Here is your freshly squeezed design inspiration for the week of September 18th, 2023.
SOMETHING GORGEOUS: Lenny Kravitz's Brazilian Compound
PORTFOLIO OF THE WEEK: Does a Portfolio Need Work In It?
CREATIVE FINDS:
ChainGPT
My Computer is ATM by Mobills-Group Corp.
Abteka: Ukraine Through Type
One Tok:
Being SO GD Good with Markers
ONE LESSON: How to Develop Design Tastebuds
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Resource of the Week
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Something Gorgeous
Lenny Kravitz's Brazilian Compound
I am sharing this AD article that was published in 2019 because the subject of "taste" has been on my mind over the last week or so and Lenny Kravitz illustrates this perfectly. I also talk more about this in my One Lesson for the week down below ⬇️
Celebrity design agencies are nothing new and something that I have shared in previous CJ like with Childish Gambino and his studio Gilga. Lenny Kravitz for those of you too young to know, is an amazing musician and artist that was very "cool" during my early years and still is! But I regard him as a true visionary, a creative being that knows no limits, and someone that I aspire to be like when I am 60 years old.
Lenny Kravitz has never allowed a medium to get in the way of his creativity and his design firm Kravitz Design, started in 2003, is a great example of this. What does a singer, song-writer, and actor know about branding, interior design, and industrial design? Maybe nothing, but that doesn't matter, because when you have great taste you can do anything.
Check out the video and take note of how cohesive and eclectic Mr. Kravitz design decisions are, and if you want to hear more about my thoughts on "taste", keep scrolling ⬇️
Portfolio Of The Week
Does a Portfolio Need Work In It?
Mads Burcharth is a designer focusing on crafting beautiful, highly detailed interfaces, websites, brands and icons. I chose his portfolio website this week because it breaks the mold of traditional portfolio websites and asks the question, do you need full case-studies on your portfolio website?
Let's begin. For starters, Mads has a great deal of experience having previously worked for Sketch and cofounding a company that he then sold. Now he is freelancing and if I had to make an educated guess, through those two experiences alone he has probably built up his professional network to a point where he has a pretty consistent flow of referrals reaching out to him. This means that there is already a high-level of trust when individuals reach out to Mads looking to work with him.
(Mads if you're reading this, please feel free to confirm or deny this)
When you visit Mads's portfolio website you are received by a quick introduction along with some contact links in the header of his website. Below that is a long board of icons, logos, and crops of work that Mads has produced over his career. At first I thought I was going to be able to click into this to view bigger case studies but I soon realized that was not the case. A few things stand out to me about this execution.
1\. While I may not be able to view more in-depth case studies about some of his projects, Mads has included enough variety to give me a sense of his process, design taste, and skill. 2. This execution of showing only samples from larger projects, when paired with his extensive career experience is enough to answer the question "Is this designer/creative good enough for my project?".
While Mads may not have the most interactive or in-depth portfolio website, theres still ton to learn from his execution.
Portfolio Rating: 6.3/10 Built With: Framer
View Does a Portfolio Need Work In It?'s portfolio here.
Creative Finds
ChainGPT
Combine two of the trendiest technologies from the last 5 years together and make a sick website for it and you have an awesome product! Just kidding, I'm sure this is a cool and useful product/service to someone, but the imagery and scroll animations for this website are sick.
My Computer is ATM by Mobills-Group Corp.
"Run a node at home. Join home staking. Enjoy a new lifestyle." - Sounds easy right? I am not a fan of crypto or staking and all that hoopla, but I do love when the projects are wrapped in beautifully designed visual identities like this from Mobills-Group which is a creative group out of Korea.
Abteka: Ukraine Through Type
Explore the Ukrainian identity through 33 events represented by 33 different typefaces. Beautiful website design 👌
One Tok
Being SO GD Good with Markers
"Dai Xiaoshuai draws pictures" is an understatement when it comes to these wonderful pieces that Dai produces using copic markers. If you've been reading Creative Juice for a bit, you know that I will one day have one of his beautiful works hanging on a wall somewhere in my home.
One Lesson
How to Develop Design Tastebuds
As a I mentioned above, the subject of "taste" has been on my mind a lot recently especially as it relates to what I do everyday as a graphic designer and creator. It's been on my mind so much that I think I now truly believe that it is THE most important "thing" you can develop and continue to grow or improve upon as you progress in your career.
If you had no technical skills at all, never opened up Photoshop or Figma, couldn't draw, as long as you had amazing taste, you can do anything.
So I began to think, how do you develop good taste? This is what I've come up with:
1\. You need to be curious and view the world as if everything is new no matter how familiar you think you are with what is in front of you. 2. You need to analyze and question everything. 3. You need to know the greats that came before you and understand that they are not perfect. 4. Have a strong opinion or perspective on topics, but not too strong to the point that you can't see the other side or even be convinced that you're wrong. 5. Practice speaking about your opinions and your thoughts to the point that your dog could understand you.
This list isn't complete but this is where I'm at so far. I'd love to know what you think about developing "taste" and if you agree or disagree with some of these points.
- Hope you're feeling inspired to make some cool sh\t this week! If you have a few minutes please take a look at the Creative Juice survey so I can continue publishing content that you care about in this newsletter.
Have a great day! - J
PS. Thank you to those who alerted me that my email was kicking back messages. I have now fixed that so feel free to send me a reply if you enjoyed this edition of Creative Juice or just have a general question!
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