1. TALENT

I think it doesn’t hurt to have a good dose of talent to become successful in art and illustration. Being good at painting and drawing is a plus but you don’t necessary need to have that as your main focus. Talent I think is also having the gift to listen to yourself and really be honest as to where your talents lie. Develop a good eye for what works. Find your niche. There is some beautiful simplistic and naive work out there as well as highly detailed and complex pieces. Either done well will succeed and stand out!

2. PASSION

This makes work easy. If you love it and creating art is what makes you happy then you are winning already. It will push you through the long nights and will make everything else that comes with the profession like writing contracts, emails and the paperwork bearable because you’ll be looking forward to grabbing that pencil and paintbrush again. Art is a great way to express your own emotions, communicate your feelings and used in the right way your work can be like therapy for the soul and catharsis for yourself.

3. STYLE

When you start out your style will still be under development. Don’t worry about that. Keep busy. Draw and paint as much as you can and the hours that you put in will be rewarded. Get involved or start your own projects. Make mistakes. That’s always the best way of learning. You will most likely find a way of working that is pleasing to your own aesthetic and that others can connect to. There are no rules. There is no right or wrong and most likely your style is already within you and will find you instead.

4. EXPOSURE & NETWORKING

Go out of your way for others, be inventive, set up projects and collaborate with others. This will lead to features and more work. Take part in competitions so you feel you are really creating your best work. Build a beautiful website. There are so many networking resources out there today and I think in times of Twitter, Facebook and Tumblr you have no excuses. Talk to people and ask questions and most importantly remember it’s not for you to decide if your work is good or bad. Let others be the judge of that.  Don’t be disillusioned. It takes a lot of time, work and commitment to get your name out there. Be strong. Do it for yourself and no one else. Don’t think about the money. That will never work. Fashion comes and goes. Be yourself, speak your mind, have an opinion and for your own sake be honest to yourself and others. The world will appreciate you for who you are.

5. BALANCE

Being your own boss is fantastic but it also means you need to have a lot of self discipline. When your work is your passion you will most likely be wanting to work all the time. I do and have a really hard time stopping. It’s not good to get burned out though.Try and keep a regular routine. Refuel your brain. Go for a walk, meet your friends, pat your cat and say to yourself ‘it’s ok I can’t always be 100%’. Be kind to yourself.

6. BE NICE & BE YOU

You probably all know the print by Anthony Burrill that says ‘Work hard and be nice to people”.

It’s so true and I think being nice is underrated. Being nice does not mean that you have to sugar coat everything and agree with everything and smile all the time. People will appreciate you for having strong opinions and direction but don’t use twitter to cry over spilled milk. For me being nice means being totally genuine as there is nothing better you can offer another. When people speak of business plans and brand establishing I just think “Show yourself!”

7. PROMOTION

Today everything is linked to everything else. Until we run out of fossil fuels around 2030 and the world goes black there will be electricity and the Internet will be working.

There are plenty of sites that aim to help you and offer inspiration, advice and opportunities to network and raise your profile. Promote yourself every day. Don’t just use your static website and blog but use sites that have feeds like Facebook and Etsy. Set up a newsletter and update your followers on a regular basis.

8. BE HAPPY & HAVE FUN

You are living the dream. You are working for yourself doing what you love. Enjoy your hard work and be happy. Don’t forget to have fun sharing what you have learnt with others. Whatever you do and make there will be more spilling out of you tomorrow and your knowledge is not precious nor is it yours to keep. Don’t forget that you are privileged. Always believe – Art can change the world.

Find Sandra’s portfolio on The Loop and purchase her work from Etsy. 

With all seats now full in the Concert Hall, we are co-hosting the flagship satellite event in the SOH Studio. Our audience will get to enjoy this year’s TEDx Talks in real time, plus a range of unique content tailor-made for the Lounge stage, including live Q&A, creative pitching sessions and more.

We have 200 spaces available on a first-come first-serve basis. As it will be a long day, we are offering ‘AM’ and ‘PM’ access, as well as all day access. Apply by clicking on the ‘Inquire’ button here:

https://www.theloop.com.au/courses/TEDxSydney-Lounge-Networked-by-The-Loop/Sydney/381

Please specify which access you would prefer. You will need to apply with a personal profile, not a company one.

If your application is successful we will send you more information on the running order of the day.

Hope to see you there!

In the meantime, to get in the spirit of TED’s mantra, ‘Ideas Worth Spreading’, here are some of our favourite TED talks on creativity.

Julie Burstein: 4 lessons in creativity

Radio host Julie Burstein has found the perfect analogy for creativity—raku pottery. A Japanese art form in which molded clay is heated for 15 minutes and then dropped in sawdust which bursts into flames, what makes this pottery so beautiful is its imperfections and cracks.

In this talk, Burstein identifies four lessons that creative people should embrace:

1.Pay attention to the world around you, and be open to experiences that might change you.

2.Realize that the best work often comes out of the life experiences that are most difficult.

3.Get comfortable with the fact that pushing up against a limitation can actually help you find your voice.

4.Don’t be afraid to explore loss — be it rejection, heartbreak or death — because making beauty out of these things is so powerful.

Elizabeth Gilbert: Your elusive creative genius

Author Elizabeth Gilbert is confused by how our culture regards writers and other artists—as people on the brink who are too easily undone by their talent. In this talk from TED2009, Gilbert reframes how we think about creativity—that rather than there being “geniuses” among us, that all of us have a bit of genius within us.

David Kelley: How to build your creative confidence

David Kelley of IDEO fully agrees with Elizabeth Gilbert. In this talk from TED2012, he shares why he believes it is problematic to think of society as split into the creatives and the technical-minded. Here, he shares how people who think of themselves as the latter can build up their creative muscles, as we all have them — whether we know it or not.

Amy Tan: Where does Creativity Hide?

Amy Tan became a writer because she found herself fascinated with one question: why do things happen the way they happen? In this talk from TED2008, Tan shares why it is so appealing to be the creator of her own universes — the one responsible for pulling strings and creating meaning.

Steven Johnson: Where good ideas come from

When people tell the story of an invention, they usually describe a “eureka” moment. But author Steven Johnson wonders if that might be a fallacy. In this talk from TEDGlobal 2010, Johnson looks at how breakthroughs are slow to build and usually happen in dialogue with other thinkers of the time.

Kirby Ferguson: Embrace the remix

In this talk from TEDGlobal 2012, Kirby Ferguson unleashes a bold idea: that maybe creative types shouldn’t be so concerned with originality. As Ferguson sees it, creativity is all about copying, transforming and remixing things that already exist. In Ferguson’s eye, everything is a remix.

Tim Brown: Tales of creativity and play

What is the difference between being a designer and just playing around? Not as much as most people think, says Tim Brown, the CEO of IDEO. At Serious Play 2008, Brown shares how building a successful firm was as easy as giving employees a place to experiment without fear of being judged — just like kids do on a daily basis.

Full blog post at blog.ted.com

This redesign was a mammoth nine-month project – a multi-discipline and multi-location collaboration between leading figures across UX, design and development. The result is a beautifully crafted platform that will hopefully cement The Loop as a tour de force on the global media stage as they expand operations to London this year.

The Loop began just over three years ago when Pip Jamieson & Matt Fayle quit their dream jobs at MTV to launch their start-up. The vision was to create a platform that seamlessly connected talented creatives with career opportunities. “We didn’t want to simply be a portfolio site; we wanted to give our community real, tangible, professional and commercial benefits from having their portfolios on The Loop” says Pip. “Either by landing them a perfect collaboration, job, client, development opportunity, creative workspace, or perhaps all of the above.”

So in early 2009 the entrepreneurial duo started working from their respective homes and sunk their entire life savings into making The Loop a reality. Having been used to big-budget projects at MTV, the scariest thing, according to Matt, was having to build, design and develop the website on a shoestring. They wireframed the site functionality on Matt’s bedroom wall and after a few false starts outsourced development to Vision Tech Digital and enlisted Robbie Powell (formally of Moon Communication, now at Moffitt.Moffitt) to create a visual brand for The Loop.

Three years on Pip & Matt give us some insight into the reasons, processes and benefits of The Loop’s newest and biggest changes.

The Loop Redesign – The Objective

Since launch, The Loop has been an evolving beast, with way more bells and whistles than its original incarnation. As a result, the original style guide got rather lost in the mix and our beloved site was looking and feeling a little tatty around the edges. In fact, an audit of the old design found it used over 83 shades of grey, which definitely wasn’t the original intention. However, the final straw came in August 2012 when we conducted a survey amongst our community. In response to the question, ‘What can we do better?” an overwhelming 89% asked us to improve the design and usability. So their wish was our command!

The overall goal of The Loop’s resulting redesign was to create a wonderful user experience that fuelled platform re-engagement and in turn, increased traffic and new sign-ups.

Our intention was to create a look and feel that every creative professional and business would be proud to be a part of. It was fundamental that The Loop should have a fresh, clean, uncluttered look without being clinical. We wanted to encourage more inspiration and interaction between community members and strike a balance between being friendly and approachable, yet still sleek, professional and highly appealing to senior creatives.

The Loop Redesign – The Team

What followed was an ambitious nine-month project to improve The Loop’s design and usability.  It was a one of a kind collaboration between leading UX Consultant, Matt Morphett (based in an Airstream in Byron Bay); Design Agency, Carter Digital (based in Melbourne)l Senior Freelance Designer, Nick Hallam (usually based in Melbourne, but coerced into bunking down in Pip’s spare room in Bondi for the duration of the project); our in-house design extraordinaires, Theo Lampert & Josh Davey (based at The Loop HQ Surry Hills) and our super-talented in-house developers, led by Asanka Dewage (working just outside Colombo, Sri Lanka) & Melbourne based Agency Motherbird who where responsible for applying the new design to all offline collateral. Thank god for Skype!

The Loop Redesign – The Process

In order to really address the functionality, as well as the aesthetics, our aim was to go right back to the basics and take the time to find out what The Loop’s users actually wanted out of the platform and work from there by improving what they already loved and stripping back what they weren’t so keen on. This functionality facelift took the form of three phases: Research, Design and Development – with constant testing throughout.

The first stages involved the aforementioned survey, crowd sourced design feedback from our community and individual in-the-field interviews with 80 community members and clients to get their feedback on what did and didn’t work for their needs.

We synthesized the findings from this research and created a number of archetypal user personas and scenarios. This fascinating information was at the forefront of designing the new wireframes and workflows. After testing the prototypes, we sent them onto Carter Design to apply a new style, fonts and colour palette to key modules of the site. The idea was for The Loop to naturally evolve and mature rather than go through a complete and utter brand overhaul.

For us, look, usability, functionality and quality are all equally important. The Loop is a site for creatives, so the redesign had to look fantastic, serve top notch content and be useful and intuitive to use. This is why we enlisted the best in the business to take the lead on their respective areas of expertise. The Loop in-house design team and Nick Hallam were responsible for pulling through the design to all the pages on the platform and our development team worked tirelessly to bring all of this to life.

The Loop Redesign – The Outcome

The final product is something we’re all incredibly excited about.

The Loop is all about connecting creatives to professional opportunities and it’s now easier than ever to find work, attract clients, follow people and companies who interest you, build a network of industry contacts and use your profile as a powerful self-promotional tool, which allows you to connect with leading figures without knocking on doors and making cold calls.

The Loop Redesign – What’s New

Beyond simply improving the process of connecting talent to jobs and clients, there are now some new great tools geared to help you move forward in your creative career.

Freelance Pro: In the survey we found that a whopping 96% of our users where interested in freelancing if the right opportunity came up. The new freelance pro service will make it even easier for companies to hire freelance talent through the site based on their availability, location and skill set.

Work In Progress Feedback Tool: One of the other brand new features on The Loop is a ‘Work in Progress’ capability where you can get feedback from your inner loop on work as you’re creating it.

Inspiration: There are so many amazing creatives on The Loop, but a big piece of feedback from our clients during research was a request to improve how we surface the top talent. Therefore the main challenge was actually less about the acquisition of amazing creatives but rather how to show people’s work off to their best advantage and make content easily searchable. To achieve this, massive improvements have been made to the site’s taxonomy, tagging and algorithms.

Curation: In addition, we spent a lot of time developing a curation strategy to ensure the best work was being seen and the up and coming creatives were being discovered. The solution was to engage a hand-selected group of industry leaders to help us curate the site.

Newsfeeds: There are so many incredible opportunities on The Loop, but with such a diverse set of creatives, the test has always been how to put the best opportunities in front of the right people. Consequently, our user’s logged-in home page has been given a lot of attention and enhancement. Now when you login to The Loop you’ll instantly see all the relevant jobs, content, people and opportunities that you should be tapping into.

To Conclude:

Make no bones about it  – this redesign was a beast of a project! The Loop is insanely complex. We have a huge community of over 50,000 creatives and more than 100 unique pages to design, not to mention the thousands of user interactions and pathways. Just thinking about the whole scope makes us dizzy. But we managed to pull it off all thanks to the remarkable collaboration of all the parties above. Dream Team, I SALUTE YOU!

Our absolute favourite part of our website is the community and their work, without which we wouldn’t exist. So we’re over the moon that we finally have a look and feel that does them justice. Over the next year we’ll be launching The Loop into the UK and starting a heap of other projects. So this crazy nine months of living and breathing the redesign has been worth every second as it gives us the confidence and credibility to take The Loop to London and beyond…

Top Website Design Tools:

About to embark on a web design project?

Here are the top tools The Loop recommends using to smooth the process.

* Usabilla – www.usabilla.com – Crowdsourcing Feedback from your users

Usabilia is an amazing tool that you can plug into your existing website and allows your visitors to select parts of your website they want to give feedback on.

* Prevue – http://prevue.it/ – Internal Feedback Tool

Australian born Prevue is a nifty tool that allows designers to upload and share design interations and get feeback from key stakeholder. No more hovering art directors, you simply feedback and annotate in the cloud.

* Plan.io — www.plan.io – Simple Web-Based Project Management

Planio offers a simple integrated web-based project management solution that allows you to feedback, manage, track & priorities functionality & design changes direct to your developers. 

Marcus Westbury invited kindred placemakers and the skills-based board of Renew Australia to share expertise gained during the successful Renew Newcastle project where city streets were transformed from struggling magnets for vandalism to engaging spaces. Like-minded activation project leaders from Renew Newcastle, Gap Filler (Christchurch, NZ) and Empty Shops Network (UK) also presented to delegates who included local government employees charged with reinventing redundant spaces in their towns. Delegates also were schooled in tools and strategies for navigating building compliance, legalities and Public Liability Insurance identified as major barriers for many pop-up initiatives.

Westbury was ready to enter the workforce when the BHP steel works shut down in the late 90’s in his hometown. Newcastle suffered 40% unemployment for several years. ‘None of my friends – nobody of our age group – had a job,’ he said. Pair this calamity with the impact of shopping centres on the high street where Westbury documented countless vacant shops he admits, ‘The situation was pretty dire.’

In 2008 he began the Renew Newcastle project encouraging building owners to allow artists into their vacant, street-level premises under temporary licenses for reduced rents. Westbury harnessed the creative capital that he found online when he researched local sellers only to discover low-budget DIY artmakers by the hundreds who were exporting their work around the world. By handing over empty spaces to imaginative people with limited capital, he made this entrepreneurial workforce visible and changed the rules for Newcastle’s identity.    The upshot of his efforts culminated in 2011 when Lonely Planet declared Newcastle as ‘Australia’s most underrated city’ in their guide to the top 10 cities to visit in the world. Independent studies revealed that for every dollar invested, $11 was returned to the city, the Hunter Street mall was revitalised luring back wary visitors with photo galleries, design t-shirt and skateboard deck shops, record labels, jewellery makers, co-working spaces and indigenous art galleries. ‘It’s not just about buildings and spaces and abstract real estate things, it’s about the hope it can inspire in the community,’ he says. The scheme has completed 100 projects so far and continues as a benchmark example of urban regeneration for planners around the world.

Coralie Winn and Ryan Reynolds lost their house in the Christchurch earthquakes of 2010. Like Westbury, their response was innovation.  They founded Gap Filler, an initiative which revisions the ‘gaps’ created when the city’s buildings were razed to the ground. For them one man’s vacant block was another’s pop-up music venue or one’s abandoned refrigerator, a public book exchange. Theirs is a post-disaster world where an empty lot turns into an open-space dance floor where jitterbuggers can plug in their iPods and for the price of a coin offering to the old washing machine, conquer the Dance-o-Mat for 30 minutes. The Gap Filler project has become an integral part of the rebuild efforts of Christchurch, the council appreciating the value of these gorilla projects in revitalising the cityscape and the hope of citizens in the wake of devastation. As Reynolds told the conference, ‘this is not just post-disaster recovery feel-good, but urban planning on the fly.’

creating space day 2. image by Boony Loahajaroenyot

Kate Murray, a Novacastrian working for Sydney City Council spoke candidly about the pop-ups Oxford St and William St, as did Merryn Spencer from Pop-Up Parramatta. Both were evidently passionate about working to enable imaginative business-owners and determined to change the perspective of the ‘dreaded council’. Tim Horton urged attendees to build on the momentum created by the conference to achieve practical outcomes such as new insurance products for pop-ups and pushing the Government to release an issues paper. He launched a report at the conference which investigates the cost and economic benefits to communities of culture-led renewal projects. Job creation, creation of intellectual capital, mitigation of blight, improved regional ‘brand value’ and business confidence in an area are all listed as the bright side of the Renew Newcastle scheme which triggered Renew Adelaide.

Mr Horton was also seen whispering into Simon Crean’s advisor’s ear when the Minister made an appearance on the final day of the conference fresh from delivering his press conference in Canberra on the long-awaited National Cultural Policy. Crean won cheers when he mentioned the inequity between sports in schools versus Australia’s support of the arts in education, tapping into a topical conversation. He acknowledged the creative industry’s value to the economy (5% of the workforce) and the added contribution of the industries that support artists and designers.  ‘Creativity and design are the forces that shape the economy of the future,’ he said.

creating space day 3. image by Boony Loahajaroenyot

The ‘pecha kucha’ session revealed the budding renewal projects popping up across Australia. The Sunshine Coast (QLD) is home to SCAIP, a collective, film projection space and creative business incubator and Create Innovate is shaking things up in Gosford (NSW) with artistic microbusinesses, street artists and budding fashion designers.

Feeling the overwhelming desire to get involved? Dan Thompson of the Empty Shops Network says it’s as easy as uploading pictures of empty shops in your area to their Flickr group on May the 4^th to help document vacant properties that are awaiting transformation.

Words by Estelle Pigot.

Estelle Pigot  is a freelance writer who specialises in culture and design. She began in the fashion industry, was editor of Justus Magazine and now works with private clients and Regional Arts NSW on their communications strategies. Estelle is also a long-time contributor to Design Federation and has an unfinished fantasy novel taking up space on her laptop’s hard-drive.

One of the key challenges of the digital industry is that it is constantly evolving. Whether it be because of new devices, new technology, or just new ways of engaging with audiences, the digital space is constantly evolving. Even for veterans like ourselves who have been in the industry five, ten or even 15 years, it’s still a challenge keeping up to the pace of this channel that we love so much.

So as I progress my 7th year of experience in the industry, and having worked on different sides of the fence (from publisher side with News Digital Media, to User Experience Consulting with Different and now Global Digital Agency, Reactive), I thought I’d share 7 tips that will help the digital super stars of tomorrow become great digital designers.

Design for the User First


My time working at Different showed me that understanding the audience your designing for and the way they behave is integral to delivering delightful and engaging experiences. Always put your user hat on first, and ask yourself, how would the user react to this design, this feature or this content? What is their thinking process as they engage the work your designing? How can you make the experience simpler?

Embrace Interaction Design


For a Digital Designer, Interaction design is what allows us to shine above other media channels. The way our designs interact and enthral the audience is what often separates a good design from a great design. Embrace that challenge and think about your interactions as much as you would think about your colour palette or photographic style.

Don’t let the screen hold you back


Andrew Barrie, Senior Producer from Lightwell, came into the Reactive Sydney office last week to talk about some of the great experiential work they do over there. He talked about a project they recently worked on, which required them to design and develop an interactive interface across 14 screens put together as a laddered tabletop. We take for granted the breadth of work we could do, because we sometimes wed ourselves too much to the screen we sit in front of.

The presentation is more important than the last pixel


Without a doubt, creating beautiful design work is integral to any agency and is at the essence of what we do. But sometimes as designers, we get fixated on pushing that last pixel, rather than spending time thinking about how we’re going to sell the work to the client we’re designing for. Selling your idea or your design can sometimes be more important that polishing that last pixel.

Designing is only 50% of the job


What I’ve come to realise over the years, is that no matter how great you make your design, it’s only half the job. What about how it behaves or interacts? What about when it breaks? How is it going to be built? Does it answer the client’s needs? Does it support the audience’s needs? Putting solid thinking into all of these questions is just as important as having beautiful creative.

Keep up to date with technology


Coming back to my point earlier, with the way the industry is constantly changing, it becomes a prerequisite to be on top of its movement. I might argue that keeping up with technology could essentially define how unique and engaging your next creative idea is.

Digital isn’t your only playground

As the lines begin to blur between digital agencies and traditional advertising agencies, your skill set as a digital designer will be pushed more and more. This means that while your focus might be a digital experience, don’t be afraid to explore how your creative idea could be translated offline. What if your idea was a print ad in a magazine? A poster in a bus shelter? An experiential display? A TV ad? Having the foresight to see how your ideas could be executed outside of your space will make you indispensable.

XYZnetworks owns and operates eight leading brands including The LifeStyle Channel, LifeStyle FOOD, LifeStyle YOU, Channel [V], [V] HITS, MAX, Country Music Channel and The Weather Channel.

Portfolio tips:
1) Keep it simple.
2) Tell your story.

Interview tips:
1) Prepare by researching the company.
2) Don’t be scared to ask questions.

These are three of our favourite manifestos, and unsurprisingly they come from design-orientated enterprises.

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1. Holstee

This piece of rhetoric is no stranger to the blog world. In fact, it must be amongst some of the most shared words of the last few years and we couldn’t agree with it more. The Loop is all about following your passion, unleashing your individual creativity and sharing it with the world. Thank you Holstee for articulating this so perfect and spreading it so widely. 

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2. Work is not a job

Designer, Catharina Bruns, absolutely hits the nail on the head every time with her quotes on prints and other products. Work is not a job encourages you to make your work a playground, not a prison. And the easy way to ensure this… Do what you love! 

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 3. Right Brain Terrain

Right Brain Terrain founder, Frederic Terral, creates to remind himself that he’s alive and he tells you to do the same in this honest, handwritten advice. Get out, explore, observe, learn & listen to music are more of his orders to stimulate creative thinking. 

Curated from BrainPickings

There’s no doubt each new year sees a series of new or recycled trends in the world of design. So it’s fascinating to take a step back and trace some of these to their origins and observe how they have made an lasting impact in the industry.

The book, 100 Ideas that Changed Graphic Design, chronicles this timeline of design perfectly. It brings your attention to all sorts of styles and techniques that we simply take for granted today.

From pictograms to propaganda, here’s a taster of graphic design game-changers.

UNIVERSAL PRICING CODE

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RANSOM NOTES

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EXPRESSIONS OF SPEED

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FOUND TYPOGRAPHY

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MANIFESTOS

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METAPHORIC LETTERING

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PUBLIC SERVICE CAMPAIGNS

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RAYS

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VISUAL PUNS

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TRIANGULATION

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Thanks to Brain Pickings for pointing us to this book

The Monkeys create provocative ideas that live within advertising, entertainment and technology. They’ve been called an ad agency, a collective, a branded content company, the business model of the future and a bunch of bloody dreamers. Truth is, they’re a bit of each.

Portfolio tips:
1) Make sure your book feels like your own.
2) Don’t feel like you have to show a lot of work, show what you think is valuable.

Interview tips:
1) Try and be able to talk about your work.
2) Don’t be late.