*Transcription Disclaimer: the following transcription was automatically generated, and may have errors, or lack context.*
Alex Lazaris:
Welcome, welcome. Happy Wednesday. Thank you so much for joining us today. I think you guys are going to be very, very excited. We're going to be doing some logo design with Sydney today. I think you guys are going to be really happy. So Sydney, tell everybody a little bit about yourself. Where can they find you? All those good things.
Sydney Michuda:
Yeah. So my name is Sydney Michuda. I'm a letter designer, illustrator, anything that you kind of want in a designer. I run my own one lady design studio named Super Creative. I'm based in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. So if you're from the Milwaukee area or if you visited the area, give us a shout out. I've been working in the industry for about six years. I've worked for a couple local advertising and design agencies, but once the Pandemic hit, it sort of forced me to become a full time freelancer a little bit sooner than I was expecting. So it's been a very interesting journey, but all good things, it's been great for the most part. And while I started freelancing full time recently, I've been doing my own freelance work under my own brand for quite a while. I typically work with women very similar to myself, where there's small, one person creative companies, a decent amount of really cool wedding photographers, handmade jewelry, ceramics, food trucks, local events, things like that. And whenever I do those, it's usually for branding purposes because that's generally my specialty. So that's a primary logo, secondary logo, color palettes, typography, illustrations, things like that. So, yeah, that's what I do by day. Other parts of the day and night, I run my own goods store or design goods store. So I sell art prints and pins, greeting cards, notepads, things like that. And then I also listen to way too many true crime podcasts.
Alex Lazaris:
Amazing.
Sydney Michuda:
Hang out with my cats and enjoy cocktails whenever possible. And you can see more of my work on my website, which I have up here. You can also follow me along on Instagram, which is where I post a bit more of my daily happenings, more regular work that's posted here, a little less tidy. But you can also follow me on Behance, and if there are any questions that you have for me that we don't cover today, feel free to send me a message, whether through email or Instagram. So, yeah, perfect.
Alex Lazaris:
Well, that's Sydney. I'm based in Portland, she's based in Milwaukee. I see a bunch of people in Chat saying that you guys are from Dallas and Chicago. Where else are you guys tuning in from today? If you guys are on YouTube, make sure you come over to Behance. Net slash live and interact with us there. That's where we're going to be reading Chat. So, like you said, like Sydney said, we will be reading your questions. We'll try to be answering them real time. We're pretty open to anything. You guys have questions or business things anything you want to discuss about, we're here to help answer those and kind of get the most out of your viewing experience. I love that your work is so tangible. I can see all these things not just being great logos, but you have some really great prints and pins and all these other really awesome pieces, and they all kind of feel like like your aesthetic is very cultivated. It's gorgeous.
Sydney Michuda:
Oh, awesome. Thank you.
Alex Lazaris:
Brazil in the house. Germany. India. Pittsburgh. Las Vegas, Sweden.
Sydney Michuda:
Wow.
Alex Lazaris:
Good morning. Good evening. From everybody around the world. This is quite the scene. It's awesome. So if you guys also don't remember, we have the Adobe Daily Creative Challenge this afternoon that we're going to be going through. If you guys hop into our discord, you guys can check it out. The link is there. Check it out. Bitly AI discord. Check it out. Come hang out with us. We are doing coasters. We'll review it, critique it, help you guys kind of push the needle a little bit further with some of your coaster designs. So definitely check it out, participate, and we'll go through that later on this afternoon. So, Sydney, I'll let you take it from here. Give us a little rundown of what we're going to be working on today.
Sydney Michuda:
Yeah. So I am working with a new client that I just signed. She's a super cool Rad lady that's starting her own pottery business where they make DIY pottery kits. So you'll purchase one, and they'll have a full set of instructions and supplies and tools to teach you how to make a mug, a candle holder, dishes, vases, what have you. So that's what I'll be working on today. And I did a bit of prep work. As you can see, I like to be very prepared. And as I'm kind of going throughout my discovery process where I find inspiration, I just always write down a very clear list of ideas. Whether it's like something super simple, like just the name of a font or the idea of using a scoring texture as a pattern, because that's pretty used pretty frequently in ceramics sometimes.
Alex Lazaris:
Do you mind zooming in just a tiny bit, just so it's a little bit easier for chat? There you go. Perfect. I love this. This is, I think, one of the best things you can do whenever you're starting any creative project is, like, kind of give yourself a little sandbox to play in before you start trying to build the castle.
Sydney Michuda:
For sure. Well, especially since yeah, you can totally if you have that idea, you can start executing it right away. But for me, that kind of takes me out of that discovery realm, so I want to stay in that world first. So I'll just write it down as fast as I can so I don't forget it.
Alex Lazaris:
Absolutely.
Sydney Michuda:
Some of these things make sense, some of these things don't. But then while I'm doing this, I'll also kind of just formulate different directions in my head before they've actually come to fruition yet. So I usually have a list of different directions that I want to take the brand in.
Alex Lazaris:
I love that. And I was like, I wish I was that organized. She even has, like, clear hierarchy and her type way to show off. Yeah, great.
Sydney Michuda:
I always feel like designers are basically, like, glorified organizers in a sense, sometimes, so I always want to keep things as organized as possible. Absolutely. I wish my house was as organized as I like to keep my notes. Awesome.
Alex Lazaris:
So I see that you have these items to incorporate. Are those designated from the client, or are these kind of from your own kind of ideas?
Sydney Michuda:
Kind of a bit of both. When I talked with the client, I showed her a bunch of mood boards, and there were a few things that really resonated with her. This isn't a full list. I think I left a few things off, but just, like, smaller things that she commented down that she thought were fun or cool or just might like to incorporate into the brand. So I just like to write those down so I don't completely forget.
Alex Lazaris:
Totally. Did we get to see the mood boards?
Sydney Michuda:
I was told that we shouldn't exactly show the mood boards, but I can totally bring those up if you want.
Alex Lazaris:
It's up to you. I mean, sometimes I think it helps to frame things a little bit, but you don't have to.
Sydney Michuda:
Yeah, I'll just kind of breeze through them real quickly. We kind of went through just a whole bunch of different mood boards. And one thing that would have been my first go to is to use shapes like these. But there's actually a competitor in the realm that uses shapes that are pretty similar. So I want to make sure if we go with a direction using these funky organic shapes, that it definitely separate and differentiates himself enough so they don't look like they're overlapping visually.
Alex Lazaris:
Yeah. I think knowing when to pivot when your competition is doing one thing is a great way to stand out.
Sydney Michuda:
Yeah.
Alex Lazaris:
I love this. So you have a bunch of really organic shapes and patterns kind of throughout this mood board.
Sydney Michuda:
Yeah. So just a bit of exploration with type, logos, colors, shapes, different things like that. And I did a bunch of sketching beforehand.
Alex Lazaris:
Holy moly. Say something for the stream. This is great. These are really cool.
Sydney Michuda:
Thank you. I like to be prepared for any occasion. So some of this is just more free form illustration, just playing around with different shapes. Some things that are just super basic, some things that are more distinctive. I wanted to create a good amount of patterns just in case we can incorporate that as a way to make those shapes different from the competitor.
Alex Lazaris:
Awesome.
Sydney Michuda:
Make it nice and fun.
Alex Lazaris:
And how did you do these sketches. Did you do them?
Sydney Michuda:
Yes, I did them on my iPad, just with a few different brushes. Usually I just kind of stick with marker type brushes because it feels nice and organic without feeling too.
Alex Lazaris:
Yeah, hemza goes. Wow. Sketches. Yeah. These are insane. These are so good.
Sydney Michuda:
Thank you. Yeah, just creating more patterns, but I did think that so one of her main tenets of her brand is that when you're working with ceramics or pottery or clay, you're forced to disconnect from your phone because your hands are all dirty and you don't want to get your phone all dirty. So that tactile. The way that this material would be used is so hand focused, I thought maybe incorporating a hand might be a fun icon for the brand. So I did a few different hand sketches here, trying to keep them mostly all in black so I can add color to them later.
Alex Lazaris:
Yeah, I think this is a trap that a lot of more junior designers kind of fall into when they first start doing branding work is they think like, I need to do a logo in color immediately. And then you can hide a lot of bad design choices by doing the color too soon, the color compensates too much. So, pro tip, if you guys are designing at home or starting to do your own brand design or logo design, try it in black first and then eventually do an inverse of it to see kind of how it looks on what does the negative spaces and things look like. But it will help you quickly move through your design phases rather than once you eventually have to do it in black. Finding out that those colors didn't work or they were compensating for shading and.
Sydney Michuda:
Stuff like that, for sure.
Alex Lazaris:
Black is great.
Sydney Michuda:
And it also helps too, because what I'll do a little bit later on is I'll create a color mask with this so that since it's in black on white, you can basically take just a black raster shape like this and make it into any color you want. Totally nice little handy tip that I'll go over later on, but yeah, I was trying to kind of explore also, I don't know if I mentioned the name of the brand, it's Pottery with a Purpose. Okay. Yeah, purpose. I kind of took some of her notes over here. Purpose is covering function and cause. Pottery is a functional purposeful, application or material, and just the intention behind it. There's people and earth over profit. She has a bit of nonprofit qualities mixed into her brand. Some proceeds will be going to mental health causes, which is just so amazing. Pottery with a purpose. I was trying to play with the double P as a monogram, just kind of going in different directions. One of my instincts would have been to have this P flipped upside down and tucked underneath there, but that's also a thing that a competitor did. So not going to do that. But yeah, just kind of playing around with the letter shapes, and then I cut a little bit more into abstract shapes, thinking that just like a bowl or a cup or just a semicircle shape like, that is a pretty universal shape within the pottery world. So I tried playing with that in a few different areas, potentially turning that into a P, adding a few other letters there, making some fun still lifes, which I think would be a pretty sweet icon for the brand.
Alex Lazaris:
So many little design elements. You can kind of pull out an abstract or throughout the brand. Awesome.
Sydney Michuda:
And I always try to make in the main logo, whatever the icon is, that can then be taken out of that specific context and then used as patterns or textures, like little tiny bits that are overlapping in the corner just because it just adds so much more to the brand that way. Rather than just having a logo, you have a whole suite to play with. Makes it much easier later on.
Alex Lazaris:
Totally.
Sydney Michuda:
But yeah.
Alex Lazaris:
All right, let's start messing with it.
Sydney Michuda:
Yeah, I'm going to just start playing with a bunch of different type options here.
Alex Lazaris:
Kendra asks, how do you find that a competitor has a similar design?
Sydney Michuda:
So usually the client will kind of bring those competitors to your attention. Usually when I start out, I'll ask them, are there specific competitors in your realm that you either want to stay away from or that you just want me to be aware of? Luckily, this client was very ready with that information, which was awesome. Sometimes in the past, I have done, like, if the thing that they're doing is a bit more niche, kind of like this, I'll do my own search and kind of just do my own mini competitor analysis. But yeah, it's a bit of a mix of both, I'd say.
Alex Lazaris:
Awesome, riculetta.
Sydney Michuda:
I know. I use this for one of my wedding fonts.
Alex Lazaris:
Oh, nice. Yeah, it's great.
Sydney Michuda:
Let's see here. I had a few fonts that I knew to use right off the bat, but trying to find all the you.
Alex Lazaris:
Just had, these typefaces are kind of your go tos.
Sydney Michuda:
Yeah, sort of. Usually one of my go tos is SAA, which is kind of like I think it's mimicking the US. Highway typeface. It's one of the fonts that I use in my logo, and it's just such a fun sort of vintage, but not hitting you over the head vintage.
Alex Lazaris:
That's awesome. Greetings from Lagos. Wow. Welcome. That's awesome. I love these typefaces, I think. Have you ever seen those memes that are, like, graphic designers spend 99% of their time trying to convince themselves not to use Gotham again?
Sydney Michuda:
Yeah, seriously. And that's such a real thing, that you just kind of get stuck in your certain lane with certain fonts that you want, and it's just such a fine line to toe between having your own style and not kind of just copying yourself, I guess.
Alex Lazaris:
Absolutely. And Val loves whenever you say memes instead of memes. That's her favorite thing.
Sydney Michuda:
Cool.
Alex Lazaris:
Voodoo Val, if you don't know her, she's an amazing host and creative and incredible artist. She's here doing some mod work today. That's awesome. Oh, you're bringing up everybody's favorite font.
Sydney Michuda:
Yeah. So I want to try to find a good classic geometric sands typeface because that was something that she mentioned that she kind of likes, and you can't really go wrong with one of those usually.
Alex Lazaris:
It's true. It just works for so many things.
Sydney Michuda:
Right.
Alex Lazaris:
And if you guys don't know, Adobe fonts is included with your Creative Cloud subscription, so it has a lot of really great typefaces for you to be able to use throughout all your designs, so definitely recommend checking it out. You can also search directly from the type tool inside of Illustrator and Adobe. Val loves it. She says, Alex, we'll have words later. Yep. All about the memes.
Sydney Michuda:
None of those. No. I have a new kitten that is just running wild behind me, so it's hard to keep my brain on this and not watch him sprint around chase ghosts. Yeah, exactly. Keeping all those ghosts away for us.
Alex Lazaris:
Question what are you looking for in your typeface and what is your thought process while selecting a font that will be relevant?
Sydney Michuda:
That's a really good question. I honestly would say it's kind of a gut feeling, and I'd say that that gut feeling just kind of comes with repetition and experience and just the more you design, the more you can kind of get a feel for what you're looking for. But specifically right now, I'm looking for a good geometric sands that has a little bit of character, but not too much like some of these san Serifs. Like this one. I really like this font, but there's just a bit too much funky characters in there, and I'm just not quite looking for that. Sophia is a good choice, but it's a little bit too like a little bit too bubbly or just I don't know. I guess not what I'm looking for.
Alex Lazaris:
Yeah, I feel like it's tracked out quite a like I feel like it might need to if you did use Sophia, you just take the tracking in a little.
Sydney Michuda:
Yeah, for.
Alex Lazaris:
Whenever I'm I think as you experience more graphic design work, you get to see kind of like how type was used for certain things. Whether it's a Western or, like, a rustic or vintage, you kind of see there's characteristics of each typeface and letter and so you can start using those historical things as you kind of obsessed over type to leverage that through your design language as well.
Sydney Michuda:
For sure. And sometimes when I get sick of browsing through that whole list, I just go to fonts that I've activated so I know that these are ones that I obviously have liked in the past.
Alex Lazaris:
Yeah. That's awesome. That's such a great way of seeing what things you have.
Sydney Michuda:
Right. Like, I chose these for a reason at one point.
Alex Lazaris:
Exactly. Yeah. I always have to go back to MyFonts.com and look at my library for the purchased ones that I've used and I'm like, oh, that's right. I have that really cool typeface that I didn't use for a project.
Sydney Michuda:
Right.
Alex Lazaris:
So maybe I can use it now. So funny.
Sydney Michuda:
Yeah. Usually I'll just kind of pull out as many fonts as I can. Those P's are a little bit weird, but I might fix that later on just so that I know basically all the assets that I have at my disposal, I like to have them all out in front of me so I can then just assemble everything together like a puzzle.
Alex Lazaris:
Absolutely.
Sydney Michuda:
That's kind of fun.
Alex Lazaris:
Have you ever used the type tool within this to search for Adobe Fonts?
Sydney Michuda:
Sorry, what's that?
Alex Lazaris:
So instead of going to just Adobe Fonts, you can search real time in the type button. Like if you just select that layer of type again and then if you go up to the character section, click the down arrow and then you have the filters. And then it says, Find more up top.
Sydney Michuda:
Oh.
Alex Lazaris:
And then that will activate it. It should activate the Adobe fonts. But that looks like it's Struggle Busing right now. Never mind.
Sydney Michuda:
Right, but that's a really awesome tip. I didn't know that it could do that.
Alex Lazaris:
Yeah, so you can do that and it will automatically just kind of show you a render instead of having to go to extra websites and stuff. So if you guys are designing along at home, do that and maybe you'll have more luck than the initializing issue.
Sydney Michuda:
Man, that's really awesome.
Alex Lazaris:
Yeah, it's one of my favorite little Easter eggs.
Sydney Michuda:
So then is this showing all the fonts that I have activated on my computer along with everything on Adobe right now?
Alex Lazaris:
Yeah. So you see like the cloud logo next to the type right there? And those all have the clouds that are just in the cloud, as the Internet says, in the cloud. And then if you click it, it will download it for have. Like see on hover, it has like the down arrow on the cloud.
Sydney Michuda:
Oh, yeah.
Alex Lazaris:
That would activate that typeface for you.
Sydney Michuda:
Wow, that's really cool.
Alex Lazaris:
So easy peasy.
Sydney Michuda:
Yeah. Whoa.
Alex Lazaris:
Type hack is what Ethan says. Absolutely. You guys are welcome. It saves you 5 seconds for going to the website.
Sydney Michuda:
Yeah. Oh, wow, man, I'm definitely going to play with that.
Alex Lazaris:
Yeah, you get lost. This is forever. What designers spend their time on is.
Sydney Michuda:
Just looking at type and stuff.
Alex Lazaris:
Exactly.
Sydney Michuda:
Yeah. I'm just going to keep going back to my initial list just because, again, I know that these are my tried and true typefaces that I like to use most frequently.
Alex Lazaris:
Absolutely.
Sydney Michuda:
That's kind of funny. Have to fix those later on, but yeah. Are there any go to fonts that everyone else likes to use?
Alex Lazaris:
It's a great question. I like TT sans. I think that's what it's called. Let me see if I can find it. Yeah. Chat, what are your favorite typefaces? And bonus points if it's comic papyrus or papyrus or comic sands yeah, but really, it should be Comic Papyrus, right? Have you seen that beautiful mashup?
Sydney Michuda:
I think so. Yeah.
Alex Lazaris:
It's great.
Sydney Michuda:
As a graphic designer, whenever there's any goofy graphic design thing like something like that, or when there was that SNL sketch about Papyrus, just all your friends end up sending it to you. It's like, yes, that's.
Alex Lazaris:
Sophia. So that typeface you were looking at earlier, shelley says lotto. Eric says halvet. I could display montserrat. Okay.
Sydney Michuda:
Yeah, montserrat is a really good one.
Alex Lazaris:
I heart p 22 mechanic, acumen type pace.
Sydney Michuda:
Yeah.
Alex Lazaris:
Thank you.
Sydney Michuda:
Lamont such a cool one.
Alex Lazaris:
Yeah, it's great.
Sydney Michuda:
What was that?
Alex Lazaris:
Mint old style wings. Come on. What's? Mint old style is what Brandon said. Nice.
Sydney Michuda:
That's right.
Alex Lazaris:
Papyrus rules. Thank you, Carol. I appreciate it. Plus one. Coolness. To Carol, right? Feel like a wizard in Harry Potter. Just assigning random values to houses now.
Sydney Michuda:
Yeah. Plus one.
Alex Lazaris:
Minus tenet says sounds like you may be looking for ways to organize a project post case study. What? How do you typically like to organize your case studies?
Sydney Michuda:
I don't know. It kind of depends on the client. I'd say a lot of it would be probably just whatever I've created during the brand. Wow. That's a very different font in all caps. However, I've created the brand boards. Usually I'll just take every image within the brand boards and just piece it apart as much as possible so I can make it as long of a case study as I can.
Alex Lazaris:
Totally.
Sydney Michuda:
Especially since I work with a lot of small makers. A lot of them don't get as much of a chance to take really beautiful photography. I definitely can't speak to what this brand will do with their photography. I'm sure it'll be really awesome anyways, but since it's a bit more customer and retail facing. But yeah, I would always love to work with more clients that can incorporate more photography into what I do with them.
Alex Lazaris:
Absolutely. Yeah. Whenever you can get really great shots of your work, it's always super helpful for getting more work.
Sydney Michuda:
Yeah. As a one woman studio, that's a little bit difficult sometimes because when my clients are in California, oregon not exactly going to fly out there to take some photos of their work, but absolutely.
Alex Lazaris:
Just bake that into the invoice.
Sydney Michuda:
Yeah, for sure.
Alex Lazaris:
I need $4,000 for our flight.
Sydney Michuda:
Right.
Alex Lazaris:
Thank you. Appreciate it.
Sydney Michuda:
Yeah, we're almost at the end of the list.
Alex Lazaris:
Any suggestions on clients that insist on creating a font for their branding? Interesting question, Joel. That's kind of a loaded one. It's hard.
Sydney Michuda:
Yeah. Honestly, I've never really worked with clients that insist on creating their own typeface, but I don't know. As a huge type nerd, that sounds like a dream. I would love to create a whole font for a client, but I don't know, I guess you could always start with a font that's in a similar vibe as what the client is looking for, and then you could use that as a placeholder, and then later on, you could develop that whole font together.
Alex Lazaris:
Yeah, I think it really depends. I think there's like, two parts of that question that could be answered for Joel. I think if it's a custom logo type, I think that's pretty straightforward and kind of easy to do, where we can modify typefaces, really drive home characteristics or things like that, and make a custom piece for them. And how varied and how custom that is depends on, really, the project. And then there's the other part is, like, I've had customer or clients go, we're thinking about doing a complete custom typeface for us for marketing and web and all these other things, and then that gets very tricky, right?
Sydney Michuda:
For sure.
Alex Lazaris:
But yeah, I think it depends on your client's budget and patience, because that gets tough. That's a lot of work to build a typeface.
Sydney Michuda:
For sure. Yeah, I almost had that lined up with a client where she wanted. So I basically create a custom lettering for her logo, and I let her know that this is custom lettering. So you can't really type this out on your computer. You can't use this as a font. So I offered to create the whole font for her, but I don't think she's there yet. But totally, hopefully one day.
Alex Lazaris:
And Caitlin asked, what's the projected timeline for this branding? Ask.
Sydney Michuda:
So, for this one, I'd say from beginning to end, about, I'd say three weeks, just because I generally have a few other clients going on at the same time. But, yeah, I'd say this one probably about three weeks.
Alex Lazaris:
Christina asked, do you use fonts, modified fonts for logo design? Often. More often than sketching a logo? I think it depends on the.
Sydney Michuda:
Yeah, it really depends on the project, depending on how organic they're looking for something. Like, I recently did a project for a different ceramicist, and her stuff is very organic, very hand done. So with this one, I did create this type on my own. Sorry, my cat jumped on the table. So this one, I did create the type on my own, made it very hand done, making it look like it could have been sculpted out of clay. So this one, it was super appropriate, but for some other ones, like this one here, it felt a little bit better. Just have it clean and straightforward. Really clean font.
Alex Lazaris:
Absolutely, yeah. Oh, there's the kitty cat on your Instagram. Just in case you guys were wondering what the kitten looks like.
Sydney Michuda:
Yeah. Here, actually, I'm going to pull him over really quick.
Alex Lazaris:
Oh, it's simba. What's your cat's name?
Sydney Michuda:
His name is Poe after one of the Star Wars characters from the recent series.
Alex Lazaris:
That's great.
Sydney Michuda:
Yeah, he's super fun and super wild. Normally he'd be napping right now, but he doesn't feel like doing that.
Alex Lazaris:
Of course not, wreck.
Sydney Michuda:
Exactly.
Alex Lazaris:
Steve is asking, does it come with a complimentary kitten?
Sydney Michuda:
Yeah.
Alex Lazaris:
I think Poe's a hit. I have to have PO back on.
Sydney Michuda:
The screen one day. Nice. He can be the new Adobe Live mascot.
Alex Lazaris:
Oh, no. Val just asked if he said Star Wars. So if you don't know, Val is a huge Star Wars buff.
Sydney Michuda:
Like, nice.
Alex Lazaris:
Hugest.
Sydney Michuda:
Heck yeah.
Alex Lazaris:
Most huge.
Sydney Michuda:
I would ask her how she feels about the new series, but that tends to rile a lot of people up.
Alex Lazaris:
Oh, man. I'm not going to speak for Val. That's awesome.
Sydney Michuda:
Yeah. Okay, so I'm feeling pretty good about these for now. I think maybe I'll pull some in later.
Alex Lazaris:
Yeah, they're looking great. So this is your more refined selection from the other list?
Sydney Michuda:
Yeah, I like to just basically pull as big of a list as I can. That's something that's even moderately appropriate. Like, this one isn't very great, but it's nice to just have in there for comparison.
Alex Lazaris:
Absolutely.
Sydney Michuda:
But, yeah, then I kind of just from this list refine into a few other or like, a more reduced list. Is it the same one? No. Okay. So I'd pull the same font twice. I'd say that's a keeper.
Alex Lazaris:
Yeah, absolutely. I do that all the time. I'm like, wait, what I do here? Oh, I just tracked it all a little bit. That's weird. Right?
Sydney Michuda:
And generally I like to get things nice and small so I can just make as many type layouts as possible.
Alex Lazaris:
Perfect. Yeah. Val said that you guys are going to have to DM about the new Star Wars series.
Sydney Michuda:
Yeah.
Alex Lazaris:
So funny.
Sydney Michuda:
And now there's a new season of the Mandalorian coming out, which is just great. Seeing Baby Yoda on screen, I feel.
Alex Lazaris:
Like they've really upped the amount of screen time baby Yoda's been getting, and I'm not mad about it.
Sydney Michuda:
Right. Me neither. He always reminds me of my cat, too, so I'm like, oh, my God, look at you.
Alex Lazaris:
You're so rambunctious.
Sydney Michuda:
Right?
Alex Lazaris:
I really like that centered type there. Looks really nice.
Sydney Michuda:
Yeah. Thank you.
Alex Lazaris:
You could see that being used with an Instagram post or something like that with a square crop. If it's really nicely change out the background color. Bada bing, bada boom. Yeah, easy peasy.
Sydney Michuda:
Let's see here.
Alex Lazaris:
Steve is trying to pick fights with Val now about Driver. His name Adam Driver.
Sydney Michuda:
Adam Driver.
Alex Lazaris:
Yeah.
Sydney Michuda:
Don't get me started on Adam Driver.
Alex Lazaris:
Having a long distance relationship right now.
Sydney Michuda:
Okay. Normally I would never put a stroke on a font, but sometimes I like to do it just to. See the balance, and then I'll adjust it later. So I just like to put that out as a disclaimer.
Alex Lazaris:
Like, the variations coming up now, like, starting to riff. I like it.
Sydney Michuda:
Yeah.
Alex Lazaris:
So chat. Don't forget whenever you're doing these designs that pixels are free. So do as many variations as your heart desires.
Sydney Michuda:
Right.
Alex Lazaris:
We're not having to send things to print anymore just to try things.
Sydney Michuda:
For sure.
Alex Lazaris:
You can riff as much as you want.
Sydney Michuda:
And then these are some of the taglines that she had cooking around in her brain. So I like to just have those close by just so I can toss them into layouts as I see fit.
Alex Lazaris:
Absolutely. And is she looking to incorporate those in the logo, or is it just kind of like, how is she thinking about that living?
Sydney Michuda:
I'd say that she's pretty open to it. I generally like to include at least one version of the logo where there is a tagline sitting underneath, just so it's all the information that a customer would need in one logo. Absolutely. And then different versions where it's more reduced. And then some of these other ones, like, usable and unique might not be the primary tagline, but it might just be a fun pipe lockup that can be used within the entire brand suite.
Alex Lazaris:
Absolutely. Yeah. There's so many really cool nuggets you can have with a client like this, even. You were talking about the charity kind of initiatives that she's really interested in as well. And those can be, like, really fun lockups or little badges or graphic elements that could also flesh out the brand a little bit more.
Sydney Michuda:
Yeah, totally.
Alex Lazaris:
Super fun.
Sydney Michuda:
I've been dying to use this font for so long, and I proposed it at least once before, but it didn't end up happening with that client. But oh, no, I just love gopher it's so much.
Alex Lazaris:
Today's the day.
Sydney Michuda:
Yeah.
Alex Lazaris:
Kendra asks, what are some of your tips on how to price your work for a beginner?
Sydney Michuda:
That's a good question. And that's basically something that just takes a while to kind of figure out. When I started out, at least, I just did some Google searches and tried to kind of figure out what the average price was per hour. And then you can basically from there, figure out just, like, whatever rate you'd like to earn per hour and then kind of judging what project you're working on and how many hours you think that'll take. I know there's a lot of debate going on right now with if pricing per hour is a good idea. Some people think that it's more of a value thing rather than an hour thing, which I kind of like that idea since I tend to work a little bit more slowly.
Alex Lazaris:
So you're saying that you prefer to do the hourly rate? Correct.
Sydney Michuda:
Well, that's just what I'm doing now. I would like to transition to do more of a pricing system based on value, how valuable an identity is, or illustrations are. Basically, usually what I would also do is I would take whatever I was working or making it my full time job and then charge it up by a cup or like $5, $10 maybe. Just because when you're at a full time job, they have to account for taxes and income tax and health care and all that kind of stuff. Whereas when you're just your own freelancer, you don't always have to worry about all those expenses you do at some point. But absolutely as a starter, you can charge what you think someone of your experience level would make and then charge a few dollars extra, I'd say.
Alex Lazaris:
Yeah, I think the people that don't like hourly because I see a lot of people saying I don't like hourly. Hourly is awful. Yeah, I love hourly. I think if you guys don't like hourly, you're charging hourly rates. Wrong. So like, for my business, I charge hourly because I have clients of all different sizes where I don't just do their branding, but I will do ongoing work with them. I think the hardest part for any freelancer is that getting new clients and things so you don't have to deal with going out and finding new clients or waiting for a new client to come to you. But once you've already done good work with them, they typically want you to help them out with the rest of their business. Right. It's smaller with smaller businesses don't typically have these long ongoing projects, but I have a lot of marketing design teams at a tech company or whatever who they have ongoing needs that they need design support for and they can always tap us and see what's going on. And by them not having to always go and be like, oh, we need five grand for this project. And having to go through all those approval cycles means they can just be like, oh, we just need help with the social media template or something like that, where it's just like a one off project where they're like, okay, how many hours do you think it'll take? And I can tell them how many hours I think and then they're like, cool, great, go at it. And then if it goes done faster, no problem. If they have a bunch of different iterations and things, I'm fine with that because I'm getting paid for my time for that. I think all it takes is, like, one lump sum project where you're like, this is how much your branding is going to be. And then that to go completely out of scope. To be like, okay, you know what? Actually, hourly sounds fine, because at the end of the day, they can make as many changes as they want and you get paid, right?
Sydney Michuda:
Yeah, I'm definitely still trying to like since I just became a full time freelancer in March, I'm still kind of trying to figure out that whole world of how I exactly want to price everything for my business. But, yeah, I do work with a client that's very strict on their hours, and they have very tight time frames where they'll say, like, you have two and a half hours to work on this and it's due tomorrow at 11:00 a.m..
Alex Lazaris:
Carol says you're very lucky if you can build by the hourly. There's huge competition in this kind of work. And people do shop by the numbers, and I would say people are still shopping by the numbers, even if it's not hourly. And I think it's up to you as a creative to get to the point where you're providing value above what the client expects to pay. Right. Like, if you're saying, okay, my hourly rate is $30 an hour, how am I providing enough value to that client that that $30 is a great deal for them? I think no matter what your hourly rate is, I think finding that balance of value in the eyes of the client is how you have to prove that out. But if we're sitting in a meeting for an hour and a half with the client just tweaking or arguing internally, I'm getting paid for that now versus those times where I used to do fixed fee. And then I'm just sitting there like, man, I can't believe they're wasting everybody's time and I'm not getting paid for this or I'm losing it. I don't know. Yeah, we can always have these debates.
Sydney Michuda:
I love them, right? Well, yeah. Again, as a new full time freelancer, sometimes I feel and I know I shouldn't say this, but I feel a little bit bad charging for all that extra time if there are those revisions. So right now, with the way I have everything, I don't charge for extra rounds of revisions, partially just because I work with a lot of smaller makers and that can really have an impact on them. Whereas it might be a little bit different if I had a different kind of client base.
Alex Lazaris:
Absolutely. And I know some people are talking about this in Chat right now, but do you typically take a percentage up front?
Sydney Michuda:
Yeah, I always require half up front. And for them to sign a contract, I've been burned a couple of times for all it takes. Yeah, it takes like, only one time. And then you're like, no, I'm not going to do that anymore. I require half up front because I don't want to put in 20 hours worth of work and then have someone back out of their entire business.
Alex Lazaris:
Absolutely, I completely agree. Yeah. If you're working, especially with a new client, make sure you get your 50 or 60% up front just so you can and mark where those pay cycles should come at the end or in your contract. Make it very clear this is when I expect to be paid, and this is how the percentages break down. But yeah, for sure. Especially with new clients.
Sydney Michuda:
Yeah.
Alex Lazaris:
And charge a late fee. If they don't pay you on time, they incur a late fee.
Sydney Michuda:
That's a good tip.
Alex Lazaris:
Yeah. This is your livelihood. It's not fun whenever you have to go like, hey guys, you owe me a bunch of money. And they're like, yeah, we'll get to it.
Sydney Michuda:
And you're like, no, but actually I.
Alex Lazaris:
Already turned in everything.
Sydney Michuda:
Right. Usually, for the most part, I don't have too big of an issue with people paying late, which is really nice because for the most part, I just tell them, you're not booked with me until you sign the contract, send it back and pay your first payment. And also you're not getting your assets until you pay me the final.
Alex Lazaris:
So and Carol just said, sure, you can ask for half and do the entire project and get burned for the rest. And that's true, but I would say that's a fault of your contract. So how I typically structure it is 1st 50% is up front, and then as we go through, I typically break my projects down into four different sections. One's, like, mood board and design ideology and research strategy stuff. And then it goes into first concepts and then maybe the rest. And that's like the 50% mark. And at that 50% mark, I get whether, depending on the client, if it's another 25% or another ten. So I kind of break it apart by here. At this point, at this meeting, another payment is due. And so we get closer and closer and closer until that final handoff of files, and that's the last 10%, potentially, of the project. And at that point, typically, I find that people don't want to just cause issues for no reason. They're not going to pay you. They're not going to pay you before then. But if you only have like 10% or 25% left, they typically will probably carry it through. And you can kind of tell throughout the process of how receptive the client is going to be to that stuff.
Sydney Michuda:
For sure. Yeah. I think a lot of it is just about reading people and knowing, like, okay, this person's a really I don't know, they're a really good person. They seem really honest. That's probably not the best way to go about it, but sometimes you can just kind of tell that a person's going to follow through.
Alex Lazaris:
Yeah. And I've had clients who start off really great and then all of a sudden they, I don't know, jackal and hide it a little bit and change personalities completely and cut it off. And that's kind of a risk you run into. So make sure that you're pricing fairly and that you're pricing enough to cover your expenses and make sure you have a roadmap of savings.
Sydney Michuda:
Right? For sure.
Alex Lazaris:
But that's what I'm saying. If you guys can get in the good graces with a client early on and then continue to do work with them rather than just flipping up a logo or brand design. If you can figure out a way to work with them on an ongoing basis, you're going to be much happier and you'll make sure that your payment cycles and everything are consistent.
Sydney Michuda:
Right. Well, and so much of being a freelancer is based off of recommendations too. So if you do great work for someone, they might recommend you to their friend that's also an entrepreneur or is it also looking for some work and that's starting a business?
Alex Lazaris:
Absolutely. My best clients might not have had work for me after the initial brand and whatever design process, but they were so happy with the results and the work that they go and tell everybody. And I've had one client that I worked with years ago who essentially sends me like one referral a month. And that's pretty huge.
Sydney Michuda:
That's a huge lead. That's awesome.
Alex Lazaris:
Jackie asks, if you charge hourly, how do you know how much is 50% and when do you take it? So if you're charging hourly, they typically have an engagement of some sort that they want to hire you for and you can ask for a retainer. So instead of saying it's 50% of X projects, I typically would say, I need this amount of money to start working on this stuff with you. And then I would invoice them every two weeks so that it's consistent with all my other clients. That way you have money to fall back on and then in the contract, talk about how you would use the retainer to pay for unsettled dues or whatever, and then just bill on top of that.
Sydney Michuda:
Yeah, for sure.
Alex Lazaris:
I know this has gotten really deep into contract and land out of the business.
Sydney Michuda:
Right. I recently just bought a book by Hutzpa Design.
Alex Lazaris:
I think they're called great ladies.
Sydney Michuda:
Yeah. The freelance and business and stuff or whatever. The book is called Sabas. Yeah. And I'm only like a few pages in because, I don't know, life happens and you don't always have time to sit down and read. But I am so excited to learn more of those gosh, business related aspects of the design world.
Alex Lazaris:
Yeah, the Five S book, if you guys haven't read it yet, has kind of a really great outline to things that you need to do for your design career. Not necessarily design career, but the freelance business part of it, which is very scary and daunting when you're first starting up and they kind of give you some really actionable, great steps. And it's written really well because it's infused with the sister like personality and it's wonderful. Yeah. And Paco said hoodspa, they've been on Adobe Live a few times. They have?
Sydney Michuda:
Oh, nice.
Alex Lazaris:
Every time. They do amazing work.
Sydney Michuda:
Yeah, they're pretty cool.
Alex Lazaris:
Yeah, they're, uh what else? Let's see what other questions we're getting. Shelly goes, question would you consider handwritten style font nice since pottery is hand?
Sydney Michuda:
Uh, yeah, for I honestly, that kind of would have been my go to for something like this, especially since I love creating handmade type. But from the initial call with the client in the mood boards that I showed, there was some more handmade type and she just didn't seem as to gel with as much of it. So I decided on this brand to stay away from that a little bit and then let the illustrations that I'll get to in a little bit convey that more organic handmade. So absolutely. Just a bit of a balance.
Alex Lazaris:
And Anna asked about how you use artboards and all that.
Sydney Michuda:
Every I feel like every designer is super different in how they organize their artboards and stuff. Like I mentioned earlier, I like to have everything out in front of me so I can kind of just assemble it like a puzzle. So I will generally have my mood boards on the side on a different monitor. Then I'll pull together a bunch of different type options and then once that's set, I'll usually press Shift O so I can hold option down and drag and create another artboard so I have just a fresh clean slate. And once I have a good amount of assets in here, which I'll keep working on those, then from there I'll start assembling more of a branded brand board with colors and backgrounds and textures and things like.
Alex Lazaris:
Excuse me. Christine asked Sydney alex, how many clients do you usually book per month? Approximately? I'm always scared to book too many at the same time or not enough tips on that.
Sydney Michuda:
Man. That's just one of the biggest questions for a freelancer's world. Not overbooking yourself, so you have too much to do or nothing at all. I don't know. I think I like to use a time tracking software so that I can what's it called? I don't have it up. I think it's called Time Eye or something like that. It's not the cleanest software, but it's free, so that's why I use it. That allows me to kind of block out different hours and times throughout a certain weeks. So I know that next week I'm going to be spending at least like eight to 10 hours on this project. I'll also be working on a website, a few other things here and there. It is tricky though, when you have clients that have a lot of rush work going on. Absolutely. That kind of just throws your entire schedule off kilter a little bit.
Alex Lazaris:
Totally. Val says she uses Mondays, which is a great little project management software tracking thing.
Sydney Michuda:
Yeah, for sure.
Alex Lazaris:
Carol goes, too many clients. That's a high class problem. Kudos to you. Yeah, I think that's the hard part, and I think that's just kind of one of the growing pains that you'll eventually have to come realize with. When I first started my design firm. It was really tough because I took on every single project because I was afraid that the issues of being afraid that you weren't going to have enough money down the line or those clients will say no to you next month and you won't have anything left. So it's definitely a phobia thing and kind of a comfort zone. So take on the clients that you want, but the issue is you're going to burn out really quickly through that. I think I quickly was doing like 18 hours work days or something pretty close to that, and that recipe for disaster. And then I eventually got more help and then the firm started to grow more. But I got to the point where I looked up the work that I was getting and it wasn't moving my design firm forward in a way that I wanted to do it right. I ended up cutting a bunch of which is like the scariest part is like saying no to work, but giving yourself enough space to do the work that you are passionate about and that gets you more of that work. So your aesthetic is super defined and really beautiful. But whenever I go to your work, I can see the kinds of projects you work on and what you want to do. And I think as a client or somebody who's coming looking for designers, I can see exactly what to expect from you. And I think curating and cultivating that requires time and attention to detail. And if you're just starting off, it's hard to do that without burning yourself out, working on things you don't want.
Sydney Michuda:
To work on, right? So finding that balance, that's definitely one of the biggest things that I struggled with. I still struggle with it now, but struggle with it really hard. I'd say a year and a half ago was burning out really quickly because basically how I started doing my own stuff was I was working at an agency, like several agencies ago, and they did some pretty cool work, but it just wasn't for me. So I decided, screw it, I'm just going to start creating anything I want for myself. Which is weird that it takes that kind of weird stagnant feeling to kick yourself to start creating things for yourself. So I just started illustrating stuff on my desk. And then months and months and months later, I had some freelance clients, but I was also working full time at a different agency. So everything that I was doing was just like 100% creativity every second, every day, working from 09:00 A.m. Until 10:00 p.m. Basically every day. And you just burn out so quickly and you just start to really hate everything around you. And when you reach that point where you just hate everyone and everything, that's when you need to just take a break and spend several days not working. It can happen so easily, especially in the design world. Where everyone expects you to have the most creative, cool hobbies all the time, and every aspect of who you are as a person needs to be super cool and design related.
Alex Lazaris:
Yeah, I agree. Dan asked I noticed she's trying to center the text between two text lines. What's the best way to do that? You can do the align tool. So there's that tool she's on right now, horizontal align. Center it's up on the top or you can throw it under your side widget with your Windows option. You can center line, vertical line, horizontal line, and you can also distribute the type and that'll help kind of get you where you need to be.
Sydney Michuda:
Yeah, usually I'm pretty diligent about that, but answering questions while you're trying to design is like, a lot of things at the same time.
Alex Lazaris:
Yeah, absolutely. Corey goes, hi, guys. Is it difficult to get your foot in the door for your first full time design job? I've been applying since finishing university, but not really getting anywhere with it. And I would say it's always tough whenever you're trying to start something, like whether it's a new career or a new job or even changing. Right. Like, I ended up shifting my design firm away from all this tech Silicon Valley work and then I moved into physical hospitality, packaging bottling and that whole industry, and that's like a complete shift. Even though I was experienced as a designer, nobody knew that they could hire me for those things and all that stuff. So whenever you're trying to either reinvent yourself or get into your foot into the door, getting the work in your portfolio and then starting to share that out, behance is a great platform for that. Get it on your website, start reaching out to people and being like, this is what I'm capable of doing. I think you need to make sure that your portfolio is really curated and speaks to what you want to work on because that will show through. So make really good portfolio now.
Sydney Michuda:
It sounds so simple and as big of a bummer as it is, networking helps so much.
Alex Lazaris:
Absolutely.
Sydney Michuda:
I think every single job that I've ever had, except for the one that I just left, every single one, was because of a connection and because of hard work and my portfolio and all those other things. But what gets your foot in the door sometimes is that friend of a friend that works at a place and they just happen to have an opening, which can be really great, but also, again, a huge bummer if you don't like networking and going to those events. Absolutely. Especially with what's happening in the world.
Alex Lazaris:
Right now in a post COVID world. Definitely go do design events or hang out with other people, but also whatever experiences you're having with people online. I know a lot of people are playing a lot more video games than they normally do and stuff like that, but just throw your foot out there and just say, hey, you know what, guys? If you're playing video games with somebody, just say, hey, I'm looking for a design job. Anybody have any work that they can throw my way, I would love to get it out there and just try it and learn it and be more professional so you never know who you might know. You could be at a gas station one day and somebody you meet there can give you a job.
Sydney Michuda:
Right.
Alex Lazaris:
Just say you're available. Put it out in the world.
Sydney Michuda:
Right. And one of those things that I always refer back to is people don't really know what you're capable of unless they can see what you're capable of. So even if it requires just you creating your entire own new fake brand or an entirely fake advertising campaign, having that in your portfolio can help so much. And also it just shows that you have the drive to want to do that. I know when I applied for a job a while back, one of the reasons that got my foot in the door was that they noticed how much side work I did for myself and they saw that that was a really just pretty sweet initiative.
Alex Lazaris:
Yeah. I cannot harp on that enough. The personal side project thing where you just make your own thing or brand or whatever kind of project you want to work on, that's the projects that typically get you the work because it shows just how excited you are about the subject or the industry even. I was on Adobe Live, I think, three years ago doing these sorbo tequila bottles. And that was a project just for Adobe Live. And I went and I made it. I built out the labels, put them on bottles, photographed the bottles, and put that into my case study and presented it like it's real work. Even though you can go through and watch me do and talk about how it's just for Adobe Live and all these other things. That project has given me, like, 99% of my bottle and packaging work since I started my design firm.
Sydney Michuda:
That's awesome.
Alex Lazaris:
Yeah. It's those side projects that get you, like, your foot in the door, right? Do them.
Sydney Michuda:
Yeah, do it.
Alex Lazaris:
Do it. Nike sponsorship now be great. Yeah, I love that type in the middle there. It looks really good.
Sydney Michuda:
Oh, thanks.
Alex Lazaris:
Kind of has, like, a nice little wood fire oven feeling right now.
Sydney Michuda:
Yeah. One of the things that I always do as a designer, one of my go to's is just to have a million different type layouts and lockups.
Alex Lazaris:
Absolutely.
Sydney Michuda:
And one of my introductory stages like this is just to go wild and explore as much as I can. So some of these are definitely not winners, but it's just nice to explore and see what the possibilities are with these letters, for sure.
Alex Lazaris:
And you won't really know, until you start making them.
Sydney Michuda:
Exactly.
Alex Lazaris:
Great thing.
Sydney Michuda:
Yeah.
Alex Lazaris:
Biola says my day job has nothing to do with design. That's okay. You don't have to. I've done some mentoring in the Bay Area where I met a person who was working as a bank teller, which is, like, the most non designing job you could ever probably have.
Sydney Michuda:
Yeah. Seriously.
Alex Lazaris:
She came into a mentor night and showed me her portfolio, and I was just like, wow, this is incredible. And it was just all work that she did for fun, for friends and family members, and it was just so inspiring. And she was like, I just want to get into the design industry. I was like, you should, because, girl, you're there. You're there. You're doing incredible.
Sydney Michuda:
Right.
Alex Lazaris:
You don't have to have a design job to be a designer.
Sydney Michuda:
Right.
Alex Lazaris:
Just in case you guys didn't know that.
Sydney Michuda:
Yeah. Starting to look like a protractor.
Alex Lazaris:
Like, it measure the degrees of the kiln.
Sydney Michuda:
Yeah. Cool.
Alex Lazaris:
What resources do you use for inspiration when starting a new project? It's a good question.
Sydney Michuda:
Yeah. Personally, I use just a wide variety. One of my go to's is always going to be Pinterest. Since I've been on Pinterest for so many years, it's really curated for exactly what I want. So I don't really see a lot of that crappy calligraphy or I don't know, all those crafts and stuff like that. But a lot of mine is really tailored for design.
Alex Lazaris:
Kittens.
Sydney Michuda:
Yeah. There they are. I always use pinterest. Not logged in right now, but everyone knows about that. I use Behance all the time. Just a bunch of different mood boards.
Alex Lazaris:
You can see how I stolen my mood boards.
Sydney Michuda:
I appreciate it.
Alex Lazaris:
I was like, Why? I've seen all those in mine.
Sydney Michuda:
That's great. Yeah, so, like, separating them out between branding, packaging, illustration, just a whole bunch of different mood boards. Especially Behance is always really professional work, too, whereas sometimes Pinterest is a little bit lo fi and not as professional as you might want. But Behance is great, and it's gotten.
Alex Lazaris:
Even better in the last week. I feel like they have the Search by Similar feature now on certain projects, like certain images, and you just click that, and it does like the whole Google Images thing where it brings up similar visuals. So if you find a project that you're like, I really like the aesthetic of this, then you can click the Search by Similar, and then it will pull up a bunch of projects or images that are visually similar. So I've used it to find new inspiration pieces or help define a mood board for me, and it's awesome.
Sydney Michuda:
That's really cool.
Alex Lazaris:
That's exciting.
Sydney Michuda:
Yeah. I feel like with Behance, a lot of the times what I am shown is the really cool professional stuff, and there's a little bit less of the small time designers, I guess. So it'd be really cool to have that. Search function to see just everything else that's out there too.
Alex Lazaris:
Exactly. Sometimes you're thinking about what does a clay logo look like?
Sydney Michuda:
Right?
Alex Lazaris:
But then by doing a visual search to similar, you get a completely different type of project and it brings you up with the same aesthetic you're looking for so you can kind of see how it's used, which is awesome. Let me see here. Rachel asked how do you show the client where the project is headed or final stages without giving them the assets for payment purposes? You mentioned not handing over assets until payment is made.
Sydney Michuda:
Yeah, so I will actually show you a brand board and hopefully this project will be to the stage by the end of tomorrow's livestream. But where's that good mud one? What I'll do is create different brand boards that look like this. So primary logo against like a main color background, a few different other color options, and then usually a badge, secondary logo, an icon, sometimes a mockup depending on who I'm working with, then just different directions. But yeah, so generally I'll show things in brand boards like this and then we'll go back and forth on a few edits, trying out some other things. She actually just decided to go with this initial first direction, which I'm psyched that I didn't have to do a whole lot of edits for that.
Alex Lazaris:
Absolutely.
Sydney Michuda:
Not that there's anything wrong with clients wanting things to be particular, but yeah, so that's generally how I show them. And then once they have officially approved the brand and their project, then I'll just start packaging everything up in just a whole bunch of different formats.
Alex Lazaris:
Yeah, I agree that's the best way to do it. You put it on a mock up and I think somebody else asked, how do you present a logo to a client? By mocking it up, it helps the client not just see this flat photo, but it gives them an idea of how this could live in space. Or how does it look on a wall, how does it look on a coffee mug? Whatever it is, for the business that they can start to see their brand kind of come to life.
Sydney Michuda:
Yeah, that's actually the most recent one for this client. First of all, this is just such a fun project to work on, but I could definitely tell that mockups were going to be a huge thing for her. So I made different t shirt designs stickers like one of those keychains more t shirts than pennants. And then since it was a food truck, later on, I helped with the truck design and helped mock that up. But yeah, mockups definitely help the client fully visualize what you're doing instead of just having it on a flat color.
Alex Lazaris:
Absolutely. And you can easily grab great stock photos from like Unsplash for free or you can get like premium ones from Adobe stock. And those are also just great ways to kind know, show the environment, show the lifestyle to the client. Awesome stuff to do.
Sydney Michuda:
Yeah, absolutely.
Alex Lazaris:
David asked this might be a question for part two, but how do you present your revision stages? Is it a repeat of how you would present the original concepts, or do you change it up a bit?
Sydney Michuda:
I'd say it's kind of a repeat of what I did the first time, just because I feel like if I had to redo things, it would create more work than is necessary. So generally I'll just see here just, like, adjust a few things here and there. You can kind of see the colors start to change, the brand board start to change. So for the most part, I'll keep the same assets in place, but just change up what the client is requesting, whether it's messaging or other things, I guess.
Alex Lazaris:
Yeah.
Sydney Michuda:
As soon as I switch a tool, I get very distracted.
Alex Lazaris:
Totally. I think it really depends on the client. Right. I think depending on how far along in the revision it is. What type of revision is it? If it's just a small little incremental change like you said, just go in there, swap it out really quickly, and then they're like, Great, that's perfect. That's actually exactly what I wanted. But if it's a complete redo or redesign, then you're probably going to use different mockups because the mood may have shifted. The lifestyle might not be exactly what you thought it was to begin with.
Sydney Michuda:
Right.
Alex Lazaris:
Just really depends, which I hate saying that 99% of our jobs is it depends.
Sydney Michuda:
Right?
Alex Lazaris:
It does.
Sydney Michuda:
Right? Our title should be it dependers.
Alex Lazaris:
Exactly.
Sydney Michuda:
Graphic Designers.
Alex Lazaris:
That's awesome. Robert goes, do you use any security protection features in PDF to stop clients from just walking off with your work? No, I'm not really worried about my clients stealing my stuff. I'm more worried about people on the Internet, so don't do that, please. If you're watching the stream, don't steal people's work.
Sydney Michuda:
That's not good.
Alex Lazaris:
That's my spiel for today.
Sydney Michuda:
Usually, I guess I'd say my clients don't really have Adobe Illustrator, so I'm not as worried about them manipulating things. But yeah, that's not a situation that I've ever encountered, which is really nice, actually.
Alex Lazaris:
Yeah. And then if they do steal your stuff, there's legal things that can happen because of that and they don't pay you.
Sydney Michuda:
Right, yeah.
Alex Lazaris:
That's not such a big thing. I think if people aren't going to want to pay you, it's because they don't like the design and they just want to cut ties.
Sydney Michuda:
Right.
Alex Lazaris:
But if they like the work, they probably also would like to pay you, right? I don't know. Maybe that's my naive thinking.
Sydney Michuda:
Yeah.
Alex Lazaris:
Rachel's like, I love that this live series serves as time for Sydney to work on actual work, get the project done. It's amazing.
Sydney Michuda:
Yeah.
Alex Lazaris:
I think that's the best way to see work happen real time. Like seeing professionals do really great work and see how they're trying to solve real client problems.
Sydney Michuda:
Totally. Yeah. I honestly always work way better with a brief. What is going on over there? Just because I don't know. As a graphic designer, I am aware of the limitless possibilities in the entire world. So that always just helps when I can have a brief and a client to tell me they want something in this category with this style, because otherwise I can never narrow it down for myself.
Alex Lazaris:
Yeah, exactly. I think even if you guys are trying to do your own side projects or personal projects or whatever at home, give yourself constraints. That way you can actually have a brief to go against. It also helps if you say, whenever you're presenting your case studies, these are the constraints that I was working with, and this is how I solve these problems. And as a hiring manager, I want to make sure that my designers can defend their creative and they actually have real thought and strategy behind it rather than just making pretty things.
Sydney Michuda:
Right, for sure. Yeah. Whenever I would do my own side projects, I would always try to give myself some sort of rules and guidelines just because yeah, without that, I just stall, basically.
Alex Lazaris:
Absolutely. Yeah. It's tough. Like you said, the options are limitless.
Sydney Michuda:
Right.
Alex Lazaris:
And they asked, Are you using a pen or a mouse?
Sydney Michuda:
I'm using a mouse right now. I used to use a wacom tablet all the time, but the one that I currently have broke, so it's just been like I just haven't gotten around to buying a new one because I'd like to eventually buy a nice fancy one. Absolutely. But, yeah, right now it's just an Apple mouse.
Alex Lazaris:
Yeah. Typically when I'm working in Illustrator, I'll use just a mouse, and then if I'm doing, like, photo editing or whatever, I'll just use my wacom. But I don't know, I like the mouse way more for doing line work like you're doing.
Sydney Michuda:
I actually work the opposite of what you should probably do before, where I would use the wacom tablet just for everyday stuff like clicking around with the pen tool or type, or just literally anything, even just scrolling on the Internet. But yeah, when it came to having to do more painterly stuff, my hand and my brain just could not get the two to work. It's much better for me on the iPad when you can see what your fingers are doing.
Alex Lazaris:
Absolutely.
Sydney Michuda:
Yeah. I could never get the tablet to work for my brain in that sense.
Alex Lazaris:
Chris Olsen says Briefbox has some sample briefs. That's really cool. I didn't even think about that. Go to the Internet for your own little creative brief.
Sydney Michuda:
Yeah, that sounds awesome.
Alex Lazaris:
And if you're doing your own side project, you could just go down the street, depending on how outside you are right now. But you can go see a local business and be like, oh, if I was to redesign that business and then take before Photos and then make a little case study about before and afters by being like, oh, there's, like, a laundry mat in my neighborhood. This is how they did it. Here's what a rebrand could look like or an ice cream place or whatever.
Sydney Michuda:
For sure. Yeah. And I know that there's a ton of designers out there too. Like, I think Lauren Ham has her homework series or whatever. I think hers is much more lettering based. So if you're interested in getting into more lettering work, if you subscribe to her newsletter, she always has lettering prompts, so that's always something cool to check out.
Alex Lazaris:
Yeah, that's awesome. What was I going to say? Oh, we have 13 minutes till we go into the daily creative Challenge, so make sure you guys are uploading it to the discord so we can check it all out together. And Rachel asks, how much of your logo work do you do in Procreate versus Adobe Illustrator?
Sydney Michuda:
I would say about, like 75% in Illustrator, the other 25 in other iPad apps. I like to get my like I'll go through the discovery process with the mood boards, start making these ideas that I mentioned earlier, and then from there, I'll just start sketching things that are on either this idea list or that are just coming to me as I'm doing more sketches. Like, I didn't think of this thing initially. I just started making it, and it was really fun to draw. This would make actually a pretty fun tatoo. Also love it.
Alex Lazaris:
Let's make everything tattoos.
Sydney Michuda:
Yes, essentially. Yeah. I have a still life tattoo on my arm, and it's fun. Yeah, anything can be a tattoo. True. But yeah. What was the question again?
Alex Lazaris:
Procreate versus Illustrator. How much time put into them?
Sydney Michuda:
Yeah, I'd say 75% in Illustrator.
Alex Lazaris:
And I will answer that I spend all of it in Illustrator. Zero time appropriate. So it's really whatever workflow you guys like, you could say, how much time do you spend in a notebook or anything like that.
Sydney Michuda:
Yeah, it depends, again, based on how much of a drawer you are. I know that people are always very concerned that they think that if they don't have good sketching or illustration skills, they can't be a graphic designer, which is completely false, but it doesn't hurt. So if you're just a designer that isn't as inclined to start sketching right away, then Illustrator would probably be your first choice.
Alex Lazaris:
Yeah, absolutely. I am not the biggest sketching fan. I don't do that. I just jump straight into Illustrator and start riffing. I mean, I guess, again, it goes back to it depends, but most of my projects are going to start with Illustrator, and then I'll mess around with it. Inside of that, it just helps me get to good faster versus spending a bunch of time sketching and being like, you know what? All these ideas aren't very great, and then if I like one, then I have to go trace it. So for me, it's just quicker that way.
Sydney Michuda:
Yeah. See, for me, sometimes I feel that way, but then also the opposite, where sometimes for me, sketching, if I can just draw it out real quick, I don't have to worry about making shapes in Illustrator, where it's going to take a little while to really finesse to make it look exactly so.
Alex Lazaris:
Yeah, it oh, David, I keep forgetting to ask your question. I'm sorry, man. He wants to know who is your dream?
Sydney Michuda:
Um, I have always wanted to work with a local deli because, I don't know, I love food, like every human being does, but I think it would just be really cool to work with a local deli that you can create their entire brand. You can create their signage, their social media, their advertising. Make it kind of vintagey, but not too over the top. Make it fun and a little bit kooky and crazy and witty. Have a lot of fun puns rolling around.
Alex Lazaris:
I love a good pun.
Sydney Michuda:
Yeah. When it's appropriately timed, I love a good pun. And then hopefully they would create their own line of canned wine or cheeses or something like that, so I could help with the packaging too. So my ideal client in the future, or Dream client, would be a deli.
Alex Lazaris:
You're getting me hungry just thinking about it.
Sydney Michuda:
Yeah.
Alex Lazaris:
Like, oh, think about all these meats and cheeses I can design for now.
Sydney Michuda:
Right? It yeah, I guess more general dream clients would just be like more small makers that I'm working with. I love being able to work with the main creative person behind their brand because they care so much about it. Yeah.
Alex Lazaris:
I think that's one of the great things about this field is that we are service providers and there's a person on the other end that is coming to you for an expertise, and at times it's very vulnerable. But you have such a huge impact for some of these people. Giving them a great brand could be a huge lift for their whole family. And you're helping a small business. People are relying on your work to do good for their of. It can be very spiritual at times, I feel like.
Sydney Michuda:
Yeah, absolutely. Alex, which hand do you prefer? This one or that?
Alex Lazaris:
Uh, I think the one on the yeah, yeah. I think that gap the negative space, I think is throwing me off just a tiny bit on the left. Yeah. You know where the thumb kind of like, pinches in. Yeah, I think it's a little bit more simple on the right.
Sydney Michuda:
Yeah, I'll go with that one. I had to take pictures of my own hands because normally when I try to draw hands, as everyone knows, that's a really difficult thing to try to draw so hard. So with these, I took pictures of my own hand with my phone and then placed it into my iPad and then sketched it out from there. Normally I'm not a big fan of tracing things like that, but when it's a hand, sometimes you just have to.
Alex Lazaris:
Do it and getting all the dimensions correct for a like you can make a really wonky looking hand real fast.
Sydney Michuda:
Yeah, no kidding.
Alex Lazaris:
Joseph says when does the project start? Billing start? Do you add phone calls, meetings, emails, conversations, time to your final project sum using timer or do you use math? Yes, math is good, which adds up all the brainstorming. All right, so project billing, so you start as soon as you have your contract set. The initial calls you typically have with a client I don't bill for and then as soon as after we have the contract done, billing starts for everything. For meetings and stuff. I typically don't bill for emails, but if the client is wanting a very in depth email conversation, then I would probably bill for that. I don't really bill for slack messages. Sometimes, you know, sometimes you have a very Chatty Cathy on the other side and it's going to eat up a whole day.
Sydney Michuda:
Right.
Alex Lazaris:
Best judgment.
Sydney Michuda:
Right. Generally what I like to do too is just add hours for project management into your scope that you're going to spend 4 hours on mood boarding, 15 hours on the first round, things like that. And then sometimes I'll add in like 3 hours for project management, which the emails and phone calls kind of fall into that realm.
Alex Lazaris:
Absolutely. Yep. And Sarah asked, do you both have social media where we can follow you at? I am doing the whole anti social media and stuff now, but I do have an active Behance, so you guys can go check it out there. But Sydney, where can they find you on social?
Sydney Michuda:
You can find me at supercreative Co for my Instagram, this is where I post a lot of things more on a daily basis, whether it's just aspects of a project. Let's see, yeah, different things that I make for my shop, prints and things like that. So yeah, you can follow along on my Instagram here. Generally I'll have a link to my website, but yeah, I have my portfolio, different little fun products and stuff. And then also my Behance, which I try to update pretty regularly. Like whenever I update my website, I'll update my Behance as well.
Alex Lazaris:
Absolutely.
Sydney Michuda:
All are good options.
Alex Lazaris:
You guys have less than five minutes to get your projects into the daily creative challenge. Make sure you use Voodoo Val's link above. She reposted it a couple times already to post it in Discord so we can check a look at it. Joke. Mira says on Alex, what basis did you decide upon the choice between using your name or sort of an agency name for your freelance business? I like my last name, so I did it I know it's really narcissistic to say that, especially because I don't typically like to come at it from that angle with clients, but for me, it was like a business decision. I didn't want to make up a fake name. I think it's just a personal preference. It doesn't really matter as long as you make good work and treat your customers right.
Sydney Michuda:
Yeah, I don't have as badass of a last name as you do.
Alex Lazaris:
What are you talking about? Your last name is great.
Sydney Michuda:
I don't know. People never know how to pronounce it, and I don't mind it either way, but yeah, I definitely experimented with Sydney Kate Design Co. Which is kate is my middle name, but I also wanted to do breakfast for Dinner design Co. And not have anything to do with breakfast at all. Just never say anything about it.
Alex Lazaris:
Yeah, absolutely.
Sydney Michuda:
But that was already taken. But yeah, then I went with super creative. Just because I say the word super all the time and it just has kind of a cheery, peppy attitude to it and it's kind of a little dig it myself. Like, oh, look at me, I'm super creative.
Alex Lazaris:
Yeah. I mean, there's so many great agency names, and I just felt like I could never top them, so I was just like, I guess my last name will know. Like, there's a moniker I think is a wonderful brand design firm and a wonderful name for all the great work that they do. Hybrid SF, also another great design firm. Gretel, New York. Those are awesome, wonderful shops, but without them doing quality work, that name would fall flat, right?
Sydney Michuda:
Yeah. And I think that using your own name or a brand name, it's either are completely acceptable. I mean, everyone there's just a huge variety of both in the world. But the reason why I chose a different brand name is because I wanted to sell products, so I didn't want my first name on top of a print or a pin.
Alex Lazaris:
Makes sense.
Sydney Michuda:
Not that there's anything wrong with that direction either, but I just wanted to create a whole new brand, basically.
Alex Lazaris:
Yeah, that's a great way to look at it, too. What are your goals? How do you do it right?
Sydney Michuda:
Yeah. What are you trying to create with your business?
Alex Lazaris:
Yeah. And Sarah's asking, how did you make your portfolio? Website? I built mine in squarespace just because it was easy and I was tired of working with WordPress. I've done everything else in between. Webflow is great. It was just easier for me to do it all in squarespace. How did you build yours?
Sydney Michuda:
I also did squarespace.
Alex Lazaris:
Squarespace. There you go.
Sydney Michuda:
Love squarespace. I will love it all the time or every day.
Alex Lazaris:
And if you want, like, a really good e commerce solution, why am I blanking right now? Shopify. Shopify is great also. It's super robust for that stuff, but I think if you're using it, it is awesome. So, got a minute left, everybody get your coaster designs in.
Sydney Michuda:
Yeah. Hopefully tonight I'll do a bit more work on this. So we'll have some colored backgrounds going on. And you can see some of these type lockups that I was creating in these different colors. I'll add the icons in there, experiment with some of these hands and some of these crazy textures that I created up. Really fun to experiment with that tomorrow.
Alex Lazaris:
And Robert asks, do you use the new online review features in Illustrator for feedback during the process?
Sydney Michuda:
No, I don't know about that.
Alex Lazaris:
So I don't use it either. Right. So not yet. I think I'm just still in my antiquated process. Sorry. Sorry, Robert. I have not used it yet.
Sydney Michuda:
Is that like a way for clients to be able to see what you're doing and working on and comment on it?
Alex Lazaris:
I think it's like I'm not going to speak to it. I don't know enough details to give a clear answer for that. I would assume it's like dropboxes, like paper where you can comment on sections and review and change.
Sydney Michuda:
Oh, okay.
Alex Lazaris:
But maybe not. Yeah. Great question, Robert. All right, so I know we are at the mark now for design feedback. So everybody get your projects in there, right?
Sydney Michuda:
Meow, yeah, we're going to be talking about coaster designs. You.
Alex Lazaris:
So we've got coasters, everyone. All right, make sure you get your coasters in there and we're going to go review them real quick. I love the idea of smiley faces. Smiley faces are one of my favorite things in the world. So I love the fact that you use these, the coffee cups and the Good Morning Sunshine as a coaster. I think I would love to see this as a series of different coasters, maybe. I think this is fun. It's playful. I don't know. What are your thoughts?
Sydney Michuda:
I'm in the same boat. I love when people can make smiley faces out of slightly unconventional things. I was kind of trying to toy around with that in my sketching process, but yeah, I think that this would make a really great series if there was different colors, different phrases. And then you could always incorporate different parts of the coffee making process, too. Like the little espresso glasses or the I don't know, just other coffee things, I guess.
Alex Lazaris:
Yeah. I was thinking the one piece for me is that I would probably want it to maybe explore what, like you said, what other coffee elements are. Because the eyes for me, a little bit hard to read and it took me a while to realize, oh, that's a smiley face. So maybe you're doing a top down version of a late right where you can have the swirls or whatever, make it like the negative space. Because right now the top of the eye is kind of where I want the people to be at. So I think for me, it's just a little hard to read. But I think it's a cool concept, and I love it's kind of where it's at. A little side coaster, a little unconventional side. Yeah, I like the type a lot. Is that wisdom script? No, it's not wisdom script. What type is that? Now I'm going to think about this all night.
Sydney Michuda:
Right.
Alex Lazaris:
I love breakfast foods, all that stuff. I'm very excited for this. What I would say is that you've got these really cool characters inside the type, but then you've got just a mono white line, like, glow on both the bottom and the top. I think if you would use the width tool in Illustrator to increase maybe the thickness on one side of the line weight, that would be super helpful just to keep everything being a little bit more consistent throughout.
Sydney Michuda:
Yeah, I think that's a good call. I'd like to see how it would look, too, with that line extended to kind of meet the edge of the capital D or the letters in there. Not exactly, like, touching, but have a consistent width between the two. So it's a full shape around there. But I definitely love the diner aspect. I love anything vintage inspired design.
Alex Lazaris:
Absolutely. And that sun is really fun.
Sydney Michuda:
Yeah.
Alex Lazaris:
Day two coasters, let's go. All right. Breakfast all day.
Sydney Michuda:
So wait, are these coasters that are, like, diner breakfast themed?
Alex Lazaris:
They are indeed.
Sydney Michuda:
Okay. Got you.
Alex Lazaris:
It's breakfast time.
Sydney Michuda:
Cool. I really like that bottom lockup. That's a really fun use of type. It's kind of mixed between a burger like that, I think.
Alex Lazaris:
Yeah. Man, you guys are making me hungry again. I just forgot about how hungry I was. Right. I like the type all the way around the coaster. I think that's a really fun way to bring everything in. I would say I would probably want the color palette of the first coaster to have a little bit more consistency with the egg. Like, maybe more yellow orange instead of just brown. But I get that it's pulling in the diner logo, so maybe that's fine. I would love to see somebody just at the diner get really confused when they look down in their glass and be like, oh, my gosh, that's an egg in the bottom of my glass.
Sydney Michuda:
Put an egg in my cup. Yeah.
Alex Lazaris:
Who did that?
Sydney Michuda:
Something that'd be really cool with this one, too, because looking at an egg top down, like, that kind of looks like a frying pan. So you could add, like, a little frying pan handle on it. Granted, that would be a die cut, so it'd be a little bit more expensive if this was for a real business. But you can make, like, a frying pan coaster.
Alex Lazaris:
That would be fun.
Sydney Michuda:
Add some bacon in.
Alex Lazaris:
Yeah, actually, yeah, you could just use the frying pan texture. Yeah, that's a really good idea. Well done.
Sydney Michuda:
Thank you.
Alex Lazaris:
Don't listen to me. Listen to her. She's great. All right, so the other thing, brian says that the font is Parkside regular. Boom, POW.
Sydney Michuda:
Cool.
Alex Lazaris:
Parkside regular. Was that diner font?
Sydney Michuda:
Very nice.
Alex Lazaris:
Kendra says, I didn't know about these creative challenges. They're so cool. Yes, they are. They are very cool. Very fun. I think we're missing the coaster part of this, but I think I can envision it. And it looks yeah, I think for just a consistent part of things, I probably leave off the copy at the bottom just so it doesn't break the kind of circle motif you've got going. But I think within the crop guides and everything, probably be fine. Breakfast time. Now I want coffee, too. This is funny because I could actually see this coaster being used in a hotel.
Sydney Michuda:
I was going to say a hotel cafe, too. Yeah.
Alex Lazaris:
I feel like this is everything I see anytime you check in a hotel, it's perfect. Yeah, it's cool.
Sydney Michuda:
Yeah. Nice and calm.
Alex Lazaris:
The sun. Yeah, it's fun. I love even the coffee stain kind of texture around the outside is kind of like a nice subtle nod.
Sydney Michuda:
Yeah, that's great. This one's cool.
Alex Lazaris:
Yeah, go ahead.
Sydney Michuda:
Very vintage. Fifty s. Sixty s nuclear era like Fallout four kind of aesthetic Nailed it.
Alex Lazaris:
I was just about to say this gives me lots of Fallout vibes.
Sydney Michuda:
Oh, I love that game.
Alex Lazaris:
Yeah, I want this now. I want, like, a NUCA cola. Yeah. This is wonderful. Thank you for making us feel a certain way.
Sydney Michuda:
Now the treatment on the type is really nice, too, because you have that shadow behind it, which is a really small detail, but it adds so much extra stuff to a layout. You have that diamond at the bottom, which helps balance it, and the banner at the top, which plays really well again, into that inverted shape there.
Alex Lazaris:
Absolutely. Yeah. This is really cool. Yeah. And you got the neutron going, too. You've nailed this. Good job. We can all go home now.
Sydney Michuda:
Yeah.
Alex Lazaris:
First time from Sarah. Welcome, Sarah. This is awesome.
Sydney Michuda:
Yeah.
Alex Lazaris:
Very cool use of the diner motif again. Throwback retro vibes with the stars and the diamonds. Love the background pattern kind of coming out from that. Everybody's nailing the type. This is, like, really impressive. It's not easy to do a retro throwback, but everybody's doing awesome well.
Sydney Michuda:
And it's nice, too, that there's just a brief description of what this hypothetical designer or diner would offer, like the burgers, breakfast burritos all day, open 24/7. So there's those extra details mixed in there, too.
Alex Lazaris:
Yeah, absolutely. Kari's creative diner.
Sydney Michuda:
It's a fun little burger.
Alex Lazaris:
Boom, POW. So breakfast all day gets a little hard to read there, so I'd say just bump up the copy a little bit more around the corner here. You can kind of see how the type kind of almost touches these lines. So I would just say make sure that your spacing feels a little bit more even, because I. Think there's a lot of negative space here around the burger, but then it's super tight around the outer ring. So just be mindful of those little details. But yeah, burger, I'm hungry. Again. This is nicer. More nice. Pull this up into another window. Again, I think we're still having the same kind of little type issue at the bottom and it might just be the typeface on every day, but it gets a little pixelated and harder to read on that. I would also say maybe use the Shape Tool and then do Type on Path to kind of do an arc over the burger because you have a nice visual language on the hamburger itself with this kind of like semicircle. So if you could reinforce that design language through how the type is warping around it, I think you're going to find that the design feels a little bit more cohesive.
Sydney Michuda:
Yeah, I do think that this one makes a little bit better use of the space compared to the first one, which is absolutely it's nice to see two different options, too, so you can kind of see how you went from one point to another and you kind of realize that along your process. One thing that I would say, too, is that as a rule of thumb, I try not to track out lowercase letters too much. This is lowercase and it is tracked out a little bit further than I would generally do. So I would consider with this one maybe switching to an All Caps font, maybe something similar to what might be going on down here with the breakfast all day or just like a good, strong, clean All Caps San Serif or great, great advice.
Alex Lazaris:
Yeah, it's hard to do the lowercase tracked out and I love that Val is like, I really love the Squiggly Lettuce. The Squiggly lettuce is super playful and I think you have a lot of really fun things happening with this.
Sydney Michuda:
Yeah.
Alex Lazaris:
Another rise and shine. Let me open this guy up again. Going into the whole we love smiley faces and how could you not love this? This kind of reminds me of those, like, Jimmy Dean commercials with the sun coming around. Can't complain. I think maybe the type could be a little bit bigger or maybe the sun is a little bit less sharp because I think you have like a really bubbly kind of mono weight line typeface happening. So if you could incorporate that a little bit more into the piece, whether that's like giving the smiley that same treatment of the stroke type where it's like rounded corners and things like that, so it's not just a square. And then I would probably even take this stroked outside and bump it up to be the consistent kind of thickness of the type as well.
Sydney Michuda:
Yeah. Again, love a smiley face. It just puts a smile on your face automatically just seeing it. And with this one, I can kind of tell that the sun is a little bit off center from the larger circle here. And I know that that's because you incorporated type above that, so you wanted to give the type enough breathing room. But I think if the sun was centered and it was scaled down just a little bit, then you could even add another layer of text underneath the sun. Just another phrase that can kind of play along with it. Like, good morning, sunshine, glad you're awake. I don't know.
Alex Lazaris:
Yeah, have a great day or whatever.
Sydney Michuda:
You made it up to bed.
Alex Lazaris:
I think that's really great advice, especially whenever you think about if this is a real coaster, they're probably going to be thrown down on a table. And I guess I'm probably just immature and I like to mess with my coasters. But you think about a coaster is never going to be just perfectly straight on, but they spin around. They might be at a ten degree, 15 degree, 45 degree angle. So if you consider that sun, you're not having the sun kind of rotate and wobble whenever the coaster does spin around. So just think about that. Great advice. Kitties and cakes. Gluten free cat cafe. This is incredible. I love the background pattern. I love the whole concept. It's really great.
Sydney Michuda:
I wish Poe was walking around right now. I don't know where he is, but he would love this one too.
Alex Lazaris:
Yes.
Sydney Michuda:
My kitten that I was about right. Yeah. My kitten that I introduced earlier on.
Alex Lazaris:
Amazing. That's really cool. I like the idea of incorporating the coaster to be more than just a circle. It's now a ball of yarn. I think that's really playful and fun. I think it's probably going to be a little bit hard to read at smaller sizes, like on a table and stuff, so maybe there's an opportunity to mess with the layout a little bit where maybe the cat goes up and the sun goes up with it as well. Just kind of center that all on the coaster itself. But really fun, playful.
Sydney Michuda:
Yeah, yeah. I think stacking the elements would be a good idea. Just create a little bit more space, but yeah, just like you, Alex. I love the idea that it's like a circular object. So you made the background pattern into something that is also circular, like a ball of.
Alex Lazaris:
It'S so clever.
Sydney Michuda:
Would be branded so well for a Cat Cafe.
Alex Lazaris:
Yeah, exactly. And we all know Cat Cafe is you have a very captive, very passionate audience that will go there.
Sydney Michuda:
Exactly.
Alex Lazaris:
Trying to open original the hive. I really like how you did the shadows and the type. And I think it goes back to the whole retro vibes that we loved about the fallout. But like, the starburst you did are really cool with the little strokes on there. It gives it so much personality.
Sydney Michuda:
Yeah, for sure. I think those stars are really effective too, because they just add that little bit of extra sparkle, for lack of a better term. And that the shape of the exterior shape there is that b, which relates to the hive mentality.
Alex Lazaris:
Yeah, I think it's great. I think this is your day one, right? So not a coaster, but I'm excited to see how that looks in a coaster. I think if you just wanted to leverage this color and then the starburst, boom, simple mic drop. Done. See a good morning, everyone. Jay's coffee cup. Nice. I like the idea of being able to incorporate the coffee, and especially if this coffee cup is actually printed with the logo on there, I think that's a really fun nod to what might be actually on the coffee, like, on the coaster.
Sydney Michuda:
I think the colors are very appropriate for a coffee coaster, too.
Alex Lazaris:
Absolutely. Yeah. That's great. That's a good point. I would say that if you are going to mock up the logo on top of things, just think about the shape. Right? Like, if you're trying to treat this as a coffee cup, maybe warp the type a little bit to make it feel like it's actually kind of rotating in space a little bit. Right now, it just feels like you've stuck a logo in the middle. So if that's kind of what you want to do with how the logo if you don't want to warp the logo, maybe you do a top down version of the coffee cup rather than a silhouette so that you have the design aesthetic and the language and the coffee colors, but then you have the logo just kind of plopped on as like a foam decoration or something. Shift s penguins. Penguins are so cute. Is that shift? No, it's command s. Yeah.
Sydney Michuda:
Come on, Alex.
Alex Lazaris:
I had to look at my keyboard. I'm about computer illiterate.
Sydney Michuda:
That's a really sweet illustration, though, of that guy.
Alex Lazaris:
Yeah, absolutely.
Sydney Michuda:
A lot of great detail. Nice to see the highlight kind of going over his back and then along the legs as well.
Alex Lazaris:
Yeah, absolutely. It's really fun.
Sydney Michuda:
Yeah.
Alex Lazaris:
What a mess. That's how I feel like my son would be waking up with me. Yeah, what a mess.
Sydney Michuda:
That's how I feel every morning.
Alex Lazaris:
Exactly.
Sydney Michuda:
What a mess.
Alex Lazaris:
I like the brushstrokey aspect of it. I think it's a really fun concept. I think parts of it need to be tidied up, though, because I get what you're trying to go for with the rough brushstroke things, but I think sometimes when you go with that aesthetic, you need to like it needs to be perfectly imperfect. Right now, I think there's, like, a little bit of, like let me zoom in on it.
Sydney Michuda:
Those corners.
Alex Lazaris:
Yeah. Just like the w has kind of a broken brush. You kind of want it to be like one stroke and not like three or four strokes in that one direction. Or if it is three or four strokes, in one direction. All of it needs to have three or four strokes in one direction. So it's kind of like this. Like, even in the h right here, that imperfection. If you're going to have imperfections like this throughout, then each ligature needs to have that same approach. I think right now, it feels like you drew over a sketch instead of it being, like, intentionally this way.
Sydney Michuda:
I think it'd be interesting to see what the coffee cup would look like in that same brushstroke style. And again, you could add more coffee related elements in that same brushstroke style to kind of create an actual visual mess on the coaster. Yeah, it might be a little bit much, but could be cool.
Alex Lazaris:
Yeah. And I think what I love about this is also the black on the white coaster. I think that visually is very strong, especially for this painterly effect. It feels like a brushstroke on a white canvas. So I think carrying that through, like she said, on the coffee cup would be awesome. But visually, I think it's really strong. It just needs, like, a little tiny bit of refinement on the mess. But maybe it's also super intentional because it's what a mess.
Sydney Michuda:
Yeah.
Alex Lazaris:
Breakfast all day. I love seeing all these coffee assets since I'm such a big coffee buff. Breakfast all day. I like the idea of locking up the type kind of at that angle so that the art itself can kind of fill that space. I would say maybe you could bump up that coffee cup that's kind of spilling up a little bit more so it kind of breaks the circle.
Sydney Michuda:
Yeah. I think that this one creates a lot of really nice movement, too. Like, just the movement of the coffee kind of spilling up into the air and then breakfast all day kind of looks like it's coming from that same arc of movement there, too. I would track out breakfast all day just a tiny little bit. To me, it looks like it's probably at, like, negative 20, so keep it to zero or maybe a little bit higher.
Alex Lazaris:
I love how precise that is. It looks like it's negative 20.
Sydney Michuda:
Maybe it probably is negative 17. I don't know.
Alex Lazaris:
It's amazing. It's so good. Yeah. Go to zero, not negative 20. Perfect.
Sydney Michuda:
The arc can just do that on its own, too.
Alex Lazaris:
Totally. No, I think it's great. I love the coffee cup with it. The movement, like you said, is awesome. Coaster. Coaster. Oh, my gosh. We were talking about puns earlier. This is brilliant. Yeah, we love good puns.
Sydney Michuda:
Yeah. Now I'm imagining I would, like, actually like, if I had this coaster at home, I would actually put my toast on it because I don't want to get a plate dirty.
Alex Lazaris:
Yeah, absolutely. So what was done really well for this is, as we were kind of talking about earlier, is like, whenever you mock up these assets, it helps kind of create the vibe and the lifestyle. And so you can use these tricks to kind of make your artwork kind of pop or convey things really nicely. So I love the shadow mockup. I love the poster mockup where it's kind of like showing it being worn and distressed. I think that for the sake of it being a coaster, maybe the folded in fours isn't the correct texture for it, just because coasters are pretty thick paper, and if they're folded at that extent, I think it's probably dead. You'll probably rip the paper because they're so thick. So I think love the texture approach with it. Love the shadow mockup. I just think you probably aren't folding a coaster that's two inches by two inches. So maybe just think about that with your mockups. I love the knocked out type and stuff in the background. I like the idea of the toaster popping in at the bottom, too.
Sydney Michuda:
Yeah, I love how the bread overlaps the type that just creates just an extra level of dimension that wouldn't be there if that toast wasn't there at all. I think that's a great addition.
Alex Lazaris:
It's looking real crisp.
Sydney Michuda:
Yes.
Alex Lazaris:
I don't have any other good puns. Gospel call now. Perfect. All right, so that's all of the daily creative challenges. I think if you could show us your screen and kind of give us a heads up for what are we going to be working on tomorrow.
Sydney Michuda:
What? Hello. Righteous. All right, so tomorrow I'm going to continue working with this brand. Today was a lot of just laying out all the puzzle pieces on one surface, and then I'm going to do a little bit more work tonight. But I'll pretty much decide on two or three different distinct directions. And as you can see, I started working with these color palettes. I'll probably start blocking those out as full on brand boards. I'll incorporate some of these illustrations that I made and we can see these come to fruition. And if this one doesn't get chosen, I'll just get that as a tattoo. Instead, start working with some of these really fun shapes that I didn't get to quite yet. And what I really want to do is incorporate some of these patterns in these shapes over here. But that will all come tomorrow. So, yeah, this has been just really amazing hanging out with you guys, answering some of your questions. If anyone has any other questions later on that we didn't get to, feel free to send me a message through my website. Again, my website is supercreative Co. You can click around and view my portfolio. You can also find me on Instagram at supercreative co. Nice and consistent URLs there and handles. Then also on behance.
Alex Lazaris:
Yeah, that's perfect. And if you guys come ready with lots of questions for tomorrow, or like she said, you can DM her. But we'll be back here tomorrow. We are very excited to show you guys kind of the next steps for this branding project. So come with all your business questions, all your design questions, illustrator questions, anything you guys might have. And we look forward to kind of picking it up from there.
Sydney Michuda:
Yeah. Bye, guys. Thanks for hanging trees, the tree and that get out trees keep down tree and that's and yellow jam give it about trees keep them tree and my.
