Jaz Design

Something I didn’t learn whilst at university was the importance of being a part of the design community. Reading and commenting on blogs, browsing galleries, doing tutorials – unfortunately for me I missed out on this, until I graduated. I don’t remember quite how I discovered the rich world of design online, I’m just happy I did. I advise anyone and everyone to read at least one thing a day, just one thing! Stay up to date with trends (and learn when to avoid them), share and learn about new techniques, find out how things are affecting the industry – the opportunities are endless. The galleries offer inspiration and opportunities to promote your work… I don’t think it can be denied that at least having a small amount of awareness of what’s going on is important.

These are a selection of the blogs that I have stored in my Google Reader that I check in on every day. I hope you find something you like after the jump!

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the art of promotion

I won’t say I read these books in full, more like skimmed them and pulled out the relevant and interesting information and interviews that I needed.

the art of promotion is very interesting – I like looking at other people’s work and the primary goal of this book seems to be to show you work and deconstruct it. It’s an inspiration source really and I found some innovative things which will work very well to inform my development of my self promotion. The accompanying text is both informative and interesting too.

3.5/5

Becoming a Graphic Designer (2nd ed)

Again, skimmed and pulled out relevant info. I’m a web designer so there was quite a lot of irrelevant stuff that I’m sure is really interesting for people in those different fields. The web design section had some interesting interviews and while I think this version is a bit dated, it was still worth the read skim through.

Both of these were on the reading list for my self promotion unit and they are both useful if you’re going into the graphic design/web design field. Probably more so for graphic/communication design.

3.5/5