As you probably all know I’m an avid Twitter user. I love interacting with other designers and non designers to share and learn. But all to often Twitter turns into a sea of links and re-tweets. This in itself isnt a bad thing, but I think we (myself included) tend to forget that ACTUAL PEOPLE (for the most part) run these twitter accounts. So take a second to say hello to your twitter friends today.

Follow me on twitter @NikiBrown or send me an email and lets interact. Lets have a conversation!

One of the most important assets you can have as a designer doing print work, whether you are new or old is an understanding of how to correctly set your files up for printing. There are multiple ways to do this and I am not saying that my is the only way but, mine works and this will teach you fundamentals of how to correctly set up your file so your printer does not send them back to you and waste time in the printing process. There is however, some technical jargon in this article. I have included a glossary at the end that tells you what “the jargon” means. So veterans, students and anyone in-between will be able to read and take something away from this article.

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Computer – check. Photoshop – check. Lots of free time – check. It seems that this is all that is necessary to call yourself a ‘designer’ these days. I believe that there is far more to a designer than software, computers and free time. Designers should have critical thinking skills, understanding of design principals, knowledge of grid systems, typography and much more.

Read the rest of my guest post over at Design Reviver and join the discussion in progress!

So it looks like Photoshop just rang in another birthday! Photoshop just turned 20?!?!?!? Holy crap that’s a long time for software. I don’t know about you but Photoshop was my first ‘design’ program starting with version 6. I admit that I cheated a bit and also tinkered with Gimp for a bit. But I mainly have font memories of an online course with my less than legal version on my PC back in the day. I remember being so fascinated and intrigued by Photoshop and what it could do and I was SO EXCITED to learn. This tinkering that I did in high school is what pushed me to become a designer.

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In the wake of the popularity of the Clients From Hell site I thought it would be appropriate to talk about good experiences with clients. I had a chance to have a chat with Liz Andrade from CmdShiftDesign and discuss the topic.

What do you think?

Have you had good (or bad) experiences with clients? What was it like? What did you do to foster the client/designer relationship? Leave a comment and join the discussion.

Remember when you had that *first* genius moment in design when we discovered effects in Photoshop or the gradient mesh tool in Illustrator? (I remember these moments quite fondly…) Its always great to look back and where we came from and laugh at ourselves I asked some of my fellow designers to dig though their archives and share their lovely first attempts at design. Enjoy!

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