Day 31/ 180 to Graphic Design Bossery _ 29 May Wed 2019
It’s 10:23 PM.
(Not on your time, but on my side as I type this.)
I was thinking of hitting the sheets but I’m sticking to what I told myself I’d do today (yesterday..get it?) — to write my first post and ship out into the internet. It’s all about shipping, and I need to get better at it.
(After all, real artists ship right? I think that’s what Steve Jobs said…Not that I’d really think of myself as an artist. But hey, that’s a story for another day.)
Now you’re probably wondering…
What exactly am I shipping?
Containers? Ships? Drugs?
And what do I mean by bossery?
To the first point. I’m shipping in terms of having an idea and getting it created to (good enough level of) completion.
In this case it’s creating some kind of content (any kind of content) around my little experiment I’m running regarding gaining a new set of skills (mainly being Graphic Design, Photoshop and possibly Illustrator and Indesign).
Why? Because I’ve recently stood on a metaphorical landmine regarding my recent venture in the business world (keep an eye on that in a future post about this) and want to ensure that I’m always growing my set of marketable skills.
The second point. I made up that word. It sounds legit though. Don’t you think? In this case, it’s just getting a good enough competence to:
A. Make cash with these skills if I was in a super shit financial situation from whatever catastrophe could arise in life (like I have recently in doing my own business and having reality swinging me some haymakers). Because you know, shit happens.
B. Put colour into cartoon’s I draw and put in my computer for editing (I grew up drawing a lot of manga. It would be awesome making realistic digital versions drawings.)
C. Create business related graphics for myself.
D. Have an extra skill to combine to whatever businesses I get into the future.
Anyway, this is a 6 month commitment (which started the 28th of April last month) to putting at least 1 hour daily to building up these visual design skills (so far I’ve missed two days. On the first I was feeling shit and on the second I didn’t plan my day out effectively).
Putting the project together was a hassle in the beginning.
How come? Well, I’m not paying for a Graphic Design course and that means I’d have to put my little curriculum together myself. I did just that and it was annoying. But hey, that annoyance is unjustified because this is only costing time yo!
The initial videos I found were outdated and confusing relative to the later version of Photoshop.
But over time I struck gold.
See, there are some folks out there who have a thing for empowering the planet and stuff like that and one the ways they did so are through MOOCs (Massive Open [Free] Online Courses).
How the fuck did I forget about this invention?
I need to high five whoever came up with this idea.
(Dude if you’re reading this, hit me up and I’ll make a plan to high five you.)
I remember discovering and taking my first Open Online Courses around 2014 to 2015.
It was as monumental as discovering fire.
Straight from the minds of people experienced in their fields I learned things like:
· Marketing (because I like marketing)
· English Grammar (because I had writers block)
· Economics (because I heard about Behavioural Economics and was curious to learn some concepts in economics) and
· Story writing (because, I had writers block).
The free one I’ve been taking at the moment ( in terms of Graphic Design) is on the website
Coursera. And this is a legit course by a legit Graphic Design teacher called . (I gauged the credibility on the quality of his many reviews)
And for the software side, I’m learning Photoshop and more Design principles from the super (fucking) generous Gareth David of Tasty Tuts on YouTube. The dude has the perfect courses. And they’re free.
(By the way, I’ve been learning Graphic Design and these softwares from scratch recently)
So, what did I do today?
I did a lesson on the Pen Tool and Path Tool again to do things like this the image you see.
In my next post I’ll write an interesting story about an interesting event.
- Thomas Lekhanya
P.S Posting up this stuff online is a 30-day challenge in itself. I’ll decide if I want to carry on 30 days from now. This makes it two challenges. You see it right? One is the Graphic Design stuff and the other is the act of posting shit online.
P.P.S I’m usually too much of a perfectionist with creative stuff I do. So yeah, if you’ve read this (well done) far and wondered why my writing might seem a little scattered. Try looking past it. I’m avoiding taking hours to finishing something simple.
