When I started my freelance journey I would say YES to every job that I came across. I’m not sure if it was because of the money or just the excitement of starting a new project but I would take it without realizing it may not be worth it.

After some time and some bad experiences I learned that I couldn’t always say YES, it doesn’t fit my way of life. I first started freelancing so I could do what I love and saying YES to every job may bring lots of things that I don’t love as much.

I got myself into a few projects where I wasn’t the designer anymore; instead I was just taking orders from a client and doing as he pleased. I realized this happens a lot on the design industry, where clients who don’t have any knowledge of design but have this idea in mind of what the final product should look like. So they hire a designer to execute their ideas instead of using their expertise, which is what they are actually paying for. This quote really hits home in that regard.

“ You don’t see people hiring a doctor and tell him exactly how you want him to work, that’s not how it goes. You tell him your problem and hope for a good fix. It should be no different with design.”

I would be lying if I said I had never been a client’s puppet before. I got through it just so I could get paid but at the end was it worth it? Well, not even a minute of it. It’s stressful to do something I know isn’t best for the client; it’s shameful to work on something that I’m not proud to say I did. Thanks to all that I learned to say NO.

The Art of Saying NO

I understand that a lot of times financial situation may get ahead of us and it gets hard to turn down projects, but I believe in the Gods of Design and I like to think that it takes a few NO to bring a good YES. Therefore I have been saying NO to many projects, and been blessed with many YES. To be honest it feels good to turn down a project that you know it would be nothing but a headache.

When I turn down a project before saying NO this project isn’t a good fit for meand sending the client out the door. I try to educate the client as much as I can, show him the best options and why I would say NO to the direction he wants to take. My philosophy is to always do the best work, but after going over the options and educating the client, he still wants it his way, a big NO is my way of ending it.

Being in Peace with saying NO

At first it can hurt you a bit to say NO, you can always think ahh, I should taken that project, but once you start realizing most of the clients that you come across are a NO instead of YES you will start appreciating even more the work you say YES to and be thankful for saying NO to certain projects.

Once I started saying NO I have not worked on a boring project, I have been focusing on creating the best work for my clients and let my experience lead the way and deliver great results to those who believe in my work. I hope you can learn from my mistakes and say NO when necessary.

Further Reading

• No One Nos: Learning to Say No to Bad Ideas
• 8 Essential Strategies to Saying “No”
• Learning To Say “No” Nicely — How to Keep From Burning Bridges

Hope you enjoyed the ready and I invite you to share some thoughts on the subject.

Our job as web designers is to educate our clients and open their eyes to the benefits of responsive design. But, when you explain to a person who doesn’t know much about the web, it needs to be broken down to the basic principles. Here is how I break it down to my clients.

Designing a Mobile Version

There are a few options to mobile design, but, the best and most used approach is called “Responsive Design” (also called  Adjustive Design).

What is Responsive Design?

It’s simply a design that adjusts to any size screen, so the website will look correct no matter what device the user is using (phone, tablet, laptop, desktop, tv, …) The user experience will always be a great one.

How is it done?

This type of design is done by using responsive techniques to code the website so it can adjust according to the size of the screen. That way it is not specifically designed to a certain phone or device, it supports any current devices, and, any future ones to come. With this approach any update made on the content will automatically look perfect in any device.

Responsive Design Samples

It’s not necessary to visit a website on your phone to check if it’s responsive, resize your browser window and check how the layout reacts to it. Here is very simple sample I’ve made to help you understand better how the adjustment occurs without breaking any of the content.
Responsive Design Sample

Other great sample of responsive design are:

• Boston Globe
• Smashing Magazine
• Food Sense
• El Sendero Del Cacao
• Abduzeedo

Why Mobile Design?

Check your statistics, and find out what’s the percentage of visits you get from mobile/tablet devices. Compare that to the previous months to see if there’s a monthly. That should tell you why a mobile version is necessary. Sometimes a great amount of traffic comes from mobile devices, and that’s the amount of your visitors struggling to navigate and read the content of your site.

Interested in a Mobile version of your site?

If you are interested in finding out more about it, or, have any questions feel free to contact me for further assistance.

This piece is a collab I did with the photographer Sam Robles, he contacted me with a couple photos of this soccer player that reminded him of the king Pele and what we had in mind is pretty much what we got as a result, place him on a field and make it look realistic and hot at the same time, and this is what I got.

It’s a sport photo illustration using mostly basic skills so I decided to share this is a detailed case study which I will not only show the steps of how it was done, but I also wrote what was exactly done in each and every step so you can watch and learn a bit.

Case Study

Here you will be able to see the steps I took to get to the final result, the image started with the soccer player photo by Sam Robles, the others are stock photos I had to keep the quality so i went with the best place ShutterStock.

01 - First thing I did was to select the player out of his photo, I used a pen tool on this case. This is a very important step to your work, if you don’t do this right it will bite you back at the end so take you time and make sure you get a good selection. I took me about an hour to get that in case you wondering.

02 - Now I place the stadium photo on the background, somewhere around the middle because I still have the sky and the grass to fit in.

03 - Since I first seen the stadium photo I noticed the grass was not exactly what I wanted that’s why I grabbed another photo with better grass and here you can see the difference.

04 - Placing the sky now, I could go with something blue and nice but the final look that I had in mind was kinda dark so I decided to go with a nice cloudy sky.

05 - Now that I have almost everything in place it’s time to work a bit on the illumination so I can make these photos look more like one. Starting with the grass, I create a layer over it and with the Gradient Tool and the color black I create a shade around the grass to make it look like it belongs there.

06 - The same step I did with the grass I repeat on the sky, getting it a little darker.

07 - Time to fix the stadium light now, this one is a little trickier because I want to make the right side a lot lighter than the left one so it looks like the light is the same way as it is on the player, to get that done I used the technique I taught here (Manipulation Basics: Illumination and Coloration)

08 - Now that I correct a little bit in every photo the image is starting to look better, to give a whole better look to it I decided to add a crowd there, it takes a bit of patience but it’s not hard to do, I used the pen tool to select the empty spaces and placed the crowd photo in there, re-sized to look real and added a darker shade on the edges so it blends in well as you can see.

09 - The scenario already got everything I wanted, time to make it look even more real so I replace the soccer ball with new and better looking one. Also added shadow of the player (following the light direction on his body) and a little shade under his foot and the ball so they won’t look like they are flying. I also created a new layer to add some light around the player so that area stay lighter than the others to bring more attention to that area.

10 - This step was essential for my image to have that look it had in the end. I saved the image as it was and using Adobe Lightroom I made the image look somewhere like an overdone fake hdr photo, saved as a .jpg and placed it back on top of all the layers, I reduced the Opacity a bit so the over all look wasn’t too overdone and this kinda worked as a texture.

11 - Now on top of that I create a couple layers to fix the lights, this time more like an overall instead of each photo separate. I put some light coming from the top left, also add light to the stadium and got the grass a little darker.

12 - My last steps were to give more shadow around the player since I put light on the stadium the shadow usually goes 4 ways so I did that but still left that main shadow darker because the light on the player was on that direction. The last thing I did was add the color, I did that by adding a layer desaturating the whole image a little bit and another layer on top with the final color I wanted to apply on the image.

I hope everyone like this case study and remember if you want you results to come out good always pay attention to details.

It is now 2012 and last year about 245,000,000 were online just in the US. That’s 90.2% of the US population which means that for every 10 people 9 were using the internet. And it blows my mind that a lot of businesses still don’t have any online presence.

People are online on their phones, tablets, and computers, doing everything you can imagine. What makes you think that when they need some type of service, or product, they are not going online to search it? Call me lazy but if I have the world in my hands why should I go around town for something that it is only a click away? How many times have you gone online while hungry searching for a place to get food from and that place you really like doesn’t even have a menu available? It happens every day with every business.

In today’s world it’s not just about having a website anymore. Those times when your cousin built you a website are gone. Any business that wants to succeed needs to build an online presence. The web is evolving and offering more and more tools for businesses to succeed online by attracting and interacting using the Internet. The ones that are adapting to the changes are leaders of their field.

Here is how I see it

Let’s say I build a design shop in town, and I don’t do anything to spread the word about it other than having the shop on 85 Main st. with a sign outside that says Paulo Design Shop. That’s the same equivalence of a business just having a website, how should they expect people to come in when they are not doing anything to attract them?

Now, if I go around town talking to people about my shop, offering my services, connecting to other business, and planting seeds to eventually get some work, that would be the equivalence of a business having a website ,and, using other tools such as social network, blog, newsletters to make a connection with users to become future clients.

That’s actually building an online presence. Where you have a long term connection with users by keeping using social media networks, keep users updated and even more connected to your business by using newsletter and blog. When you get people talking about your business for thousands to see, that’s when you know you getting a pretty good online presence, and, the more people talk about it, the more popular it will get.

Remember that none of that matters if your website totally sucks. It’s the same feeling when you walk into a business and you just want to walk right out. If you want your business to succeed you have to have a good foundation, and, for that you will need somebody that knows what they doing and pay the right price for it. But, that’s an investment you’re making for the growth of your business. So how can it not be worth it?

How I build online presence

A mix of Web Design, SEO, Blogging, and Social Media Marketing is the recipe I offer to my clients which are mostly small business that end up growing a lot by building an online presence. The website is your foundation and the key element of the business. Then comes the need of attraction. That’s when I use SEO (Search Engine Optimization) to attract users free by using search engines like google. Also use Blogging and Social Media Marketing and Newsletter to stay connected with current users and also attract more. That’s the basic recipe and there’s a bunch of other tools that can be used depending on the type of business and every client have different needs but having an extra set of skills that will take your client to the next level is essential.

Further Reading

Here are some books that helped me learn a lot.

• SEO Made Simple
• The Zen of Social Media Marketing
• The Thank You Economy

To wrap it up, if you are a designer and would like to expand your field and offer some cool new services jump right into it and start learning. Use it first to promote yourself and your services then start building something for your clients. If you have a business of any kind and I have just opened your eyes, get in touch, I would love to help and give you some good advice.

Today I celebrate a new year and my new beginning. I know that 2012 will be a great year to go after our dreams

Exactly two years ago I was starting my full-time freelance career.I used to have a regular job and work freelance on the side whenever I had a chance, but on that New Years Eve of 2009 something clicked in my head. I remember my old boss asking me to work on January 1st and I thank him for that, because instead of doing so I quitted the job and went head first into doing what I love.

I promised myself that for that year I was going to do what I love and be free. That was one of the best decisions that I have ever took in my life. It was such big turn with no guarantees, I had to struggle and hustle a lot to stay on my feet but happiness was always around me because I was doing what I loved.

I’ve failed a lot during this past two years, but I learned a lot from those fails and it made me a better professional and a better person. The fear of no guarantees that I had two year ago still on my gut and it’s what keeps me moving.

“You can’t stop moving when there’s a lion running after you.”

I can’t put in words how much I’ve learned. I’ve done a lot of great work, and planted a lot of seeds that will provably bring me to new directions, all because of one decision that I took 2 years ago. But after all the only thing that matters is how happy you are and how much are you enjoying your everyday life because at the end you can look back with a smile or a tear, and that my friends it’s up to you!

Happy 2012! Enjoy the New Year like is your last.

Most of us designers and people from the creative industry rely on our creative talent to make a living; not that is all it takes to be a designer but it’s a large part of it.

The problem we have is how to keep up with this daily creativity and never run out of it, as we all know the term “burnout”. Many creatives end up burning out at some point of their work life. It can be very frustrating and take a long time to recover.  Being a creative may seem easy in other eyes, but we know it is difficult to keep up the creativity with the stress of our daily lives.

We don’t learn how to stay inspired and creative; we have to be aware that refreshing our minds is essential to keep it running without a problem. Here are a few things I have been doing that have helped me tremendously with my creativity. This is how I fill up my tank and make sure I never run out of gas.

Turning off

Going back to being a creative, especially if you are a freelancer or someone that works from home; there’s a tendency to not have an exact time to start working, which is not the biggest problem. The biggest problem is that there’s probably not a set time to stop working as well.

We have to set up a time to start or at least the most important, set a time to stop work. When I say stop I mean stop until the next day. My stop time is 5pm everyday, sometimes earlier but never later. If I do need to work more I start another section later at night let’s say 10pm – 12pm or so depending on the amount of work I need to get done, that way I get a nice break to refresh my mind.

If you don’t set a time to stop, it’s like being on 24/7. Even though you’re not working every minute, or even if you away from your computer, you’re mind is always going back to work. Especially if you keep checking email and social accounts on your phone and every now and then you come back to the computer to do something. If you find yourself doing that, it means you never disconnect from your work, you’re always ON and you will burn out sooner or later.

Stay Active

Another thing that I do daily which helps me a lot with keeping a fresh mind is staying active. I found a physical activity that I enjoy and I use it to take my mind away from everything by focusing on it for an hour or two. Look for an activity that you like and can be passionate about. If you are not into sports or any kind of physical activity, you can find yourself doing other things like music or taking the time to fulfill other passions. You can do anything that you will have to completely focus on without being able to think about work.

I’ve always been into sports and for the past 3 years I have been practicing Brazilian Jiu Jitsu, so every night right after I turn off I move on to my training. I stay active by doing that, and I’m also using the time to also learn about a Martial Arts. Most importantly, it’s nearly impossible to think about work when someone is trying to choke you out or put you on a submission.

By doing that I completely take my mind away from work and keep it fresh and ready for the next day, so I suggest you do the same. Find something you like and enjoy doing, something you can be passionate about. This will help you stay active and refresh your mind.

Take a Day Off

Take a day off from technology every week, away from technology meaning computer, Internet, phone (if possible) or anything work related. Enjoy a day doing something that inspires you and make sure to get away from the box where you work or live in.

I know it’s hard to take a day off when you’re really busy and you are passionate about what you do. I’ve had this problem where I wanted to work every day and every second of my life. Eventually we have to understand that life is a marathon, not a sprint race and think about what’s better for ourselves in the long run.

Every week I take one day off to completely stay away from home/work and do something I enjoy. I try to get inspired by the world away from my work. What I’ve been doing is going to a different town every week, to simply walk around and take photos. I found that photography inspires me and getting to know different places to photograph is a really cool activity. Find this activity that you enjoy doing and turn off from technology. By the next day you will want to work so much more. A day off from technology will feel more like a week away from the computer, so your work mind will flow like never before.

Other Resources

Here are some other interesting articles I found on the subject:

• Burnout – A List Apart
• Overcoming Creative Burnout – HOW Design
• Avoiding Designer Burnout - Six Revisions
• 12 Tips for Avoiding Burnout as a Freelancer – DesignM.ag

I hope that we can all take a lesson out of this and make sure we don’t run out of gas on this long road called life. Feel free to say Hello! and I’ll see you next time.

It’s been a little over 3 years that I have been working with Abduzeedo and it’s been nothing but awesomeness! Going back 3 years, I was working a shitty job and a lot of my hours got cut off because of the resection. For me that meant more time to work on what was my hobby back then, “design”.

I remember looking for a certain tutorial at good-tutorials and I somehow landed on this great website called Abduzeedo. At first glance I thought it was pretty cool, inspiration of all kinds and really awesome tutorials so being curious as I am I went on the about page to find out more about it. Guess what? The founder was Brazilian just like me and so was most of the team. I felt the urge to contact them right the way to let them know what a great job they were doing, and so I did. Not only did I get in touch with Fabio but I offered him some help to create some posts, since I had some extra time in my hands and lots of ideas, why not give it a shot.

My intentions were pure; I had no idea if they even had a visitor a day and it didn’t matter at all. I saw that they were doing something good and I wanted to be part of it. Fabio was great, after a few emails back and forth he allowed and trusted me to do a post. My first post was born on October 8, 2008 - Inspiration: Crazy Ads. I started out with a post here and there and after some time I started getting the hang of it. I was posting good content so it turned into a post a week. The more I got involved the more I wanted to share, the comments from people all over the world were overwhelming and to see them inspired by something I shared was really an amazing feeling. Next thing I know I was posting twice a week, three times a week, every day of the week.

During this time I got the chance to share some cool stuff, learned a lot about the industry, I’ve meet a lot of people, made a lot of friends, and a lot of door opened up to me. Looking back at what I’ve posted here are some highlights.

Tutorials/Articles:

• Really Cool Digital Make up in 10 min
• Manipulation Basics: Illumination and Coloration
• Soul Rebel Poster Tutorial
• Awesome Colorful Poster Tutorial
• Creating Very Cool Folded Typo
• Sport Photo Illustration Step by Step
• Creating Graphic Portfolio Without a Client

Interviews:

• Interview with the Master of Photoshop Justin Maller
• Inside the Studio of Hand Made Font
• Christopher Haines Interview
• Interview with Young Artist Saad Moosajee
• Interview with Photo Illustrator Wojciech Magierski
• Brian Hoff talks about the redesign of TDC

To view all my posts abduzeedo.com/blogs/paul0v2

I’ve also started some post series that are very popular today: Friday Fresh Free Fonts, Typography Mania, and Tuesday Total Textures. I had the pleasure to be part of the team that helped Fabio put together and release the Abduzeedo Book, and represented the blog in some great events like the FOWD.

Now that I look back these 3 years flew by and I’m so happy to be part of the A-Team. I start everyday of the week with Abduzeedo in my mind. I interact non-stop with our users via email and twitter because it’s part of me. I am thankful for this experience that has changed my life and will continue to do so.

Welcome everyone, some of you may already know me and follow me around at abduzeedo or twitter. If not, feel free to say hello and get to know me better.

This is something that I have wanted to do for a long time especially because a lot of people have been asking why I don’t have my own blog. Well here we are, I wanted to keep it as simple as possible so the content can be king.

This will be a little backstage of my work life, there’s a ton of cool things I want to share: ideas, projects, freebies and whatever else comes to mind. Most importantly, I want to use this little manifesto to make connections. I want to know about you and your ideas too; I want to get involved with people who share and seek the same interests as me.

Promises apart, I want to post at least once a week. So grab a cup of coffee and come around once in a while to see what I’m cooking.