I have my degree in general studies and I would love to go into graphic or website design, but I don't have the skills to do it and need to create a portfolio, but someone told me I would have to get a job doing something else until I have the opportunity to do graphic or website design. It sucks that you can't get a graphic or website design job where people can train you to have those skills. How long would it take for someone to get a graphic or website design once those skills are taken care of?

Just wondering how the reason rise of AI art is affecting all my designer friends? I do freelance work and had a Fiverr account for a while. Had to ditch it due to all the AI artists undercutting.

(Reposted this because reddit somehow didn't add the most important thing in any post)(info)

So i watched this packaging design in TikTok and liked it but my idea is to add a cup in the bottom of the packaging so you can put it in your car cup i

have drawed the idea and (it's actually a bad draw)so what i need is if someone that's experienced in packaging design and can give me some insight

will it work or not and if it will work is there's any

other way than wasting lot of materials

Yo guys, have you ever found some dope animations on websites that you just can’t reproduce?

And what a pity that your AI agent (whether it’s Claude Desktop, Codex, or anything else) can’t properly interpret video files. Sometimes an animation is so complex that you can’t even explain it verbally.

Would you pay for a tool that could cleanly extract an animation and recreate it in the technology it was originally built with - whether that’s CSS, GSAP, Framer Motion, or Lottie?

Or at least, would you include something like this in your design/web development toolkit?

Hi everyone,

I’m looking for a new (not used) laptop for around $800, mainly for computer graphics work — primarily Adobe Photoshop, possibly other Adobe apps as well.

Screen priorities (most important factor for me):

• Ideally OLED, but if that’s not realistic at this budget, I’ll settle for a good IPS panel with verified 100% sRGB coverage (not just marketing spec — happy to see independent/measured reviews if anyone has links)  
• Preferred size: 17.3”, minimum acceptable: 15.6”  
• Needs to comfortably run Adobe Creative Cloud apps (Photoshop mainly, possibly Illustrator/Lightroom)  
• Dedicated GPU would help (GPU-accelerated features, Generative Fill, etc.), but I’m open to trading GPU power for a better/more accurate screen if that’s the smarter call at this price point  
• At least 16GB RAM   
• SSD storage, 512GB minimum

Thank you in advance for your help — I really appreciate any recommendations or insight!

Client keeps missing scheduled times and now guilt-tripping me about it, how would you handle this?

Any related stories or professional dos and don'ts for freelancers working with mid-sized companies are appreciated.

I'm a freelance designer working with a potential client on a new project. We were trying to schedule a call with their executive director to review my proposal. I sent over my calendar link with available times. Instead of using it, she asked if an 8 am call would work, without saying which timezone, we're in different ones, so I wasn't sure if she meant 8 am her time or mine. When I didn't hear back, I let her know I'd be logging off soon and if we didn't connect, we'd find another time.

Then at 4a-ish the next morning, she messages saying she's sorry she missed my message and asking if I could still make it work. A couple hours later she sends over a new brief to review. Then a few hours after that, before I'd even seen any of it, she sends another message saying she's giving this one more shot, like I'm the one who's been unresponsive. It's still early in the am.

I want to stay professional and not burn the lead, but the vague scheduling and the guilt-trippy tone are throwing me off. This is a bigger opportunity than my usual projects, I've invested hours for the first job brief; researching the company and writing the proposal. She'd already mentioned wanting me to meet with the executive director directly, whose contact info I can find on their website. Would it be reasonable to reach out to the ED (or their assistant) directly at this point, or is that overstepping since she's technically my main point of contact? How would you handle something like this?

Hi everyone! 👋
I recently received an email from Google regarding the UX Designer hiring assessment and will be taking the assessment as the next step in the hiring process.
I’m trying to understand what to expect and prepare appropriately before taking it. If anyone here has recently taken the Google UX Designer hiring assessment, I’d really appreciate your insights.

A few things I’d love to know:

-What is the assessment format like?
-What types of UX/design questions or scenarios should I expect?
-Are there any specific topics or skills I should focus on while preparing?
-Are there any official or unofficial practice/demo assessments available?
-How did you personally prepare for it?
-If you remember any sample questions or question types, could you share them? Even a general idea would be really helpful.
-Is there anything you wish you had known before taking the assessment?

I’m especially interested in hearing from people who have actually taken the assessment recently, rather than general Google interview advice.
Thanks in advance to anyone willing to share their experience! 🙏 It would really help me prepare with a better understanding of what to expect.

I have worked as a 360 design for over 15 years through a mixture of Agency and In-house corporate environments. I have come to the stage where I feel like I am done with it. The work is repetitively boring, and progression has come to a halt unless I want to get into a management role. I used to love the problem-solving element of design, and creating workflows which ran smoothly. I have explored the UX/UI side of design as a possibility (which seems like a natural transition), but I found I didn’t enjoy it, and have come to the conclusion it is not for me. I am not able to change roles for the next few years because of family reasons (steady, secure paycheck). But I need some advice on areas I can start looking at now / Start training in ahead of time for jobs I can pivot into from design.

For those of you freelancing solo: how do you actually track your time, manage client projects, and handle invoices? Are you using dedicated software or have you put something together in Notion/Excel?

I keep hearing designers say the tools built for this (HoneyBook, Dubsado, etc.) feel bloated and built for photographers not designers. Is that your experience too or am I wrong?

I made this cover using PicsArt on my phone. Can you recognise the image?

https://open.spotify.com/album/4eWDKY4bra5lYmEheY1lVF?si=_F9rUDvsQOCx9GGW1Tkg1g&utm_source=copy-link

Hello everyone,

I'm Ayesha, creator of Avexia Studio.

Over the past year I've been learning CLO3D, pattern making, grading, tech packs, factory requirements, garment construction and 3D visualization. I started building a portfolio and began looking for freelance work.

That experience gave me a reality check. I spent a lot of time trying to make my work fit what I thought clients wanted, while simultaneously realizing that I hadn't yet pushed my own design ability nearly as far as I thought I had. Some feedback made that painfully obvious.

So instead of continuing to make work just to get a job, I decided to do something I've wanted to do for a while. Build something of my own. I've also been learning Blender, and that opened another door for me. Suddenly I could think beyond simply making a garment and start thinking about the entire world surrounding it. Materials, environments, visualization, presentation and the product.

That led me to CALIBER.

The word has always carried the idea of a standard, quality and measure of excellence. For me, CALIBER is becoming an experiment in exactly that. What happens when I stop designing for a brief and start building according to my own taste? I want to explore luxury, craftsmanship, identity and the feeling of belonging to a world that isn't designed for everyone.

It's still early.

There are only a few of pieces I'm genuinely proud of, and there is a huge amount I still need to learn. I'm not presenting CALIBER as a finished brand or pretending I have everything figured out. I'm building it to find out. I'm going to document the process publicly. The designs, failures, experiments, technical problems, visualization, research and eventually whether people actually want the things I'm making.

And that's where I'd really like your criticism. What do you think? Would you follow development of something like this? And once the collection becomes more developed, would you be interested in joining the waitlist to see it potentially become a real product?

I'm particularly interested in criticism at this stage because that is what pushed me to this.

Hey everyone,

I’m looking to start doing remote freelance graphic design, but I’m struggling with how and where to actually find my first real clients.

To give some context on my skills: I don't have any formal agency or corporate experience yet. My portfolio mostly consists of small projects I’ve done for friends or in design school—specifically vector artwork, brand identity (logos, color palettes), and social media carousels. I work primarily in Adobe Illustrator, Photoshop, InDesign, and my next goal is to learn how to use Figma.

I know how to do the design work, but I feel lost on the client acquisition side.
What platforms or job boards are actually worth checking for entry-level freelance design?
How did you land your first real remote design client?
Are there specific niches or types of projects I should focus on pitching as a beginner?

Any guidance, harsh truths, or tips for a beginner trying to get their foot in the door would be hugely appreciated! ☺️☺️☺️

(I’m on the autism spectrum btw so the social part is not easy for me ;3)

Hi, I need to create a design that is 2 meters wide and 40 cm high. I already have an existing design, but the dimensions are smaller. Does anyone know how I can adjust it to the size I need? Obviously, simply enlarging the image doesn't work because it gets distorted and doesn't fill the entire space. I'm asking in case anyone has a trick or an idea of ​​what I can do about it.

I’m tempted to take this course. What do you guys think? The guy behind it is pretty well-known, so I’m guessing it’s not total bullshit 😅

Any recommendations for really good online courses? Ideally something focused on leadership/management, but I’m open to anything to help go from mid-level to senior.