Category: A Closer Look

A Closer Look with Alejandro Giraldo

Meet Alejandro Giraldo, an illustrator and art director from Medellín Columbia who has worked on some incredible freelance projects and has great insight into inspiration, motivation and personal projects. Take a closer look!

How long have you been working in your creative field?
I think humans are creative since the day they were born, but some of us just decided to get a diploma and make that for a living. So, I’ve been in my creative field for 28 years and  I’ve been a freelance illustrator for 3 years now.

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A Closer Look with Carl Sutton

Meet Carl Sutton. He is a graphic designer and illustrator living in Wales. His work is an exploration of deconstruction, anatomy, entomology and symmetry and we had the pleasure of getting a closer look into his projects, process and ProSite.

How long have you been working in your creative field?
I’ve been working commercially since I graduated in 2009. Since then I’ve floated between studio and freelance work. These days I work on personal and commercial projects side by side.

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Do your personal projects differ from your professional work? If yes, how so?
Over the years I’ve slowly seen the gap between commercial and personal work close. I try to take as much opportunity with commercial design as possible. I enjoy the challenge of visual communication through collaboration. Visually interpreting concepts or generating ideas from discussions. I retain a certain visual style throughout all of my work but I’m happy to experiment a little more with commercial projects. Widen the palette and try new things.

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A Closer Look with Jessica Henderson

How long have you been in design?
I worked as a full-time designer immediately after I graduated college about 7 years ago. I worked in-house in a University marketing and communications department while going to grad school and switched gears to become an assistant professor after graduating with my MFA about 3 years ago.

Do your personal projects differ from your professional work? If yes, how so?
For sure. I very much have one foot in the “fine art” studio and one in my office. The work I do for clients is strategic, objective-based and bottom-line driven while my studio work is entirely self-directed. I love the freedom to wander here-to not have an explicit strategy or game plan. There’s room for ambiguity, surprise and tension that is typically less desirable in the client-work I do.

A Closer Look with Jessica Henderson

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A Closer Look with Alex Yaeger

We had a great time interviewing Alex Yaeger, a graphic designer and illustrator who focuses on creating original and intriguing concepts to best serve his clients. 

How long have you been in design?
In some ways, since I was a child. My parents were both landscape architects by degree and I was always surrounded by an abundance of drafting tools. I always enjoyed fictional settings in illustrated books and video games that fleshed out their worlds with logos, maps, and schematics. I would often emulate those sorts of creations in my spare time and especially during less-appealing classes in school. At one point, I even designed a logo for a photography studio my mother temporarily worked at. Despite this, I didn’t realize that I wanted to make a career out of my creativity until I was in my second year of college. Having been somewhat aimless and uncertain about my future before, entering the graphic design program really opened my eyes and realized that this was what I was meant to do. Before I left school, I was already tackling freelance and contracted work.

Do your personal projects differ from your professional work? If yes, how so?
I tend to think about each project very passionately. Working professionally, this has caused some deal of anxiety as, in the end: a designer does have to defer final say to a client or director. I have gradually learned to accept this and persevere in fulfilling the duties required of me. I think this is an internal struggle all creatives face when making a living based on their talents, sometimes we care too much for our own good. Personal projects and creative exercises are a good way to prevent burn out and, in the end, tend to appeal to and bring in potential clients the most.

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A Closer Look with Gina Kiel

We had a great time interviewing Gina Kiel, a freelance illustrator based in New Zealand. As a versatile illustrator and full time mom, she emphasizes the importance of maintaining creativity in her household. 

Do your personal projects differ from your professional work? If yes, how so?
I like to be versatile so that I can take on a range of good projects which don’t always have to match with my personal work, it keeps things interesting and challenging. It’s good to mix it up so everything doesn’t end up looking the same. I put lots of love into every project I work on so I think there’s naturally an essence that ties all my work together, it’s all coming from the same place. I am pretty selective about projects that I show on my website, it’s the work I most enjoy creating and the directions I’d like to explore further. I believe one of the ultimate achievements is to attract professional commissions based on personal work.

What do you think are the most important elements to focus on, when creating a personal website?
Keeping the design of the website simple and minimal to let the work itself be the main focus is important, I think. To put thought into presenting different projects well visually and making the descriptions short but clear. Choose your best work to display and make sure you keep on top of it, update it, maintain your blog, put new work on and take off any old work that you no longer relate to, keep it current.

A Closer Look ProSite

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A Closer Look with Adam Grason

How long have you been in design?
I’ve been designing since High School and started freelancing around that time but didn’t really take it serious as my career until about 5 years ago. Total years designing has been 10 years.

Do your personal projects differ from your professional work? If yes, how so?
They do tend to be different. I currently work full-time for Disney where my current role requires me to design and illustrate training materials. My freelance/personal work is very stylistically different and tends to be the work I am most passionate about. All my work outside of Disney tends to nod back to the earlier design era where illustration was king and it all had a handcrafted look.

A Closer Look

What do you think are the most important elements to focus on, when creating a personal website?
The most important thing to me is that who you are and the type of work you want to be doing is proudly displayed. In the past I would literally post anything and everything I was working on….even if it sucked. I was so caught up on making it look like I had a lot of work that I started getting the wrong kind of inquires. It wasn’t until I stripped down my site and dropped all the garbage that I began to get the kind of work I could see myself doing for the rest of my life. Your site needs to give someone a snapshot of your passion for art and your skills within seconds or you will lose them.

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A Closer Look with Gabriel Lira

We had the pleasure of interviewing Gabriel Lira, a Brasil based designer who has an incredible eye for branding and a strong entrepreneurial spirit. 

How long have you been in design?
I’ve worked as a designer since 2007, but design has been an important part of my life since I was a kid. I knew from the start that I would use the creative part of my brain to guide me through life. I always liked to draw and when I was a teenager I started drawing rock band’s logos, with inspiration from songs from bands like AC/DC, Black Sabbath and Metallica.

Do your personal projects differ from your professional work? If yes, how so?
Mostly, it doesn’t. The client’s personality is a definitive variable to how the work is going to flow. If the client wants to take risks of developing a cool project, the design process works fine and the result is amazing. The major difference between my personal and professional jobs is the freedom that I have on a project.

What do you think are the most important elements to focus on, when creating a personal website?
There are certain points that have to be taken in consideration, they are: level of experience and the objective of the website. The first one is important to know the level of information in each project and define what content is going to be put in the webpage. On another hand, a experienced professional focused in UX, for example, will have bigger projects in the area and won’t be necessarily showing projects in other areas.

Describe your process when creating this website
The process is very simple and I have been using Design Thinking on all the projects i’ve worked on. Design Thinking can be applied in any area of knowledge. I divide in four steps: Insights, ideas, prototype and realization. Inside each of these steps are applied determined tools that helps me conclude them in a fast and efficient way, however, is not a perfect formula.

What is your daily routine?
Nowadays my routine is simple, I wake up and go to work where I stay during commercial hours. Then I go to the gym and then work on my start up, called Muv Shoes, where I stay until midnight then go back home to rest.

What inspires you and keeps you motivated?
One of the things that helps me keeping motivated is a course on Branding that I have been taking and am now concluding. Behance is another source, I see wonderful works everyday that help me evolve.

What creative project you’ve worked on are you most proud of?
There are two cases that I created that makes me proud, one of them is the brand Janaína Jório and ins a small part of it available in the link: bit.ly/qcBSjp and the other is the one the I work everyday, my start up and cam be followed at www.muvshoes.com.br and soon I will put the whole project in Behance, and everyone will be able to be seen in many curated Galleries.

What are some projects you hope to work on in the future
I hope to work on some projects of big impact in society, relevant projects that have meaning to the rest of the world.

Full ProSite Here.

A Closer Look with Pavel Emelyanov

We had the opportunity to speak with Pavel Emelyanov, a designer out of St. Petersburg Russia who has created incredible projects inspired by natural materials.

1. How long have you been in design?
My professional experience started in 2010 year, when I joined my first design studio. Before that I worked for 5 years in a printing house, making-up newspapers. At that time I studied software and theory and practiced printing processes. First steps were great years!

2. Do your personal projects differ from your professional work? If yes, how so?
In personal projects, I try experiment with ideas, technologies and graphics…but in general my projects have a similar direction and baseline. As a designer I see more around myself and understand how to add something new in personal works. For clients, I often need to use more proven decisions. Sometimes clients see what I do in personal projects, and say: “Oh! I want like this.” But for me it’s less interesting to make the same thing a second time.

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A Closer Look with Akos Major

We had the pleasure of interviewing Akos Major, a freelance graphic designer and photographer whose peaceful photographs and simplistic techniques have caught our eye. 


How long have you been a photographer?
I bought my first camera in 2008, which was a Nikon D40x. I still have some of my first images in my portfolio - the Island series, and a few ones from the waterscapes series. I’m getting into photography more and more each day. It’s a discovery period, i’m trying new mediums and finding new subjects.

Describe your process when creating your ProSite
It was really easy thanks to the developers and the user friendly interface. I’m not good at coding, so it was a huge help. Sure, I want to improve the appearance of the whole site, just have to make a room for it besides the daily tasks - especially in the ‘about’ section. Overall, all I knew is that I wanted a clear looking site and i’m glad with the results.

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A Closer Look with Bex Glover

We had the pleasure of interviewing Bex Glover, a graphic designer, artist & illustrator living and working in Bristol, UK. 

How long have you been in design/illustration?
10 years

Do your personal projects differ from your professional work? If yes, how so?
Yes to some degree, my personal work is often more hand rendered / painting based -using markers and spray paint, and it tends to have a more abstract aesthetic. I like to emulate the hand rendered feel in my digital illustrative work too, but the style and subject matter will be dictated by the requirements of the brief. Some can be cleaner cut, simple, and digital in style, others more urban and freestyle. It’s great when you get projects where the client wants to do something based on your personal work –that’s often the more fun, creative stuff.

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