that.
Alex Lazaris:
Yeah, absolutely. I think the way that you've packaged it up and easy to digest understanding as a client, I can gum to you really quickly and be like, how many do I get for this budget? You're like, oh, actually you don't have the budget for the larger packages here's. Just one thing, if you have a very specific thing in mind, is a great offering and I think it's a great way of positioning it to clients.
Sydney Michuda:
Well, especially as you're just starting out because every client that you work with is going to want something different and a little bit custom in a certain way. So for me, that was just nice to sign on some people on the onset that couldn't pay for the whole shebang, I guess.
Alex Lazaris:
Absolutely. And Den goes, just to clarify, so you create three fully fleshed out directions for the launch package?
Sydney Michuda:
Yes. Wow. Yep. Yeah, sometimes I definitely have a favorite. Like, I think this one's starting to be my favorite for this one. So I might put several extra hours into this one compared to this one down here, but I just want to make sure that they have a full set to choose from so that they know that they're not leaving anything on the table.
Alex Lazaris:
Absolutely. I love that Eric says, I think it's a good approach. It really depends on the client and the one size doesn't fit all. Yeah, I think theme of today's stream will probably also be it depends. I'm calling it now, but I agree. I think it all really depends on your client and how you personally work. I prefer to only give the client one really solid direction, but just because I never seem to get a good multiple logo client where it's like I typically will present and then I go, Great. I love option A and B and C and then combine all. Three of them and then that's what you like we should get now it's like, no, that's not really that good.
Sydney Michuda:
Right.
Alex Lazaris:
But I built into my process, like, I have to do a ton of strategy work up front, and it's non negotiable. And I'm going to give you a direction that solves the business problems that you have. And the clients, I just make sure to over communicate that and bring them along to the journey and say, we can do a lot of things for you, but we want to make sure that everything is defined up front.
Sydney Michuda:
Right.
Alex Lazaris:
So really depends however you want to approach it.
Sydney Michuda:
Really depends.
Alex Lazaris:
Just make sure your client is understanding of your process because that's where you're going to run into problems. If your client thinks that you get three complete iterated versions and you're only going to give them one, they're not going to be happy, and then you're not going to be happy whenever you have to do the other two.
Sydney Michuda:
Right.
Alex Lazaris:
So you don't want those friction points. So just over communicate, chat over communicate.
Sydney Michuda:
Oh, yeah. Not loving those polka dots.
Alex Lazaris:
Didn't you say, Alex, that you do so much research that you only ever present one design to your clients in the end? How does that work? Yes, that's exactly it. I do about like 80 to 120 hours worth of research, typically.
Sydney Michuda:
Oh my gosh.
Alex Lazaris:
Yeah, it's robust. That's kind of like how I've kind of positioned my business and my clientele to be like, this is necessary for you guys to be successful. And we'll do a deep, deep audit into who they are, what their competition is doing, how to differentiate in the marketplace. In that process, I will present very defined mood boards and then that mood board and directions. I'll pitch them a couple of different things and say, this is kind of what I'm thinking for this. But then with this flavor and twist, and then they're like, okay, I can see it happening before I start to design. And that way I'm not spending time designing random things for them that aren't going to be used at the end because I think just my experience is like, I don't do really well once I have a really solid set of design ideas for a direction, for a brand. Me spinning it up after a strategy and everything is already defined to pivot a different direction is really tough for me. I struggle with that.
Sydney Michuda:
Yeah. And I think honestly, for me, I work a little bit better when there is this kind of more free flow process here and I just like creating those extra directions. Oh, it's a different shape. And I've definitely worked with other agencies that have that really intense strategy up front where they just mood board the heck out of it. So there's a really established direction. They have all that research up front, competitor analysis, stuff like that. And that's just so amazing that places can do that. I just don't do that because totally. Yeah.
Alex Lazaris:
I think that comes from just my background of being a self taught designer. I didn't go to design school. I think I was always afraid that whatever designs I made weren't going to be strong enough. So then I inherently was always looking for strategy to kind of build the case for why the design works.
Sydney Michuda:
Okay.
Alex Lazaris:
And so I think that Phobia kind of pushed me to learning strategy and the business and all that other stuff to help support the creative decisions. So I think that came from a place of fear, but now is kind of what differentiates me in the market now.
Sydney Michuda:
It's your strength.
Alex Lazaris:
Yeah. There we go.
Sydney Michuda:
Yeah.
Alex Lazaris:
It's like vain, right? Like being born in the darkness.
Sydney Michuda:
That's crazy, though, too, because I feel like I'm almost the opposite way, where I always felt like my concepts were lacking, and I was always just so afraid that my ideas were going to be bad. So I decided to prop up the design assets and the cool factor as much as humanly possible so that no one would really want to poke holes in the ideas. But then later on, I was like, oh, that's right. Concepts are super important, and now I know how to do this.
Alex Lazaris:
Yeah, totally. It's like, just learn. How do you learn this process over time?
Sydney Michuda:
Yeah.
Alex Lazaris:
There's no one size fits all at all.
Sydney Michuda:
Exactly.
Alex Lazaris:
But if I know that the client is really expecting two different designs, what I'll do is I'll make sure that I have a brief that is solid enough for another creative on my team to take it and run with it, and then we'll kind of be siloed in our creative process.
Sydney Michuda:
Okay.
Alex Lazaris:
And I'll just take a direction, and the other person will take a direction, and then we kind of, like, hash it out afterwards. That way, they're still getting different directions. It was something that I saw a lot of the agencies that I was freelancing for for a while would do. That where I would get a task or a project, somebody else would get one, and then whoever had the strongest pitch would go to the client, or they would present just two different directions. So it kind of allows for different ways to solve the same kind of creative brief. Yeah.
Sydney Michuda:
One thing that I really miss is being able to work with other designers. At the last place that I worked at, I sat next to a couple really great designers, and it was just so nice to be like, hey, Sam, could you come over and look at this real quick? Because I really trust you, and I think that you're a great person, and I want to hear what you have to say. Whereas when you're at home, you can't really ask your cats what they think.
Alex Lazaris:
Meow once if you're hungry. Meow twice if you like the design, right? Totally.
Sydney Michuda:
And sometimes I'll ask my husband, too, and he's like, I don't know. The pink is good, I guess.
Alex Lazaris:
Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, it's tough. Yeah. Getting those online communities, even finding a Slack channel, even the Creative Challenger channels, you can post in there and be like, what are your guys'thoughts how did you do this? What are you thinking about this? What are the first reactions you get, like finding those online communities right now when we are so kind of isolated and separated?
Sydney Michuda:
Yeah, for sure.
Alex Lazaris:
But Val says so you essentially cut out the middleman and the element of I hope my clients like this. You found a workflow that ensures satisfaction. That is correct. Yeah. The whole goal is I don't want to spend tons and tons of time doing a bunch of concepts that I don't think are going to win.
Sydney Michuda:
Yeah, I think that there's definitely a lot of confidence in that approach, too. I think one of the reasons why I do provide multiple options is because I'm just always afraid that they're not going to like the one that I've decided on.
Alex Lazaris:
Totally.
Sydney Michuda:
But kind of like you said, if you have that strategy and concepting up front to back it up, it's probably not as likely to happen.
Alex Lazaris:
It still happens, though. And I think sometimes they're still like, oh, man, how did you do this? Or Why did you do this? I've had those moments where I've flown across the country to present thing to a client and sprinted really hard on this work and think that I nailed it. And then they're like, yeah, don't like that.
Sydney Michuda:
Try again, bud.
Alex Lazaris:
But the whole thing I try to do is I try to demystify the process where I'm not just like some behind the curtains, like wizard of the Oz thing. It's spooky. I want the client to know exactly kind of where these things come from. So I'll open up the Illustrator artboards with them and let them take a look and see why things didn't work and explain the process to them, which is very vulnerable.
Sydney Michuda:
Yeah, for sure.
Alex Lazaris:
So Dan asked, did you make these textures and patterns yourself? And you've said, yes, but if you want to give a little extra info to absolutely.
Sydney Michuda:
Yeah. So before I hopped on the live stream yesterday, I made all these sketches and illustrations on my iPad, just kind of anticipating from the talks with the client where some of the gaps in the market would be. And I kind of realized one way to really separate themselves from their competitors was to use all these textures and patterns. So this one right here, just a bunch of fun squiggles, random dots, more textures, straight lines, like kind of a speckled texture and pattern. And I tried to make my own chirazzo.
Alex Lazaris:
I think that's how you say it.
Sydney Michuda:
Yeah. So I'll incorporate those with one of these directions. I'm not sure if it'll go with this one or this one, but we'll see.
Alex Lazaris:
That's so cool. Yeah. Everybody in Chat is gushing over your textures. They're gorgeous.
Sydney Michuda:
Oh, thanks. Thanks, y'all.
Alex Lazaris:
And Y'all, the themes of today.
Sydney Michuda:
So now I'm making a mock up with this just tertiary logo onto a tote bag.
Alex Lazaris:
And Derek asks, when presenting, what order do you present? Everything. Is it type first, et cetera, et cetera?
Sydney Michuda:
I send them the brand boards that I have, and sometimes I'll hop on the phone with them. Sometimes I'll just give them a really thorough rundown through email saying, like, the first concept was based on X, Y, and Z. And they usually get brand boards that kind of look like this, where there's the main logo up here. Other elements here, more of a full page image. And then the third will usually be just like a series of mockups. So tote bags, stickers, business cards, t shirts, things like that.
Alex Lazaris:
So you send your stuff over email? You don't even present the concept?
Sydney Michuda:
No. What? No way. Yeah, maybe that's a bad approach, but I like to have the client sit with it for a little bit so they can just digest what they're seeing.
Alex Lazaris:
Okay.
Sydney Michuda:
And then sometimes we'll hop on the phone, but again, sometimes I'll just provide a pretty thorough email to them. But.
Alex Lazaris:
That is brave. I would be so afraid. That's incredible.
Sydney Michuda:
Yeah. What project am I even working on here? Okay, here we go. Yeah.
Alex Lazaris:
Look at how organized you are. This is so beautiful. If you guys are watching right now, look at how she keeps her files organized and numbers, everything.
Sydney Michuda:
Yep. So I have my freelance clients, my studio stuff, tools, like mockups education. So stuff for Adobe Live today is in there. But, yeah, I like to keep it organized because I don't want to end up losing things later on because it always happens, and it definitely will happen to everybody.
Alex Lazaris:
Wow. This is incredible. Also, I haven't been paying attention. If you yeah, look at that. That mockup has everything completely layered and named.
Sydney Michuda:
Well, that's because this was a mockup that I did download. But I am pretty notoriously good at naming and labeling my Photoshop files because.
Alex Lazaris:
Oh, my gosh, I'm not surprised anymore. I'm going to hit you up on the side and be like, hey, I need help organizing my life now.
Sydney Michuda:
Yeah, that woman that wrote that book about reorganizing your life, that's like, get rid of items that don't spark. It starts with a K condis.
Alex Lazaris:
No.
Sydney Michuda:
Kanto, something like that. But she has that one phrase that's I love.
Alex Lazaris:
Yeah. Wow. Everybody's like, wow goals. Val said that. These are so great. Sydney I feel like if the client doesn't use them, you should think about selling them as a gum run package of assets you don't already, which I completely are. If this doesn't get approved by the client, you should absolutely sell a pack. Yeah. Anna and even say Mary Kondo.
Sydney Michuda:
Mary Kondo. Yeah, that's what it yeah, this man, I would I just really want that tote bag. And I think I worked at this one place where the owner would always say, if your logo can't pass the T shirt test, you need to reevaluate it. And that's always stuck with me.
Alex Lazaris:
Yeah, it's always funny whenever you try to put it on a T shirt, and then you realize that the logo doesn't work inverted, and then you're just.
Sydney Michuda:
Like, oh, yeah, right.
Alex Lazaris:
I need to rethink this whole logo now.
Sydney Michuda:
Yeah, that's like, another thing. When I was in school, I was always taught that you should never put a gradient in a logo. But I don't know, this one group that I've been working with for a little bit, they put gradients on all their logos. I'm like, what are we doing? This doesn't seem like what's? Appropriate, but everyone works in a different.
Alex Lazaris:
Yeah. So Derek goes, speaking of organizing, when it comes to Illustrator, do you utilize layers? And if so or when, how do you take advantage of the layers?
Sydney Michuda:
I don't use layers a whole lot in Illustrator just because everything is there and grabbable for you. But I will use layers if I'm sketching something. So if I've done more of a detailed, intricate sketch, something more detailed than that, then I'll place it down. I clearly started this from an old enamel pin file.
Alex Lazaris:
Look, you see? Nothing. Chad.
Sydney Michuda:
No one will know if I'm using a more complicated sketch or illustration. Then I'll have that sketch in the background layer, then create a foreground layer and kind of just go from there.
Alex Lazaris:
Yeah, I agree. I don't ever really use the layer feature in Illustrator.
Sydney Michuda:
Yeah.
Alex Lazaris:
I think I'm just so used to locking layers and unlocking layers and then just grouping them as kind of an object.
Sydney Michuda:
Yeah, for sure.
Alex Lazaris:
And then pasting, behind, and in front is so easy to do.
Sydney Michuda:
Yeah, that's pretty much what I do all the time, is just constantly lock and unlock layers.
Alex Lazaris:
Exactly. The best is like, whenever you I used to work at an internal design job where we used Illustrator for everything, including websites and everything, and it was great. But the one thing would always be funny is, like, whenever you chance for one designer picks up where you left off. Seeing how people group things or how they lock things is so fun because you're like, oh, my gosh, this is grouped wrong. Or like, how do I unlock your layers? And this one's hidden. Like, whenever you unhide all the assets and they just pop up and you're like, oh, wow, this is crazy.
Sydney Michuda:
Right? Well, because then sometimes some person would have grouped something, but another person decides to mask it instead. You just have to dive so deep into how someone else works, and it just always seems so wrong. Like, what are you doing?
Alex Lazaris:
This is backwards. It's not how I do this.
Sydney Michuda:
This is not correct. Yeah, but again, everyone has their own way of doing things.
Alex Lazaris:
Yeah. And there's no right or wrong answer, which is great.
Sydney Michuda:
Exactly. So now I'm just making some stickers that she could use for her brand, potentially pop these into any order that she's fulfilling.
Alex Lazaris:
Cool thing about how that logo is, you could see it almost like being made and put on a counter somewhere on like a checkout counter or in the windows ledge of the shop or something like that.
Sydney Michuda:
Yeah, that'd be super cool.
Alex Lazaris:
Chat's getting heated about gradient logos.
Sydney Michuda:
What is everybody saying?
Alex Lazaris:
It's mostly just about best practices for gradients. It's kind of hard to incorporate them sometimes because you have to think about how they are going to print and if you're going to do certain things with the gradient logo, is it going to work for stickers or is it readable? Do you need to do some weird half toning type thing to make the gradients work better?
Sydney Michuda:
Yeah.
Alex Lazaris:
The general consensus is the logo has to work in black or one color. So if the gradient doesn't prevent that, then it's fine.
Sydney Michuda:
Yeah.
Alex Lazaris:
Also, good pointers for both your menus and your resumes whenever you're designing those. Got to work in black.
Sydney Michuda:
Mmhmm.
Alex Lazaris:
You didn't ask, which font did you use for this logo?
Sydney Michuda:
So this one is Gopher. I've been dying to use this in a logo just because it's so cool and fun. I really love the new type trend, the current type trend, where the top and bottoms of the letters are thicker than the sides. I'm sure there's more of a technical term for that kind of font. So if someone knows what that's called, please let me know because I would love to know that. So that one is Gopher. Down here we have P 22, mackinac pro. I think I said that right. And then this one, I think is yeah, montserrat.
Alex Lazaris:
Montserrat.
Sydney Michuda:
Yeah. A good go to.
Alex Lazaris:
And don't forget, everyone in Chat, we are doing design feedback in 27 minutes, so look forward to that. Make sure you're doing the daily creative challenge and that you're posting in Discord so we can review them later.
Sydney Michuda:
Cool. Maybe I'll move on to this one then, for a little bit.
Alex Lazaris:
Yeah. Why rachel all asked, how did you create your icons that are featured in your logo? And you just sketched those all out on your iPad, correct?
Sydney Michuda:
Yes. Some of the bigger ones are up here and then these down here. I just did some little sketches with the pencil tool or something and then went over them with the pen tool in Illustrator.
Alex Lazaris:
Awesome.
Sydney Michuda:
Yeah.
Alex Lazaris:
I like how minimal that is too.
Sydney Michuda:
Me too. I think it can't really see that this one would be ideal if it could lightly represent the two P's in the logo, but then, like, just super scaled back representation. But then it also looks like stacked cups or bowls or whatever would be created by the pottery kits. Yeah, this one needs another color because you can't really see that.
Alex Lazaris:
It'S a toughie, but that could be almost just a monochromatic version. Like if you just brought that into the brown as well.
Sydney Michuda:
That's true.
Alex Lazaris:
Maybe not. I don't know. Maybe it loses something. Jimmy Jones says, this is so helpful. Thank you. Another quick question. How often would you recommend checking in with your client on the process?
Sydney Michuda:
I don't know. I guess I basically send them an email whenever there's a new update involved. So obviously there's a lot of emailing going back and forth at the beginning because you have to give them the proper quote contracts. I think it's nice up front to communicate what that timeline and process is going to look like, saying, these are what the next steps are. You can expect this in a week. So I think just letting them know when they can expect to see things is really helpful. That's at least what I do.
Alex Lazaris:
I think that's spot on. And it sounds like you're already over communicating with your clients on your emails and making sure that they're aware and that whenever you hand over all the files for review, you're very much giving them everything that they need to know to digest everything that you've just sent to them.
Sydney Michuda:
Correct. Yeah.
Alex Lazaris:
Voodoo Val asks, who are your favorite designers?
Sydney Michuda:
Oh, boy. It's so weird now because now that everything is so instagram and digital and whatever, I always forget who they are because I'm just used to seeing them on my Instagram feed. Obviously, someone like Jessica Hissch is always going to be one of the all time favorites. There's Whitney Anderson, she's also based out of Milwaukee, and she's just incredible. I'll go to my design folder on my phone on my Instagram to see if I can find some people.
Alex Lazaris:
The Hood sisters? Maybe.
Sydney Michuda:
Oh, yeah, absolutely.
Alex Lazaris:
They crush it.
Sydney Michuda:
Brandon Nickerson out of New York City. He creates some really amazing logos and typefaces. See? Oh, I think her name is Sarah Tate. Yeah, Sarah Tate. She's based out of Nashville, and she just is so fun and colorful and just has the happiest looking work that I just love to look at. But yeah, I just said, who are some of your favorite designers?
Alex Lazaris:
I really love the work coming out of the Mexico design scene.
Sydney Michuda:
Oh, yeah.
Alex Lazaris:
There's agencies out there that just blow me away. Like Futura and Studio Yi and Anagrama. Those are kind of like my favorites. Their work is so vibrant and beautifully presented and just incredible.
Sydney Michuda:
Right? Oh, I also super duper love Land, just because everyone they're just so great.
Alex Lazaris:
Yeah, design by land or I guess by land or what's their I don't remember their social media, but their work is super rad.
Sydney Michuda:
Yeah.
Alex Lazaris:
That'S awesome. Yeah. It's kind of crazy how with Behance and everything, the design world becomes so much closer to you, you can just quickly find such incredible designers that historically would never be able to see until the Internet age.
Sydney Michuda:
Right.
Alex Lazaris:
And now you're just like, wow, there's so many just incredibly talented people just down the street from you.
Sydney Michuda:
Yeah. Before you would have to have any kind of, I don't know, recognition or a brand name. You'd have to be at some super big professional agency that was impossible to get into, and you have to work until 02:00 A.m. All the time, and it's just not the case anymore. You can just go out on your own and do some cool stuff.
Alex Lazaris:
Absolutely. You didn't ask, what do you do in your free time to get inspired?
Sydney Michuda:
Um, sadly, a majority of my free time is dedicated to design stuff, so when I'm not, like, creating brand things, I'll like, post up on my Instagram for new products, new stickers, things like that. I'm just about to release, like, one of those hotel motel keychain things, fun. And a new enamel pin. So I spent a lot of time recently doing that, which is pretty similar, but it's still creative. Just creating for myself instead.
Alex Lazaris:
Yeah, I think that's fair. So nothing except for design.
Sydney Michuda:
That's it. And Murder for podcasts and a lot of horror movies or just, like, general scary thriller things, man. And because of the pandemic, there's just a halt on so many activities. Like, yeah, traveling is great. You can't really do that anymore. Or, I love going to small plates restaurants all the time, but can't do that either.
Alex Lazaris:
Totally.
Sydney Michuda:
Which I completely understand. Why? And we should all follow those rules.
Alex Lazaris:
True.
Sydney Michuda:
I want to keep people safe.
Alex Lazaris:
Thank you. Yeah, I'd say walking around New York Pre COVID was just so inspiring because you see a pamphlet on a wall, you see a billboard, you see all the cute restaurants and bars, or you see how a shop is doing some really interesting displays to get people to come in. It's just eye candy.
Sydney Michuda:
Yeah. As much as I love Milwaukee, it's not the most inspiring city all the time. And a lot of the places that would kind of bring that new inspiration, I already kind of frequent a good amount.
Alex Lazaris:
With the happenings.
Sydney Michuda:
Yeah, exactly. All the breweries and stuff like that. But, yeah, a while, I think over New Year's, I went to a wedding in Dallas, and I had no expectations going into it. It's a city, it'll be cool and fun. Whatever. Dallas blew me away. They had such cool stuff there. I just had no idea that Dallas was such a happening town.
Alex Lazaris:
If you go back to Dallas, go to lower Greenville, and that's where some of my favorite restaurants when I used to live there were. And the design, I'm kind of biased because I worked at a design firm who did all the restaurants down.
Sydney Michuda:
Oh, cool.
Alex Lazaris:
So they're super dialed. They're really pretty. They're cool.
Sydney Michuda:
That's awesome.
Alex Lazaris:
They have even a food truck like beer garden area that has really great Philly cheesesteaks. So pro tip, go there.
Sydney Michuda:
Philly Cheesesteaks in Dallas. Got it.
Alex Lazaris:
Yeah. Gabriella says hi. New here. Welcome Gabriella. This is to Sydney. How long have you been a freelancer for and how long have you been out of design school? Have you been a freelancer since you graduated? Three big old questions.
Sydney Michuda:
Yeah, all really good questions that I honestly really like answering. So I graduated from UW Whitewater in Wisconsin in 2014, so it's been like almost six and a half years and I started working basically right out of school, which was I felt so lucky to have an agency job right out of school. I know that doesn't always happen, but yeah, I basically started freelancing here and there in college just because I had friends that were in the business school. So they would have a new startup and they would need a logo for that or someone was starting their own photography business so they would need a logo. So I would just do small stuff here and there. And then once I was in or outside of school, I started to pick up more freelance work because I started posting more on my Instagram. And basically it just kind of built and built and built to the point where last year when I was working full time at a design firm, I had clients and work booked out six, seven months in advance because you can really only work on one side project at a time. While working full time, I would do a good amount of freelance work, but then once the pandemic hit, I was kind of forced to become a full time freelancer a little bit sooner than I was expecting. But I definitely think it was just the right kick in the pants to make me go for it because this is definitely something that I wanted to do for a while. I just needed a whole pandemic to make me do it.
Alex Lazaris:
Totally. Well, the world delivered.
Sydney Michuda:
Yeah, exactly.
Alex Lazaris:
Sarah says I go to Whitewater.
Sydney Michuda:
Oh, nice. Yeah, I posted the links for this on my LinkedIn and one of my old professors, Renee Melton, she commented on it was like, oh my gosh, you remember who I am. And she said that she would share it with her students. So maybe that's one of those students tuning in.
Alex Lazaris:
Oh fun.
Sydney Michuda:
That'd be super cool. Yeah, Whitewater was a pretty good school. Not always known for the art world, but definitely got the job done. I'm here in the working world.
Alex Lazaris:
Yeah, that's looking interesting.
Sydney Michuda:
Yeah.
Alex Lazaris:
I'm so bad at doing like the hand doodle patterns like that because I just lump everything together. I don't give things enough space sometimes. Oh yeah, it's really cool to see you absolutely crush it with yours.
Sydney Michuda:
Oh, thanks. Yeah. Basically, I don't know, this kind of took me a while because I had to keep going with it. So I kind of made everything too close to the same size and then after a bunch of trial and error, was able to actually separate it and make some pieces larger. Make some pieces smaller.
Alex Lazaris:
It's awesome. Sarah says she is Renee a student.
Sydney Michuda:
Is this a logo already? I feel like that's familiar.
Alex Lazaris:
Probably.
Sydney Michuda:
Yeah.
Alex Lazaris:
But like, who cares if it's working? It's working.
Sydney Michuda:
Yeah.
Alex Lazaris:
I'm trying to think, whose is it, though? But I feel like the Reflected. Oh. It's reminded me of Robin Big. Like big black from Rob Jerdick's show. He had his own reflected bees, I think. Okay. Might be a thing. That's a pop culture reference that I haven't heard in a long time. Carol says that Taraza is great. It was on our floors growing up. Well, I like the peas being split by the yeah.
Sydney Michuda:
Yeah, I kind of like that too. That'd be a nice header on the website once you scroll down further.
Alex Lazaris:
Absolutely.
Sydney Michuda:
And I just love this icky pea green color.
Alex Lazaris:
Yeah, it's like almost hummusy.
Sydney Michuda:
Yeah, like you said, chickpea, almost hummus that's sat in the fridge for a few too many days.
Alex Lazaris:
Just like I like it.
Sydney Michuda:
Nice, gross hummus.
Alex Lazaris:
Susan asked, when you're picking color palette in the beginning, do you analyze how each color will appear in the press, PMS, CMYK, Swatches, and other reference tools? I don't, no. It's a lot of work.
Sydney Michuda:
Yeah.
Alex Lazaris:
And especially a lot of work that could get quickly changed by a client. I think, for me, at least, whenever I'm building the brand and everything, if a client feels really strongly about a color, I'm going to let them have that win so that I can get the logo and the rest of the stuff approved. Like, if they want to be super art directing on a color, that's fine. The rest of the system will still work, and I don't want to spend tons of time testing and looking in a Pantone swatch book or anything for work that might get changed really quickly and is very subjective. So that's like, the last step I do on a process.
Sydney Michuda:
Yeah. The only thing that I really take into consideration when it comes to colors translating to Pantones and CMYK RGB is just being careful of those really vibrant blues. Because as soon as you use, like, if you want to use a blue like this in your brand, as soon as you switch that to CMYK, it's just going to be the biggest bummer in the world.
Alex Lazaris:
You mean you don't like your very washed out, less vibrant blue?
Sydney Michuda:
No.
Alex Lazaris:
What would have thought? Any advice for a soon to be design school graduate on how to graduate to oh, my goodness, I can't speak today. Any advice for a soon to be design school graduate on how to land a job? There we go. I got it out.
Sydney Michuda:
He did it better. I'd say before you graduate, try as hard as. You can to get any kind of a design job, especially right now. I know it's going to be a different world that we're living in, so it's going to be maybe more challenging, but trying. Even if it's an in house position that you're not super thrilled about, you can always take that job and then work on your portfolio in the meantime and build that up until you find that job that you really love. That's basically one of the things that I did is that when I got out of school, I found a job in an agency. But after working there for a bit, I was like, this isn't really what I want to do. So then I just started posting my work on my Instagram, created projects for myself, just illustrating things that are on my desk or like fake logos for fake companies, things like that, collaborating with people. And then gradually I built up enough work and had a diversity of projects that I applied to one of the main design firms in Milwaukee and I got that job, which I was so psyched.
Alex Lazaris:
Yeah, I agree. I think right now the job market is kind of crazy. So anything you can do, like you said, to build a portfolio that shows that you can do the work, anything you can do in that realm will really help you out. So even if it's like you're looking for a side project, we talked about side projects a bunch yesterday about find those things that can inspire you or build your portfolio or get you the work that you want to do. But if you're having a hard time making up your own projects, you can look online for random prompts or there's a lot of businesses out there right now struggling, and you might be able to help them by volunteering your design work. And I'm not ever saying, like, do a design competition or do work for free, but I think working for free for companies that are struggling or might be going out of business if you can help them with their restaurants or how to help them with a website to transition in this time. Whatever you can do, that stuff will both help your portfolio and you're giving back to the community. So I don't think that's a bad thing.
Sydney Michuda:
Right, well, then again, not to promote free work too much at all, but you can always reach out to other makers on Instagram. If someone runs a pretty cool food blog, you can always say, hey, would you mind if I design some hand lettered banners for you that you can post them? And then I get the experience of working kind of with a client and you get to flex a little bit. You both get something to post, I think stuff like that reaching out for collaborations, as long as you're the one reaching out, so it doesn't feel like as much free work.
Alex Lazaris:
Yeah, if somebody's reaching out for you to do free work. I would keep them at arm's length, maybe.
Sydney Michuda:
Yeah.
Alex Lazaris:
Unless that's really what you want to do. The idea of working for exposure is that I would dissuade people from doing that.
Sydney Michuda:
Right.
Alex Lazaris:
But, yeah, like you said, hand lettering or volunteering, hey, I think this would be a really great asset to your thing. I would love to do it just because experience and then the great thing about that is you already kind of have an idea of how you want to help them, and if they use it, great. If not, you get to just put it in your portfolio and say, hey, I made something rad.
Sydney Michuda:
Right.
Alex Lazaris:
And here's how it would look on the website. Maybe throw it in context wherever you can to kind of make it seem like it's more real versus just exporting your artboard and be like, cool, it's done.
Sydney Michuda:
Right.
Alex Lazaris:
Eden asks, have you ever collaborated with another designer for a project?
Sydney Michuda:
Sort of. So when I worked at agencies, the name of the game was collaboration. Everyone would always like, I'll do this direction, you'll do that one. We'll break for a day and a half, and then we'll come back together with our ideas. But in terms of freelancing, no, I've never gotten a freelance client that I then pass off to another designer for help. I guess maybe I will one day once my workload gets to be that intense.
Alex Lazaris:
Yeah, I think that's kind of a tricky question, because I feel like, in general, designers are not just artists, and I think having two artists collaborate on a thing is probably like, whoa, that's kind of crazy that they did that, because they've either cultivated their art style or whatever. But as a designer, you're constantly trying to like I feel like in most environments, you're providing a service, and that service is your creation, and you're trying to always noodle on things. Like you said, while being at an agency, you're very much or just even in house, you're working with other designers, and you're trying to constantly work together and plus up each other's work and give feedback and critique. So that's very much a collaboration. Especially if you get sick, your partner has to take it on for you. So I think that's real time, just real collaborations.
Sydney Michuda:
Yeah, for sure.
Alex Lazaris:
Dan says, okay, guys, you're distracting me from doing my work. Stop being so entertaining. You're with us for the next sorry, 45 minutes. You can leave after we're gone. No, just kidding. You have to stay for Voodoo Valve's design off, so you have to stay until the end of the day.
Sydney Michuda:
Sorry.
Alex Lazaris:
She was very big into the Star Wars memes Yesterday design innovations. Okay, I'm back. Welcome back. So is it okay to reach out and offer free services for mutual gain and experience as well? Sure. I think the only time that it's not okay is if you're not comfortable with it. Whatever your intention is to get out of it, I think that's fine. Just frame it in a way that you're wanting to learn and get the experience, and then you're wanting to be very upfront, hey, I'm trying to build out my portfolio. I'd like to do these things for you or with you. Do you see that as being mutually beneficial? And they could say yes or no.
Sydney Michuda:
Right. Well, I think, too, just one of the biggest aspects of it is if the designer is the one reaching out first, then it's like you already had that idea to begin with, and no one's trying to get anything out of you for free. If it's of your own initiative, then I don't see there's anything wrong with.
Alex Lazaris:
And as Voodooval said, I've said this before, and I'll say it again. If a client really does have enough clout that their exposure alone would boost your career, then they should be able to pay you well. And that's the key there. They should be able to pay you, and they should be able to pay you well. I'm sure you have as well. Just random people being like, I manage this person's instagram, and I want you to do this thing. It's like, no, dude, you don't understand. I'm a professional, so pay me.
Sydney Michuda:
Right. Exposure. Can't pay for my groceries.
Alex Lazaris:
Exactly.
Sydney Michuda:
No, I've definitely gotten those messages where this would be a great opportunity for you. It's like, how do you know? And also I don't know. That's not how the world works.
Alex Lazaris:
Yeah. And Val's given a dose of love today, and it's it's don't let people take advantage of you, your work, your time. You are valuable, even if you're at the beginning of your career. And I could not have said that better than she said. Like, you know, you need to be getting what you need out of these projects and not letting people take advantage of you.
Sydney Michuda:
Right.
Alex Lazaris:
Even if they're paying you, don't let them take advantage of you.
Sydney Michuda:
Yeah.
Alex Lazaris:
Don't be bullied.
Sydney Michuda:
Yeah. I'm trying so hard not to do this too methodically and just put things as quickly in place as I can so I don't think about it too hard.
Alex Lazaris:
Somebody asked, do you think free work will set the expectation that you will be ready to do it again in the future? And I absolutely do, and that is not a good precedent to set, so don't do that. I mean, even where I am in my current career, people have in an industry that I was trying to break into were like, oh, hey, Alex, we like your work. We don't have that much budget right now, but we do have 1% of your normal project fee. And I was like, oh, man, I still have those internal struggles where I go, oh, but this could get me my foot in the door. But I don't want my foot in the door at that price point, because then they don't value me as a creative. They don't understand what I can bring to the table. And then if they do refer me to other people, that price point would be so low already that it's going to be very hard to upsell it another thousand percent to be like, hey, this is actually what I'm worth. I just did that to get my foot in the door. Like, nobody's going to be like, oh, that makes sense. Kind of bait and switch. So don't do that. Yeah. Carol says don't fall for the dangling carrot you'll get more work from.
Sydney Michuda:
Yeah, do that.
Alex Lazaris:
Yeah. We hear that all the right voter. Val says we hear that all the time. Right. Many people think that if they're beginners, if they aren't confident in their work, they somehow don't deserve to be paid properly. I agree.
Sydney Michuda:
Yeah.
Alex Lazaris:
Because it's a fine line to walk as a beginner of being confident, but not being cocky. Because I'm always looking for talent for my design firm, and I've had junior designers reach out and ask for more money per hour than I charge a client. And I'm just like, oh, no, I've been doing this for, like, 1314 years now, or something like that.
Sydney Michuda:
It's like, who told you that? Yeah.
Alex Lazaris:
I don't understand. Yeah, so just be cautious. Design innovations. Make me a flyer for an event. Add your logo as a sponsor, but don't charge mean. Okay. So on the other end of I when I was did, I was a professional longboarder, like downhill skateboarder. And there was a time that I didn't have that much money, but I wanted to go race in Canada. And so I traded a website design and logo design to sleep on a guy's couch for the whole summer and go to his events for free. So I was know, that's a pretty good trade off for me. As long as you're not feeling like, you're know, overworked or anything. Know, as long as you're happy with the arrangement, that's fine.
Sydney Michuda:
Yeah. I feel like later it'd be beneficial to incorporate this shape in the torazzo pattern so that there's a little bit of continuity going on, but just a.
Alex Lazaris:
Small, subtle, like, little nod.
Sydney Michuda:
Yeah. And maybe add like, a P in there every once in a while.
Alex Lazaris:
Yeah. You could throw in, like, a super abstract P. Yeah.
Sydney Michuda:
Like any of these.
Alex Lazaris:
Yeah. Even more abstract, maybe.
Sydney Michuda:
Yeah, absolutely.
Alex Lazaris:
It looks cool.
Sydney Michuda:
Thanks.
Alex Lazaris:
Just a reminder, everybody, we have ten minutes left before the Daily Creative Challenge. So make sure you are up to date with the Illustrator Creative Challenge for today and posting it in discord. And we'll take a look. So we'll see them all in ten minutes.
Sydney Michuda:
Yeah. This would be really fun if I incorporated that shape in that very abstract P to put that on a tote bag.
Alex Lazaris:
Yeah.
Sydney Michuda:
So it's like almost more of a statement piece rather than branded but it actually is branded.
Alex Lazaris:
I love subtle things like that. No, I love subtleties and puns. If I can incorporate both of those into one project, even better.
Sydney Michuda:
Which is funny, because isn't the point of a pun that it's not super subtle?
Alex Lazaris:
Yeah.
Sydney Michuda:
Maybe people think it is, but.
Alex Lazaris:
It'S not exactly like, oh, that's crazy voodoo. Val says, I can tell you right now, I'm a full time artist, and I've been here for years. There's never a moment in my career I was like, oh, yeah, I've made it. I'm now at a pro level. I agree with that sentiment completely.
Sydney Michuda:
Yes.
Alex Lazaris:
She says, I still have the fears and worries, just like beginners do. That's true. Imposter syndrome and the likes is very real.
Sydney Michuda:
That's one of the biggest things that I struggle with is imposter syndrome. I'm like, yeah, I always feel like it's I don't know, all those sentiments that go along with imposter syndrome. I feel those every single day.
Alex Lazaris:
Yeah, absolutely.
Sydney Michuda:
That's why you just have to remind yourself that you belong where you are. People want you there for a yep, you deserve this.
Alex Lazaris:
And Carol says, I traded what was an easy project for me with a longtime client who helped me with makeup and hair. That's great. I love things like that, especially when it's a mutual creative experience. I feel like creatives understand other creatives most of the time, and it's like, whether it's a tattoo artist or whatever, even my tattoo artist, I help her with her stuff sometimes where I just want to help her because I love her work, and I want her exposure. I want her to I have expertise that she doesn't necessarily have, and she has expertise that I come to her for. So if there's a trade that I can do, that's even better. We're both happy. It's not causing us physical money, but we're trading expertise a little bit. Great. Do that.
Sydney Michuda:
Yeah, absolutely.
Alex Lazaris:
But I would never approach her and be like, let's do a trade. I'm going to give you a website, and you give me a tattoo. Yeah, I would let her kind of ask me for that first.
Sydney Michuda:
Yeah, especially, like, when you think that you're helping someone with your skills too, and they're like, but that's actually not what I need in my life. I need actual money and finances right now, or I need help in this other way.
Alex Lazaris:
Absolutely.
Sydney Michuda:
So if someone needs something, they should be the one to determine how that help comes.
Alex Lazaris:
Totally. Yeah. When I offer help to other creatives, it's more of just like, I don't expect anything in return type thing. And it's just like, hey, I really love your work. I think I have expertise in things, and I would love to help you. Elevation says sydney, how long have you been designing an illustrator?
Sydney Michuda:
I think I first started using illustrator when I was, like, 13, maybe 13 or 14. And I'm 28 now. So that's almost, like, half my life.
Alex Lazaris:
Jesus.
Sydney Michuda:
Long time. But at the beginning, I was making, like, dorky illustrations of a girl in a cool outfit or, like, song lyrics or Christmas wish list, things like that.
Alex Lazaris:
Totally. And Elevation says, oh, I think this might be pre recorded. Nope, definitely not. Hello.
Sydney Michuda:
Not pre recorded.
Alex Lazaris:
Welcome to Adobe Live, where we do things live. I know we're so dialed with our commentary that I feel like it might look very pre recorded, but this is not scripted.
Sydney Michuda:
Yes. We're just super articulate and absolutely.
Alex Lazaris:
Leon says, Last show your tats are we don't believe you. Okay. It's fine. I'll just text you later. It's fine, Leon.
Sydney Michuda:
It's okay.
Alex Lazaris:
I need to get face tats. Leon. I think a lot.
Sydney Michuda:
I have one right here.
Alex Lazaris:
OOH, a matchstick.
Sydney Michuda:
Yes. To remind myself where did matchstick come from? Just remind myself to never burn myself out, because that's an issue I have a lot.
Alex Lazaris:
Oh, I like that.
Sydney Michuda:
Yeah. And then I have, like, four or five other things on my arm up here.
Alex Lazaris:
Okay, I see that. Wrapping it all up for Professional Day.
Sydney Michuda:
Okay. I just like the shirt.
Alex Lazaris:
It's a great shirt. Yeah.
Sydney Michuda:
Thank you.
Alex Lazaris:
Everybody's, like, looking at the tiny little screens. They're like, I don't see it.
Sydney Michuda:
There it is.
Alex Lazaris:
There you go.
Sydney Michuda:
Perfect.
Alex Lazaris:
That's a great yeah. Leon says, let's design face tats for each other. Okay, perfect.
Sydney Michuda:
Yes. I actually bought a stick and poke tatoo kit recently, hoping that I could learn how to do it myself. I haven't opened it up yet, but I'd like to get there one day.
Alex Lazaris:
That'd be fun. Are you going to start on grapefruits?
Sydney Michuda:
Yeah, probably grapefruits, oranges, whatever the starting point is. So I'm not messing up someone's arm or foot or whatever.
Alex Lazaris:
Yeah, that makes sense. What's the longest tattoo session you've had?
Sydney Michuda:
I got two at once, and I think it was, like, 3 hours long. I got married last September, and first of all, I wanted tattoos as a person because I am passionate about things, and I wanted those tattoos to begin with, but I realized, like, oh, man, there's only, like, a month before my wedding, and I want these tattoos that I've always wanted to be present in the photos. So then I got two at once, two weeks before my wedding.
Alex Lazaris:
Oh, nice.
Sydney Michuda:
And it worked out.
Alex Lazaris:
That's awesome.
Sydney Michuda:
Yeah.
Alex Lazaris:
Carol says, do a candle with two wicks. That would be cool.
Sydney Michuda:
Yeah, that would be a good one.
Alex Lazaris:
I love the matchstick motif, especially. I love Fahrenheit 451, so I'm like, oh, yeah, there's a lot of match stuff. Yeah. Shot. And I made it just in time for tattoo talk. I think this needs to be a full time Adobe stream. We'll have to petition for just tattoo talk.
Sydney Michuda:
Yes. Oh, my God.
Alex Lazaris:
There's a lot of creatives with tattoos. Yes, that spell check for tattoos. Exactly.
Sydney Michuda:
Oh, my God. Yeah. The tattoo artist that I like to go to. He's been closed ever since the Pandemic hit, and I'm just dying for him to open back up.
Alex Lazaris:
Yep, absolutely. Timo, we covered how to pick colors, like a bunch in today's stream at the beginning. So after we're done here, definitely go check it back out on the YouTube rewind. And you'll have availability to check that out.
Sydney Michuda:
Yeah.
Alex Lazaris:
I love that. Like, Leon, I just saw that on the corner of my eye. Voodoo Velve, do you want a face tattoo too? Tattoo too. Everybody's going to get matching face tats now.
Sydney Michuda:
Yes. Let's all commit to it right now.
Alex Lazaris:
So we have two and a half minutes, less than two and a half minutes now before we go into discord for the daily creative challenge. So make sure you're getting your discord uploads going because we want to check out what you're working on. Juan says, I'm on my second year graphic design, and I don't know which designing brand choose or where to put total think. You know, you start off probably when you're earlier on in your career trying to figure out how to make good logos, and I think that's kind of the starting point. And then as you progress, you start to figure out strategy and what these things convey and how to convey what the goal of the client is, and then that's probably where you'll probably start know in your design career at this point. Shauna says, yes. Tattoo talk with Adobe. My artist opens up her books this Friday, and I'm debating the worst part about COVID is not the worst part. There's a lot of bad.
Sydney Michuda:
There's a lot of terrible parts.
Alex Lazaris:
I take that back. There's a lot of people that want tattoos right now to kind of help cope with the stress, and you can't do that in a lot of places. My artist is overseas, so it makes it even harder.
Sydney Michuda:
Yeah. People are just going to go tattoo crazy once it's moderately safe.
Alex Lazaris:
Exactly 47 seconds before our discord Daily Career challenge, get your entries in.
Sydney Michuda:
Yeah. Any last burning questions?
Alex Lazaris:
Hmm. All I see is Voodoo Val talking about how she might get a sith code tattoo, but not on her face. So I think voodooval, I think you should. Why not? Yeah, but I think, like Leon said, put on your it's fine.
Sydney Michuda:
Yeah.
Alex Lazaris:
See how much you really love Star Wars?
Sydney Michuda:
Yeah. If you don't have a face tattoo, do you really even love Star Wars?
Alex Lazaris:
Exactly. You need to get, like, the Imperial logo on your cheek.
Sydney Michuda:
Yeah.
Alex Lazaris:
Rachel asked, where do I get to see the recording of the session? You'll find it on the Adobe Live YouTube channel whenever this is done uploading and things cool. So we've got zero minutes left. We are going to jump into our discord. Let me pull that up. We are doing menus today, which is very exciting if you guys have missed it. The daily creative challenges so far this week. Why is it not sharing? There we go. The daily creative challenges this week have been based around diner themes. So they started with a logo, and yesterday was coasters, and now we're getting into the menus. This is really exciting.
Sydney Michuda:
Okay, stop sharing, then.
Alex Lazaris:
Perfect. So let's get into it right now. Menus, menus, menus. I am glad I ate today before the stream because yesterday I did not, and I was getting really hungry with all the beautiful work everybody was making and all the coasters and all the coffee. Memes. So first up, who made this? Let's see here. Ken. Perfect. So we got, like, this Belgian waffle on the side. I think that's Belgian, right? By putting strawberries on it. Yeah. Croissants. Love the hierarchy. I like the simplicity of the wave pattern elements. I think this is really readable. I think you also did a really good job of not throwing way too many items on the menu. I think for menus, sometimes we can throw too many items. I think a lot of times some restaurants go too overboard with how many items that they're trying to offer. And for the simplicity for this design, everything's spaced out. Readable looks good.
Sydney Michuda:
Yeah. After seeing what I was creating, I love those abstract, fun flowy shapes. So I think that that's just a really nice background texture for this. It's not too overpowering, but it's nice and adds a little bit more impact. I do really like that header and the subheader font. That's really nice too. There's good hierarchy within the information. I do think that the copy could just be a little bit larger, but beyond that, I think it's great.
Alex Lazaris:
Yeah. Ken goes, hey, that's me. Hey, Ken.
Sydney Michuda:
Good job, Ken.
Alex Lazaris:
Yeah, I think this is great. I think, like you said, copy could be a little bit bigger. I think the other thing that's missing for me is that the price is missing, and typically you only take off the price for super duper duper rich, very expensive restaurants, that price doesn't matter kind of people.
Sydney Michuda:
But there could be gold on that bagel. You don't know.
Alex Lazaris:
That's true. There could be, but the kind of aesthetic for this feels more of, like, the diner kind of approach. So we want to make sure that maybe we keep the prices in there, because that demographic won't typically pay tons of money. The other thing is that the waffles that you have in the photography but the waffles you have listed are berries, chocolate, vanilla. So I would say maybe tie the waffle photography. Since I don't see the chocolate on the waffle photo, maybe there's, like maybe just take off the chocolate from the description, just to nitpick. But if you're building these things, think about how your apps like, if you're trying to represent the actual food, show it one to one.
Sydney Michuda:
Yeah, that's a great call.
Alex Lazaris:
I think this is great. I think it's super clean and minimal. We got the logo from yesterday or Monday or Tuesday days of the week. Who knows?
Sydney Michuda:
I thought it was Friday all morning.
Alex Lazaris:
Yeah, I've been backwards all week, so look at this. Okay. Remember this?
Sydney Michuda:
Really?
Alex Lazaris:
Logo and the stars from yesterday? Super fun. Yeah. Traditional breakfast. You got the prices in there. Egg rolls, bacon rolls. Oh, no, I'm getting hungry again, allergens I think the one thing I would say is that the allergen section is a little tough to read. I think the all caps and then the thinness of the type with it on the green background just makes it a little difficult to dissect.
Sydney Michuda:
Do you think the information separation is really nice, too? Because you can very clearly see the two different categories of rolls and hot breakfast. There's a nice line dividing those two because I know with menu design, there's a lot of information that you have to pack into a pretty small space, so having those dividers can be super helpful.
Alex Lazaris:
Oh, and Kim talking about the last waffle thing. He said that those were different types of waffles that you could choose from, but I didn't get that because all the rest of them seemed like it was description. So I think just think about that, maybe for future iterations. Yes. It's cool. I'm wondering where the green comes from, though, because I think I don't remember there being green in the coaster from yesterday, but it just seems like a color palette that was just randomly thrown in there versus being intentional. So maybe even just, like, stripping back the green and doing a black bar or like, a black box at the bottom instead, or something else that fits the color scheme. Maybe it's red.
Sydney Michuda:
Yeah, I agree with that, too. The green seems a little bit too vibrant, considering how calm and muted the other colors are and how warm they are.
Alex Lazaris:
Yeah. And that retro theme and everything.
Sydney Michuda:
Perfect. Oh, my gosh. There's a second page.
Alex Lazaris:
Yeah. So second site. Again, great job laying out the type. I think, again, this Lore Mipsum here is not necessary. I think whenever you're controlling your own design for these things, either write the Lorem Epsom yourself to be a little bit more dialed because you wrote copy for the rest of this.
Sydney Michuda:
Right.
Alex Lazaris:
So for me, the lorm lipsum, maybe that needs to be like, call us now, we can serve you, or something like that. Just make it feel a little bit more cohesive. Yeah. Again, the green, but other than that, really good stuff.
Sydney Michuda:
Yeah.
Alex Lazaris:
This looks like an ear. I love the almost like a topographical map.
Sydney Michuda:
Oh, yeah.
Alex Lazaris:
If you haven't used this with the step and the extrude and step tool, you can make some really cool topographical maps with it. In Illustrator, I like the way that you've kind of right aligned the type. I don't typically like right align type, but it seems to work really well. For this menu. I think you've captured the tapas vibe really well. Think, like, magentas and yellows are typically used in tapas places.
Sydney Michuda:
Yeah, for sure.
Alex Lazaris:
I think what I would like to see is a little bit of spacing between each element, because I'm kind of confused on the pancakes, whether it's, like, jackfruit and steamed pancakes with it. And where does the cucumber or spring onion pump sauce come into it in the next item. So I think right now I'm trying to figure out which items on the menu, and it's hard to figure out.
Sydney Michuda:
Yeah, I think that'd be a great call to just give it a little bit of space between each individual item.
Alex Lazaris:
Yeah, the colors are great. Vegan. See here's, it.
Sydney Michuda:
Has a bit more of that hierarchy.
Alex Lazaris:
Yeah, I think you could probably bump up the hierarchy a little bit more too. Like, make it really stand out that this is a menu item and then the descriptions below it. Also, just be cautious. I like the right aligned a little bit more on the other page, but now that you have a paragraph of body copy underneath it, it's very hard to read right aligned text for English speakers. So just think about that. You still want this to be readable and dissectable for people. Oh, my gosh. Everybody's like tapa's graphical map. Oh, gosh. I love a good well done. Well done. Chat. Mud flat. Thank you, Leon, for contributing today. I appreciate it. Did you just pull this from your behance page today? This is not a diner. I can roast him because he's my friend, but thank you, Leon. Leon did this really cool Academy BrewWorks logo, I think, a while back. I love the black lettering on it. I love the flags. I think it might be cheating, because he works at Disney, so I don't know. I don't know if you're just raising assets now or not.
Sydney Michuda:
I need Disney to look at this.
Alex Lazaris:
Yeah, it has legal approve it. Yeah, but hierarchy is great. Type throughout is awesome. It's a cool menu, good stuff. And now you make me thirsty. As says, it's a beer diner. Got it.
Sydney Michuda:
Breakfast without a beer.
Alex Lazaris:
Exactly. Now I'm disappointed that Shauna hasn't contributed. So next time, Shauna, you need to contribute to the stuff. Yeah. Sarah said keep flags. They're the best. Beer. Beer. Cool. Well, we'll go back to designing now, but that was super fun. Thank you, everybody, for contributing. I know doing menus can be really painstaking and time consuming. Leon's like, no Laura Mipsum here. True. Probably crisp. I love it. Good job, everybody. And you can always double check on the Adobe Illustrator daily creative challenges for future stuff. So we are now going back to the design world. We've got, like, 15 minutes left. Let's get these concepts kind of pushed a little bit further than that time we got.
Sydney Michuda:
Yeah. Now I'm just trying to wrap up a business card option. Here. I wasn't really loving how the logo looked on this business card here, but I do think that just the hand and the clay together looks pretty sweet. But you kind of need to have that logo in there somewhere. So I popped it in this shape in the top right. To be kind of fun. Well, that's some pretty small type there, so that might not be the best.
Alex Lazaris:
Choice, but that's so cool. I could see this being all used on a home pottery kit that they could be selling, where it's like, hey, guys, I know you're stuck at home right now. Here's some mud and some clay and some shaping tools. You guys can do this at home. And then that being the kind of corner of the box as the flap that comes down.
Sydney Michuda:
Yeah. Be a pretty cool banner too. Like, if you ever had a physical space, like a big banner that's hanging in the back of the space.
Alex Lazaris:
Absolutely. Oh, and I forgot, if you guys are looking for really good menu designs, the under consideration website, if you haven't been reading it, for hot takes on brand design and things like that, they used to have a blog called The Art of the Menu, I think, something like that. And they just critique restaurant hospitality menus and designs and stuff. So if you're ever looking for more menu inspiration, definitely check that out. Also, if you need to just be on Behance, check out search for menu designs, find some good inspiration there. Cool little business card.
Sydney Michuda:
Yeah.
Alex Lazaris:
Jane Doe. Oh, Shawna's. Like, I could see this in Creighton barrel.
Sydney Michuda:
Interesting.
Alex Lazaris:
Yeah, I could. It's really simple and clean.
Sydney Michuda:
That's a long URL. It.
Alex Lazaris:
Yeah, maybe they'll have to shorten that abbreviation.
Sydney Michuda:
Yeah.
Alex Lazaris:
If only pottery was a website now.
Sydney Michuda:
Yeah. Or pottery with a dot purpose.
Alex Lazaris:
Dot pot.
Sydney Michuda:
Dot pot.
Alex Lazaris:
I also love how with each of these, you kind of have shown different elements of being like, you didn't just do a tote bag mockup for each. You chose a tote bag for one, some stickers for it, and then now we're doing business cards to kind of show different breadth and different feels that way. You're not getting, like, mockup fatigue either, right?
Sydney Michuda:
Yeah. Actually, this would be a pretty cool corner of a T shirt. Where's the T shirt? Where's the design here?
Alex Lazaris:
Sorry. It goes make it seem so effortless. Wow, you do.
Sydney Michuda:
Thank you.
Alex Lazaris:
That's, like, one thing I was constantly thinking about when I was watching you mess with some of those layer masks and stuff. I was like, wow, you can tell you've been doing this for a long time because just the way you click through it real quick.
Sydney Michuda:
Yeah, that's one of those go to's that I always like using, because I do use so much, like, typography and textures that I create on my iPad. And again, I don't want to vectorize it too soon and waste, like, 10 hours doing that. So I'm just going to use those layer masks. And I honestly didn't even know about changing colors with layer masks like that until maybe two years ago when one of my old coworkers told me about it.
Alex Lazaris:
Yeah.
Sydney Michuda:
And I got ahead every day. I'm like, yeah, I've always known about that.
Alex Lazaris:
That shirt looks so good.
Sydney Michuda:
Thanks.
Alex Lazaris:
Yeah, that color is so fetch.
Sydney Michuda:
Trying to make fetch happen. It's never going to happen.
Alex Lazaris:
Yeah, it's cool. I could see that being used everywhere. Oh, man. Even to take some lifestyle photography of it in the woods or forest camping trips. I could see like, a coffee mug being really good with this stuff as well.
Sydney Michuda:
I would like to change the background color, too, just because it just adds a little bit extra branding.
Alex Lazaris:
What about the taraza in the background?
Sydney Michuda:
That would be pretty funny. Let's see how she looks. Now, normally I would fully create this pattern so it doesn't repeat like this, but we don't have all the time in the world right now.
Alex Lazaris:
No, this is where the speed comes in.
Sydney Michuda:
Yeah. Ten minutes, right?
Alex Lazaris:
Let's go quick. Adobe used to do and I don't know if they do it anymore, but they used to do these design competitions in spaces, like at events and stuff, and it's so nerve wracking. Like, 3 hours competing against other Creatives and other teams, and you're just like, oh, gosh.
Sydney Michuda:
Oh my God, that sounds so scary.
Alex Lazaris:
Yeah, but it's so much fun because I love those. Like, what can I do in 3 hours?
Sydney Michuda:
Right?
Alex Lazaris:
Good luck. What do they call those? It wasn't creative challenge. I'll have to think about it.
Sydney Michuda:
Yeah. I remember seeing those sort of speed competitions when I was in college, or even those competitions for students where they are basically broadcast on a huge live screen. They're designing something on a stage.
Alex Lazaris:
Yeah.
Sydney Michuda:
And I give so much credit to anyone that's going to do that because that just sounds so scary.
Alex Lazaris:
I mean, you're doing that now.
Sydney Michuda:
I am kind of doing that now. Oh, thank you.
Alex Lazaris:
Like Robert just said, very nice workflow. So cute. Voodoo Val says, I love I think I think you nailed this out of the park.
Sydney Michuda:
But I also don't feel like I'm competing against anybody, which my super competitive mentality would kick in and just take over and it'd be a whole other.
Alex Lazaris:
It was a it was called Adobe Creative Gems, and they did it at the Creative South Design Conference one year, and it was super fun. They also used to do a thing called typefight, which is you have an hour, I think, and you get randomly paired up against another designer, and they used to have it in an old boxing ring, and you get each assigned the same letter. And then in that hour, you have to create something, and then all the other designers vote on who did the best letter. Gnarly would explode and seeing what some of these people did, it was just so inspiring and so incredible.
Sydney Michuda:
Yeah. I've always wanted to get a bit more into the type world where I create my own fonts and do some really intricate font designing creation, but that's a project for another time.
Alex Lazaris:
Totally. Elizabeth says that Adobe Creative gems are still happening. There's one happening this weekend. That's awesome. I'm so glad. I think it's a great way to refine your practice and skills and just try it. It's stressful, but it's fine. I remember when I was like, I used to go to a bunch of hackathons as well, and you would have 24 hours to work with your team to build a website or a product or an application and design it all. It was such a good way to just practice working under stress.
Sydney Michuda:
Yeah, for sure.
Alex Lazaris:
Drink a lot of Red Bull.
Sydney Michuda:
I am someone that can't really handle any amount of caffeine ever at all, so that sounds like drinking a bunch of Red Bull and going on stage in front of a bunch of people. Oh.
Alex Lazaris:
Shauna says I remember typefight. I won my matches. What? That's awesome, Shauna. Wow, we got a design celebrity here. If you guys haven't seen Shauna, she started off this last two mornings as well. Doing I don't remember. I'm sorry, Shauna, but she was on Adobe Live and she crushed it, but I don't remember what the subject was. It was cool, though. Rewatch it. Shawna does a lot of really great hand lettering work.
Sydney Michuda:
Oh, nice.
Alex Lazaris:
Yeah. Elevation says, I'm stealing that idea. Graphic designers plus boxing ring. Yeah. It was a cool stage to set up everything that'd be super cool. People were saying his business cards are amazing.
Sydney Michuda:
Thanks, guys.
Alex Lazaris:
Got five minutes. What else are we going to build out?
Sydney Michuda:
Oh, my gosh. I don't know. I'm not feeling this first direction as much. It feels a little bit too playful, so I might revisit that later on. Let's see, what other assets do I have cooking up here? I don't know. Maybe I'll just keep messing around with some of these.
Alex Lazaris:
Do you have a favorite direction so far, or are you still trying to figure out this one?
Sydney Michuda:
I think this middle one is definitely my favorite since that's the one that I was so easily or was much easier to expand to a full set. Whereas this one I'm feeling pretty good about. But this one, I think I just need to spend more time working with this icon because while I really like that it's simple, it feels almost too simple to me right now. It might be kind of cool. Incorporated a letter in there, though. It looks like a smiley face.
Alex Lazaris:
I love smiley.
Sydney Michuda:
That's great.
Alex Lazaris:
Just, like, make the middle bowl kind of like more of a nose.
Sydney Michuda:
Yeah.
Alex Lazaris:
Ken says I really like the first one.
Sydney Michuda:
Cool. Thank you.
Alex Lazaris:
Yeah, I can see that with the type kind of bouncing around that it feels more like a toy brand or something.
Sydney Michuda:
Yeah, that was one thing that I noticed that the client was kind of drawn to in the mood board. She liked some of the lowercase or upper and lowercase text and sometimes when it bounced around a little bit, but I think this one might could use a bit more of a sophisticated palette to balance it out, maybe.
Alex Lazaris:
Yeah, absolutely. So you want to give us a quick little three minute recap of all the kind of your process, the project, how we got to where we are, and kind of what your next steps would be?
Sydney Michuda:
Yeah, absolutely. So this is for a company called Pottery With a Purpose. As you can see, she sells DIY pottery kits, and she's just starting out, but she's had this idea for a while, but it just seems like a really cool idea and concept and initiative. So she approached me and she wanted to make sure that this had it was fun and playful and light without being too young or too focused on young people, because I think the ideal target market is between 25 and 40. So someone that has their own apartment, has their own house, just needs some time to unwind. So we went through a pretty good creative, brief process. So I kind of had a good established direction or mental direction of what she was looking for. And then we did some mood boarding. And through that, we basically went through it board by board and called out things that she liked, things that she didn't like, which can be just as important. And then from there, I started doing a bit of the sketching on my iPad, realizing that I really like these fun, abstract shapes and thought that it would be pretty sweet to add some patterns in there. So I just made some of these textures on my own, made some squiggly lines, polka dots, made this terrazzo pattern. Just a whole bunch of different stuff. Because, as I've said several times throughout this live stream, I like to have all these puzzle pieces out in front of me so that when I start working on the brand, I can kind of just assemble it without as much resistance so you don't get too hung up in one specific layout. You can just kind of assemble everything as you go, but yeah, so then I pulled a bunch of type together, pulled a bunch of different type layouts together, figured out which fonts felt appropriate for her brand, pulled some more color palettes together. And I definitely wanted to incorporate, like, a terracotta or more neutral colors because it's clay after all, and that feels pretty earthy. I nailed down with this font right here, created this little still life layout that all kind of has ties to ceramics or pottery within there that also just shows the diversity of the products that she's willing to create these kits for. And one of the taglines is clay your way. So if you want to make some clay Your Way in a vase or whatever, it's available. Okay, perfect. Yeah. A few other directions. And here we are.
Alex Lazaris:
So it sounds like next steps would probably be adding in a couple more mood boards, figuring out that first direction a little bit more, and then you're going to send a very thorough email to the client with all the goodies.
Sydney Michuda:
Yep.
Alex Lazaris:
Well, that's awesome. Thank you, everybody for hanging out with us. We really appreciate it. I hope you guys had a wonderful time. Make sure to check her out on supercreative co all of her social media voodoo. Val's already posted it a bunch of times in Chat. And that will be it for us. But thank you so much for hanging out. Stick around for the rest of the streams for today. We'll see you guys soon. Bye bye.
Sydney Michuda:
Bye, guys. Thanks for hanging out.
