Thank you to everyone that responded to my cry for help last week about the images. I want to apologize for the error and I'm hoping now that it is fixed. Again please let me know if you are not seeing images populate correctly. I also know that some email clients are being finicky and will work on fixing that in the coming weeks as well!
Again thank you so much for your patience on this. This is all so new to me and hoping to get a hold of it soon <3!
Creative Juice is a weekly newsletter published every Monday morning so you can start your week feeling inspired creatively to make cool sh*t and get paid for it. Every Monday I share something gorgeous, a portfolio of the week, three creative finds, one amazing post from social media, and one lesson I learned recently.
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TL:DR
SOMETHING GORGEOUS: Minimal Kyiv Apartment Splashed With Rich Primary Colors
PORTFOLIO OF THE WEEK: This Portfolio Website Screams Take My Money!
CREATIVE FIND 01: Introducing The Worlds Thickest Pickles
CREATIVE FIND 02: Store for Fonts, Who Would of Thought
CREATIVE FIND 03: Get Your Designs Roasted for Free!
ONE GRAM: A Beautiful Moment of Bird Bliss
ONE LESSON: Sharing Your Passion is So Much Fun
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Something Gorgeous
Minimal Kyiv Apartment Splashed With Rich Primary Colors
2BM Apartment by Top Lab Interiors
When it comes to interior design I tend to swerve all over the place. On one side I love interiors that are abundantly filled with an eclectic variety of pieces from different eras. On the other side, I also really enjoy a more minimalist stripped down interior, accented by moments of texture or color. Kind of like Rick Owen's minimalist Italian home.
This beautifully designed apartment with bright splashes of primary colors located in Kyiv is the 2BM Apartment by Top Lab Interiors. This apartment screams home for creatives. It reminds me of any pantone color swatches you find with the color in Helvetica.
Besides being a gorgeous display of restraint, creativity, and color. The 2BM apartment also serves as a memory for the TLI team that will last for a very long time as this project was completed in the first months of the invasion of Ukraine.
Portfolio of the Week
This Portfolio Website Screams Take My Money!
Sierra Ching
This design portfolio website by Sierra Ching is as buttoned up as you can get...I mean I don't know where to start there are just so many good things about her design portfolio website.
First let's talk homepage header. Yes just focus on the header for a minute. Sierra has included a clear statement of what she does and who she does it for. She has included her experience. She has included visual elements to give me a sense of her personality. She even managed to include a really interesting way to show a visual of herself using a video with a cool click interaction. And just below all of that she included a bunch of logos of companies she has pseudo worked with...If I had to say this is the only reason why her design portfolio website isn't a 10/10. Instead of including companies she's worked with, she has included companies of designers that she has worked with in some way. A little fluffy but I'll accept it.
Below her header she has created these wonderful big sections devoted to her case studies, testimonials from coworkers and CEOs, and additional information about her.
Moving on to her case study pages, I love the very first section of her projects, she has elected to include some kind of data about how her work resulted in an increase in productivity or growth. This is the stuff hiring managers and directors want to see! It's also very much worth noting that Sierra's case studies are predominantly text. The image to text ratio if I had to guess looks around 30:70 which I would say is awesome especially as Sierra focuses on product/UI/UX work where articulating your process is even more valuable than just making something pretty.
Well done Sierra!
Score: 9.6/10
Built with: Framer
Creative Finds
Introducing The Worlds Thickest Pickles
Thick Pickle Website by Study Hall
Through some of the business podcasts I listen to, I've learned that there will be some big pushes in certain categories to become the category leader and lo and behold we are seeing it with pickles. These pickles however happen to be the thickest. Very cool visual identity and website experience by Study Hall out of Oakland, CA.
Store for Fonts, Who Would of Thought
Fontstore™
This is not your ordinary store for high-quality fonts. Fontstore is created by Indian Type Foundry and they offer a large quiver of secksi typefaces. If you are under a tight budget or just don't have the funds to invest in typefaces at the moment. You should check out their other property Fontshare™ which is a free service similar to Google Fonts.
Get Your Designs Roasted for Free!
DesignRoasts
As designer's we can't help but throw in our 2 cents when it comes to critiquing the work of others. So why not turn it into something that you can benefit from. I like this project for two reasons. One, it gives back to the community for those seeking feedback on their own work or projects. Two, this is a great lead generation tool that the creators can use to find clients.
One Gram
A Beautiful Moment of Bird Bliss
@amercavalcant
I find it so very helpful to give your eyes a break from looking at creative work and this moment of bird watching bliss just made my eyes so happy. Amer's account is definitely worth the follow for breaking up your feed with some awesome nature.
One Lesson
Sharing Your Passion is So Much Fun
This past week I held a presentation at the co-work I operate from here in Bali alongside with a colleague(@karawang). It was titled "Web Design: and how to do it like a pro". It was made to provide soloists and business operators some basic principles on how to build a website that was better than your stock default template. I called these principles the "5 Keys to Fantastic Web Design" and they included negative space, color, hierarchy, fonts, and imagery. You can take a look at the slides here.
Public speaking is something that I've done a little here and there over the years and while presenting gets easier, preparing doesn't seem like it does. Also, I say presenting gets easier but I can tell you that the first 3-5 slides I was absolutely trembling to the point my friends in the front row noticed. Here is an Adobe Live I did a few years ago walking through how to use Adobe Xd to create an app prototype.
Anyway, the presentation went really well and we actually had a really great turn out filling up the entire room. I had friends and attendees come up to me afterwards for additional questions and feedback and from what I gathered, everyone really enjoyed it. Some of my friends were even surprised by how much I sounded like I knew what I was talking about. To my credit I do, and that's because I like to believe I am so very passionate about design and typography and color and all that nerdy stuff we as designers love so much.
Talking about the things you are passionate about makes it a whole lot easier to present and answer questions about. To be completely honest that presentation was so much fun for me, especially the section about fonts where I got to talk about all the beautiful sides of typefaces and the personalities they can take on.
Something that I like to remind myself with before any presentations or even making videos on social media is that you don't have to be an expert. You don't have to know every single thing under the sun about a topic to share it with others. If you can present a piece of information in a way that easy for someone to understand and apply then that is more than enough.
Another thing that I like to remind myself, you're never gonna be perfect the first couple of times you do this. So you have to practice and get your reps in to get better.
If you've been thinking about giving making videos or giving some sort of presentation, give it a go!
I am thinking about doing some more design chats over the next month or so. Would you be interested and what topics would you like for me to talk on?
PS. What is one thing you would like to start or absolutely knock out of the park this week?
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