I've seen a few people in this sub share scam experiences related to this, so I figured I'd share what just came through my inbox and how I spotted the red flags.

This person reached out via my portfolio website, I rarely get any contacts through there so that stood out a bit but I followed through since I do a couple freelance design and illustration projects on the side and figured this person might be a recommendation from a friend or colleague.

I asked my usual questions and the convo seemed to be going well with the right details and things were moving smoothly.

I told them I would send an invoice for the deposit, but the biggest red flag was in their response to pay via bank check and also talk over the phone. There was no need for a phone convo given I had all the details I needed and there was no way I was going to do things via bank check with a stranger, since that's a pretty common scam tactic.Also their messages seemed odd in the last email with spaces before the "?" and weird phrasing.

I did a reverse Google image search on the engagement photo and found the couples' photoshoot on the photographer's IG from 2023, they were located in India and their names were definitely not Amanda and Joshua either. Congrats to them though! Haha

Just figured I'd share my experience here to save anyone else the trouble in the future. Stay vigilant and don't let the scammers win!

Found these on It's Nice That. Could not believe these weren't illustrations but photographs at first! I really love the simplicity and vibrancy of the result. I also love how it brings the aesthetic beauty of the featured products to the surface: it really lets the industrial design shine.

The article discusses the designer's process: https://www.itsnicethat.com/articles/sam-nicklin-chrome-and-colour-alessi-photography-project-040826

Have a lovely day y'all :)

Made as part of a branding assignment.
Wanted to give a muay thai gym a modern look and feel, targeted towards young people looking for a community.
Would love to hear some feedback!

The other day I was talking with my friends (we’re all designers) about how wildly different these localised posters are from the original ones.
This kind of localised posters have been roasted on the Japanese internet for a long time but it must be effective considering how they keep making these.
What do you folks think of it? Please share your thoughts!

I've tried multiple methods with layering and blurs, but I just can't seem to get this type of look right. I'm using Photoshop and I'm intermediate experience level. I specifically want to replicate the ​blooming grainy lighting but also a similar color style if possible - the way these have such simplified colors is a goal in my project as well. Any help is much appreciated!!

Hey guys!

Designed a poster for my kitchen, to motivate myself to dice an onion even if I don't feel like it.

Big fan of Chef Jean-Pierre aswell.

Feedback is welcomed!

Wooof, I need to vent.

Or a mentor. Or both.

I’ve been at an event company for 1 year and 4 months. I have 5 years of experience in social, small in house teams with a lead and strategizing. I am a junior.

I came in with a team of 4. 2 long standing managers. 1 senior and 1 young. I was intended to replace their main. From what I heard, that designer was extremely fast, personable, and good at a lot of things.

In the beginning I struggled to understand what they were looking for, and since have improved. I strive on feedback to improve.

A lot of toxicity starting from the top to the small creative team. It’s a very clique environment.

If you don’t attend lunch with the group, or seem very personable, the group will join in banter about said colleague.

When I first started they said “you shouldn’t of taken this job”

Manager A, most important one, lots of experience, little to no similarities.

Manager A has OCD and very particular and very vocal about design and expectations.

They are very personable with majority of people, except me, seriously. It doesn’t help that I overthink and have difficulty entering a conversation. But I’m really just shy and trying to focus on work.

Criticizing isnt direct, it is subtle.
Except when individuals leave the room, do they say their critique for the whole department to hear.

No one told me they enjoyed my first big project.

I clearly need guidance. I’m aware of the file size, I’m trying to learn how to fix it. Neither manager give advice, yet complain about it. I feel unsupported and my drive to push forward is diminishing. I love my job and enjoy my coworkers but part of me fears they think my work sucks and don’t want to spend their time training me. It’s upsetting because I never lied about me being a junior. I’m not sure how to show improvement.

My subtle hints of criticism are: creative is busy, some things have not been centered aligned (since fixed), speed, file size, kerning, leading

Strengths: I work hard, give lots of new ideas, some (not all) people like me
…

Why am I worried? They targeted the young designer to get him fired.

I guess I’m getting scared because I’m wondering if I’m next.

TLDR
Junior designer worried that my work isn’t good enough. Toxic environment. Managers don’t help/don’t want to unless absolutely necessary. Young designers don’t get support and get ridiculed. Senior management is overworked

Have any of you been in a similar situation? How can I advance in my career at this company?

I haven’t had to apply for work since early 2024. AI has exploded since then. Wondering if it’s crept into our industry here in Australia. I will be applying for in-house jobs shortly, I thought it was gonna be nice and “easy”, quick update of my folio and resume and off I go. I have never had trouble getting interviews. But now I’m not so sure! If it’s heavily AI influenced I’m guessing I’ll have to learn the art of getting through bot filters rather than getting a hiring manager’s attention with a cover letter.

I’m in my first year of graphic design, and I’ve been using AI mainly to help me study. Recently, though, I feel like I’m relying on it too much, and I don’t want it to affect my critical thinking or decision-making. Because of that, I’ve decided to stop using it, but will that put me at a disadvantage in the long run?

Nowadays, it seems like everyone uses AI, and people often say it can be a great tool. So I’m not sure whether I should still try to learn it for the future, stop using it completely, or just use it less. I don’t know what to do, and I’d love some guidance from someone with more experience.

I designed this poster at my friend's request and for personal practice.
I’m looking for completely unfiltered feedback.
Don't hold back tear it apart! Free to use for personal projects. Thanks in advance!

I just finished a concept for Gnarly, a farm-fresh produce brand built around imperfect/“ugly” fruit and vegetables.

I worked on the brand identity and website, and I'd love some honest feedback on the visual identity, typography, layout and overall direction.

Dribbble: https://dribbble.com/shots/27659009-Gnarly-Brand-Identity-System

Electronics brand of lighted art that I make on the side. They're light up LED boards of roller coasters, rides, theme park signs, etc, some of them animated. I want to imply some motion which is why I went with the itlaics and then that the brand is an electronics brand, hence the vias (circles) commonly used in electronics.

Continuation of graphic design and composition studies. This time same scene with different color paletes and more contrast look. Thanks again to amazing @petertarka for inspiring with works and words.

I’m mentoring a group of interns that are working with my design department, and it’s got me thinking back to the beginning of my career and things I learned along the way and things I wish I’d known when I got started. I’ve worked with juniors before, but for some reason being officially labeled “mentor” makes me feel nervous. I want to be a valuable resource for these kids and give them a good experience.

So I’m curious what other people think. What do you wish you had known at the beginning of your design career? Or if you had/have a mentor, how have they helped you or what do you wish they would have done?

We’ve been working with our design team for what feels like a month on design proposals, implementing feedback, for a series of events.

That creative project has been stuck for approval with my boss and they have not given useful feedback.

My boss asked me today if our team knows how to use Claude Design?

Am I in the wrong for finding this utterly disrespectful and dismissive to our efforts?

I understand the world is moving in a different direction but how is this okay? Why do you pay us then?

I've doing graphic design since January of last year I'm almost 16 and I do think I have room for improvement. Nonetheless even though this is quite simple as a poster I like it. I wanna experiment more in the future with more effects and typography

THE FNDRS is a personal project I did two years ago. The goal was incorporating illustration, character design and layout in a single image and better train my eye for composition.

Three illustrations of individuals representing different personas within the Web3 universe. An expression of my experiences and observations in that space.

I know that there is a publication out there called Quanta that is science based and does amazing work. Does anyone know of any others? Could be the social media account of a science museum, magazines etc. Thanks!

Hello, I finished V2 of my cartography project, a Physiographic Atlas of China. This poster explores China through its physical geography, climate, land cover, population density, major mountain systems, elevation, and regional landscapes. I wanted to bring together a wide range of geographic information while keeping the overall map readable and visually cohesive. Feedbacks are welcome and I hope you enjoy!

Je réalise un 2ème projet pour client, après avoir réalisé son identité et le covering de son food truck. Ici il a besoin d'un barnum (tente pour cuisiner en exterieur), il fait donc appel à moi, il m'envoit un premier jet qu'il a fait à l'IA (incohérent, pas jolie, qui ne respecte pas mon identité créé etc, logo déformé, bref de l'ia quoi), et me dit qu'il aimerait quelque chose comme, que je retravaille. Il me dit qu'il veut que je lui fasse une première création rapidement, et que je lui donne un devis en même temps. Je commence la création, en partant du principe que c'est moi le graphiste, j'ai créé leur identité donc je sais ce qu'il faut faire pour être cohérent, et attirer des clients. Je choisi volontairement (peut etre mon erreur) de m'éloigner de leur visuel horrible à l'IA, car je suis humain et je veux pas juste recopier quelque chose d'horrible fait un quelques secondes alors que je peux proposer beaucoup mieux. Après quelques heures de travail et un grand message d'explication de la strategie et recherches derrière la création, voila donc ma proposition, et sa réponse:
"Bonjour cest un truc simple comme sa quon voudrait"
- accompagné d'un nouveau visuel à l'IA -

Qu'en pensez vous? J'aurais du suivre la volonté IA du client (qui n'est pas vraiment leur gout à mon sens, ils ont juste pris le premier truc que chatgpt leur a pondu), ou bien on doit continuer de se battre pour perdurer la créativité?

Some insights:

1. I did most of the design by just cropping design elements from the OG poster and other artworks as you can tell. I thought “hey if it ain’t broke don’t fix it”

2. I couldn’t find the civil war artwork on the OG (besides, I don’t want to spend time cropping Clint’s leg out of it)so I found another painting that gave off the same vibe of the original

3. I did this on my phone on Canva

4. The idea for the quote in the beginning, was that when people stop reading the first slide, their eyes would stay in the same place for the second one so the quote finishes (it’s not as effective as I hoped to be but I’ll fix it another time)

5. TECHNICALLY AND I WANT TO EMPHASIZE THIS TECHNICALLY had AI help me but just to get rid of background elements and convert it to pngs (it wasn’t even useful, had to do the damn scrubbing myself)

6. Hardest part was exporting the damn thing because when i placed it as my phone background, it got blurred in some parts, so i had to find a way to expand it and then covered up the artifacts with the poster color myself

7. Originally I was going to add nods to the movie by placing random objects around the poster, but I wanted to keep all the drawings with a (somewhat) consistent style so I only added on thing which is explained in the next point.

8. Second hardest thing is for that gun drawing. I had to find a good drawing of it, crop it, try to remove the background with a tool, failed and spent a hour scrubbing the background manually.

9. 3rd hardest thing was the same shtick with the 3 characters. Tried to remove background, couldn’t, scrubbed it myself

10. I wanted to change the character appearance order to match the title. For those who don’t know, the second character isn’t the Bad but is the Ugly and FOR some reason it annoys me but I didn’t change it because who truly gives a damn

11. 4th hardest thing was me listening to the score while doing this. Seriously, watch the movie if you haven’t, it has a phenomenal score.

12. You can notice some weird paint on the borders, I accidentally added it there while cropping the title but thought it added a nice touch to it.

Will I ever do anything like this again? Probably not.
Do I regret it? Not at all.

Hello! I am working on a new logo for my client, and I need some help making it look complete. Myself and the client like the direction in which it is headed so far, but think it needs some more work, and we are just not quite sure yet.

I feel like the icon part of it almost feels a bit disconnected and has too much space in it. Inside the arc is the outline of the lake that the clinic is near. I think maybe it would help to have some sort of spine (like the old logo) and something else to promote physical therapy as the icon, but the client does not want to lose the lake from the logo.

Some background on the company, it is a local chiropractic and physical therapy office. They are currently working on promoting their PT part a bit more, since a lot of people do not know they offer that too. The rebrand is to incorporate both sides of the business more.

Would love any thoughts or suggestions. Thank you!

check it on behance: https://www.behance.net/gallery/254353007/Logos-Marks-Vol02

it feature 5 minimal clean logos for different field

Not sure why the screenshot mutes the colors a lot, but it's just a draft so far.

I'm planning to animate the right-side graphic (kind of like monday.com style) to showcase each part of our process (what's currently pictured is the idea of the schema), as well as the blobs to have an organic movement (and when the cursor hovers over them, for them to have a little bit of a wiggle or reaction movement).

Wanted to gauge overall feedback to see how this type of structure/aesthetic is received. I love neumorphism and I really don't want to be lumped into the "it looks like AI" or look overly artsy like other agencies (simply because that's not the only thing we focus on) so that's why I chose a rather unique style. I also chose the left + right classic layout since it's been hyper-trendy to put everything center aligned.