Do I’ve imposture syndrome??!!

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Lengthy rant to ask for a portfolio critique.
Porfolio: lillieduston.com

So I’m a self-taught graphic designer..I began freelancing on upwork and more and more improved & landed a contract gig on there that I’m nonetheless with at this time. It’s loopy how a lot of a distinction confidence makes however it’s as if the “higher” I turned, the extra I assumed I wasn’t adequate. Being on this reddit web page, dribbble, behance, and so on. I do know I’m evaluating myself to the world, nonetheless these days all these distant design positions improve the pool of candidates TO worldwide. When searching for design gigs in my metropolis (medium however not giant) there are crap alternatives. I’ve been casting my web to different areas and have utilized to much less design associated jobs because the job search course of in 2023 sucks mad exhausting. Principally I ended actually searching for design jobs (full time w/ advantages) since I’m satisfied I’m not adequate. I do know there are a number of issues I don’t know (video modifying) and solely know primary HTML. I simply really feel like I can’t compete. I additionally don’t have any official design certs. Am I trying within the flawed spots? (Certainly + linkedin). I’ll admit I’ve used certainly extra.



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4 thoughts on “Do I’ve imposture syndrome??!!”

  1. A few main comments:

    – Kerning. 99% of portfolios I see posted here, people don’t know how to kern. Example: your “Victory” logo. The i is closer to the V than the c. Your t is super tight to the c, but really far from the o. Great designers really sweat those details (especially in logos). Focus on really tightening up things like that throughout.

    – Superfluous design elements. With every design choice, ask yourself WHY you’re doing it. Why did you distress the type on the Yolélé Black Friday image? Why are you white boxing certain words in the Moonshot stuff? (I can’t seem to find a rhyme or reason.) I get why there are stars around the moon screen, but why are there stars around the map of the U.S.?

    – The best design is surprising, unexpected, and engaging in its uniqueness. I see some obvious stuff in your portfolio. It’s watermelon flavor so you show… watermelon. Is there a way with that design that you can clearly convey watermelon without being so literal?

    – Your illustration feels a little clip art-y and as mentioned before, the kerning is way off on a lot of them. I’m not sure it’s getting you much by showing it.

    – Your site design is perfect. Simple, easy to navigate, easy to see the work, and the main stuff is spotlighted right up front. Excellent.

    My recommendations: Work hard on tightening things up with solid design fundamentals. Then do more! Four pieces is a bit thin. I’d love to see 8-10. They don’t all have to be campaigns. Some can be 1-offs. Pick a dream assignment and kill it!

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  2. Giving up. The difference between people you’ve never heard of and your heroes.

    We all fuck up and make mistakes. That’s how we learn. Unless we give up. Every single designer you’ve admired is a flawed human constantly fucking up and trying again.

    School is just self education at a facility that allows you space and time to concentrate and ask questions. Graphic design isn’t alchemy or magic. It’s just having good taste and understanding the fundamentals of visual communication. Essentially.

    It’s quite literally never been easier to teach yourself the tools and push yourself on your own time – but you have to develop the habit of making the time to learn and experiment.

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  3. Please make your text larger and darker and/or thicker. Seeing that tiny, light, unreadable text is going to make people leave your website instantly.

    I would get rid of your Illustrations section.

    And add an About section to humanize yourself.

    Learn video editing – you’ll almost certainly need it.

    Don’t worry about learning more advanced HTML. As a designer, you almost definitely won’t need it.

    More thoughts here:

    [https://www.reddit.com/r/graphic_design/comments/u14sxx/portfolio_advice_for_new_designers/](https://www.reddit.com/r/graphic_design/comments/u14sxx/portfolio_advice_for_new_designers/)

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