It was feeling a bit anticlimatic to finish a whole year of graphic design practice. But I must be clear: it was a great year of learning.

I was still doing the html course so I felt I wasn’t investing enough in design. So I ended up doing some square format designs, and I think I did all of them in 1 or 2 hours. I’ve built quite a bit of design muscle, and I’m glad for that.

What comes next? I don’t know. Until the end of the year I think I will be learning html and css, and then at the beginning of the year I will see how I face this second year of design practise.

I’ve finally started learning html. I would like to have at least a basic knowledge of how front end works. I started a course with pixelpro and even if it’s more information centered and it needs more of memorizing skills, I’m glad I finally started.

Then I’m just uploading a few of the design I’ve been working for a client recently. I’ve been doing the images for Amazon listings, working with a square format. 

Then I’m just uploading 2 super quick designs I made when I was too exhausted from learning html content.

This week was the most prolific in terms of producing final designs. Even if there was one day that I didn’t practise, I stillhad lots of ideas. I just started out with testing a new font, but then I jumped into square designs, as if album covers.

I got a bit experimental with colors, since I found two sources with very good content for inspiration Typographic Posters and Philippe Apeloig 

Then I just wanted to do something with some pictures. I would say this week represented two styles of designs that more and more define my strengths.

I was in the flow of designing t-shirts. Clearly my style is more focused on typography and images (which I came to accept) but the possibilities are infinite. There’s a few designs that I find quite good, but still there’s so much to expand in this niche of graphic design.

I was revisiting the logo course again. I want to give closure to that for now, I think I will focus my learning somewhere else.

I’ve been working mostly in the rebranding of a logo, but I cannot share it yet. Once is published I will update it here.

Apart from that, I wanted to start testing a lay out for a project with all of my textures. I would like to make some type of book compiling all of them. Here is just an example of what could be, even if in my mind I want to make it very minimal and simple, with not much added text or forms.

Then the good old posters which I enjoy so much. I still need to get in the grove again.

After many weeks without being able to continue my day to day practise, I’m bacl in the game. From all the experiences that I had in the past 3 months, I wanted to make a design from the spanish pilgrimage «Camino de Santiago». This is just a gift I made for my wife.

I was surprise at how challenging it was to make a composition that didn’t feel too chaotic while still having many pictures. I would say this is the first type of design that I do, and there’s lot to learn.

Very slow two-weeks practise. I couldn’t manage to get into rythym because I was so busy with other projects. I think the course on logo design is powerful, and that I can learn a lot and finally grasp how to be good in the the process of creating logos, but at this stage I’m still too amateurish. It was a good challenge and practice to do a cloud of branstorming ideas (there was much more but I thought of just showing a theme).

Then I was surprised by how hard it was to re-design the advertisement that I’m showing. I saw it in a company’s magazine, and I just thought: let’s make it better. It became quite complicated, because I also had to get rid off information that I don’t know if the real client would be fine with. So it’s not just a visual job, but one of information. Still, good practise.

When it was hard to work on those two, I just did what I like so much: use my own pictures to create designs. It’s becoming a classic, but I like giving that outcome to many of my pictures, which otherwise I don’t think are powerful enough to be part of my photography portfolio.

I felt I needed to make some designs despite most of my time was dedicated for the course. The horizontal ones are okay, but the verticals are definetely unfinished. I just used some pictures I took from my trip to Brussels on the weekend. Anyway the point is that I’m investing into expanding my logo design skills, even if there’s quite some resistance because I feel I’m not a good illustrator, but I think with this course I’m realizing that the process of logo creation is much more than that, which gives me good sensations for a good learning curve.

This was such a journey. Finally I could have some real case scenario where I could solve with graphic design the problems of my client. Basically I had to develop the aesthetics for a workshop from a religious group. This included: the logo, two shirts, banners, and a poster.

It took me a while to find the style, but finally I went for a typography based imaginery, also since I’m not a good illustrator (yet?). Once I could find the core idea, mixing two fonts for RE-generation, then everything started rolling. Of course those two fonts are the ones I’ve been using a lot lately: Roc Grotesk and Gazzetta.

It seems like I just keep investing in poster making. I mean it’s already a genre of graphic design that has infinite possibilities, but maybe I should be invensting in something else. Anyway, this week I found my «inspiration» in the show that I’ve been watching, Trailer Park Boys, and in the documentary of Planet Earth II. I mixed my own pictures with some resources I found online. I’m still exploring different ideas, and I get inspiration from Pinterest and the ocean of visual things there.

Also I felt that it’s been a long time since I used Helvetica, so I had to bring it back in some way or another.