DustinLawson

Are you a small business owner? Freelance designer? New parent? Just suffering from a seasonal cold? Working from the comfort of your own home can be difficult and distracting.Here’s our guide to staying productive while working from home:1. Get Started Early & Act Like You Are Still Going to WorkMake sure to set that alarm for 7:00am, and don’t hit that snooze button! Pretend like you’re prepping for a normal day at the office and go through your daily morning [...]

You wake up, roll over to your nightstand and grab your phone. Immediately, you start scrolling through all of your social media to see what you’ve missed while you were asleep. You see a few eye-catching posts that you give a generous like, share, or comment. However, you also see a bunch of content that you don’t even take a split second to look at. What is it that followers hate that brands do on social media?When it comes to [...]

When seeking help from a designer, it's crucial to choose a Pittsburgh graphic design service that exceeds your needs and expectations.Here are 6 graphic designer skills you should look for in a professional.Good ListenerA good graphic designer should listen to your needs. When they listen, they should really understand your goals and vision. The more questions a designer has, the more notes they take, and the more of an effort they make to understand how to create a great solution, [...]

What They Are and Why They’re Important Businesses need to gain exposure in order to become successful. Many businesses, small and large, have recently adopted the idea of brand ambassadors. Brand ambassadors can be internal or external. Each company’s internal employees are technically brand ambassadors, as they represent the brand they work for. External brand ambassadors are people who are hired by the company (sometimes unpaid) as influencers to promote the brand via various marketing outlets.Brand ambassadors can [...]

When a designer is in the final stages of a project, he or she can take his or her service skills to the next level and ultimately create a powerful relationship with a client by creating mockups.Mockups are simple to make, and can make a brand or project come to life in the client’s eyes. Designers can purchase and download Photoshop mockup templates, create templates of their own, or find free templates to download. Once a designer has a template, [...]

Now Anyone Can Design Snapchat FiltersPhotoshop-illiterate Snapchat users, your dream has finally come true. Not only are Snapchat users able to create filters on the Snapchat website, but now you can create these filters within the app on your phone. Here’s how:How to Make Your Own Snapchat GeofilterStep 1: Go to “Settings” and click “On-Demand Geofilters” Step 2: Select the occasion your Geofilter is for. Then pick a design template that fits your event.Step 3: Customize, customize, customize!Step 4: Set up the [...]

Why Go Live on Social Media? Live streaming is the future of sharing content on social media, so if you’re camera shy, it’s time to start getting used to the spotlight. Snapchat has been a stepping stone in a user's ability to share his or her life with the world on a camera, but now other platforms such as Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter allow users to share content in real-time. live broadcasting to social media as a new approach [...]

How to Stay Organized with Social ContentFrustrated by the continual clutter and disarray of posting content on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn, Snapchat, billboards, etc.? How do social media experts keep all of these organized? One simple solution: content calendars.Content calendars are a great organizational technique for social media managers, especially when messages need to be expressed across a multitude of platforms on different days at different times. Depending on what the company’s goals and preferred platforms are, no content calendar will [...]

How do you turn an idea into a final product?Every designer and design agency has their own approach to the design process. Different things work for different people, and different agencies have different models that contribute to their agency’s brand. This is part of the beauty of the design world: everyone has their own way of taking an idea from concept to creation, and that’s totally acceptable, expected even. ocreations has our own version of the design process that we call “Process [...]

Are Pencil Thumbnails Being Forgotten in Today’s Digital Design World?I have been in the field of graphic design for what seems ages, starting in 1990. I have been a design student, graphic design instructor at the Art Institute of Pittsburgh, designer, art director and senior partner of Prizum Creative design studio in The South Side of Pittsburgh.I have always been a firm believer that designers need to be able to draw or bring their concepts to life on paper in [...]