As a designer, I often joke that all I do is make pictures all day, but there’s actually a bit more to it than that. Join me for a little look at what a Graphic Designer gets up to in a typical day…
@7am Rise and Shine ☀️☕️
I do genuinely enjoy my working day, however it can sometimes be difficult to remember that when my alarm goes off. I’m not a morning person, so my morning routine mostly consists of trying to wake up. After a coffee I do some light exercise, I find the latter much more useful as an attempt to get energised for the day ahead, but I still need the coffee first. Once I’m awake enough, it’s time to head to the office.
@9:30am Let’s Get to Work 🚗 ✉️
I have quite a long commute, so it’s nice to finally get to the office and get settled in for the day. It’s always great to catch up with my colleagues as they mostly have much more interesting lives than me. Work always starts with emails, communication with clients is super important, keeping them up to date with projects, helping out with anything unexpected design needs or adding any new jobs to my planner.
@10am What’s the Big Idea? ✏️💡
Starting a project is always exciting and that’s exactly what is planned for today! It doesn’t seem to matter how long I’ve been designing, there is always a little feeling of intimidation from starting with a blank piece of paper. Because of this I find it helpful to ease into a project with some research and if the project requires it, putting together a mood board.
Using that research as inspiration, the next stage is concept creation - also known as ‘coming up with ideas’. Often easer said than done. Whilst most of the final products we create are digital, I find the quickest way to explore initial ideas is with a pencil and paper. I’m not the greatest artist in the world, my sketches are purely to quickly explore compositions and shapes, and find it as useful for ruling out ideas that probably won’t work as it is useful for finding the ideas that have potential for some further development.
@12:30pm Lazy Lunch 🍊🗞️
I tend to just have a basic lunch at my desk. Some days when the sun is shining I almost get tempted to go for a little walk, thankfully, sunny days are rare, and I’m content with taking the stairs up to the office for my movement requirements for the day. Most of the time I just catch up on some news while I try to cram in as much of 5 of my daily portions of fruits and vegetables as I can stomach. This can be later used to justify frequent trips to the office snack supply throughout the afternoon.
@1pm Odd Jobs 🎨 👨🎨
After lunch I have to briefly jump over to a different project to make some final adjustments based on the client’s feedback. These are often fairly simple tasks, as clients will often only require small changes to things such as colours, wording and prominence - yes, this can include making the logo bigger.
@2pm Back to the Main Event! 🖥️ ✍️
Switching back to a project after giving my brain a little creative break, can be quite helpful, and often times it allows me to come back with some fresh ideas. After a little more sketching to get those new ideas down, it’s time to develop some of them further, which almost always means taking it digital. Depending on the type of project, this stage can vary a lot. Anything from building up a composition in Photoshop based on sketched ideas to moving over to a drawing tablet and starting to work on concepts in more detail. There is still a lot of trial and error involved at this stage, often times during development you can generate totally new ideas that you may want to flesh out further, or you may try to develop your most promising concept only to discover that it doesn’t quite work as intended and that one of your previously discarded ideas was actually a hidden gem all along. Ultimately you can’t be too precious about your concepts as you get closer to a finished design, for me, the priority is always that it just looks good, but it can take a while.
@6pm Wrapping Up 🏁
That’s as far as I’m going to get with the project today, and sometimes it is really helpful to pick things up again from a fresh perspective in the morning. There’s still a lot to do; finalising the design and presenting it to a client, taking feedback and going back to development if needed - but for today it’s just one last quick check of emails and then time to go home.
@7pm That’s a Home Run! 🏃📖
Unfortunately, while it is nice to have a relaxing evening at home, today is a run night. I run three times a week, and after seven years of consistent running I’m still waiting for the day that I can truly say I enjoy it. It hasn’t happened yet, but I persevere all the same. When it’s finally time to settle down, I always like to have a fantasy novel on the go. I’m currently reading Midnight Tides by Steven Erikson, it’s book 5 in the series and marks the half way point, I’m loving it so far and can’t wait to see where the story goes. That concludes another day of making pictures.
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