- Some of you may not know,
if you only discovered my channel recently,
is that I have design advice videos on YouTube
for way too long.
I started my channel back in 2013
when I was barely three years into my design career.
I have come a long way since then,
not only in terms of making videos,
but in terms of my design career as well,
and I thought it might be fun today
to go back and watch some of the design advice
I was giving eight years ago.
Do I still stand by it?
Would I recommend something different now?
How cringey is it to see myself on video
back in 2013 and 2014?
So I'm gonna pop my headphones on
and we're gonna watch
some of my old design advice videos together,
including the very first design advice video
I ever uploaded, which is now on private
because that is one that, several years ago, I did watch
and decided it was way too embarrassing to be public.
Now you're gonna see it.
All right, let's get into it.
(light music)
Okay, we're gonna start with a video
titled "Design Advice: Developing Your Style",
which I uploaded on the 20th of April in 2014.
(techno music)
My old intro, which looks very similar to my current intro.
Hey guys.
Today I wanna talk about some design advice.
In case you're new to my channel and didn't know,
I'm a designer and I like to talk about designing every now.
Okay.
(Charli laughs)
Does anyone else feel like my accent has changed?
I feel like my accent sounds very different in this video
compared to how it sounds now.
Void automatically applying your style to a project,
but rather let each project or assignment
influence you and your work.
I would agree with this still.
And I think that's the perfect to way to explain it.
So I agree with everything I'm saying here,
but what's interesting to me is that these days,
I feel like I just wouldn't make this video,
and I'm not sure even if this is still a question
that people have.
I think with the rise of, well, user experience,
design in general, I guess, people are more aware
of the fact that you need to design to fill the brief,
not to design to serve your own artistic and creative needs.
Perhaps this was more of a conversation back then
and it was something that more people were worrying about
and thinking about.
I don't know.
If you're earlier in your design career,
is this something that you worry about still?
Because I feel like it was obviously on my mind
and on my audience's mind at the time.
Okay, we're gonna get started with this one
called "Design Show and Tell: Motion Typography,
"Charli Marie TV", and I uploaded this
on the 19th of March, 2014.
As this is not an advice video as such,
but it's more me talking about my work,
which is something I still do today.
I still share projects with you
and talk you through how I did them,
so I'm curious to see how I used to do that back in the day.
Because I am quite a visual person,
sometimes when I listen to a certain song,
I can see the lyrics moving in my head.
Still happens.
This piece I'm gonna show you
is actually me trying to capture that.
This video I made combined three of my great loves,
motion type, typography and Fall Out Boy.
I knew I was gonna say that.
For a Fall Out Boy song, "Saturday",
which is a song that is very near and dear to my heart
because it's the one that they always play
to close off their shows.
So for this project,
I designed all the typographic layouts in Illustrator first,
and then brought them into After Effects to animate them.
I went with a blue, white and black color scheme
because that is the color scheme of the front of the album.
Let me just grab that.
Oh, lovely.
Because I always seem to be mentioning them in my videos,
but all the fonts in this piece
are ones you can find on their website.
I went for quite a grungy, vintage-y type look
'cause I felt like it really suited
the punk-y vibe of the song.
Oh, punk-y, huh?
(Charli laughs)
In time to the music, 'cause I really wanted to try and.
I was really proud of that actually,
about figuring that out in After Effects,
the camera shaking thing.
I used to be way more into motion graphics than I am now,
and watching this, I kind of feel a little bit sad
that I wouldn't currently know how to do it,
if that makes sense.
♪ I'm good to go ♪
♪ And I'm going nowhere fast ♪
(rock music playing)
That is a lot of shaking.
Working in music videos used to be a dream of mine
and I feel like this animation project
was sort of my attempt at it.
As I look at it now, I'm like,
yeah I can see many many ways this could be improved,
but it's not bad.
It's not good, but it's not bad either,
and I do remember learning a lot through the process of it.
I remember someone saying once that,
if you're not somewhat embarrassed by work you did
more than a year ago, let's say,
then it means you're not learning and growing enough.
So I'm gonna call the fact
that this is a little cringey a win.
Okay, let's get into an advice video now.
This is one called "Design Chat: Should You Work For Free",
and I'm very curious to see
what my past self said about this,
and if I would still agree with her.
Today I wanna talk to you about something that I think.
Very serious.
And that is the subject of designers
being asked to do work for free,
which is something that's also known as spec work.
This is something.
Spec work.
Designers who are just starting out.
Often, they'll be approached by a company
with an opportunity to do a piece of work,
normally a logo design or a poster design,
something like that,
and if the company likes their work best
out of all of the other designers
who they've asked to work on it, then they'll be paid.
But if not, then they get nothing.
This just isn't how the design process should work.
Still agree, still hard agree on that.
I think, to get the best results,
the designer and the client need to work together on a brief
so the designer can ask questions
and show the client proofs along the way,
and that way, they can reach a final design
that everyone is happy with.
As a designer, you should have a portfolio
that shows your work, and the client.
This is funny.
So yeah, this is how I used to record my videos,
was a little microphone that attached to my iPhone.
We've come a long way.
Now we have this whole Shure setup, but yeah.
Should be able to look at that
and talk to you about their brief
and then decide that they wanna hire you.
That's how the process should work.
I firmly believe that designers should be paid
for the work they do, and I'm not just saying that
because I am a designer.
Well.
Everyone should get paid for the work they do.
Fair.
You wouldn't go to four different restaurants
and have a meal at each,
and then decide afterwards which one you like best
and which one you're gonna pay for.
Chefs and restaurants obviously would refuse
to work like that,
so why on Earth is it expected of designers?
I get the point I'm trying to make here,
but I don't think that's a very good analogy anymore,
because obviously, in that scenario, you've eaten the meal
and you've gotten something out of it,
whereas you might not have used the design
that someone created in spec work,
and so yeah, therefore, what would I compare it to today?
Maybe it's more like a coaching call, I don't know,
where you're using someone's time,
you're hearing their ideas, you're getting their advice
and then you're deciding which coach
you're actually gonna pay for the session.
Yeah, that's maybe more similar to what spec work is,
where it's a bunch of designers giving you their ideas,
showing you how they would approach things,
so that you get a bunch of different options to choose from
before you go ahead.
Either way, I do definitely still agree
that it is not a good way to operate.
The more spec work designers do,
the more people outside the industry
think that that is how it works.
True.
It's sort of up to us as designers to end that thinking.
I know from experience that as young designers starting out,
it might seem that you have to do work for free
in order to get an in to the industry.
But honestly, if a company is asking you
to do a project for free for them
with the promise of maybe a possible job at the end,
is that really the sort of company
that you wanna be working for?
One that puts so little value on design?
I think it's about being smart.
She right.
Keeping your eye out for situations
where you think you might be being taken advantage of,
'cause it's probably important to note here
that sometimes, especially with bigger companies,
they might ask you to do a little design task
as part of the interview process.
Ha, that's funny that back then, it was like,
maybe that would happen, whereas nowadays, it's like,
no no, yeah, that's gonna happen.
They'll be doing this just to see how you handle a brief
and how you work under pressure, things like that.
But if the project they're asking you to do
isn't one that'll actually be used by the company
and it is just a test, I think that's fine.
It's really about knowing the difference
between those situations, and if you're not sure on it
and an opportunity has come up,
why not consult with someone
who has got more experience than you,
just to sort of sense check it
and make sure you're not being taken advantage of?
Hmm, that advice about, "Just ask someone what they think"
is maybe not so useful these days,
because it assumes that everyone has access
to someone that they can ask this advice from.
I still agree with most of the advice I gave,
but these days, I would probably try and expand on it
a little more and give people more advice
on what they could do instead.
Still, not bad, past me, not bad.
Okay, this next one is gonna be a little bit meta,
but we're gonna react to me
reacting to my first ever design portfolio.
Hey guys.
A while ago, when I was visiting my parents,
I rediscovered my old portfolio that I used to apply.
Oh, I forgot to say.
This one is called "My Old Design Portfolio, Cringe".
At university.
At the time, this was obviously good enough,
because I did get into my course,
but I feel like the standards for design
are so much higher these days for getting into university.
And these days, I feel like they're probably even higher,
so this is a little bit concerning
for what we're about to see.
I do remember some of what's in here.
But one thing to note that's interesting straight away
is that this portfolio is an actual book
that I printed out and had bound.
I've got this custom page ender on it.
As you can see, back then, I was also using purple
as my main brand color.
The first project
is something from my final year of high school,
and I was doing it on this band I'd made up
and doing all the graphics
for their CDs and posters and merch.
Okay, some context.
This was 2006 when I made this project
and when I made this portfolio,
'cause that was my last year of high school.
I was obsessed with any type of pop punk music,
and basically, I tried to make
every single project that I did
into one that related to music.
And so, yeah,
for my final graphic design project in high school,
for this band that I made up
and I got my boyfriend at the time and some of his friends
to model and pretend to be in the band,
so that I could get these cool photos
that I could edit and make the shadows green, apparently.
Okay, let's take a closer look.
Things like that.
So this is the CD design that I did.
The band was called The Out Crowd,
and I don't know, this is not too bad, to be honest.
I remember working quite hard.
Well.
Up next, we have another graphic that has to do with music
because that's what I was obsessed with
and I kind of still am.
Yeah, okay, still am today.
Let's be honest.
Is this Fall Out Boy lyric graphic.
I think I remember this being one of my first experiences
playing around with Photoshop.
Obviously, pretty cringe.
(Charli laughs)
Yeah, speaking of pretty cringe.
It's so interesting, right,
that something that was one of my first ever experiences
playing around in Photoshop,
I can remember working on this on my family computer
that was upstairs in my parents' room,
'cause I didn't have a computer of my own at the time.
Obviously, that wasn't really the done thing
when I was in high school.
But yeah, the fact that something
that was one of my first ever explorations
ended up in my portfolio
that I was applying to a pretty good design degree with
is, just yeah.
The standards are definitely higher these days.
Terrible fonts in there.
Very terrible.
And playing with lyric graphics
is something that I still do to this day.
This next piece is some of my photography work,
because when I started university,
I wasn't actually sure yet
whether I wanted to do design or photography.
This is a piece from my final year of high school.
Wow.
My work that year was kind of creepy.
Very emo is how I would describe this.
We're shifting mediums for the next piece,
and it's a painting that I did.
Back in the day, I really loved painting on canvases,
and it actually still hangs in the spare room
at Mum and Dad's house.
Mum and Dad have moved now
and I'm not sure where that painting went,
and now I'm wondering/realizing
that it was probably just akin to a parent
hanging their kid's really crappy drawing on the fridge
that my parents actually put that up in our guest room.
This next one is one that I am not proud of,
and I remember I wasn't even proud of it
when I put it in my workbook,
but my art teacher had encouraged me to do something
that showed drawing with a bit of shading
and different textures and materials.
I remember this.
I struggled with this so much.
So as you've noticed, probably, so far,
this design portfolio doesn't have a whole lot
of what we would consider design work today in it.
There's no websites.
There's nothing digital really.
All you saw was that shitty album art
and then the shitty Photoshop graphic.
I mean, this was a portfolio to get into a course
to actually learn design, but still.
I don't know, I just feel like the standards
would probably be a little bit higher these days.
But yeah, my art teacher encouraged me to put in
something that showed more creative expression
through drawing, and I thought I was terrible at drawing,
and I had a big hang up about it,
and still, at this time in this video,
I was, still had a hang up about that.
Now I kind of realize that you don't have to be great
at getting things to look perfect with a pencil and paper
in order to be a designer.
I know that what's important
is being able to communicate your thoughts
and that not everything has to look perfect
in order to be good, if that makes sense.
But yeah, I didn't realize it at the time.
So this was the picture that I drew, and honestly,
I think I'm being a little bit too hard on myself.
It's not that good, but it's not that bad.
Okay, I feel like I've delayed long enough.
Let's go in now and watch my first ever design advice video.
So this one, called "Studying Design:
"Tips for Coping with Project Hand-Ins",
was uploaded in October 2013.
One of the first videos I ever recorded.
I think I recorded it straight after
I did my first ever channel intro video,
so this is me very fresh to being on camera.
Let's see what advice I gave.
(upbeat music)
Okay, wait on.
Where are my eyebrows?
Why are they so thin there?
What was I thinking?
Okay, okay.
Hi guys, I'm Charli, and as you may or may not know,
depending on if you watched my last video or not,
I'm a designer.
Oh dear.
I'm just trying so hard.
It's very sweet.
My heart goes out to this girl who was like,
just wanted to do this new hobby and do it well
and be good at it, and so, I think, in service of that,
I just ended up trying way too hard with it
and not sounding like myself, honestly.
I'm like, "Who is this person?"
But we'll hear her out.
I did my studies at Massey University in Wellington,
and I know it's their hand-in week coming up soon,
so I'm here today to tell you a few things
that I wish I'd done differently during hand-in week
when I was at uni.
So in case you're, I don't know,
in case things work differently wherever you are,
'cause I know that now, compared to back then,
I have a much more global audience,
but hand-in week was the one week at the end of the year
where all of the projects were due together.
It was madness.
You felt very overwhelming as a student
and you felt like there was just so much going on
and you couldn't get it all done.
And yeah, this video was my attempt to give advice
to the students at Massey
who were currently in that situation.
I hope that if you're a design student,
either at Massey or anywhere else in the world,
you might find this helpful.
And if you're not, how about you just keep watching anyways.
Firstly, try to get some sleep whenever you can.
I know that it's really difficult
and that you feel like you should be
working on your project 24/7,
and that whenever you're sleeping,
you're not doing your project,
so you're not working hard enough.
Well, that's how I felt anyways.
But trust me when I say
that there's not many things more useless
than a sleep deprived brain.
Tying into that.
Oh, that was it, that was the first tip.
Okay, yeah.
I mean, fair.
Get sleep.
Good advice.
Don't hit the caffeine too hard.
I know that coffee and energy drinks
make you feel like you can stay up
and keep working for ages,
but when you've had too many,
when you finally do get to sleep,
you're gonna have a really restless night
and you're gonna wake up
and be just as tired as when you went to sleep.
Try to eat proper meals.
I know that taking time out of doing your project
to cook dinner or to prepare yourself some proper breakfast
is really annoying, but it's much better for you
to get energy from your food
than from coffee and energy drinks.
You don't have to cook fancy gourmet meals
or anything like that.
Yeah, no one's going to.
I remember, I just had a flashback.
I remember planning it so hard to say,
"something with some sustenance"
and I recorded that clip so many times.
If people offer you help, take it.
You don't have to struggle through this alone,
and this is something that I was really bad at.
I was so proud and stubborn,
and I just wanted to do it all myself,
until I realized sort of at the last minute
that that just wasn't gonna be possible.
Luckily, I've got an amazing sister.
Yeah.
And I know that all of you guys probably have friends
and family members who just want you to succeed
and they're gonna do anything they can to help.
So if they offer, let them.
Yeah, this was a big lesson for me,
and honestly something I feel like
I still have to keep learning,
is to let people help you when they offer.
But I had many breakdowns, as I'm remembering now,
in the closing stages of my final project at university.
Oh gosh.
And lastly, when your project's all handed in,
make sure you celebrate because you'll deserve it.
Okay.
I know design school can be really stressful and challenging
but trust me when I say it's worth it in the end.
I hope some of that was useful for you guys.
I'm sure you've heard it all before,
but sometimes it just helps to have a little reminder.
If you like this video, make sure you subscribe
and give it a thumbs up,
and if you've been through design school
and have any other tips to share,
make sure you leave them in the comments down below.
I'll see you next time, guys.
Bye.
(Charli laughs)
I wish I could give my past self a hug.
I'm so proud of her
for everything that's happened since then
and for putting up with this bloody awkwardness
to get to where we are today.
That's sweet.
Overall, I would say I still agree
with the advice I was giving,
that I agree with the sentiment behind it at least,
but that these days, I would try to clarify more,
try to give more detail and to be more specific
with the advice as well.
I don't know, I could imagine these days,
if someone watched a video that just was like,
I don't know, eat good meals and sleep or something,
you'd be like, "That was a waste of my time."
But that last video in particular got 59 likes.
It's had 1,781 views before I made it private,
so that no one else could watch it again.
And yeah, like I said, it was kinda the start of everything
and why you're all here now watching this.
It wouldn't have happened if I hadn't made
those very cringey videos.
Hope you enjoyed this little walk down memory lane with me
and seeing some, yeah, very questionable fashion choices
and eyebrow choices and accent.
If any of you have been watching my channel for a while
and you remember seeing any of these videos
when they came out,
then please make yourself known in the comments
because I owe you a huge thank you for sticking with me
and getting us to this point.
Right now, I'm really focusing on
pouring a lot of design advice
into the marketing book I'm writing.
You can find out more about that by joining my email list,
which will be linked in the description.
So you might see more vlogs on this channel,
more, I don't know, casual, fun videos like this.
Definitely more live streams as well,
because those are fun to make and very easy,
as opposed to more prepared advice videos
for the next little while, as I focus my efforts
and my time and attention on that book,
which I hope will be worth the trade off in the end.
Thanks for watching today,
and I will see you in future videos.
Bye.
(light music)