Jan
24th

Jan
4th

You know how I kept reiterating that I was becoming a tub of lard in December? Read this to find out why. Hint*February

Dec
26th

Yesterday was Christmas Day and also TwentyFourCarat.net’s 6 year anniversary! I started this blog when I was in my senior year in high school— although I had another blog prior this this, from my freshman year till then, but unless you want to read about my whiny, annoying and rebellious teenage years that were worse than the first entries of this blog, let’s bury that forever.

TwentyFourCarat.net has been a record of all the good times in my last year of high school, graduating with all my girlfriends— the “Asian Girls”, as we were cliquishly named in high school (who are still my best friends), sleepless nights all throughout art school till my final portfolio show that landed my first and very exciting career-starting job a couple weeks later, my transition into a lazy to healthy lifestyle and everything in between. Six years later, so many things have changed and I’ve grown and learned so much in all aspects of my life— I feel like I’m at another significant milestone in my life because huge things are going to be happening in 2012 and I can’t wait! I will share it with you all when time is right.

2011 has been an intense whirlwind— an exciting, new high-profile project at work that we are just wrapping up and will be shipping in March, intense night schooling, re-learning how to “study,” miles and miles of training for the Ride to Conquer Cancer, so much intense fitness it wasn’t even funny, lots of freelance projects with new and old clients, months and months of sleepness nights (well 5am nights) and most recently: starting a new design partnership with one of my best and most talented friends:

Our website doesn’t have much up at the moment but we have so many ideas, just not enough time to do them all! We also have some pretty exciting projects and contracts lined up for the new year that we are just itching to start after all these holiday festivities. Everything, including our logo, website and first launch project were cooked up 3 weeks before launch, and we don’t think the polish level of the posters are up-to-par yet but on top of the everything we had to do and went through, I think it’s amazing. The last 3 weeks were the craziest, most intense and wanting-to-die-because-I-was-so-tired-everyday weeks of my life. I still have no idea how we did it but I would happily do it all over again with my Kimchi.

The new year is coming up and I still have a bunch of freelance projects I want to finish and still be able to live my life and do other fun things like snowboarding and girls’ nights, so I probably won’t be posting until 2012.

I know I haven’t been posting entries regularly like I use to and keep saying I will but I’m especially thankful to my group of loyal readers who are still reading, commenting and supporting me, no matter how sparse the entries… since the beginning. Some bloggers like to say they only blog for themselves but if I knew that no one reads my blog, I would not blog at all.

I wish you all a happy and healthy new year!!

I love you all. xoxo.

Jul
27th

Oct
28th

One of my best traits (and perhaps downfall) is that I’m super picky about organization. My desktop has be de-cluttered and minimal, desktop and quick launch icons has to be ordered by category, all my Photoshop layers have to be named and organized in folders, my panels in all Adobe programs have to be in specific positions… it’s ironic because sometimes I spend so much time on organization but it all pays off in the end. Since I’ve been doing this for a while now, I’ve picked up a lot of tips and tricks to design efficiently and here is my “must-do” list:

Have an inspiration gallery on your hard-drive for things like:

• websites
• packaging
• logos
• business cards
• illustrations

Browse through this folder when you are facing a design-block. You can have a general gallery or have separate folders for each project and sub-categories are also helpful (eg. under websites: corporate, fashion, food, etc.).  There is nothing wrong with using other people’s work as inspiration because this is what most designers do— we look for images that inspire us and use that newly-found inspiration to create something from scratch in our own style. Just don’t copy a design outright! Make sure you keep adding to this folder when you come across work that inspires you.

Have a design library on your hard-drive full of resources:

• fonts
• stock images
• patterns/textures
• icons
• vectors
• actions/scripts/brushes

Having a design library on your computer allows for efficient designing process so you don’t have to look for new textures and fonts every time you start a new project. Make sure the rights of all these art assets allows you to use them for the project you intend to use it for and remember to keep on adding to this library!

Accessibility.

With online file-syncing services like Dropbox, you can keep all your resources and inspiration in reach at all times if you need to design on different computers.

Use content management tools.

To view my images I use Adobe Bridge with the thumbnail pane enlarged— you can adjust the size of the thumbnails with the slider on the bottom right of the screen. This allows me to browse and compare all the images in a folder without clicking each of them (because I hate clicks!).

All designers should know this already but you shouldn’t be dropping all your fonts into your Windows/Fonts folder or it may effect your computer’s performance especially if you have thousands. Instead, you should be using a font management tool to install or uninstall fonts you need. Advanced font tools may have tons of features for example, categorizing your fonts. I use FontXplorer because it’s free, simple and has all the features I need.

Actions and Scripts.

One of the best things about Photoshop are it’s actions and scripts. I create actions for functions I use daily such as:

• Pasting (F4) and clearing (shift+F4) layer styles
• Flipping horizontally (F8) and vertically (shift+F8)
• Auto-Contrast (F2)
• Save as Pattern (F5)

What are some methods you use to design efficiently?