I will post images in a daily basis so you can follow the progress of the whole project: illustration, logo design and web design. I invite you to join the project, you can post your feedback or just ask any question you have.

Step 1: planning the page

Before starting to draw I do a quick sketch to plain everything, so I can figure how much room to play I have.

The page is going to be pretty simple, as you can see, just an illustration on the left and a login form in the right, the goal is increasing the conversion rate.

Step 2: sketching the illustration

En este paso uso prácticamente todo lo que tengo a mano para componer la ilustración, desde fotos a antiguos bocetos. Cuando estoy contento con la composición me dedico a limpiar y retocar las lineas hasta que consigo una base sobre la que trabajar.

Step 3: inking in Photoshop

I have explained the inking process a hundred of times so let’s go ahead, I just will post some images giving you some useful tips.

Step 3: coloring the illustration in Photoshop

Coming Soon!!

And remember, if you want to contribute just share this post in your Facebook or Twitter!

What is this tutorial about?

The object of this tutorial is the cute vectorial character illustration for Cheeky Monkey Media, web development company from Canada, designed by commission some months ago.

Final integration, cute, don´t you think?

Sadly the video is about 15 hours long, so I need to split it in different parts and accelerate the time to compress it within YouTube´s restrictions. I will write some annotations along the videos where I share some tips to improve your inking in Photoshop and your coloring in Illustrator but I’m sure lot of questions will pop up on your mind, feel free to ask.

Here you can see the character evolution from the concept to the final rendering.

This is the character evolution from sketch to final artwork

And some close-ups:

Remember there will be several videos and I will update this post frequently, so subscribing to my Youtube Channel, my Facebook page or my Twitter is a good idea to stay up to date.

Video 1: some tips to improve the quality of your lineart in Photoshop

I receive lot of questions about my digital inking process: how do I get so sharp and crisp lines?, what brush settings do I use?, how big is my canvas?… In this video I reply all these questions and some others, if your lineart looks pixelated or blurry take care of these advices and you will notice a change.

Video 2: how to vectorize your lineart in Illustrator

Vectorizing your lineart in Illustrator with Live Trace is so easy that you don´t really need to deal with vectors until the final conversion. I find much more comfortable and natural working with Photoshop and a Wacom tablet, also the inking process is much faster.

At the end of this step I have lot of white shapes over a black silhouette.

Video 3: Assigning flat colors in Illustrator

This video could be a bit boring for expert users, I just assign flat colors and organize the shapes into groups, it’s very important when working on complex illustrations.

Music courtesy of Nanowar.

Video 4: Applying gradient colors in Illustrator (Part I)

I forgot to record the first minutes of this video, I just applied very basic gradients and cut big areas into smaller ones, then I start the tricky part: adding shadows and lights.

Music courtesy of The Butcher’s Ballroom.

Video 5: Applying gradient colors in Illustrator (Part II)

So here is the last video, after 15 hours of work our vectorial mascot design is completely done. Crisp and clean!

Music courtesy of Shearer.

I hope you enjoyed the process, if you have any question or suggestion just let me know.
See you soon!

The problem: as many as possible

When I started designing I used to work for small clients with tight budgets: just a logo, just a mascot, just some icons…

As my demand was increasing, the orders became bigger and bigger: brand identity + 12 poses of mascot design + full website.

I was a newbie so I thought that having 12 poses in my portfolio was better than a single one, so I just kept posting images like the one in the left.

The issue is, the more of these images I added, the more common I found myself repeating this dialog:

Client: Hey nice work, how much for a mascot design?
Designer: Thanks!, I charge 700 US$ per mascot.
Client: Great!, just within my budget, please, design 12 poses for me.
Designer: Hmm… sorry… this is the price per pose… (add here a long chat about how much time I spend on every design).

So we have a problem: what you put in your portfolio is what the client expects you to do for him. So if you put lots of stuff in your portfolio the client presumes that the production is not too time consuming, if it’s easy to produce then he obviously will want the biggest amount possible.

The solution

Every design is unique, it’s not just about cut, paste and rotate. Each pose is almost as time consuming as the original design and this is something the client should assume.

In my new portfolio the images will feature single poses. But I don’t want the client to think that I have limitations when it comes to pose the character, so:

1. I will have cases studio, not at first glance but accessible enough for any client that needs it in order to make a sale.
2. At the end of the page I will feature some image of a character posing in different situations.

Do you have any suggestion?

The next time we will discuss how to choose the projects that should appear in our portfolio.
I hope you enjoyed it!

Its about a system of avatar creation for an Online poker app. I don’t usually accept these kind of orders, since the ammount of work and dedication they require is huge, and the payments are not usually so huge. But the boys from Pokermania made it possible.

The job involved the creation of 22 sets of elements (11 for men and 11 for women), with about 10 elements for each set and 6 color variations for each item, which means I’ll be designing about 1300 elements in the next two months. You can figure out the customization possibilities we’re offering.

The big deal of this project is getting illustrations with a very high detail level, usual SOSFactory style, but being flexible enough to fit them into the template at the same time, both in color and style as well as in their position.

We’ve finished only 4 sets by now, and the app won’t see the ligth until May, so I can’t give many details by now, but I’m enjoying so much with this project that I wanted to tell you all about it.

UPDATE: Fat boy set

We thought having some different body shapes was a good idea, we don’ have lot of flexibility but we have room for adding a funny bear belly.

Warning: Playing poker online with real money being a under 18 is not nice at all, even if you are over 18 it´s still not nice.

I used to do it by dragging the layers from one archive to another one, the issue is you need to disengage the window, select the layers and drag them. Then you need to move the layers to the right position.

But there is an easier way to move lots of layers to a different file, if the files have the same dimensions they go exactly to the same position, this is great when you work with lots of layers in high resolution.

To combine 2 PSD files y Photoshop:

1. Open both files
2. Select the layers or groups you want to move to another file
3. Go to Layer> Duplicate Layers
4. Choose the document of destiny… and done!

I’m a Photoshop user since its 6th version and I just discovered this command… what a tool!

So let’s talk about the brief

1. How important is for you the brief you get from your client when you’re asked to design something?

In my current situation it’s not that important because my services and style are very defined, anyone that visits my portfolio knows what I do and what to expect, so I don’t need a very detailed brief. Actually I wouldn’t recommend an extensive brief if you work for small client profiles with low experience in the design process, in some cases it´s appreciated negatively, clients tend to think you are so lazy that you give them homework to save time yourself.

I recently had to do a refund because the client was so rushed that he refused to write a brief, he textually said:

 "We don’t need a corporate message… It seems to me that you have boilerplate questions that you ask regardless of the design goal or source and try to force your customers to answer them by repeating the same questions over and over. Your design process needs to work with the customer, for the customer — not force the customer to work around your methods or requirements."

2. Are you fully satisfied with the briefs received from your clients?

They usually don’t provide a brief, there are exceptions, specially for web design orders since the client perceives the task as more complex. For logo or corporate illustrations I usually ask some informal questions and they tend to reply briefly. It´s tough, on one hand you need to get the info, on the other hand, you need to ask carefully or the client could be offended.

3. Do you help your client to create his brief? If yes, how do you do it?

Yes, I do. I openly ask for their brief, they usually don’t have one so I write a list of key questions to understand their needs. As I previously said, it needs to be a short list and direct to the core.

4. How hard is for your clients to create a brief even if they receive some helping questions?

Most of the clients have problems to define their own corporate values and their corporate image, they actually are not conscious about their brand identity. If I ask something like: "what are the feelings you want to communicate? or how would you like to be perceived? they reply with series of adjectives with so wide meaning that is not too helpful, like: cool, professional, sleek, good looking… they don’t elaborate their replies too much.

5. Are you satisfied with the solution you use right now in order to get complete briefs from your clients (meaning a brief that is really helpful for you when you start working at your client’s project)?

Yes, I do. It’s not perfect but it works. 

The problem is not my design process, it’s a deeper problem, it’s my whole brand identity. Right now I’m perceived like an artist, but I’m redesigning my corporate stuff to be perceived like a brand manager with very good artistic skills.

6. An I add the following questions: What do you do when the client refuses to write a brief or he does it sloppily?. Would you accept the work even if you know it’s not going to be a good logo or web?

Honestly, at this point, sometimes I don’t know how to act. I usually refuse the work and I offer a refund… what do you do?

A big hug for all that remain, and a moment of remembrance for those who already left.

I wish you all the best for next year!
Sergio.

In the meantime, there were some other redesigns, but none of them came out. I made a big mistake: I wasn´t clear about the reasons for the redesign.

But this time it´s definitive, at the beginning of the year SOSFactory V2 will finally see the light. I´ll tell you the main reasons for the redesign:

1.- I didn´t know the clients, I designed for myself.

When I designed SOSFactory my skills were quite limited. So I designed my web considering my tastes as an user. It was created by an artist, not by a designer.

The problem of this philosophy is it attracts one type of clients characterised by their low chances of success in their projects, regardless of their budgets. This kind of client makes decisions with the heart instead of with the head. No ofense, all of them were great to work with but a big percent of these projects never will be even started, obviously it doesn´t help to promote my services.

Now I do know my clients.

However, every corner of this new version is aimed at the client. Moreover, at a very specific type of client. My objective is to recycle my clients educating them, both directly (by articles and tutorials) and indirectly (acting as a model). And maybe to reach some other clients who appreciate communication strategies above visual impact. I mean, clients who put the reason before the heart.

The objective is to get a good portfolio of successful clients vs portfolio of profitable clients.

2.- I didn´t know my own needs.

Since I didn´t know my clients, I didn´t realise my own needs. SOSFactory V1 main page is a reflection of this fact, it´s just useless. I don´t need such a big news area, neither I need a welcome message, nor those links to my tutorials… everything randomly laid out.

Now I do know my own needs.

SOSFactory V2 is hierarchical. All the elements are distributed according to its relevance. My priority was design above illustration. Every decision has been taken in order to reach these 2 main tasks:

Improve my conversion rate:

1. Show my work in the most quick and effective way.
2. If the client decides to hire me, he has to find a quick way to do it.
3. If the client has doubts, I must offer him some reasons to decide.
4. It he finally doesn´t, at least he should enjoy the web and remember me.

Attract my target clients:

1. I want to attract a medium-high profile client: design agencies, big corporations, enterprising entrepreneurs with successful projects…

3.- I denied the social side of my job.

At first, I thought a blog would only distract the clients from buying. In fact, I had two different webs: On one hand SOSFactory, my portfolio, on the other hand SOSNewbie, which was my blog, rather a personal than a professional project.

Integrating my blog and my porfolio in just one domain is one of the best decisions I have ever taken since it increased my presence in the net.

Now I understand that the social side is the key.

This step made me understand how important the social factor is in the Internet. So I´m currently very active in the following networks:

• Facebook
• Twitter
• Youtube
• Deviantart

The new SOSFactory takes social networks into account. The objective is to improve my social support to improve my brand image. These are secondary objectives, but they´re quite important anyway:

1. Keep the users (clients or designers) well informed about possible events, thanks to the up-to-date news.
2. Offer resources to my users, through my articles, tutorials or my Youtube videos.
3. Promote my profile in social networks.
4. Promote my passive income by selling stock designs or premium tutorials.

4.- I didn´t have an identity.

Since I didn´t know my market, or my audience, I didn´t understand my needs, so I could´t have a corporative identity.

In time, I know myself better.

Now I know my own identity, I need a web which reflects my way to interact with the world:

• I´m a businessman more than an artist.
• I achieve my goals, in a simple and funny way.
• I´m a perfectionist, practical, modest and open-natured.
• I´m generous, my success depends on my clients´ success, and the success of everyone who interacts honestly with me.
• I offer good quality service which is worth a decent remuneration.
• I´m honest and I demand the same in exchange.
• I don´t need everybody to like me.
• I believe in hard work above talent.
• I believe in intelligence above aesthetics.
• I believe in facts above words.

5.- I was breaking all the basic rules about usability.

This was the weakest point in SOSFactory V1, I have a brilliant set of utterly silly decisions in this area:

• Instead of emphasizing my logo, y gave priority to this kind of "space" button with links to secondary parts of my web.
• Another epic mistake was using Flash for the navigation bar, just to add some animation and sound, because that was cool!
• The container is optimized for 800x600px resolution, so the content looks too compressed and the text is hard to read.
• The texts are corporative texts, quite generic, so they don´t reflect my personality.
• There is no room to display big images.
• … we could go on and on.

Now I know the basics about usability.

Even though I´m not an expert in this area, it´s one of the aspects of design I enjoy the most. I´m following some interesting blogs about usability, and I think I´ve improved quite a lot in this area.

Everything must be where it has to be, and if it´s not, just change it.

6.- I chose the wrong technology.

As a noob I was, I limited to use what I knew. I used plain HTML with some Flash touches. Templates are restrictive about the design, and the management takes quite long. Each change has to be done page by page.

My new web will be flexible and easy to manage.

It´s created with style sheets (CSS) + HTML, each element of the design is cut in different PHP files. I gain flexibility with this, it´s quicker to manage, and there are many more advantages. In addition, I have some Ajax touches to charge contents effectively as well as Javascript to make changes on the interface.

Final thoughts

The key to build a good website is the intentionality, every small choice must be oriented to a goal, in my case it was atrackting a different kind of client. But before you must know yourself and your market, so you can create the right enviroment, with the right tools.

In the next post I will disclose all the reasoning behind my choices.
And hopefully SOSFactory V2 will be online around middle January.

I hope you guys a great holidays, thanks a lot for your support!

First of all, I must admit that the heading of this post is a misunderstanding, since it wants to mean just the opposite of what it says. I´m totally against "free pitching". It´s not for fear (luckily I´m not affected by this market). I write this just because, as a designer myself, with a relative comfortable position, I feel responsible of the education of novel designers (that´s the reason for this blog), who come along looking forward to having success but too focused on short term. Just like I was 8 years ago.

If you work participating in crowdsourcing sites, please read this post, and if you have some time, think it over. It´s not my intention to tell you off, I just want to offer some arguments that you maybe haven´t considered before. If you have and you are still positive that this is a good thing for your career, please comment your point of view for us.

1.- Are you a novel designer, so you need some experience and make your portfolio?

I can answer with another question: do you know any other job where people work for free to get some experience?

I can find it acceptable that if you have no experience, your salary should be lower than an experienced worker´s. But… working for free? If you have to do that, choose another job.

You can find many alternatives:

• You can work for an non-governmental organization.
• You can look for a job as a scholarship trainee.
• You can sell stock designs, sell tutorials or work like guest blogger.
• You can create your own blog and convert the traffic through advertising, while you promote your services.
• You can work for friends and relatives.
• You can work in personal projects or fictional clients.
• Websites such as Elance, where clients choose a designer according to their budget and their portfolio. It´s not a panacea, but at least there are some guarantees.
• You can offer your services in blogs, art communities and forums at a reasonable price.

There are only 3 rules:

1. Your salary (even if it´s not much) must be guaranteed.
2. Your prior objective is to learn, both in commercial and technical levels.
3. Making a good portfolio which contains quality work is the key of your future.

But, let´s suppose that the payment would be guaranteed in this contests. As we already commented in my previous post about 99designs, there are still many obstacles:

• Unidirectional communication: the client speaks and the designer executes.
• Communication is also poor: there´s not a good brief and feedback is limited and poor.
• Revisions are cumulative, that means the project evolves basing on other designers´ entries, which can make you "inspire" in other people´s work.

Are you really learning good habits? The only positive thing I can extract from this is that you will have known the hell of labour market, and you´ll become stronger… If you survive. But I think this is an unnecessary evil, discouraging and not useful… even counterproductive, because of the bad habits you would acquire.

2.- Need to work?

Ok, in these sites there are plenty of clients, some of them with acceptable budgets. But your salary is not guaranteed, there are hundreds of direct competitors (some of them without any moral principles) and the system doesn´t enable good quality results.

It´s like selling low quality fruit in a low quality macro-fruit-shop… I think it would be more intelligent to set up your own store far from that other one, and focus on the quality of your products. I mean, dont´you think it would be more intelligent to create a good quality portfolio and promote it yourself? If you´re a good professional and you offer good products, in a short time clients will knock on your door. Then you´ll be independent and you will set the rules of the game.

Otherwise, you´ll keep selling low quality fruit for your lifetime, you will depend on intermediaries and you will have the competence in your own home.

3.- Want quick and easy money?

Wow! 1.000US$ for a logotype I can make in 10 minutes!!!

Sorry my friend, you´ve chosen the wrong profession. In desinging, there´s nothing quick or easy. If you really want to have success you have to think in long term. You must improve your product and your service, you must promote your work, you must be a professional and then your work will be profitable, you´ll be able to choose who do you want to work for, and you will really enjoy your job.

Ok, let´s suppose you want quick and easy money. Is it really quick an easy? There are hundreds of designers and hundreds (even thousands) of entries. The chances of winning, even if your entry is the best one, are quite bad. Firstly, because of simple statistics, and secondly, because the client have the possibility, with a legitimate intention or not, of retiring his money and then there would be no winner of the contest.

Let´s pick the last 3 contest winners on 99designs.com and let´s check his conversion percentage:

Adisign09, Okydelarocha and Lene conversion rate. At best case the was paid 1 out of 10 projects, at worst case 1 out 50.

4.- Who is the one who loses out?

Crowdsourcing puts quantity before quality, they don´t promote clients´ education in design methodology. They think designers don´t deserve the guarantee of being paid. They offer low quality proposals, even when the clients have an acceptable budget… Designers without any methodology, not involved in the making of the brief, unfair competition, "free pitching" on principle, "quick" and "easy" money… The get-rich-quick culture.

The client loses, the designer loses… Who takes advantage then? As always, the intermediary, the organizer who earns his comission. Considering that 99designs generated last month 715.000US$, and they obtained a 15% benefits (forgetting the extra 39US$ for each registration), their income of the last month reaches the not inconsiderable ammount of 107.000US$.

Do you really think this is beneficial to your career? Do you think it´s beneficial to the client? Think about it, do you really want to promote these values?

5.- Is it unethical, immoral or something?

I have to admit that I don´t turn to designers code of ethics very often. I´m not a fudamentalist in any aspects of my life. My decisions are based on common sense. But it is always good to have a frame of reference and I agree 100% with its contents.

Let´s see what the AGDA code of Ethic says about contests:

• AGDA discourages members from predatory pricing practices such as free pitching, loss leading and other pricing below break-even. Members should be aware that such practices will damage the economic viability of their business.
• AGDA is unequivocally opposed to the unfair manipulation of designers with the aim of garnering unpaid work (commonly known as ‘free pitching’). Client practices which do damage to a member’s business are those that award projects or commissions on the basis of the commissioner’s acceptance of unpaid design submissions (eg. unpaid competitive tendering or speculative work).
• A Member shall not take part in any design competition if the terms of the competition are not approved by AGDA. AGDA bases its assessments on the International Competition Guidelines published by ICOGRADA (International Council of Graphic Design Associations). A Member or organiser of a competition can contact AGDA to review a competition’s terms and provide recommendations and/or approval.

This said, crowdsourcing websites break all ethical principles of our profession once and again. They buy designers´ ethics with promises of "easy" money. They sell lots and lots of low quality "fruit" to the clients. And in the meantime, they are filling their pockets at the expense of your dreams.

Please, share this post in your social profiles.

Something´s changing in the design industry. My clients demand +900 revisions for each logotype, I work blindly because I don´t obtain the information I need from them, the client changes his mind every second, my competitors are available to work for half of my prices, competition is unfair, and sometimes I don´t even get paid…

Hopefully this is not my case but it´s not a fiction either. It´s the situation of everyone who works through intermediaries, such as 99designs.com and the likes. Web pages where the client posts the requirements of his project and a pack of unemployed designers compete, sometimes loyally, against his colleagues until degrading limits.

Sorry for revealing my position at the very beginning of the post, let´s better make this way: let´s choose a random case and let´s analize the numbers. This one for example: The first proyect you can currently find in 99designs.com. I think it´s a quite representative case.

The facts (at the moment of writing this post)

1. Budget: 1,189US$ (1,000US$ + 99designs.com commission 39US$ + 15% of the prize)
2. Number of entries: 837
3. Number of designers: 164
4. The contest started 9 days ago and lasted for a week. There are 2 days left for the contest to finish. 2 weeks total.
5. Status: caution, payment not guaranteed.
6. Briefing:
   • Logotype design for Conway Wealth Group, the company seems to be some kind of financial analyst.
   • It must be elegant, crisp, good looking.
   • Preferably blue color.
   • It must contain a symbol that means whealth.
   • Aimed to company managers and executives within Fortune 500.

My Opinion

1. If you need 837 proposals to design your logotype, that means something´s wrong.
2. If you need 164 designers to design your logotype, that means something´s wrong.
3. Let´s make some numbers to realise how ridiculous the situation is: 6.10US$/designer and 1.20US$/entry
4. How long do the client spend watching, commenting and rating 837 entries from 164 different designers?
5. There is no lack of time (at least 2 weeks) or budget (around 1,200US$) to create a quality proposal.
6. The fact that the client extends the competition period means something´s wrong.
7. The fact that the contestants are accusing each others of plagiarism means that the system is not the ideal. Let´s see the comments:
   • 14 comments
   • 7 hidden comments
   • 3 accusations of plagiarism
   • 0 answers from the client
8. If you can understand the needs of the client from that briefing… then you better dedicate to clairvoyance, it´s much more profitable.
9. If the client didn´t say a word after 837 proposals, that means something´s wrong.

Results

These are the 3 entries which have obtained a better feedback from 837, for a logotype that will cost near 1,200US$.

Conclusions

On one hand, we have 164 designers, with 837 entries (and there are still 2 days left), with a non guaranteed prize, an incomplete briefing, a client that doesn´t respond to the proposals and constant complaining of plagiarism from the contestants. If we´d share the prize, each designer would receive just about 6US$. At least 163 designers (maybe all of them) won´t get a dime for his work.

Do you consider this aceptable?

On the other hand, we have a client who has a more than reasonable budget of near 1,200US$ and a deadline of two weeks. And if everything goes as expected, he will obtain a pretty mediocre logotype.

Does the client obtain a service according with the ammount he pays?

And in the middle we find the intermediary, 99designs.com, who will get near 200US$. Considering that this web generated last month 715,000US$, and they obtained a 15% benefits (forgetting the extra 39US$ for each registration), their income of the last month reaches the not inconsiderable ammount of 107,000US$.

UPDATE 16 March 2011: 99designs tried to censor this post due to an inexistent copyright infringement. This post is a product review and fit within the Fair Use doctrine. The contest object of review is now private, I bet my review went further than I predicted.

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