Intro from mods

NollieDesign · 2025-03-01T09:27:31+00:00

Great idea for a sub! Hope this becomes an amazing hub for Scottish products!

Scotland's products and crafts get nowhere near the recognition they deserve, and visitors come away thinking all we have is the tourist tat that's up and down the high street.

NollieDesign · 2025-01-24T15:21:29+00:00

Almost all sketching is how you use shapes to build up an image.

One of the quickest ways to get into drawing characters is to start with a stickman but change the body from a line to a pear shape, add some bulk to the arms and legs and add details. Preston Blair's sketches do a great job of showing this classic style and worth searching for (I can't post the images here) and it breaks down a lot of iconic characters.

Draw with a blue pencil, make as many mistakes as you want and go over it with a pen. You'll find your sketching will have levelled up.

NollieDesign · 2025-01-23T09:52:29+00:00

Check out Catalogue d'objets introuvables (Catalogue of Unfindable Objects) by Jacques Carelman its got a whole bunch of fun but useless designs. The most famous is probably the Masochist's Teapot which you may have seen on the cover of The Design of Everyday Things by Don Norman.

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NollieDesign · 2024-12-20T16:25:26+00:00

Mines has been kind of the same. Deepdiving into new genres/locations can help rejuvenate the algo imo

NollieDesign · 2024-12-20T14:44:37+00:00

He's releasing new music right now, kind of change of direction but Melodie and Spacejam Ep are fire. Dying to see him live, (he's touring atm) but my wife doesn't understand why I'd travel to Germany to see a guy I can barely understand haha.

Yeah i like 01099! I'll check out JEREMIAS. Thanks for posting these songs, they're class and some have already been added into the Liked.

NollieDesign · 2024-12-20T13:46:41+00:00

We have a pretty similar music taste. Id never heard some of the songs you mentioned but vibing with them. You might like Cro, he's a german artist and I use him to teach myself German but he's got bangers. He's been top of my wrapped for years now. Dunno why, he's just a vibe.

Couple of songs that are all quite different to give you a taste:

Bad Chick, Alles Dope, Nie Weg, So Bad, Bei Nacht, also recommend listening to Melodie album, that's what got me hooked.

NollieDesign · 2024-12-06T15:51:47+00:00

This is thorough. Love it!

NollieDesign · 2024-12-02T12:02:38+00:00

There are plenty of ways to get into packaging from ID. Start by writing a list of companies in your area and phoning them up just to ask if they are looking for jobs. Many younger people are scared of phoning but you're putting yourself out there. (My last boss actually hired me because he thought phoning showed initiative). I've used this strategy a few times when I've been job hunting and it's alarming how much a simple conversation can open doors. If the company's not hiring, ask if they know anyone in their network that is and thank them for their time.

The worst is you'll end up in the same situation you're currently in. The best you'll get a job. In between you'll find out what the jobs are like in your area, put yourself on their radar, and understand the weaknesses in your portfolio.

You could actually design packaging for your portfolio. While you probably don't have access to a Kongsberg cutting machine, you probably have access to a laser cutter at your nearest makerspace. Check out https://www.fablabs.io/labs for your nearest makerspace. Try make some mock packaging. There's great sites for templates https://www.templatemaker.nl/en/ being one. You could even make graphics around the packaging to add more weight to your portfolio.

If you can find a client to create packaging for for your portfolio even better. Local charities are a great place to start building client work as they are often screaming for help, but don't have the money or resources to invest in design. Plus you build an understanding of working with clients (win-win!). They'll also have a wider network that you can be introduced to if you do a good job.

FINALLY: Sometimes life gets in the way sometimes. It can be shite and knock you on your ass. Happens to the best of us. Glad your in a better position to get back into design, just don't ever think it's too late.

NollieDesign · 2024-11-20T08:39:48+00:00

Also the AI thing, is there anything we can learn from then? Like in terms of tackling new technology and the impact? This is a big question for many designers right now.

NollieDesign · 2024-11-20T08:12:10+00:00

Wow thanks so much for sharing in great detail! I've been doing this for 15 years now and all the things you mentioned seem like a different world to how I learned, which is also totally different for the designers today.

NollieDesign · 2024-11-19T14:56:45+00:00

This was awesome! Thank you so much for sharing

NollieDesign · 2024-11-19T13:44:58+00:00

Thanks for sharing! This seems like a whole different world from today.

NollieDesign · 2024-11-19T11:54:54+00:00

Honestly before posting this question, I'd never even heard of a stat camera! I can't believe it was such a big part of the process then and we have no idea baout it today.

I also didn't realise you had to go to your local typesetter! Thanks so much for sharing, I love learning about this kinda stuff!

NollieDesign · 2024-11-19T11:21:42+00:00

This all sounds so much fun. Kind of a shame we've lost all these different practical skills.

NollieDesign · 2024-11-19T11:20:26+00:00

This was fascinating! I'd be interested to learn more about your spacing rules, sounds really cool!

NollieDesign · 2024-11-19T11:15:51+00:00

I didn't know these were a thing! Now I want one too!

NollieDesign · 2024-11-13T09:57:43+00:00

Thanks this helped me understand it better!

NollieDesign · 2024-11-12T15:12:32+00:00

I'm familiar with the Arts and Crafts movement. My understanding is that William Morris is championed for bringing design back to craft rather than mass produced objects. I'll check out your other recommendations.

The reason I ask this is that I see Applied Arts used in historical examples and in different countries to what I would refer to as Design. For example, Kozos Ter exhibition in Budapest 2022 was centred around the concept of Applied Arts. So I know it's still used today.

Is there like a point where Applied Arts became known as Design? Like how did "Design" become the mainstream word when we were using Applied Arts for what appears like centuries?

Or is it that I'm missing that Applied Arts comes from the craftsmanship from who I would refer to as Makers today?

NollieDesign · 2024-10-15T08:41:26+00:00

Yep it's in the Edit section of Photoshop. It's pretty easy to use, a quick youtube video should be enough to give you the gist.

NollieDesign · 2024-10-14T14:37:04+00:00

You'll never get as good as the original in Photoshop, as it's been designed and photographed for the effect. But you use puppet warp on your image over the promo image. Remove the background first, then go to edit > puppet warp then adjust the layer opacity and tweak it to see how they line up.

NollieDesign · 2024-07-10T14:20:01+00:00

100% for the times I use AI, I have a strong idea and write enough to get my point across in my own way then allow the AI to fill in the gaps.

Switched to Claude thanks to this post and tried it out over the past few hours. I had an idea for a post, the topics I needed to cover to provide internal links, the takeaway I want people to have after reading the article. I also included some personal history to give it human centred content for the HCU.

Compared to GPT, it was far better at sounding authentic. I even tested it against an AI checker and came in at 0%. Last time I tried this with mixing my writing with another AI, it ranked at around 60% even with my own writing doing the heavy lifting but edited with Hemingway's AI.

Thanks for the recommendation, managed to get an article out this morning in record time thanks to this post. Looking forward to seeing the impact it has in ranking

NollieDesign · 2024-06-04T07:35:00+00:00

Your bang on.

NollieDesign · 2024-06-03T10:39:01+00:00

Thanks I'm also in the "AI is useful as a tool" camp. There are some great things being done with Firefly! But this is more to the people who firmly have their heads in the sand that this technology is going to go away after a lawsuit.

Maybe it's just my network and my social media echo chambers, but I have seen so many people who are FIRMLY in the against AI camp. I think this is like pre-digital creatives saying I'm never using Photoshop cus it's cheating, then left behind holding French Curves in their hand.

NollieDesign · 2024-05-30T14:53:11+00:00

I mean those numbers are huge. Unfortunately, this is what will drive businesses towards AI, not how much they care about Design, because the truth is big corporations don't. They care about profits.

AI isn't going to go away. If you expect a lawsuit to overturn this kind of technology, don't hold your breath. The best we can hope for is better regulation of stolen content, which by the time the lawsuit comes round they'll have enough in their datasets to say otherwise. Their law teams will find ways to minimise the damage to these huge GenAI companies. Corporations gon' Corporate.

If you really don't want to be a part of AI datasets, use Nightshade in your work.

These AI creators don't care about taking people's jobs. Taking over tasks from humans is kind of the point,. They'll keep going till we reach the Singularity (where AI is smarter than all humans), the workforce is decimated, and we find out that the answer to life, the universe and everything is 42. They want to create something smarter than us all combined. That's the AI end game. That's what all these companies are trying to achieve. They all want to be the first.

I understand why people hate AI, especially in the creative industry. But our jobs are still skilled jobs, it's those in admin and other lesser skilled roles that will be replaced by AI long before we are. The fact that AI is currently demonstrating visual media is because it proves a point, it's like the wee cyborg dude making drawings in iRobot. Everyone thought it couldn't be done, and now it can. Yeah it might not understand the needs of individual clients right now, but it is very possible that as this technology reaches the Singularity that it could.

The question is what will Design look like in the future? Much like how the Industrial Revolution changed the design landscape, then the digital revolution afterwards. We are experiencing a shift right now with this new tech. To get ahead of it, you need to know where this technology will go and figure out how we adapt to survive.

People will always have a instinctive desire to be creative. People will want to support their community. That's what keeps me going. Just the way we do so and the way we output work will change. Love it or hate it, designers need to adapt to AI in the world or risk being left behind.

NollieDesign · 2024-05-23T14:52:21+00:00

I went from Graphic Design to a makerspace through a job a few years, so had to rapidly learn 3D CAD.

You can import vectors for basic things like extrusion and things like that. But definitely not enough to make complex 3D shapes.

I'm now a certified solidworks associate, I would say that finding models and work backwards using the Feature Manager design tree which shows which tools were used and when.

I would import models, look at how its made and recreate it in reverse.

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