Norebbo.com – Free Illustration and Design

Tips for Young Designers

It occurred to me the other day that I am no longer a young designer. Even though I can still remember it like it was yesterday, it has been 14 years since I graduated from college (*sigh*). I’ve had a great career up to this point, and I feel fortunate to have worked with some of the most talented people in the industry. Along the way, I’ve experienced the thrill of victory as well as the agony of defeat. It’s been an adventure to say the least.

As I approach the mid-point of my design career, I’d like to take a moment to offer some advice to young designers who are just starting out today. I’ve racked up some pretty good experience through the years, and these are the most important bits of advice I can give to anyone just getting started:

Don’t give away your work (or time) for free

As a budding designer, one of the most degrading things you can do for yourself (and this industry) is to give your work away for free. Would you expect your car mechanic to fix your transmission for free?  Or how about your dentist fixing your teeth as a favor? You have a very specialized talent that people are seeking – so why let them take advantage of that?

Many argue that giving design services away for free is the only way to build up a portfolio, but I disagree. Why not take some time to work on your own projects? Or better yet – how about redesigning some existing poorly-executed design (like a logo or a website) from a well known company? As someone who has interviewed many designers in the past, I really enjoy seeing how a young designer can take something that exists today and make it better. To me, the “before and after” examples are the money shot in a job interview.

Here’s another thing to think about: even if you are just starting out and you have no clients, giving your services away can be detrimental over the long term. In the future, will your freeloading clients be willing to pay when you’ve done so much free work for them in the past?

Take your time – don’t become the fastest designer in the studio

I’ve always been a fast worker, and a year-long stint at a high volume exhibit design company about 12 years ago taught me how to be even faster. It wasn’t uncommon to walk into work in the morning with the company sales team waiting for my arrival at  the door, anxious to feed me design requirements from new clients that needed an exhibit design proposal by the end of the day.  Each and every day was filled with crazy deadlines like this, and the only way to keep my head above water was to stop being so analytical about everything and just start sketching like a mad man. If they wanted a custom 48’ x 48’ trade show exhibit designed from scratch within 8 hours (under budget, of course), I could do that – and the sales team (and my boss) began to take this for granted. At first, they felt sorry for putting so much pressure on me, but since I delivered time and time again with good results, it became normal and expected of me.

When I left that job, I (unfortunately) took that work ethic with me. At each and every job I had after that, I became the go-to guy for speedy design. If somebody wanted something done NOW, I was the guy they came to, bypassing every other designer in the studio. Can you see where problems might start to arise? It wasn’t long until I started feeling burned out, and it was my own fault.  Don’t make the same mistake I did. Take your time. Your quality of work-life will be much better.

Give your clients options

If there is one thing that irritates me about asking another designer to do something for me, it’s not receiving enough design concepts in return. If I’m not satisfied with the design, and the designer doesn’t have any other options to show me, it wastes my time and theirs. If the designer had produced multiple solutions for a single task, I (the client) could give more valuable feedback by selecting elements from each that I liked (and disliked). That helps the designer greatly, as he/she could have a much clearer understanding of how to proceed instead of taking another wild shot in the dark hoping to please me.

Of course, we all know that there may not always be enough time to produce multiple concepts for a single task. In that case, you should quickly mock up a few ideas before spending too much time on just one. Show those mockups to the client as soon as you can – before the first formal design review. This will save a lot of time during the course of the project, because you’ll have a much better chance of spending your time working on something your client is happy with.

Learn to accept criticism

Face it – design in subjective, and everybody has an opinion. You’ll never make everyone happy, so just do your best to accept the fact that there are people who won’t like your work no matter how hard you try to please them. I admit that I’ve felt like throwing my hands up in the air in surrender after endless revisions that did not satisfy the client. In situations like this, the only thing you can do is to push on, and accept the fact that in order to satisfy your client, you’ll sometimes need to create things that you aren’t happy with. In situations like this, I always produce two concepts. One for the client – and one for my portfolio.

If you’re just starting out in this business, get ready to hear “I don’t like it”. A lot.

It’s ok to be a niche designer

If there is one thing I regret about my career up to this point, it’s the fact that I spent far too long trying to find my niche. I have a degree in industrial design, and my first job out of college was as a product designer for a large Fortune 500 company. Within a year after that, I was transitioning toward environmental design, which ultimately led to a year long adventure designing trade show exhibits. By this time (1999), the internet was in full swing and I naturally fell into designing websites – there was so much demand for web designers at the time, and even though I had no experience designing for the web, I found myself as a founding member of an internet startup. When the .com bubble burst, I was out of a job and took a role as a visual designer for a large home appliance company designing graphics for touch-screen interfaces. Once I had enough of that, it was on to mobile UI design – which by the way, I am still heavily involved with today.

For all this experience, I still feel lost sometimes. Unsure of who I am as a designer. Whenever I stumble across a really great website, or an incredibly cool series of vector illustrations, I feel inspired. Inspired by these other designers who have so obviously spent their career developing one core talent to the point that they are masters of the art. In fact, I know designers like this, and I hire them from time to time when I need something that I cannot do myself (like, for example, character illustration). Most of them make a pretty good living focusing on one thing, and as they develop their talent, things just keep getting better.

I feel that I do have a broad range of design skills, but they are diluted compared to other superstar designers. I have never spent enough time focusing on one area of design to the point of mastery, and for that I am ashamed. I can design websites, but I feel like there is so much more I want to learn. Same for 3d graphics. And icon design. The list is endless. If I had stayed focused on product design, I wonder how successful I would be today? I’d have 15 years of experience doing that one thing by now, so it does give me reason to think. This is something you need to think about as well. Do you want to be a good designer who can do many things? Or do you want to focus on one thing and become a superstar?

Tags: design advice

The story of how I was banned from Fotolia.com. Twice.

Before I begin, I should say that it may not be appropriate to call this a “story”. It is a factual recount of actual events, and I welcome any representative from Fotolia.com to come here and tell their side of the story should they feel the need to explain why they did what they did. The comments are open, and I welcome any reply from them.

This is what happened

I was an active contributor to Fotolia, and I started uploading my stock images there in the spring of 2008. I was successful there, and my images sold well. In August of that year, I was banned without an explanation. Finally, a phone call and an email to their director of operations revealed that someone was buying my images with a stolen credit card and they banned me because they deemed me to be too much of a risk to Fotolia. Fine – I accepted that and requested payout of my earnings (about $1600 worth at that point). They told me I would be paid, and I thought all was well. A month went by. Two months went by. Nothing. In early October, I sent an email asking for a status update on my payout. No response. Another email a few days later, and again – no response. I was being ignored, and I was starting to feel like I got scammed. This went on for an entire month, and I finally had enough. I was convinced that they were running a crooked operation, so I posted my story on microtockgroup.com for all to see. Guess what happened? Within a few hours of telling this story, I received an email from Fotolia (the same person I spoke with in August) telling me to delete my post or they wouldn’t send me a check. Long story short, I complied and I was paid within several weeks.

A year later, the dust had settled, and I approached Fotolia again about the possibility of reinstating my account. Fact is, they are a big player in the microstock market and I wanted to be a part of it. I may not like the way they run their business, but I wanted in. It was a business decision – my images could earn both Fotolia and myself additional income each month, and I wanted to upload my portfolio there peacefully and without trouble for their administration team. A few emails back and forth to the same Director of Operations, and he agreed to let me start uploading again. Happy to have all of the previous problems behind us, I began to upload my portfolio.

In less than 5 days, I was banned again. My account was totally locked out, and I couldn’t log in. And in typical Fotolia fashion, no explanation was given. My account was simply locked and there was nothing I could do. Several back and forth emails later, I was told that it was a mistake and that they would reinstate my account. A week went by, and nothing happened. Two weeks, and still nothing. All the while, the images that I had already uploaded were online and earning money. Money that I couldn’t access! And the kicker – all attempts to contact Fotolia were met with: “please speak to our Director of Operations about your account”. Trouble is, the Director of Operations wouldn’t return my messages. Again. Convinced that this was not a company I wanted to do business with, I demanded removal of the images I had already uploaded. They complied, and that was that.

On a whim, I tried to contact Fotolia again in June 2010 about the possibility of setting things right. I did not receive a response.

I’m not normally one to burn any bridges, so why did I write this for all to see?

To make other Fotolia contributors aware. Aware that Fotolia management runs their business in a very strict fashion, and they will act harshly and swiftly before allowing anyone who they deem as a threat to defend themselves. As a business owner myself, I can respect that. They have every right to run their business how they choose, and we as contributors must comply with that. But we (the producers of stock images) have choices. There are many outlets available to us to market our work, and we need to choose those outlets carefully. Do yourself (and this industry) a favor and support the outlets who support the contributors in return.

Again, I welcome any and all comments from the Fotolia staff regarding these series of events.

Tags: fotolia

Visual Designer vs. Web Designer vs. Graphic Designer – what does all that mean?

I’ve been called a lot of things, but the only thing that really confuses me is my title. I proclaim myself to be a visual designer. I am not a graphic designer, nor am I exclusively a web designer. But I think there is a chance that I might be a digital designer. Ah, confusing isn’t it? So what do all of these different titles mean? Here are my own personal definitions of the most common titles given to people who create graphics:

Graphic Artist – I have never heard the term “graphic artist” more than I did while working in a large Fortune 500 company in the midwest about 13 years ago. It was a communications company with a small design department, of which I was a core member of. In my three years of employment there, I don’t think I was ever once called by my real name by the executives – I was known simply as “the graphic artist”. Those guys and gals had no real understanding of what I did – all they knew is that I could make pretty PowerPoint graphics for them when called upon. To me, their lack of understanding implied that they looked at me the same way they would a painter or fine artist. So to this day, when I hear someone use the term “graphic artist”, I naturally assume they don’t give a crap about what I do on a day to day basis. “Graphic artist” is simply a catch-all term to conveniently label all graphic people as one of the same.

Graphic Designer – Someone primarily focused on print design is most commonly referred to as a “graphic designer”. These are the people who design magazine and book layouts, print advertisements, banners, and billboards. Of all the graphic designers I’ve worked with over the years, I’ve found most to be highly talented vector artists and illustrators as well.

Web Designer – This one is pretty much self-explanatory I think. A web designer is someone who designs and builds websites. This can include everything from the graphic design and layout of the website, all the way to building and deploying it. In my experience, I’ve found that most web designers are more specialized in one area vs. another (graphics vs. coding). The superstars of web design are the ones who can do everything very well. These people are difficult to find, and if you are lucky enough to come across one – pay them handsomely.

Digital Designer – You know those fancy on-screen menus that come with your DVD and BlueRay movies? That is the work of a digital designer. Digital designers typically work in TV and interactive media, which can also include things like game design and animated websites. Digital designers produce graphics that are rich in mixed media like video, sound, and images.

Visual Designer -A visual designer is someone who dabbles in all aspects of the visual arts. This includes print, web, illustration, and even fine art. Because of the broad range of design categories required n my mind, there are very few truly exceptional visual designers. I’m also noticing many large companies using the term “visual designer” to advertise open design positions, as this implies that they are in need for someone who can do many graphic-related things. So if you are a designer looking for work, take note that anybody looking for a visual designer will work you hard – but it could be a very satisfying experience because of the variety of work involved.

“Visual designer” is the title that I am currently using for myself, and I don’t think it’s working out very well. Whenever I tell someone that I am a “visual designer” it is usually met by blank stares, thus requiring me to take more time for a more detailed explanation. If they still don’t get it after a minute or two of describing the work I do, I realize that I was probably better off by just saying that “I am a graphic artist” to begin with.

Adjusting my digital strategy: out with the old, in with the new (I declare my online store a failure)

If any of you have been paying attention recently, you’ll probably be quite shocked to see that I’ve ditched the idea of having an online store. This is a decision that I have been struggling with quite a bit lately, as I’ve learned one very important lesson over the past three years of trying to get the Norebbo.com marketplace off the ground: basically it comes down to the fact I’m a content producer and NOT a web marketer.

I have been spending far too much time lately working on marketing that online store (with unsatisfactory results), which has been depriving me from my one true passion: graphics and design.

So with that, the online store is dead and the next chapter of the Norebbo saga will be in the form of a casual blog (the one you are reading now).

Mixed emotions are all I can feel at the moment, as part of me feels like I have failed. The performance of the store never really met my expectations, and there was seemingly nothing I could do to gain market share in the microstock business. My full portfolio of images is still selling well on places like dreamstime.com and shutterstock.com, but I just don’t have what it takes to market my own site to the level I wanted to get it to. So…I threw in the towel and raised my hands in surrender. I’m done.

Even though I do feel a sense of failure, I am also filled with giddy excitement about the launch of this blog. I’m also experiencing feelings of relief, because now I feel like I have escaped from the shackles of the store. This blog will allow me to produce content, upload it, and forget it. The content will be exclusive, and FREE. This blog will allow me to be much less formal about the work I do, and I feel like I need that badly.

Enough about that. Now, on to producing more content!

Adobe’s Content Aware Fill feature for Photoshop: 
This. Changes. Everything.

I’ve been really busy for the past 10 days or so trying to put the finishing touches on a series of client projects that needed to be wrapped up by March 31st. Combine that with my always busy schedule of creating and keywording new images, and well…I barely had enough time to breath. During this time, a neat little video surfaced on YouTube that set the graphic design and photography worlds on fire: Content Aware Fill from Adobe had been revealed.

I follow a lot of miscellaneous graphic and web design forums on the internet, and this was the one thing that everyone was talking about. To be honest, I didn’t really have the time to sit through a long video demo so I just blew it off and bookmarked it for later viewing. Finally, with all of my client projects complete, I had a few spare moments to have a gander.

Holy crap.

If you’ve ever struggled with stitching images together, or pulled your hair out trying to remove lens flare, you already know that this is the feature that will save us all from those kinds of technical tasks. The YouTube video made it look like magic (hence the reason for so many calling it a hoax), but I am very curious to see how it will work in the real world. There are many times that I just can’t get an image to look right in FormZ (my 3d modeling software of choice), so I’ll just render the basic image and then spice it up in Photoshop. Cloning, cutting, and pasting is something I do very often, and I’m totally geeked about the amount of time this will save me in post-processing my images.

But is it too good? The only thing about Content Aware Fill that makes me cringe a little is the thought that it might make it easier for image thieves to remove watermarks from copyright protected photos. Of course, there are plenty of people doing that now (manually) so it isn’t like this will spark a new wave of image theft – but I think that there is a strong possibility that it will make it easier for those thieves to get away with it. But such is the life on the internet. As a content producer, I know that it is pretty much impossible to keep people from stealing images if they want them badly enough. If there is a will, there is a way.

Watermark-removal aside, I think Adobe hit a home run with this feature. If it will be included in CS5, sign me up for an upgrade.

Finding inspiration
: A brief explanation of how I come up with ideas for my conceptual illustrations

As you would probably have guessed by taking a 2-minute stroll around my portfolio of illustrations and 3d renderings, a large majority of my work is highly conceptual. To be honest, I don’t have much of an interest in generating images of plain objects sitting on plain backgrounds, as I don’t feel like I’m contributing much to the royalty-free stock market by doing that. I mean really – if you need a picture of a simple book on a white isolated background, there are plenty of other places on the internet where you can easily get that in any color or perspective you need.  Of course, creating simple images of isolated objects is easy and it would be a fast way to boost the size of my portfolio but I have little interest in re-creating such common imagery.

Generating thousands of 3d renderings a year is tough, especially when each one needs to illustrate a specific business metaphor or technology theme. It helps that I have spent many years working for large corporations, because I feel like my head has been forcefully crammed full of those catchy buzz-words and phrases often used in big business such as, “let’s touch base”, “coming down the pike”, and “action items”.  I admit that some of this business-speak is a bit over the top (see, even I do it too) at times, but it is catchy and the most clever ones usually spread like wildfire – until they get played-out and are replaced by something fresh and equally bizarre. The good news for me is that most of them are fairly easy to represent with simple objects, and I can usually come up with several variations of the same buzz-word or cliche in a short amount of time. However, there is one new buzz-word that I’ve been hearing more and more lately, and I have yet to come up with a decent image for it: disintermediate. Basically, I think it means to cut out the middleman, but…I’m not really sure. All I know is that it’s one that I’m starting to hear more and more, and that means I should probably look it up in the dictionary before I get left behind.

Another big source of inspiration for me comes from business journals and financial magazines. Those publications usually include a ton of highly-clever illustrations and photography to support their articles, and I can usually generate several new ideas with a brief thumb-through of each new issue.

Creating these conceptual images is very challenging, but as much as I hate to admit it, my years spent at big mega-corporations have been very good for me. Without that experience, I’m not sure I could have come up with half of the ideas and concepts portrayed in the Norebbo portfolio. I’m always looking out for new trends and buzz-words though, and luckily, there are new ones infecting big-business all the time. I can’t promise that I’ll cover every one of them, but I do have fun trying.

How are people using my images? 
After all these years, I still get a kick of finding my images in use across the Internet.

As a designer who spends nearly all of my working hours making images and graphics for other people, I always find it interesting to see how my work is implemented into their projects. It’s easy if I’m working on a very specific assignment from a paying client, because I get to control every aspect of how that particular image or graphic will be integrated into their design. For a visual designer like myself, that’s a pretty good thing.

But sometimes I have no control over how my work is used, and it’s something I think about a lot when I’m creating Royalty-Free images. I try to imagine how the image will be used, but it’s difficult as everybody has different requirements and objectives for using images and graphics. I realize that it’s impossible to create images that will be perfect for everybody, but the best thing I can do is try and think of how I would integrate the image into my own design. For example, I always try to leave the edges of each image clean so that the buyer can extend it if necessary. I also think about colors and textures, realizing that most people are attracted to brighter colors than I prefer. Really, if I could get away with it, nearly every image I create would be gray, silver, and metallic – but I realize that not everybody likes such a cold and dark style so I keep reminding myself to use bright colors.

Always curious, I’m constantly on the lookout for my Royalty-Free images in use across the internet. Most of the time I’m pleasantly surprised at what I find – my images have been used on corporate websites for Fortune 500 and 100 companies, travel blogs, and multitudes of e-commerce sites. And I seem to be a particular favorite for web template designers, so one of the places I troll frequently is TemplateMonster. There are a lot of my images in use over there.

I’d very much like to see how you are integrating my images, so please feel free to contact me if you would like to show me your layout – and if it’s really good, I just may want to promote it here.

Article and blog writers – use images in your articles!
 Three quick tips for attracting and retaining your readers attention.

Having been in the web design business for over 15 years now, I’ve spent a lot of time around some incredibly intelligent usability experts. One of the most common tirades I’ve heard from them over the years is about the likelihood that, on the internet, nobody will read a large wall of text that is put in front of them. Most will skim the article to find the information they need, and if it’s not found quickly, they won’t stick around. There are several easy ways to retain the attention of your readers:

First (and the most obvious), you need a clear and concise message that gets straight to the point. Your readers aren’t going to stick around long enough anyway, so help them out by giving them the information they need right away.

Second, clean formatting will make your article easier to skim. Brush up on the writing composition skills you learned in elementary school and use paragraphs and bullet points appropriately. Nothing scares off a reader faster than a huge wall of text with long paragraphs and no bullet points. If you let your text have room to breath, it will be much easier for the user to skim your article and extract the information he or she needs.

Finally, adding images to an extremely long article will make it look not so intimidating to your reader, and if the images are chosen correctly, they just might actually help deliver your message and set the tone for the article. At the very least, adding interesting illustrations and photography is a great way to attract and keep your reader’s attention.

Did you know that I allow article and blog writers to use any of my images from this site for free? Yes, that’s true – so feel free to use however many you wish.