kenreynoldsdesign.co.uk

My Life as a Cartoon #22

Posted 08 Mar 2010 - One gratefully received comment

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Free – Illustrator Scribble Vectors

Posted 04 Mar 2010 - No Comments - leave yours now!

We all scribble and doodle, but do we ever use them? I figured that I might try to start so here are a set of my scribbles that I’ve turned into vector shapes, I hope you will find them useful.

This vector set is free to download.

I hope they are useful to you. I’ve made the set available as an Illustrator CS2 file and an Illustrator 10 file.

To download the CS2 .ai file, click the link below:

Download Scribble Vectors – Ilustrator CS2 .ai file

To download the Illustrator 10 .ai file, click the link below:

Download Scribble Vectors – Ilustrator 10 .ai file

These vectors are completely free for personal and commercial use. The only thing I ask is that if you do find them useful let me know. I’d love to see your final results, and then display them within this post.

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How to be a Happy Designer

Posted 01 Mar 2010 - No Comments - leave yours now!

Design is one of those jobs that you should care about if you want to be good at it. The general impression is that if you are a designer you must be doing pretty well for yourself, this may be the case for some, but on the whole it’s a difficult industry. Especially if you are starting out.
Long hours, constant rejection and limited jobs in a competitive market are just a few of the pitfalls that we all battle against. The biggest obstacle can sometimes be that most people don’t properly understand what a designer does.

Some jobs you simply must love to be able to tolerate. I know people that have very tough jobs with stupidly long hours and meagre pay. Despite this they seem to love what they do. For example my brother is a chef, it’s a very unsociable sort of job with awkward hours, the pay isn’t great and it’s hard graft but he loves doing what he does. I won’t lie to you there are times where he questions weather it’s worth it, but he sticks with it because, to him, there is something special about what he does.
This is the first step, you have to figure out what you want to get out of your job and your life.

In one of my earlier blog posts I asked you, what is the best thing about your job? This gave me a little insight into what is important to people in their work.
Personally I cited my sense of achievement when I see a design progress from my thoughts to sketches and it’s eventual use. For others it was the simple exchange of ideas, how they never stop learning and simply earning a living doing something they enjoy.

The key to being a happy designer is to work to a set of personal principles that make you believe in. It might be that the work itself is enough, the act of creating probably gives us all a buzz, but can that sustain you over a career that might span a lifetime?

Continue Reading

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My Life as a Cartoon #21

Posted 25 Feb 2010 - 3 Gratefully received comments

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Guest Post on Circlebox

Posted 22 Feb 2010 - No Comments - leave yours now!

I’m pretty excited because I’ve had my first article published on another blog! Callum Chapman over at Circlebox, very kindly accepted my article entitled: “Living with a Freelance Designer”.
Please take a look, and while you’re there check out the great things Callum is doing with his blog.

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What is the best thing about your job? – Random Question #1

Posted 18 Feb 2010 - 9 Gratefully received comments

One of the good bits of this whole blogging lark is the interaction with you lot, out there. I love reading your comments and getting a bit of dialogue going. If we didn’t have that element to the whole thing, this blog would basically be me waffling on and on. OK, so maybe that’s the case regardless…

… Anyway, in an effort to get a bit of interaction going I’m going to start just throwing out a random question now and then. Some of them will be design related, others probably won’t be related to anything at all. Don’t be afraid to comment or answer even it it seems completely off topic. I like the idea of a free-form conversation going on in the comments thread.

I did have a bit of trouble coming up with the first question to get the ball rolling, but after a very hard week, it eventually presented itself.
My week has been a bit of a slog, I keep myself pretty busy and this week it’s all beginning to pay off. I managed to finish a very long running project. Unfortunately, I can’t tell you about it (maybe one day), but it has been a large part of my work life for a while now. It’s the sort of project that you think about while trying to sleep. Anyway it’s finally come to an end, or a new beginning, and I can set it free into the world.
I remember the start of the project, last year, when it was just a twinkle of an idea. I’ve witnessed it form in my mind then grow and progress to the point that it has taken a proper ‘real’ shape. The best thing about it is that I have physical proof of the process in my notebooks, scribblings and artwork. This commentary of creation is wonderful.
Which brings me to my question:

What is the best thing about your job?

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Design Book Giveaway… Winner

Posted 18 Feb 2010 - 2 Gratefully received comments

Thank you to everyone that took the time to enter.
The winner of “How to be a Graphic Designer without losing your soul” by Adrian Shaughnessy, is:

Iain Fergus

Congratulations to him, and better luck next time to everyone else!

I’d appreciate any feedback of suggestions you might have for further competitions or any general musings you might want to offer about my blog in general. Please get in touch.

Thank you all once again.

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