The Super Productive Inhouse Designer

If you currently work as a designer or have another creative career in-house, you know it. The in-house creative accomplishes more with less. With over 15 years working as a designer in-house, I've learned a few tricks of the trade that have made me a little bit more productive. Unlike some articles on the internet, I won't concentrate on the use of apps or to-do lists. Instead, I will share my designer tips on accomplishing work swiftly and efficiently.

Know Your Stuff

The number one secret to productivity is not really a secret. You can accomplish more when you know your stuff inside out. There are multiple ways to accomplish a task, find the one that works best for you. You can take workshops, go to conferences, or search the internet for videos of what you want to learn. I highly recommend Lynda and Skillshare as learning resources; in addition, there are also plenty of books you can read to accomplish the same. Everyone learns things differently, the key to your productivity is finding what works for you and to keep learning so your skills are not left behind.

Create a Template for Success

You might think I'm kidding, but I'm serious. In order to produce in-house, you'll need a formula for success, and creating templates is part of that formula. The templates will free your time to create complicated projects and will allow you to hand-off easy projects to a non-designer. You can also create templates for your own personal use. This is where a Branding Manual becomes much more than just rules. By using some manuals, you can create layouts with grids at different sizes, you can save color files, and styles.

Reuse and Recycle

We've all done it. We created a million and one versions of a design for a client. And some of those versions were so incredibly bad to us that we refused to show those to our client. Because you're an inhouse designer you have the power to reuse materials used in a different year. If you have an event and are crunched for time, the best thing to do is to start from something perhaps a design used a different year. You can update that design a bit by using a different cover graphic and/or a change in color. The point is to change the design enough so that it's noticeably different but the same. 

In terms of recycling, you can use a discarded design for a different client. Yes, you heard me right. Remember those designs that a client never saw because you decided that there were other better choices, well now's the time to dig those designs from the past and start from there. And if there's something particularly wrong with that design, then you have the benefit of having been away from the project so long that you can easily make changes. 

Take a Break

Burn out decreases productivity. It seems counter-productive but you might benefit from a break to be a bit more productive. Our minds are not meant to be constantly working without a break. If you give yourself space, you'll be more likely to get that work waiting for you completed quicker. I schedule breaks into my schedule. 

I hope you learned a tip or two from this post. I'll keep sharing what I've learned. If you'd like me to cover any topic, please let me know below.

Refreshing this Blog and the Age of Multimedia

I was wondering if I could create videos to expand my skill set, as a creative outlet, and learn more during the pandemic. It's been quite a few years since I last wrote on this blog and it has been to my detriment. Writing and researching subjects I am interested in the past has sparked creativity but also opened my mind to many things I never knew. In the last five years, I've had a different journey. My journey took me to complete two marathons, to take part in advertising campaigns, and lastly be the most physically strong I've ever been in my life. In regards to my mental health, my life has been a rollercoaster, which is partly why it was difficult to continue this blog. But today I am writing because I decided that the things I love are what I should focus on and being a life-long learner is a big part of who I am as a person. I can't survive life without learning or without having a creative outlet.

In the last few months, I've done a lot of learning. This time my journey of experimentation has taken me beyond print and into multimedia. I truly believe that there's nothing creative I can't do. It may take some time to learn, but I thank my willingness to learn, which is the reason why I can do anything. The last time I delved into multimedia was years ago back in College. And two years ago, I took a course at the Brooklyn Library on After Effects. I had so much fun but didn't use the skills beyond my class. And so you know in order to be experts, we must continually practice our craft to develop. I hadn't done that in terms of multimedia.

In June of this year, a couple of months into the pandemic, I decided to create a YouTube channel. I wasn't prepared for the amount of work required to get reacquainted with the software and to get a rhythm going. I spent countless nights on the struggle bus until 4 am. And today, a few months later, I feel like I've got a schedule that works with my 9 to 5 schedule and allows me to sleep lol. I figured it out. I still have lots of experiments to make in order to make my channel successful, but with every video I publish, I learn something new. 

Anyway, I hope you join me on this digital journey that will be interspersed with other graphic design experimets, I undertake.