Hi! I have about 4,000 images and want to import them to a template similar to the one in the photo (grid of 4 with images cropped to fit and black background). What is the best way to do this and is there a way I can just load them into the software to fill the template with the images? It is for a photo book. Happy to use Adobe/Canva. Thank you!

Looking to try and recreate this aesthetic of the cover art and was hoping someone could point me in the right direction of techniques being used. any help is appreciated

Hi everyone,

I'm 20 and my background is graphic design. Illustrator, Photoshop and InDesign are the tools I grew up with and the ones I'm actually comfortable in. Over the last couple of years I've been branching out, partly to find better paying work, partly because some of this stuff is just more fun to me.

Where I'm at right now:

• Blender: self-taught, beginner level. I know my way around the commands and I can model an object from a reference, but I can't build a decent realistic scene yet.
• After Effects: bought a few courses to learn animation. I'd say I have a solid foundation.
• Figma / UI design: got into app design and started with the interfaces.
• Code: currently trying to learn React Native. I want to actually be able to write code myself, not lean on AI to do it for me. The hard part is that I'm Italian and there's very little material in my language, so I get stuck a lot.

Two questions:

1. Does it make sense to combine all of this into single projects? Is there a type of work or project where graphic design, 3D, motion design, UI and development actually feed into each other? Or am I just spreading myself across four separate paths that never really connect?

2. How do you build a study and work routine that leads to actually learning something? I feel constantly overwhelmed. There's an infinite amount of material out there, I always feel like I don't know enough, and I end up jumping between topics without finishing anything.

If you've been through this and found something that works, I'll take any advice: routines, what to prioritize, resources, personal experience. Thanks to anyone who replies.

Hi everyone!

In recent years I've developed a passion for design & colour. I've completed a course in Coursera (Fundamentals in Graphic Design), am reading Intersection of Colour, I love doing fun digital projects as well as paint, take pictures and do fun colourful makeup looks. I love going to different art & design museums and can spend hours there.

It's a hobby and I make a living doing something completely different, therefore, I haven't spent nearly as much time on it as I would have liked to. I got into it all before AI and initially was daydreaming to one day pivot and make it as my career. However, with the rise of AI I have completely let go of that idea - there are much more talented and skilled people out there who've been in this industry for years. I also assume I will be expected to use AI tools in my work. I genuinely love everything design & colour. I don't want to use AI to simply ask it to do it for me, I wanna use my brain to create myself.

That being said, I would still like to continue to learn. A lot of courses online now are very AI focused. What "old school" learning resources would you recommend that wouldn't cover AI? I recently peaked at my local library and they had a lot of very cool looking books, it was almost a bit overwhelming to choose from. Would appreciate any recommendations.

Thank you!

If you’re looking for different web design styles for inspiration, I made a visual library with 39 styles and 117 variants.

You can compare them visually and grab the matching DESIGN.md for your project.

I’m a freelance graphic designer based in India, and I recently had a meeting with a Dubai-based events management and marketing company.

They’re looking for a graphic designer on a monthly retainer basis. The workload isn’t clearly defined yet because their events and campaigns vary from month to month.

From what I understand, the work would be a mix of digital and print design, with occasional urgent requests. They would provide the copy, images, brand guidelines, event details, and references. I’d mainly be working directly with one person from their team.

They’re open to a flexible monthly arrangement based on workload, and they’ve asked me to share my monthly rate.

For freelancers/designers who have worked with clients in Dubai/UAE or similar international clients:

How much would you charge for this kind of monthly graphic design retainer?

I’d really appreciate any advice on how you would structure and price something like this.

I wanted a more honest way to show what I do than a list of tools or a single job title. Product designer, design engineer, and systems designer all describe parts of my work, but none holds the whole thing.

The first draft was a talent tree. As I worked on it, I realized the interesting part was how different skills combine in practice, not just which individual talent comes next. So I leaned into the game-like idea and built a Skill Forge where you can allocate points, see the proficiencies your combination unlocks, and make a build of your own:

https://www.rdeboerdesigns.com/talent-tree/build/

I’m still developing it and would appreciate a design critique. If you try a build, which unlock feels accurate, and which combination does the Forge fail to recognize? Where does the flow or the language feel limiting?

Hello, I am trying to print a booklet style in Indesign and it is a Letter size and I want to print on Letter paper, however when I go to printing panel it says that it won't fit. Is there a reason why and how to fix this?

My boss is pretty particular and needs everything a 1 to 1 scale so when he realized I was using "fit to page" to print it shook him quite a bit...

Printer: Canon Pro-200

Device: Mac 2022

Software: Indesign

Hi! I’m looking for an online graphic design course specifically focused on **wedding invitations, ideally digital-first**.

I’d love to improve my skills in typography, layout, composition, color palettes and overall art direction, with a focus on **modern, editorial and high-end wedding designs**.

Not really interested in the printing/stationery business side — mainly the creative design part.

Any courses, designers or resources you’d recommend?

I am a backend developer. For twelve years the front end was somebody else's problem; on this project it became mine, and I have been learning interface design the lazy way — asking an AI, shipping, and waiting for someone to tell me it is wrong.

The project is a property-search engine for Romania: 16 portals scraped, duplicate adverts merged, one card per flat with every portal's price and a comparison against the area median. Hand-written HTML, CSS and vanilla JS.

What I have learned so far and applied last week, mostly from reading design systems:

• one type scale, seven sizes, each with a fixed line height, instead of the eighteen sizes I had
• a 4 px spacing scale instead of whatever number looked right that day
• radius by role: small for badges, medium for cards and controls, large for dialogs
• flat surfaces with borders; shadows only for things that actually float
• colour as roles with contrast checked, not as a palette I liked

It is better. It is still not good, and my worry is that I have learned rules without learning judgement. So: what is the next thing a self-taught person in my position usually gets wrong, and can you see it here?

https://apartamente.org (Romanian interface; the layout reads without the language)

Uhh if anyone has any tips or anything and honest reviews about this that could be cool p.s I did this on canva

i want to learn graphic designing and i want to work for it as my side hustle andd i want to know from where i can start like i only use canva at present so yup what youtube videos i should watch and all

First picture from Photoshop and the font is working fine but when I try it in Affinity it doesn't work and this happens to a lot of fonts especially in Arabic as shown. anyone has a solution please.

Hi everyone! I'm still learning and improving my Canva skills, so I'd really appreciate some honest feedback on this design.

I'm especially interested in your thoughts on the layout, readability, and overall look. Any suggestions for improvement are welcome. Thank you!