by Justas | Nov 20, 2015 | Inspiration
Once again I’ll present you collection of great icon sets I’ve collected through the week. It’s nice to see so many different styles and interesting approaches on icon design. I’m sure you will discover some great icon designers and awesome icon...
by Justas | Nov 17, 2015 | Articles
Today I would like to present you my Adobe Illustrator Workspace for icon design. These are the main and most essential tools I’m using when working on my icon design. To be honest, a month ago I didn’t care much about the way my Illustrator is set up. I had dozens of unnecessary tabs and panels opened that only distracted me making it more difficult to find the tools I needed. One day I got an email with a question about my Illustrator workspace. I took it as a sign and decided to clean everything up and build my workspace from scratch. I carefully examined my working process and, I believe, managed to create a perfect example of the Adobe Illustrator workspace for an icon designer. At least, it is the best for me. What I didn’t understand before is how much time I was actually wasting making my way through the piles of useless panels. It might look like just a half a second, but trust me – it matters! The time adds up, and you can save quite some time and nerves at the end of the day if you have your workspace adjusted to the specific thing you’re working on. You are welcome to take a look at my set-up below and feel free to implement it into your own icon designing process. Quick tip: I’m not sure how many of you know that you can create a bunch of different Illustrator workspaces and then simply switch between them while working on your project. In Illustrator CC it should be located in the top right corner....
by Justas | Nov 3, 2015 | Articles
It is unbelievable how drastically my life has changed over the past year! And it is all thanks to Dribbble. This is the community of great and supportive creative minds who are always willing to help and inspire you to go further and do more, do better, keep improving every single day! I thought I would share my story how Dribbble turned my hobby into a career to show my gratitude, and also to inspire all of you. I still vividly remember that time in July a year ago, when I was sitting at the camp with my laptop and checking my Dribbble account. I mean, I am not one of those guys that bring his laptop to the camping trip, but in my defense — I had to make some final adjustments to the project I had been working on (and yet I was procrastinating on Dribbble, right). I had around 350 followers back then and I desperately wanted to increase that number. Don’t get me wrong, 300+ followers was a great achievement for me, and I was beyond happy that so many people were interested in my work. But you can’t judge me for wanting more, can you? In fact, one of my New Year resolutions (yes, I do make New Year resolutions) was to raise my Dribbble number of followers. I was half-through the year and yet I hadn’t done anything about that. I created an Excel file where I estimated my chances of increasing the number of followers over the remaining half of the year and eventually ended up with three options: Pessimistic – 500...
by Justas | Oct 30, 2015 | Inspiration
Once again I’ll present you collection of great icon sets I’ve collected through the week. It’s nice to see so many different styles and interesting approaches on icon design. I’m sure you will discover some great icon designers and awesome icon...
by Justas | Oct 27, 2015 | Articles
I promised to do a quick analysis/feedback session on how to launch a successful cotton bureau campaign, and before I dive straight into it, I want to once again thank everyone who supported Grumpy and bought a t-shirt. You are incredible, and your tees should be sent tomorrow, so you are going to get them very soon! I would love to see you wearing your Grumpy t-shirt, share your pictures with me and the rest of the world using the hashtag #IconUtopia or the contact form – whichever is more comfortable for you! I’m looking forward to your photos! But…First things first: What is Cotton Bureau? Okay, for those of you who are not familiar with it, Cotton Bureau, as they put it themselves, is the best place to buy and sell t-shirts online. Simply said, it’s a little business that lets everyone upload their design, create and then have their t-shirts being sold for two weeks. Afterwards you get your cut from every t-shirt, and your customers get their ridiculously high-quality tees. You can read more about this on Cotton Bureau About Us page. Why Cotton Bureau? There is a pretty reasonable question you might ask — why the Cotton Bureau campaign when I could simply print out the t-shirts, ship and handle everything myself? In the end, I would have made a lot more money. But look at it this way: You’re running your first ever t-shirt campaign. It’s risky as you never know for sure if it is going to be successful or not. And if you want to have the best quality shirts for decent price,...
