Portfolio Glow-up ✨ A 30 Day Challenge

1. Class intro: Great portfolio is all about telling a story. How will your work impact your client's business? And how will they have a great experience working with you? Welcome to the 30 day portfolio glow up. My name is Marlin, and in this course, I've collected everything I've learned about portfolio design for the past ten years of running my branding studio. I know how hard it can be to have the time and energy to work on your design portfolio, especially when you are swamped with client work. Or maybe you're just starting out, and you're not quite sure what to put yet. In the next four weeks, you're going to be using the workbook and the course videos to create a crystal clear plan for your portfolio. We're going to design new case studies for your portfolio and even work on your About page. Week one is all about finding inspiration and creating that crystal clear plan to move forward. In weeks two and three, we're going to work together to create personal projects that are really going to be impressing your clients. And finally, in week four, we're going to take all that work, put together compelling case studies, and also work on your about page and your process on your website. I'll be with you every step of the way, and the workbook even has a template for case studies, so you can just swipe that and use it as is if you like. At the end of the month, my goal is that you're going to feel super proud to share unit portfolio, but also that it's tailor made to get you work. The class project is to snap a picture of your celebration page that's a summary for each week. And share that in the projects tab. It's a pretty quick exercise, but it's a great way to show that progress and to help inspire each other. Once you finish the course, you can even share a link to your portfolio and what you've learned so we can all get inspired and visit each other's portfolios. I'm always here if you have any questions, and you can always post them in the discussions tab so we can all help each other out. I can't wait to see what you create. I'll see you in class. 2. What Do I Want to Say?: Most portfolios look quite similar, and most potential clients have a look at more than one website before they start making a decision. Having great thumbnails for your work is a good start, but we really want to have a think about what feeling you want to create the first time someone lands on your website. Like, maybe clients want a really calm and trustworthy partner that they can hand over the ins to. Or maybe they prefer someone who pushes back and comes up with creative and maybe a little bit risky ideas. Thinking about those two scenarios, those two sites would look quite different. This also comes from who you are as a person, since this business is kind of a reflection of Start by thinking about those values that you really want to portray. How you see the world and the type of clients that you want to work with is just as important as what those clients are looking for because that is going to be shaping that relationship going forward, and making sure we find that personal fit is really important. Our task today is therefore to just think about that feeling and that first impression that you want to make. Your website is kind of like your storefront. So I like to have a little exercise where I think about my dream office. Maybe it's light and bright, maybe it's filled with plants, maybe there's design books and posted notes everywhere. Have a think about what that would be in your mind, have a little walk through that office and envision the feeling that you get walking through it. In the workbook, day one has a space for you to describe this exact feeling and what that space looks like. I call it a brand walk through, and you can use just descriptive words, or you can even add in little images as a kind of mood board if you feel like that's helpful for you to envision that space. 3. Research Time: Now that we know more about that feeling that we want to create, let's go gather some inspiration. Plus, this exercise kind of doubles as competitor research as well. Grab a notebook and your computer. Then search for creative businesses that are in the same city or in the same area that you live in. Even if you're going to have global clients, it's always easier to win those local ones first. So that's why I suggest starting here. We're going to start really narrow, and as we go through these businesses, depending on how big the city is that you live in, you can always expand it into, like, a national or an international level to find more inspiration. You go through these websites, make a little note of what the header says, because this is going to be really revealing about who their clients are and what they think that these clients care about. This is something we can take with us, and once we start looking into the client research part, we can go back and have a look at this and see how it's different or maybe similar to what we're trying to go after. For now, start by just scrolling through the site and start making little notes of things that you really like. Like, maybe they have a style of mockups that you really like or maybe the layout is really interesting. Maybe they have an about page that you're just thinking is so personable. So make little notes of these and we can come back to them later. Copy and messaging style is also super important. I know we often focus on imagery as designers, but knowing how to speak to our clients is maybe even more important because this is where they're going to truly be feeling seen by you as a company. If there are specific expressions that this company is using or ways that they're talking in a more casual or more formal style, make note of that and things that you like, and maybe want to try out for yourself to reflect your own personal voice. If you want to make sure you remember something, you can always take a screenshot, save an image. Collect it either on your computer or I like to save it to Mila note as a way to just keep everything in one place. We really want to make sure that we're paying extra attention to case studies and to the homepage, because this is typically where most companies put the most effort, and this is also where most clients are going to start making those snap decisions about if this is a good fit for them. Once you feel like you've gathered lots of inspiration and seen lots of different sites, the workbook has a section for you to summarize the things that you like and the things that you want to bring with you into your own site. 4. The Client: The problem that we solve for our clients is never a new design. That's why selling ourselves by just talking about our design skills never works that well. For example, if you're designing a poster, the problem you're solving might be to get more people to buy tickets to an event. Or if you're designing a brand, it might be to reposition the client as a more high end and trustworthy product. But how do we know what this problem actually is for our specific business and our specific customers? This all starts with who that dream client is. So that's what we're going to be figuring out today. We want to have a really clear definition here because when someone comes to our website, we want them to really feel seen so that's the same reason that you're more likely to be encouraged and excited about a course that says that it's specifically for creative entrepreneurs, rather than for just generic small businesses. And you probably think about the word niche here, and something I really want to pinpoint is your niche doesn't have to be a specific industry. I think this is a huge misconception. Your Niche can be a type of person or a type of brand. Has a specific approach or a specific set of values, for example. For example, it could be small businesses that care about sustainability and eco friendliness and they make all their products in house. That is already quite a narrow range of customers, and they also probably share quite a lot of values with each other. Means that you can become an expert on this specific market, and you can start to recognize those same problems so that when someone hires you in this niche, you are an expert. You know all the problems that your previous clients have faced, and you can offer a lot more value that way, rather than if you're coming in blind to a new industry or new type of value every single time. When we think about this person, it's a lot easier for us to start imagining what their day looks like. Are they super busy? Are they very family oriented, and what really matters to them in terms of what they look for in a creative partner. If you feel completely unsure what your ne should be, I suggest starting with yourself what are your special skills, your interests? What do you bring in terms of a passion to a project? So, for example, it could be anything from if you love crafts, maybe handmade businesses are a great fit for you. Or maybe you worked in retail before you started doing your design business. Maybe it wasn't your passion, but you have all this experience and knowledge about what's important when you're selling in a retail environment, and that helps you be a better designer for retail businesses. There are no wrong answers. Just look inwards and think about what you really enjoy working with and what kind of special advantages that you have that you can bring to the table. Niche will change and evolve as your business grows with you and you start exploring that work with different types of clients. So don't feel like you're stuck or locked into one niche that you're picking early on because it will always be evolving. So give yourself that kind of patience to pick something now and then to see and evolve as you go. In the workbook, you'll find some helpful prompts to help you kick start this thinking and start learning more about your clients. These will mostly be assumptions at this point. Feel free to start updating them or kind of adding more information as you start working with clients and learn more about them. One of the big reasons that we really want to do this now and not skip this step is because it's going to help us when we're picking the type of work we want to showcase in our portfolio, but also for that copywriting, when we're describing projects and our process and all these different things on our website, we're going to have so much use of having done these little quick exercises now. So I'll let you get on with that and I'll see you tomorrow. 5. A Review: Before we start creating new work for our portfolio, I think it's a great idea to review what we already have and some gaps that we might want to be filling. This part of the class will still be really helpful for you, even if you have almost no work yet. So just stick with me and I'll tell you some tips to get started there. I think a really well rounded portfolio needs to tick a few specific boxes. The first one is that the quality should feel consistent. So if you have some work that you feel really excited and proud of, and some that maybe you created very early on that you're not as proud of, make sure that you're taking out that lower quality item. The type of work should also be speaking to the same type of client. This is when we talked about that dream client before. If we maybe have switched niche, we might need to take out some portfolio pieces that no longer fit for that client niche, or maybe we feel like we've learned a little bit more, and certain things aren't kind of jiving as much as we thought they would in the beginning. So think about taking those out as well. And lastly, each project should serve a specific purpose, like showing a specific skill or showing that you have experience with a specific type of business, for example. That note, have a look at your portfolio and all your work samples, and have a think about these specific questions. The first one is, is there any work that feels either outdated or maybe it's not a good fit for my niche or the type of work that I want to get more of? The second one is, is there any work that feels very similar, and you don't quite feel like having all of them is adding much? So if you're very new and you only have a few projects and all of them are poster projects, for example, that could be fine if that's all the work that you want to be known for, and you feel like it's showing that consistency in the type of project that you can provide. Let's say you want to show that you're a brand designer, and every single project is a packaging design project and you feel like you have lots of other work, then maybe keeping a few of your best packaging ones in there could be great to show that you could offer those services as part of a branding package, but you maybe don't need to show all of them. And finally, what kind of work do I want to add more of? Could be a skill that you know they are really good at. Like, maybe you are great at illustration as part of branding projects or creating brand patterns or maybe you're a website designer and you really want to show some more interactive websites. So have a think about the type of work that you feel is missing from your portfolio and think about it from that perspective of what skills am I showing? How is this speaking directly to my client? And how is it showing that I know and have experience or at least the skills to work in this specific niche? If you're just starting out, you kind of have a great opportunity here to shape and create this image of the feeling that you want to create when Son lands on your website. You want them to think, Wow, this is lots of stunning illustration work for packaging, and you really want to show that as one consistent image. Or maybe you want to show a little bit more diversity and you can create some minimalist packaging, some illustrative packaging. So try to think about that impression you want to create and then write down somewhere between maybe six and nine case studies that you could eventually be getting to that you would feel creates that whole image together. There's some really helpful guiding questions for you to fill out in the workbook. So go ahead and do that and I'll see you tomorrow. 6. Keywords: The last thing we want to do this week to make sure that our website is really bringing in all those new people is keywords. I know SEO can feel quite overwhelming, but today, all we're going to do is come up with three to five main keywords and about five to ten kind of secondary ones. The main keywords are what we really want to be known for, like Branding Studio Edinburgh. Keyword doesn't have to be just one word. When you put different words together, it's called a long tail keyword. These long tail keywords are much easier to get found for because there's just a lot less competition. The important thing we want to keep in mind when we're choosing our keywords is what are our potential customers actually typing into Google? A great way to find this out is to use a tool called Answer the Public. Or you just choose your location, and then you type in one specific or maybe two keywords that you want to find out a little bit more about, and it's going to give you lots of opportunities to see what kind of questions people are posing using these keywords. You can even filter by search engine like Google or even look at social medias like Tik Tok, for example. These questions are extra helpful when we're writing kind of FAQ sections or maybe even blog posts where we can make sure to answer them word by word. Another must use tool for keyword research is Google keywords. Here you can set your location, and then you can search for different keywords and see both how the trends have changed over time, but also different related keyword searches. This is a great way to start filling out that secondary list of keywords because we're getting tons of inspiration for things that are trending, things that people are searching for, and are related to our initial service or initial keyword. So your first main keywords should be related to things that you want to be known for. So that's typically the services that you provide, any particular style that you have, like if you have a very bold or colorful or minimalist style, for example, and if you want to get clients locally, you might also want to pop your location in there, like we talked about with the branding studio Edinburgh, for example. By adding in our style, we can create these very specific search terms that are quite common for people to search for. So it can be like minimalist branding, or we can even have our niche, like food packaging design, for example. For our secondary keywords, we really want to try to get a little bit of a range. So we have some that are a little bit broader where there's lots of searches happening, but also more competition. Also some that are a little bit more niche down where you're being a little bit more specific about the type of style that you're doing, a little bit more granular about the type of work that you want to get. It's very similar to if you've done kind of keyword research for hash tags on social media. You want to have some that are overarching for your work, but then you want to get specific about a couple of different ones. If you still feel a little bit unsure what to actually even start with, try going to different design forums and maybe where people are asking advice for how to do the different services that you're proposing because there's usually a lot of clients in and especially people looking for advice. So there are a lot of questions that they're asking you can start to look for keywords and different trends that you can try out. These keywords are going to be a little bit everywhere on our site. So some are going to be in blogPost, some are going to be in case studies, some are going to be on your homepage. So it's good to have a good variety of some that are more posts questions, some that are single words. So that you have that nice variety and your copy that we're going to work out a little bit later in week four is actually going to sound very natural and not like your keyword stuff. You connect your site to Google Analytics, you're also going to start to actually see what you're being found for. And if you're seeing certain trends, like for us, it's usually brand identity design, for example, you can start to really dig down on these ones and create more variations of these to make sure that you're getting really, really deep into one kind of niche when it comes to keywords. Like I mentioned, we're actually going to be working on copywriting and actually using these keywords in Week four. So for now, you just need to write down the different ones you're choosing in your workbook. 7. Introducing weeks 2 & 3: The next three videos are going to take you through how I approach personal projects. They're going to be all kinds of different projects, and they're going to be talking about how you can create those briefs yourselves that are tailor made to get you work and to reach those goals that you have. We're going to be focusing a lot on insights that I've heard from working with my actual clients about what's really important when you're showcasing a case study for a specific type of deliverable. Like, for example, what packaging clients are looking for or what branding clients are looking for. This is all about making it feel real because even if these are personal projects that we are creating the briefs for ourselves, honestly, clients really care about showing that you have the skills. They don't always really care about it being a real client. So I think this is a great opportunity to really be taking on that work that we want to be getting more of. We will be focusing on creating mock ups and copywriting for your website and creating those final case studies in the last week. All we really need to do now in the next two weeks is focusing on the design portion. Feel free to create one or lots of different projects depending on how much time you have in the next couple of weeks. And don't forget to share your progress in those snapshots in the class projects tab. If you have limited time, start with one project now, and then you can always come back to these videos when you have a little bit more time throughout the year. 8. Designing Branding: Creating a new brand is a big financial investment for a lot of clients, but also an emotional one. Our goal with this case study is to really show that we've understood the brief, that we can create something that feels really appropriate for that industry, and also something that this client is going to feel super excited and proud to share. This often means that we need to show a lot of different applications of the brand to help the client kind of see the vision and how this could be translated into their own business. Yes, a great logo is nice. But when you see that brand pattern on a custom wrapping paper or that nice signage, you really see the value of hiring an expert for get there, we're going to start by writing that branding brief. We want to be describing what the business does and how it functions. We also want to be describing why they need a new brand and all the different deliverables in terms of where this brand is going to be living. Make sure you also describe lots of different potential challenges that they could have with their previous brand. These are the reasons why they would be needing a rebrand. Like, maybe you just didn't feel very unique or maybe didn't speak directly to their customers or maybe they switched client base recently. In my experience, there are a lot of different reasons why people hire a brand design. But there tends to be some common themes that come back. For small businesses, cohesion and saving time tend to be huge reasons. The logo and visual identity, if there even is one, usually haven't been created altogether. So we're kind of lacking that cohesion and that nice vision for the brand. That means that every time that they're creating a new presentation, pitch deck, or maybe even a social media post, they're kind of having to figure it out and reinvent the brand in new ways. And that is both frustrating and makes you not quite feel proud of the brand that you have, and also just takes tons and tons of time. On the other hand, in some cases for small businesses, they might be brand new and just starting out. In that case, the founder has usually saved up money from their own savings to invest into things like a brand website, other things that they need to launch this company. That means that although they are excited to invest in branding, which is really important, they also need that money to really stretch. So we want to show that by creating a brand that is really effective, we're going to be making their marketing better, their website more effective, really showing that they're getting value for money. This means that we might want to show brand guidelines and how that's translating into marketing assets or pitch decks, for example. Really show them that they're getting something super valuable that they can then use for all parts of their business. For large companies, branding is often more of a pivot rather than a 360. They spent a lot of time and money making sure that they're building up that relationships with their customers, and they don't usually want to throw all of that out and just start from scratch. If this is your type of dream client, we really want to make sure that we can show that we can take something that is already. Distill down what's working and what's not working and then translate that into something that is going to be way better and way more efficient for what they're trying to accomplish. But showing that transition rather than just presenting something completely new. For the purpose of this course, when we're creating personal projects and we're not working with actual clients on things, there are a couple of different ways you can approach this. So the first one is that you could yourself create a kind of before version that you think has some serious flaws, and you can then work on changing that into something better. You don't want to spend the time doing that, another way could be to go to some stock sites and purchase a stock license for something that you feel is very generic and not very good, and then you can improve on that. Or you could, of course, rebrand an existing business or brand. Now, I would be a little bit cautious with that because we don't want clients to be confused thinking we actually worked with this company. So we want to be super clear then that this is a personal project. And if you're working on something like rebranding like Coca Cola or something, then we really want to think about how we're presenting. But also these famous brands would be the least likely to actually have a lot of change. So I suggest going with one of the two earlier options, either creating a before and after or grabbing something from a stock site that is quite generic and then transforming that. All this to say that the personal projects that we're creating for our branding portfolio are going to be very much down to that type of customer that you're after. So we really want to make sure we're tailor making all of the different applications and how we explain the project to that specific need. Now, let's gather some inspiration. My favorite sites for brand inspiration are rebrand, Behms Identity designed. And under considerations brand new. All of them are also linked in the helpful link section in the workbook at the UIN. To make it easier to actually look through inspiration, sort it, keep it organized, and also to leave little notes on why you saved something, I like to use Mel note because I can use their extension to save something straight to the board, rather than having to save it to my computer first, which makes my computer a lot happier to not have to deal with that. So that is a suggestion. But there's also, of course, tons of other tools that you can explore. To give you an example of how you can then take that moodboard and turn it into a finished concept that you would be presenting to a client or to finish work that you're putting on your portfolio here is a mood board that I created for a small business tech consultant. And then here, now we're going to be looking at how we turn this into an actual concept. The goal here was to create something that felt professional, but that also had kind of a playful, more modern, innovative tech feeling. And we wanted to lean into this kind of clean design style. But then to inject personality through custom Illustrations and a little bit more quirky details. Based on these discussions with my client, we started to do some sketching for how we could merge this human side and the technology side, because something that came up a lot in the discussions was yes, they're creating technology solutions, but it really is about how people like to work already and the people who will actually be using the technology. So it's more of a little bridge between the different working styles and the different challenges that they're having. And this was both the people who are working in the company and their actual customers. Based on this, we created a kind of abstract icon that had this merging between the soft and the more sharper edges. We also use this little circle here as a kind of something coming off and evolving into something. And that is supposed to reflect the project that they're having together. We made these decisions because in our discussions with the client, we talked a lot about having logos that has some sort of movement, some sort of dynamicism to them, but that still felt abstract enough that the company can take on meaning as technology evolves and becomes different things for different people. This also gives us a kind of modular system where we can take apart these different shapes and create that balance between the hard technology side and the soft kind of human side. You definitely don't always have to start with working on the logo. Because it encompasses so much strategy, I find that sketching on the logo first, it can sometimes spark a lot of ideas that we can use for things like icons and illustrations later on. A lot of those first ideas that we have, they tend to be quite obvious. So that's why we don't want to use them for a logo design because that's something that is supposed to be very unique. But using something that is a little bit more obvious for an icon design, or for an illustration that's communicating something specific, that actually is really beneficial because that brings a lot of clarity to it. Since we're creating this brand project for our portfolio specifically, we really want to have a think about those brand applications. Once we have our logo, start to think about at least three to five other brand applications that you can incorporate and design for. This could be anything from brand patterns to signage to packaging to social media templates or pitch decks, anything that you think this client would actually use the brand for and apply it to day to day. The type of applications we choose can also be an intentional way to show off different aspects of the brand. For example, if you're designing packaging or a brand pattern, that could be a great way to incorporate all the different brand colors versus if you're showing a sign, that might only be black and white. 9. Designing Posters: Poster design might be one of the best ways to start exploring design. It can be created in any style. And even though, of course, you could spend hours and hours on custom illustrations or custom fonts, most poster designs are a little bit quicker than, let's say, creating a full brand identity. That means it's a great way to showcase your skill, and it means you can get a few more projects up on your website a little bit quicker. To create our polster design, the first thing we want to do is to start picking the event or type of thing you want to promote with your polster. Lot of poster designs are going to encourage someone to go to a new restaurant opening or to a specific event. But you could also go the route of more like government informational or NGO posters where you're talking about something like biodiversity in the city, for example. While the events based posters are usually commissioned by clients who are businesses, the more informational ones are usually by universities, local governments, or charities, for example. So I want to keep this in mind when we're creating the style and also the settings for it later when we're working on once you know what you want the design to be for and who is commissioning it, have a think about these questions. First, what's the core message that they want to get across? Where will this poster be displayed? Is it going to be in a subway? Is it going to be in a park, for example, in a school? Think about where the setting will be. What action do they want people to take? Is this purely informational, or do they want someone to go to a website to book tickets or to follow them online, for example? What more detailed or granular information do you need to include? Things like sponsors of the events, maybe social media handles or instructions to get to the location. That last step actually really helps you sell that you are a strategic designer who can create within a brief. Anyone who's thinking about commissioning a poster design who sees that you don't have a logo on your examples or you're missing the dates of the events, for example, they might feel like you're more focused on the visuals and not on the strategic part. Although, of course, we're designers and we want it to look beautiful. Our job is really to help our client reach those goals, like getting more tickets booked, for example. So I suggest starting by looking at the hierarchy, which information is most important and which information needs to be there, but we can put it a little bit smaller and a little bit less in the main focus of the design. So, for example, if you're designing a music poster, the band, either their name, photograph, maybe their logo, for example, that could be something that we really want to highlight. So the people who know that band are going to get super excited right away. Next up, we want to talk about the dates, the location, and the times that this event is going to happen. And we also want to make sure that people know exactly how to book the tickets. And the last information might be things like who's sponsoring the event, if there are any safety instructions, if there's any accessibility instructions, for example, anything that we think could add to this poster design to make it a little bit more applicable and look and feel. Make this process of hierarchy a little bit easier, what I like to do is just create a super quick sketch where I'm making a little bit of a grid and then just making blocks for the different information that I want to put. So the bigger you're making something, and the more in the kind of middle focus it is, the more people are going to see it first. So that's what we want to keep in mind, starting with the biggest thing in the middle and then placing everything out after that level of hierarchy that you're working. If you already have an image that you want to be working with, let's say a picture of a band, then start to look at that picture if there are any empty spaces where you think, Oh, this would actually be a great place to put the dates, for example. Or you might want to, let's say, get rid of the background, just use the band members and layer the different components. But how do you add things like sponsor logos if you're working on a personal project? Well, in my case, when I've been working on these for YouTube videos and I've been creating personal projects, what I've been doing is just making these up. It's just a placeholder to show that you know strategically that this is something that would come up in a poster design. Sometimes I use logos that never actually were picked for a branding project, or I just make them up from scratch. I'm not sure if they would ever read this information, but showing that you're putting it shows that you're dedicated to that strategic angle. We'll be adding your designs to some beautiful mockups in Week four. So for now, just focus on the design portion. 10. Designing Packaging: Packaging design is one of my favorite types of projects to work on, but it also comes with a lot of moving parts. Just like with the poster design, we need to show that we can create something stunning that people are going to want to pick up from the shelf, but also the incorporates tons of legal and practical information. I think it's quite common as a designer who wants to create something really nice for the portfolio to focus on that one bit of the packaging that we can see on the shelves. But to really show your strategic purpose as a design partner, I think it's a really good idea to design the full 360 of the packaging so that we can really show that we know how to deal with the real project. For example, is there a design on the lid once you open it? How do you make the nutritional information really clear? And how do you incorporate QR codes and bar codes and practical information like that into a design that still looks really nice and these details will show that you have an eye for detail and also that you know how to work with a realistic brief. To create a great packaging design, start by writing out all the information that you need to include. This could feel like a lot, but most packaging actually has more or less the same sections. So you could probably go to your pantry or to one of the latest products that you bought and have a look at those different sections. Here's a bit of an overview of what you typically find. For the cover of the product, we usually have the name of the product, the logo from the company itself, maybe a few little benefits and something really eye catching for the design. For food products, you usually always need to put the amount of the product. And that can be the same if you're having a product, let's say, legos, you might want to put how many pieces are in it, for example. For the back, we might have things like instructions, nutritional information, allergens, for example. There might be safety instructions or age restrictions for a product. If it's a toy, for example, you could have things like bar codes and QR codes, information about the company itself. A lot of companies also like to put, for example, badges for certifications that they've got or awards that they won. And also, if there is space, you can always put additional benefits or reasons to buy the product. And finally, there needs to be a way for people to contact this company if they have any questions. Things a little bit easier, if you just want to jump start into this, I actually added a sample product with the information that you can just grab from the workbook. Once we know what we're going to be putting, we need to think about who is going to be buying this product and why. Is this a product they buy out of habit, for example, the same breakfast cereal every day? Or is there something new and exciting, a one off purchase, for example. We also want to have to think about what we want this particular case study to say about our skills and our work as a whole. Do we want to show off our illustration skills, or do we want to show that we know how to do really minimal packaging design, for example? The workbook also has a few questions to help you narrow this down a little bit. Once you know everything you want to put and the general feeling, again, we're going to start with hierarchy. Actually sketching directly on top of a copy of the die lines. So Dilines are like the blueprint for any packaging. It's basically going to show the printer where things are going to be cut, where things are going to be folded. And it's also showing us as creatives where we can put our design. We knowing where things are going to be cut means we know we can't place anything there. We also look at the orientation, if it's flipped up or down, for example. So this is all information that's very important for us to know. And if you're going to be working with packaging design, getting comfortable with delines is also really helpful. Most online printing companies offer you different di lines that you can download. So let's say you're looking at a specific product like a folded brochure or a box for packaging, for example, usually underneath in that same listing, they have so that you can download the delines. They typically come as a PDF, sometimes in design, and sometimes Adobe Illustrator because these are the most used programs for designing packaging. So these will be different formats that you can actually work with and open. If you feel a bit confused about die lines or you have any questions in general, don't forget to post your question down in the discussions tab, and I'm happy to help you out. Great packaging encourages you to pick that one product out of the s of other products on the shelf, whether in person or online. So we really want to make sure that we're creating that right feeling with our design. Think about that main graphic, that main visual that we're going to be seeing. And how is that creating a connection to our product? And making someone want to pick it up. From there, try to really take a 360 approach to your packaging design. How are you connecting the front of the design to the back of the design, and how are you making sure that that feeling is the same all around the packaging? Because that really shows that you're able to take the brand in that brand visual style and kind of carrying it all around. For the back where we have a lot of information, you could either do a solid color or we can create, for example, boxes for texts to sit in. And these could be incredibly simple and minimalist, or you can be a little bit more playful with the shape of them, how they're tying in. C layer illustration, for example. So if you've got illustration on the front, you can make little spot illustrations to incorporate on the back to really make that feeling cohesive. The same works for a brand pattern, for example. If you've got a brand pattern in the background or as a part of the design on the front, you can always carry that a little bit back to the back of the product. Design elements like badges or ribbons can also be really helpful when you just need to break up the layout a little bit and get key information like certifications or benefits or weights, for example. A way that feels like they're easy to see, but also something that is not just becoming one giant mass of information. If you want to gain an even deeper understanding of packaging, it's a good idea to actually print your packaging and try assembling it. So, of course, this might be a little bit different if you have a can or something like that. You could print it and try to put it on an existing can that you have. Or if you're doing a box, you can try to print it and assemble it yourself. All you need for this is a little bit of a thicker paper and, like, any home printer, just to kind of get an idea of how it works. This doesn't have to be something that you necessarily put as part of your portfolio, although if it comes out beautiful, you can always take pictures of it and show that you know how the process of creating something works. But it's also for us to understand, like, Alright, this turned out upside down. I need to figure out the die line so I know how to turn this upside down. Or things like, for example, understanding how big the text actually appears once you print it at a certain size. Something else that you can add to your packaging case study to bring a lot more value and also as a way to create a lot more engaging mockups is to actually use one design, but then create multiple products from it. So, for example, in this case, we've got a type of lemonade. Try to show that to you, where we've got the same type of layout, we've got different colors. We've got different illustrations. But as you can see, the layout is more or less identical. And this is a really good approach when you're designing packaging because it shows that you can take this one concept and then take it across a product range because most companies have more than one product. So this could be from anything from like a food or drink product to let's say you're doing a brand for a construction company that have lots of different tools, you can do it for the drill. You can do it for the saw, for example. So they are showing that you have an understanding of how to make a cohesive packaging line based on the brand. Also, since you already have the design that you created, it's going to be way faster to create those additional products. You don't have to start all the way from scratch. 11. What makes a great case study?: It's easy to think that the whole purpose of a case study is to have stunning, beautiful mockups of your work. Although these help, our job is actually to show that we are a strategic partner who made these design decisions because they were the best choice for the client and the project. So how do we do that? I thought I would take you through an example, and then I also put a template in the workbook that you can use as a base structure for your own case studies. It can help you have a kind of guide so that when you're creating mockups and writing copy and structuring your own, you know what to use as a kind of kick off point. The very first part of a case study is actually not the images or the text itself. It's actually the thumbnail that we use for someone to click into the case study. Which image you choose to use is going to set the tone for the project. And it also informs the client what type of work it is and if this is something they even want to explore further. Something I always recommend is to have a variety of different motifs in your thumbnails. So, for example, instead of just having the logo for all of your different thumbnails, if you're a logo and brand designer, you could do the logo for a few, but then maybe you're doing signage or you're doing social media posts for some just to kind of show that you have a lot more depth and a lot more different deliverables in your projects than the logo itself. This is just an example, of course, but I hope it can spark some ideas for you to have a think about how you can create this more well rounded image in your portfolio. Another detail we can add is to have the image actually switch or to have a little animation when you hover over the thumbnail. This gives you another opportunity to show basically double the amount of images in the same real estate space on your website. And it also makes it a lot more interactive, so people are excited to hover over all of them and check them out and maybe be even more encouraged to click on one. We also want to think about the text that we add here to describe the project. If we just add the name of the company or just add branding project, we're really missing out on some great opportunity to connect with our clients. Instead, think about the problem that you solved with your branding and what the overall feeling of the project is. For example, for this medical company that we worked with, I wrote finding answers through research and patient stories. It gives it a bit more context, and it's also a lot easier for those potential clients to connect with those projects and see, Oh, actually, this is kind of similar to what we're trying to do. Now we have this first page ready, let's dive into what to actually put in the case study. We want the client to quickly be able to answer these quick questions. Your personal role in this project? What different services did you provide? Why did the client approach you in the first place, meaning what problem were they trying to solve? How did you help them? Meaning, what was your solution? How did you go about it? So sharing your process and your thinking behind your different design choices. And finally, what impact did it have? This last point is actually really, really important but very underrated. And it's going to be showing why it's worth investing in your services. Let's go through these one at a time and go a little bit more into depth. The very first thing you want to do when you get into a case study is get an understanding of the tone of the work, the overall style, the industry of the company, and what the project was about. I think it's a great idea to have a big splash banner, kind of image that makes you feel like you're part of the project. So this could be one with pictures of people interacting with the final brand. It could be like a real person interacting with the finished items, like, let's say you're designing something for a storefront or some merchandise or anything where it feels a little bit more tangible. And if you don't have that, you could have a mock up with a person in, for example. This first section should also contain all the key information about the project. So that would be the client name, the services that you provided, any collaborators that you worked with, for example. This is an example from a design studio called Hyperact where they've really taken this step a little bit further and broken down the services so that clients can really imagine what this actually means practically for them. As we make our way through the project, we want to have a nice mix of images and texts to really guide the reader and the viewer through this story. There are a couple ways to do this. The first one, which is maybe the easiest is to do it chronologically. Basically, talking about what the project was, what the problem we're trying to solve was, and then your solution kind of step by step as you actually did it. Another way to do it could be to break it down into different applications. So talking about how you worked on the logo, then talking about how you transferred it to colors and fonts, and then finally, how you took all of this together and created like social media posts and packaging and other assets from it. The key thing here is to really guide the person that's looking at this, through your design decisions. So making sure you vary the type of images that you have and that they kind of work together with the text so that they can really understand, right. This was the problem they were trying to solve. Here's the solution, and this is why they made this specific design decision. For some creatives, showing behind the scenes like sketching or setting up a photo studio could be a really great way to make that connection to how much work actually goes into a project. This could be anything from a time lapse of your illustration work sketching in your notebook or just pictures when you have a little bit of different stages like the mood board or chat with the client even. It also makes the person looking at this feel like they get to know you a little bit more, which kind of breaks down some of those barriers of hesitation that they might have for actually getting in touch about their own projects. One company that does a great job of this is a branding and marketing studio called SnaSk who work in Sweden. And in their case studies, you have almost a 50 50 breakdown of the final images and the behind the scenes of how they actually took these. I think in a world where a lot of people assume that something really spectacular is just made by AI, this is also a great way to show all the work and strategic input that goes into any project. I also want to talk a little bit about interactive elements on any part of your website. I think as designers, it can feel a little bit like we have the pressure to create these insanely different websites, where you've got things moving. You've got different parallex scrolling. You've got all these interactive elements. But actually, it might be hurting your website because clients aren't always the most tech savvy, and if there's anything that gets in their way of actually looking and taking in your information, that could actually be something that goes against you. If all these animations and extra bits also make your website slower to load, it also hurts your SEO, so it's harder for people to find your website in the first place. All this to say that, of course, your portfolio should be something you feel excited about, something you feel proud about and do explore lots of fun ways to design it that makes it feel like you. But don't feel like you need to add a bunch of very complex things just for the sake of it. Add little things that you feel are really making a difference and that is making the experience for the person who's visiting your website a lot better. This is especially true when it comes to the mobile experience. So we don't want to put all of our efforts into our desktop and then completely forget about our mobile version, especially if you're someone who does a lot of marketing on social media. Because a lot of people are going to come through your social media post into your website and be on their mobile phone. And finally, before we wrap this little chapter up, let's talk about accessibility. In some countries, it's just a decent thing to think about to make your website better. But in some places, they're actually starting to make it a legal requirement that your website is actually meeting at least the minimum levels of accessibility. This can mean things like allowing your tags to actually work efficiently to go from text to speech, for example, when you're using different tools like that. Can also work with color contrast and making sure that your text and font sizes are not too small. It really doesn't have to be that intimidating. There are lots of great contrast checkers that you can actually use just to plug in your own colors and your own fonts and see how they are actually appearing and how that's working. I've put some in the workbook for you that you can go check out. If you make sure that your all tags are actually describing what's in the image and not trying to keyword stuff them, and you're working on your color contrast and font sizes, you're already coming really far to making your site really accessible. So don't feel discouraged or it's a very complicated thing to get started with. Next up, we're going to talk about how to create those stunning mockups that you actually want to put in your case studies. 12. Copywriting: One of the most overlooked parts of a case study is the text that we choose to add. Not only is it great for SEO and helping people find our website, but it's also a way for us to use storytelling to convince those people who are kind of on the fence if they actually want to hire you. For example, let's look at this picture. It looks nice. But if I tell you that this image is for a personal finance company who want to help millennials to plan for the future without stress, you might get a clear image of why this design works. If I go a little bit further and I tell you how we made these design choices because our research actually showed that millennials felt very intimidated or frustrated by money. So all of our design choices were about creating this calm exciting energy that showed them focus on goals specifically. So how their different financial goals could actually help them reach goals like traveling or buying their first home. This way, we're really showing the value of our creative work. You can see your copywriting as telling your potential clients about your past work in a kind of more conversational way, where you can really tell that story and show the value. We want that tone to feel like and what it's like to work with you. So for some designers, that will be very buttoned up and very professional, and for some people, will be a little bit more cheeky, for example. This is mostly up to that client designer fit. So we spoke in week one about finding out what your values are and what you want to say to clients. So this is going to be super important for creating that feeling and for your client to understand those values that you have and your working style. Imagine you were sitting across from this potential client in a cafe. How would you describe your work? What kind of words would you use, and what tone would it have? Would it feel very exciting? Would it feel very professional, for example? Don't worry if this part feels a little bit unnatural. I've noticed that a lot of people when they start out, we start with a very professional and bottom and up style because we're worried to come across as unprofessional. So it's a great foundation. And then you can start to look at that text and say, Does this sound like me? If I would actually talk to someone, what words could I maybe replace in this text to make it sound a little bit more like me? One strategy that you can use for this to start noticing what words you're actually using a lot is to start describing these projects in voice memos to yourself. You can then type it out or some tools even let you transcribe the voice notes. And then you can use that as a way to start putting together something that feels a little bit more casual or a little bit more in your voice. Make sure you're editing the text to go into very clear sections and also that you're combining it together with those images so that it makes sense together. Not that you're having one story through the copywriting and then just kind of putting images randomly, but they should be connected. Here's an example of a case study we created for a company that helps patients with chronic illness. So we start with just having a nice banner where we're showing off the logo, but it's in the context of this family, which is a really big part of this actual project to make sure that the family of the people who have that chronic illness are actually part of the story. We then go into looking at the little details. So we have finding answers through research and patient stories. And then we have the different services. So this is going to help both with SEO but also with describing the project. Then start with a challenge. So talking about how Unhide as a platform that helps patients track their own symptoms and how this is actually going to be something that patients are going to be able to use. But currently, it's something that you needed to appeal to all these different groups of people needing to feel inclusive and approachable. So we had this thing of the doctors and the patients and wanting to appeal to all of them at the same time. We can then start to show of the brand and talk about our solution. So we talked a lot here about collaboration between these different groups and wanted to create something that can actually be a smaller than sum of its parts. And this is where this idea of this overlapping comes from. We can then start to show how this is actually applied. So here we have a report, for example, and this is actually a photo that isn't related, like we've not made this photo, but it's a perfect example of someone who's using the platform and the type of target demographic that we're looking at. The pictures are also matching in terms of color, so that's really important. We then start to talk about our process here. So making sure that the brand would connect, we start by making sure that we talk to the founders with a one, one experience of everyone involved. And we looked at how it was really challenging for patients or families who advocated for their loved ones. And so we talk about creating this environment that feels really assuring and dignifying. And we can then combine that together with our pictures of the research and our more branded aesthetics. So we've got our logo, and then we got how that's applied into social media. And knowing we have this reassuring feeling and this really empowering feeling, we can look at the pictures here in the application, and we can see that it's translated into the design itself. Finally, we have a section here on the impact, so talking about how they could reach a lot more people, talking about how it can help people feel seen through this brand, and also giving them a toolkit that they can actually use to create a lot more work day to day, things like having assets that are easy to use for their presentations or social media, for example. And then finally, we have a call to action for people to actually get in touch about their own project. Workbook has a template set out for you that shows some different layouts for images that you could use and sections for the copy, very similar to the one that we just looked at. So have a look at this and see, Okay, I have these different mockups. Do I need to create any additional ones? What kind of copy do I need to write? How is this going to come together as one story? As you're writing the copy for your case studies, this is also a great place to start using those keywords that we created in Week one. Incorporate them into your SEO for your website. Since we already have this list that we create in Week one, our job right now is to start putting them in in a way that feels natural and easy to read. We really want to avoid it feeling like it's very keyword stuff. A quick way to do this is to make sure that we have all those services listed right at the top. This is a quick way to get some keywords in without it being incorporated into the text. We can then be really intentional about mentioning how we did this work and incorporate those keywords. A good rule of thumb is to use those core keywords that we created our main keywords, something like three to five times if your case study is about 500 to 1,000 words. The remaining keywords, you can sprinkle them in if they seem appropriate, but not every case study needs to have every keyword. It should feel natural and actually make sense in the context. Another area where copyrighting is really important besides your case studies is your About page and your process page. None of these actually have to be super long or extensive, but it's just another opportunity for us to win over those clients who are kind of on the fence. When your About page, focus on why your skills are actually helpful to the client instead of just making it about what you enjoy about design. For example, you can talk about your experience with a certain medium. Or why you have experience in a certain type of industry, for example. Don't get me wrong. Having a few details about you that connects with people can be really important. The thing we want to avoid is landing on this site where you basically have a big picture of you and saying, Here's what I do, and this is why I love it. But we don't really get any understanding of how this is relating to the project or why you are the better person for this. In my case, my About page is also where I share our sustainability work. And our different values as a company. Because I know this is something that is super important for the client choosing us. They're coming to us because we understand what it's like to work with sustainably driven clients. And we also have that experience and expertise and share their value. For you, it can be a similar approach, but it could be anything. You can talk about how you really love to work with small mom and pop shops because you love to see the impact, for example. Find something that is that connection where they can see why you got into this, but it's relating to them and how it's helping them. If you're a little bit more established and you've got some nice clients under your belt, you can always put these logos here. You can even put a timeline of different projects you've taken on and how your company has expanded. Let's say you've hired someone or you've expanded your team to other freelancers that you can work with a great opportunity to show your different capabilities as a company. If you're just starting out, this is a great place to put some pictures that really help people connect. So it could be, for example, a picture of you sketching something or you working at your computer. So people don't just get that one headshot, but we actually have a bit more of you working on something. It feels a lot more actionable and easier to connect that. A world full of AI, this also shows that you're creating everything from scratch, and it shows the value of your services. The process page is here to make sure that you and your clients are on the same page right from the start. Clients come to you already knowing from your website how long a project usually takes, what steps it involves, for example. You don't have to be super detailed on this, but setting out all the different stages and what the purpose of each one is can be really important for the client making sure that they're preparing all the materials that they need, that they understand the type of time they need to invest in the project, for example. You can, for example, say that discovery is all about understanding where your company is now, your future goals, and your customers, so that we can really make sure we're making strategic choices moving forward. And if you like, you could add something like it's typically a two hour meeting, and you get a little strategic report afterwards, for example. I promise this will save you a ton of time when you're actually managing those projects later on because clients come in with this understanding. And you can basically take this information and put it into your proposal as well. So doing that work now could also help when you start sending out proposals. Just like with the rest of your site, don't forget about mobile. Sure that anything that you're adding is going to actually look really good when you're scrolling on a smaller format. So, for example, if you're adding those different stages, make sure you're adding them in different blocks and not as one solid image because once you get on mobile, that's going to be super duper tiny and impossible to read. 13. Creating Mockups: Today is an exciting day because we are taking those beautiful designs that you created, and we're turning them into stunning mockups. Mockups are a key part of running a creative studio because we can't always take physical pictures of the designs that we create. Sometimes the clients is abroad. Sometimes it's not something that becomes a physical product right away. So knowing how to create your custom mockups or to actually customize ones that you can buy is a really important skill. Mockups also a great way for clients to actually envision how a final design is going to look. So we need them not only for our portfolio, but also for presenting concepts to clients. There are a couple different ways to work with mockup. So the first one is to buy a license or use ones that are free to use that you can customize, but that are essentially already set up for you. The second way is to create your own. But let's start with using premade ones just so that we have that down in case you want to start exploring there. I added a list of different websites that offer both free or options to license in the workbook, so you can go and explore those different options. And one that I use a lot is one called Mr. Mockup. You can see that there are so many different options, and you can see that even in the free tab, we've got tons and tons of different mockups. So how do we actually know which one to go for for our project? We need to start by thinking about these designs that we've created and where they would actually live in real life. For example, a logo mockup on a coffee cup might be a great idea for a coffee or a cafe brand, but it's probably not a great fit for a kids clothing brand, for example. Also want to find a nice mix of different applications for each case study, so that it feels a lot more dynamic rather than just having the logo put on lots of different things, for example. For example, I recently created this cute design for kid friendly cafe, and I decided to put the mockup on a sign, on a menu, and we created this really cute social media post that we put on a phone mockup. This gives a nice set of variety, and it also shows how the brand could actually be applied. What if you design something a little bit more static? Like, let's say, a poster design. In this case, I think it's a great idea to find some mockups that show it close up where you can have the details, maybe not even showing the entire poster at once. And you can have some that are further away and in context of where this polster would be. The same goes for if you're creating a custom illustration, for example. You could put one mockup of a notebook with showing your sketch, and you could put the final artwork on an iPad or you could put it even on a finished situation like, for example, a cover design. Most mockups are prepared in Photoshop, but at the end of the video, I'm also going to talk a little bit about some other options if you don't have Photoshop. It's up to the designer who makes these mockups to actually structure the layers and name them, but most of them have a very similar structure. So as you're working with a couple ones, you'll get more and more familiar with how they function. Most of them have a background layer, sometimes it's a color that you can edit. Sometimes it's a texture, for example, and in some cases, it might be incorporated together with the actual thing that you're working with. So, for example, the phone might not be separate from the background. Also have a design layer where you will actually place your design, and this is what we're really interested in. And then sometimes you also have things like lighting or shadows, for example, that you could actually tweak yourself. To add in your own design, all you have to do is double click the design layer to get into the Smart Object. That's what it's called. And when we paste our design here and click Save, we can go back to the tab of our actual mockup and you'll see that it has been updated. If you do feel like it is not quite looking accurate in terms of the colors that you wanted to have, you can go into these other layers that they've put in, like lighting and shadows or different color saturations, for example. And the easiest thing to do is just to start looking at the percentage of it that's applied. So you can actually start decreasing it a little bit and see how that affects the final result of the mockup. Once you're finished with it, just choose Export and choose a PNG or a JPEG file and save it to your computer. Make sure you file sizes are not massive because that's going to really slow down your website, and that could really hurt your SEO, but also the experience of using your website. For that reason, I usually prefer using JPEGs because they are a little bit lower in file size. But what about when you can't find that perfect mockup? Or maybe you just don't want to spend the money? I'm going to show you two ways to create your own mockups in Photoshop and one way to do it in Adobe Illustrator. I want to take you through two different mockups that we're going to create in Photoshop because we have some that are a little bit more straightforward and some that have a little bit more texture. So the first thing we want to do is we're going to use this notebook as our mockup. And so I want to select just the notebook. So what we're going to do is create a copy by right clicking and choosing duplicate layer. We can call this notebook, so it's easy to remember. Now, this is still the entire picture. So what we want to do now is head over to the menu here, and we want to select Object Selection tool. This is going to start working and notice different items in your actual artwork. But what we want to do now is just click on the one we want to select. Now, if we zoom in a little, we can tell that it's actually selected the shading here as well, the little shadow behind it. And I don't want that. So I'm going to zoom out a little bit. And I'm going to choose deselect, and I'm going to add a square for this little area up here. I think that looks a lot better. So what we want to do now is making sure that we're creating this as a layer mask. And that's going to make sure that only this area is actually selected. So this is going to be really important a little bit later on. Now what we want to do is create a container for our actual design. So I'm just going to use the shape tool here and create just a rectangle. Doesn't have to be perfect, just needs to generally cover this area, and we can just rename this. And then what we want to do is we want to make this into a clipping mask. And you're going to see how this is only applying to the area that we actually marked off before. Right now, it looks very white and there's not a lot going on. So what we want to do now is we want to convert it into a smart object because that is going to make sure we can actually update our design so we don't have to recreate the mockup every time. So if we click in here, we see we've got this white rectangle, so we can hide that, and then we can go and actually grab our design. So I've just made it in Illustrator super quickly. So you can just copy this and we can go back into Photoshop and paste it. And we're going to paste that as a smart object. I want to make it really big, so it's going off of the actual notebook so you can see that this mask is working. So let's place it somewhere like this and just hit Command save, and then we're going to go back into our original one, and you can see how it's being cropped right now. That already looks okay, but there are a couple other things we want to do to make it look a bit more realistic. I want to add on a bit more texture, so I'm going to create another copy of the background layer, and we can name this something like textures and shading, for example. We're going to pull this all the way up to the top. And what we want to do now is we want to change the blending mode from normal to linear burn. Now, that looks a lot right now. So what we want to do is make sure it only applies to the notebook. So we're going to just create a clipping mask here. And now this is only applying to the notebook, but it's quite severe. So I'm actually going to go and reduce the opacity a little bit here. I think that looks a lot better, but I'm going to go back into the design and show you if we move this placement to where there's a lot more shadows on this notebook, you'll see, like how this is actually working and how it's picking up those shadows a bit better. So now if we zoom in, you'll see that this edge on the notebook where we have this shading, it's actually applying that to our design, which is really good. I think we're pretty close right now, but I want to show you a few more things. So let's just move this back to the middle for now so we see what we're doing. So one last thing that we can do is to actually work with the opacity of our design a little bit. So by lowering the opacity just a smidge, we can actually create a little bit more of that texture see through, and it just becomes a little bit more realistic. So now that we have the basics, let's head into this T shirt. So we're going to do the same thing. Just open it in Photoshop. So we're going to basically do all the same steps. We're going to start by creating a copy. We're going to call this T shirt. We're going to use our selection tool. I did a pretty good job. We're gonna make it a layer mask. So we got our T shirt layer mask here. Then we're going to make our area for our design using the shape, and we're going to create that as a clipping mask. Now we're gonna convert this into a smart object. And we're gonna go in and add our design. So we're gonna hide our rectangle, grab our design and paste it in. This might be a little bit big. We have to try it out. Yeah, no, that feels very big. Okay, let's make it a little bit smaller. We still want to have it in a big area because I want to show you how the texture works. So now we can tell this is on here. Yes, but we're not really getting much of the texture. So we're going to start by just doing the same thing we did for the other one, duplicating the actual image. We're gonna call this texture and shading. We're gonna pull it at the very top, changing the blending mode to linear burn, creating it as a clipping mask. And and if we're looking at this right now, again, it feels a little bit harsh. I'm going to pull it down a little bit. It's not terrible, but we do have this fabric that is doing little folds and things. And if we zoom in, we can tell that we are getting the shading of that, but our design is not at all warping, and that's what it would be doing. So this is what I'm going to show you now, which is a little bit of a nice hack that you can use for anything that doesn't have just that straight shape like we had for the notebook. So we're going to click on a rectangle, which is we can again rename it to design. And what we're going to do now is we're going to click Edit. We're going to go down to free transform. And then we can see that this is now one big square. But if we click this little icon at the top, we actually get these little areas where we can start manipulating the design. Now, what I want to do is I want to actually add in some specific lines I can manipulate along the fabric here. So I'm going to click this vertical line, and I'm going to click to add two different ones here. We can then go in and see how this design would actually be warped. So we can go in and start moving our design a little bit, just to start getting a little bit of that effect that we would actually see. You really can be very subtle here and experiment and kind of see how you go. We can go and add in another one over here. Start tweaking these a little Maybe that's a little bit too harsh. We might also want to make this line feel a little bit softer, like it's almost going a little bit curved. And we can do that in the same way by just adding them in this horizontal way. So if we add one here, we can actually start pulling this down a tiny bit. You don't have to just grab the lines themselves. You can start to actually grab were on the mark, but it's going to warp it according to where your lines are placed. So the more lines and the more divisions you have, the more flexibility you have. So you can see that if I'm doing this, it's not really warping this part that doesn't have any lines on it. Don't want to work in Photoshop, Adobe Illustrator recently added their very own create mockup feature. This means that all you have to do is find a picture, just like we did for Photoshop that you want to use as the base of your mockup. Then you put it into Illustrator and you put your design on top. This needs to be a vector. It can't be another picture. Then select both your image and your design and choose object mockup make. This will automatically create a mockup for you, where your design is doing a pretty decent job of following the curves of the actual object that you're placing it on. The one thing I have noticed is that it's not amazing at following the textures or the more kind of tactile feel of the object itself. Because of that reason, I think it's a great option to use for things like mugs, for example, that have a little bit of that curve that can be more tricky to work with than Photoshop, but it's also something that doesn't come with a lot of texture. Way to fix this a little bit is to add a little bit of gaussian blur to your actual design before you start working. Of course, Photoshop gives us a lot more option to actually customize our mockups. But I think Illustrator can be a great option when you're working with something pretty simple like a cup and you don't want it to take a lot of time. But what if you don't have access to something like Photoshop or Adobe Illustrator? This case, there are great websites like let's say Canva or Placet or PACDora that actually have a desktop app where you can work directly in that program. Some of them come with a subscription, and some of them have lots of free options. So I've put all of these websites in the workbook so you can go and explore them if Photoshop and Illustrator isn't for you. Good luck creating your mockups, and I'll see you tomorrow. 14. Getting in touch: All this hard work you've dug up until now will not pay off if clients don't actually have an easy way to reach out to you. Start with the navigation and add a simple contact button here. This is where a lot of people will expect to find this contact page. So make sure you have that in place so it's easier for people to find. On the contact page, you can choose to add a form, for example, or you can choose to just add your contact information like your email and your phone number, for example. My case, I chose to have both because I want people to be able to give me a call if they have very specific questions, but having the form is where I get most of my leads, and it's really important where we can actually ask specific questions. The longer the form is, the less likely it is that people will fill it out. But at the same time, it's really important to make sure you're qualifying those clients. So when I first started out, I just had name and email and I think maybe message, and we got tons and tons of spam coming through. Now that I'm asking for things like a budget and a timeline, I can quickly start qualifying this client because if they're telling me they want a branding project for $100 in I don't know, two days. I'm going to instantly say, there's way too far of a distance between where I am and where the client is. So this is probably not a viable lead. But if they come back with something that is pretty close to my normal budgets, I can start to have a conversation with them and we can start to actually have, like, a discovery call, for example. Next up, we want to make sure that anyone who's reading all this hard work that you've put into your case studies, who is already really encouraged by all this exciting work going to have an easy way to reach out. If you have very long case studies, then you might want to consider putting a call to action like getting in touch about your own project in the middle of a case study. But otherwise, you can always put it at the end. You can do an embedded pop up form here or you can even just link to the contact page. Lastly, I recommend adding some way of contacting you in the footer. This is a place where a lot of people go to for that contact information, so it's just another extra safe secure layer to make sure it's easy for people to get in touch. Anywhere you ask people for contact information to them, make sure you're reading up on the GDPR rules for your area. So this is not just about where your business is located, but it's where anyone who's fill out this form is located. So, for example, if someone from Europe could be filling out this form, which if you have a website, that is likely, then make sure that you are really looking into those GDPR rules. I'm not a lawyer, so I can't advise exactly what to do here, but make sure you're looking into it, and generally, you want to make sure you have your privacy policy, your terms and conditions really clear that people need to accept them, and also that you're doing double opt in. So if you're going to add someone to an email list, they need to be actually actively joining an email list, and you need to have double opt in where they are confirming that that hits. Again, not a lawyer but make sure you read up for your own area and what's relevant to your business. 15. User journey: We have arrived at the very last day of this 30 day glow up challenge. I'm so proud of you for doing all this work. And today is all about polishing up last little bit that could really be the make it or break it for someone to reach out. When you design any website, you really need to think about the user journey. This starts with where on your website visitors are actually landing first. Now, it might seem intuitive that that's always the homepage, but especially, let's say you're doing marketing or you've got a blog, people might actually come to things that you've linked to from otherwise. So that might be your case studies that they land on first or blog post, for example. Goal, wherever they land is to answer all the questions and then encourage them to reach out. For example, let's say someone lands on your blog about how to design a poster. Now, in this case, we might want to just answer all those questions about how to design a poster. But as one of our examples on how to do that, we could link one of our actual case studies. So that way, they're going from the blog, clicking on your case study, reading up about your great skills and your knowledge in this area. And then from there, we can have a contact button to actually reach out about your project. The same is true for your homepage. Instead of just showing your work, you want to make sure that you're interlinking to your about page, to your process. To your different case studies, of course, as well, just to make sure that it's really easy for people to find out that information when they might wonder about how long a project takes or who you are to work with. So make sure they can easily answer those questions and take those boxes and then finally get in touch with those good call to actions. All the design decisions you make to actually create that style of your website, it's completely up to you, your brand, and who your customer is. But make sure that you keep those accessibility and user journey aspects in mind so that your website is really functional. If you need to review those accessibility tips again, you can find them in day one of Week four. 16. Wrap-up and thank you!: Did it. I'm so proud of you. And I hope that this can be a course that you can come back to whenever you need to update your portfolio or when you feel like something isn't quite working. I would really love to know how you actually get on. So you can actually use the discussions tab just below to ask me any questions, and you can use the projects tab to post those summary pages from each week, where we can actually talk about everything we've done and everything that you were maybe wondering about. We can also help each other out as students. Don't forget to make the most of the workbook, and thank you so much for coming along for this glow up month.