Bryan Connor - Young and Freelancing

Advice to Myself

Heavily inspired by the brilliant writing of Frank Chimero in a recent post What advice would you give to a graphic design student? I’ve created a desktop background for myself with tailored advice for what I need to keep reminding myself of during this final year of school.

I think it’ll help me focus and improve and if you think it might be helpful to you please go ahead and download the full size version.

What Advice Would I Give to Myself?

Personal projects are more valuable than client projects.

Teachers should act as guides and mentors and not totemic figures. Learning design history will make your work stronger. Be influenced by subjects outside of the design world.

Let who you are take precedence in your work.

Reading and language allow you to write and think better.

Recognize when your design is stuck and take it off-screen or walk away. Don’t be afraid to start over. Getting advice can lead to both breakthroughs and dependence. Start reckless and then rein it in. The reverse is difficult.

Getting noticed isn’t as important as making good, fulfilling work. Trends are temporary. Design basics are forever. Gathering ‘inspiration’ is almost always crippling.

Turn off everything and ideate with pen and paper.

Don’t take yourself or your work too seriously.

Dribbble Community Reactions: Infographic

Dribbble, the fledgling community of designers posting snapshots of work, has had landmark week for both press and controversy centering around the true purpose of the community.

Dribbble has been criticized for its exclusivity and many are waiting to see whether it will turn into a gallery for the best designers to post work and get patted on the back or a coveted space for receiving valuable feedback from some of the big names in the industry.

In the past 24 hours Dribbble has taken one big step towards the later with a sizable sample of the community chiming in on the purpose of Dribble in reaction to a shot entitled Dribbble Etiquette no. 1 “Provide feedback only when asked (you pompous ass).”

In the information graphic below I’ve cataloged the responses for the past 24 hours as “Pro-Feedback,” “Indifferent / Unrelated,” and “Anti-feedback.”

My thoughts? Sometimes a community needs something negative to rally against to define what it’s going to be down the road.

Mapping Istanbul

I, as you may know, am a lover of information graphics and more recently a lover of Istanbul. My recent time in Istanbul has left me with lots of great experiences and lots to digest.

Mapping Istanbul has caught my interest as not only a beautiful series of information graphics but as a way to digest and process the city that has a massive history, a myriad of cultural influences, and a diverse life of its own.

The series of narrative information graphics from ProjectProjects catalogs travel routes, population density and demographics, economic factors and much more.

It looks like the only way to purchase the beauty outside turkey is to email the Ottoman Bank Archives and Research Center by email at archive@ottomanbank.com

All images via ProjectProjects.com

This New Format. Blogazine? Editorial Design?

My name is Bryan Connor and I have the itis.

Design-itis

De•sign–i•tis Definition
Pronunciation: /-dih-zahyn-īt-əs-/
-noun

1. The incessant need for afflicted designers to constantly redesign their web presence as a result of slow but sure dissatisfaction with their previous version. Severe cases redesign with a frequency of every 6 months or less.

Many designers know the trials of this unfortunate disorder, myself included. As you can see my site has fallen prey to a redesign once again.

But whenever this happens I think all designers feel a certain sense of improvement which I think is the case here. It may look like a pretty standard redesign but in the process I’ve changed the format up quite a bit…

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Amtrak Baggage Tags Redesigned

Amtrak has been doing a fantastic job of branding themselves lately and despite delays and inconveniences I still love them. The wonderful posters that have been coming out for Amtrak, designed by Michael Schwab, harken back to the golden era of train travel and add a lot of dimension to the Amtrak brand.

The posters are nice on a surface level but you don’t get this richness of brand while you’re actually traveling. To begin to bring that brand in to the train travel experience i redesigned Amtrak’s default luggage tags to resemble the work and feeling of Michael Scwhab‘s campaign for Amtrak.

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SXSW & This Site

So I’ve arrived at SXSW after a brilliant trip and initial contact which I’ll detail in an article later.

Preparing for this conference has been intense. I’ve been working with Infochimps to prepare for a data meetup happening on Sunday (which you should come to if you’re in Austin) by completing the meetup identity, website, and signage for the event.

I’ve also been working heavily with GuruStorms, a finalist in the SXSW Business Accelerator Program to get their brand and website up to date. They’ll be presenting Monday in front of a panel of judges who in previous years have singled out Twitter from a myriad of other startups.

In all his preparation I’ve been squeezing in time on this website and trying to get it fully functionally and beautiful as well. As you might imagine this has proved difficult. Contorting wordpress to bend to my will is taking time and I’m striving to make a site that is deep with content and really nice to look at.

Bare with me as I make everything functional stay tuned by subscribing to my RSS feed to be notified when everything is perfected.

User-test Your Website or App for Free

In the world of interactivity, the importance of user testing is drastically underestimated. Designers love to think that users will use their site the way they designed it without any hesitation and that everything is obvious. It’s nearly impossible to find a major flaw in something you’ve designed from the ground up.

A single user test can change all that very quickly as it has for me time and time again. The misconception of user testing is that it’s expensive and ultimately not worth it. There are many services that will gather “qualified participants” to user test your site or app for a reasonable sum. These services get the job done but you can bootstrap your own round of user testing for free.

Small scale user testing is an idea triumphed by Steve Krug in his wonderful usability book Don’t Make Me Think. His concepts are really solid and he preaches that even doing a single user test looking over the shoulder of a friend can do wonders for your site.

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Cliche Poster Display Taken To New Heights

What’s worse than a silly designer cliche? One that is mass marketed and sold for a profit to the unwitting masses.

There is a trend that when a designer wants to display a poster, instead of hanging it on a boring old wall, they setup their tripod and a time and take the photo holding their poster. The more interesting way you can hold the poster, the better.

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Should a Young Freelancer Incorporate? 6 Opinions for Business

Freelancing can be a bit frightening at times, especially when it comes to dealing with legalities and finances regarding your freelance business. The decisions you make will effect everything from your bank account to your branding. I think every freelancer wonders whether it’d be better to set them selves up as a business rather than an individual.

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Student Status – 12 Reasons Freelancers Should be Proud

Transparent Freelancing

I was reading an article on (the newly redesigned ) Freelance Switch the other week about 5 Tips for College Freelancers and one tip was to hide your student status. I thought this tip was a little odd and so did a few people in the comments so I came up with 12 reasons you should tell your new clients you’re a student and proud of it!

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