hello welcome to a little day in the life video so this is my work from home
routine as a freelance a graphic designer
what I do first thing in the morning is usually hop onto my emails and just
double check anything that I need to do for the day get that over and done with
and actually today I needed to edit a thumbnail and make sure my video was
scheduled and ready to go for this evening so as you can see I'm just using
Adobe Photoshop and editing this little raw Wednesday thumbnail and then I get
some food so I've actually started being a little bit more healthy I'm making
this fruit smoothie thing with apple juice I'll have that and a cereal bar
and it sort of keeps me going until midday and another thing that I highly
highly recommend doing if you work from home is getting ready and putting some
makeup on so you're set and ready for the day ahead so besides the fact that
I've already done my emails and I was checking up on a video that I uploaded
this morning I haven't done anything else so I'm gonna start just checking
over my weekly plan so this is my planner and it's actually Wednesday and
but I didn't get loads of things done yesterday so I've moved everything over
I'm gonna tick off the things I have done and just write in the things that I
need to do because this helps me stay on track before I actually get
started on my proper to do list I'm gonna quickly clean and tidy my office
because it's getting a bit cluttered and I don't feel productive when my
office is cluttered
so I'm actually going to be working on a little bit of a client project today
I've been working with Pippa the client for a while now we've done a whole bunch
of different designs for her I've done a logo design I've done a header banner
design for social media I've done a business card and I've done a flyer so
I've been working really hard with Pippa and she's really happy with the results
as am I so today we're actually gonna work on like an e-book template so she's
looking to launch her own ebook and she wants a basic template that she can go
in and edit and sort of replicate each page on she's sent over a couple of
ideas so I'm gonna show you that but first actually I'll show you the stuff
that I've already done for her so you can kind of see where I'm going with it
so in the file for Pippa we have obviously her design contract which I'm
not going to go into today but I'll happily kind of talk you through mine so in here
we've got the header and logo there's a lot of different file types in here I'm
not the neatest of people I've just kind of sorted this out in the logo file we
have it in the four different versions so we've got full-color grayscale one
color and white and I'll just show you the full color one I have it for digital
and print version again another video idea I could show you how I sort of save
out my logos let me know but this is the logo design that we went for in the
end she said she loved the color purple she wanted it to be quite simple but fun
represent the different topics that she talks about and sort of speak about her
personality all in one logo so we went with this in the end she saw one of my
old designs and we sort of adapted that idea and made it her own if I quickly go
onto her website you'll see that I did a banner for her it's basically an
adaptation of the logo so we've got the inner part of the logo and then the text
that was around the outside we've adapted and changed a little bit and put
over this side I think it looks really nice I feel like it's added a bit of
professionalism to her website I'll leave her links in the description
obviously I've asked her if I can record all this so
go and check her out if you're interested in any of the things she
talks about but for today's project it's something I've never done before but I'm
very excited to give it a go and help her out it's been a really nice process
so far and she's actually sent me some initial kind of sketches and ideas they
are just sketches this is what my sketches look like she apologized for
like how they look but it really just helped me as a designer I appreciate
even the simplest of doodles so she initially sent me this which
she'd seen online she likes this kind of style for a front cover but is open to
ideas she wants a border around it somehow but not the same border as the
logo so not with those same icons nothing floral but something that will
fill this space at the top of the bottom or maybe around the edges and then we
also have some drawings so as you can see we've got a drawing so pretty design
on the top and bottom and then the title strap line and her name so straight away
I can visualize what is she's after and then the inside pages she's wanting a
border around the outside to match the front cover in the same kind of style
and then a space in the middle for her to put text and images wherever she
needs it and then the final page would be the about the author page so similar
to the leaflet that I made but a little bit condensed with her image some copy
and a little bit more about her with that same border on it so what we're
gonna do is I always initially head to Pinterest I'm gonna look at some border
designs see what sort of sparks my attention see what sort of sparks
creativity I guess I love going on Pinterest to kind of develop the ideas I
already have in my head and sort of refine them down
I've got a rough idea I have to use Pinterest on my phone at the minute
because I had to reset my laptop so that's why I was scrolling on my phone I
do a lot of my work on my phone which has its pros and cons it means I can
work anywhere but it also does mean that when I'm not working I can accidentally
fall into the trap of working because my phone's in my hand all the time so what
I'm gonna do now is step number two so I've gathered my inspiration
maybe it's step number three I've asked my client for what they want I've
gathered my own inspiration and now I am going to sketch out some initial ideas
these might not these might never see the light of day
but it's important to me to sort of visualize on paper what is in my head so
I can use paper that's fine but what I'm gonna do is set you up on this tripod
and I'm gonna sketch on my iPad and I'll leave the link to the iPad that I have
mine has been discontinued now so I'll link the nearest one you don't need the
iPad you don't need anything fancy a notebook and paper will do fine
okay as you've seen I have been playing around with an array of different ideas
I'm not loving them but it's kind of the two directions I was thinking of so what
I'm gonna do is stop fretting over it I'm gonna send my little sketches back
to Pippa so that she can let me know if she absolutely hates both of them or if
one of them is sort of an okay vibe and then we'll get onto another little
project whilst we wait for her reply ticking off one thing on my to-do list
that is done I've sent her an email and she'll probably reply to me either later
today or tomorrow so whilst I wait for client feedback I'm gonna quickly do a
little bit of a stock check on my store so for those of you that don't know I
have a little online store it's called soul and fire and I sell on there a lot
of eco friendly little stationery bits and I'm hoping to expand the range
further go in like moving forward and we're actually gonna work on a little
bit of a design for one of the new products later in the video so keep an
eye out for that but like I said we're gonna stock take I
double check how much stock I have in a lot because I'm a small business I can't
afford to keep restocking and I can't afford to accidentally sell something I
don't have enough of if you watch my studio vlogs you'll have seen this
drawer many times but this is my little stock draw it has been a lot more full
than this previously but I recently sold out of my weekly planners so that is the
product we're working on today so I have little greeting cards so they're all
eco-friendly they're all printed on recycled paper using an eco-friendly
inks and they come in zero plastic packaging all they have on them is this
little sticker at the top that says soul and fire and then on the back it tells
you that it's a 100% recycled paper and so they all
come like that I add those stickers as I ship them and then I made myself little
dividers so I've got six different cards all together
if you want to see them I'll leave the link to my website in the description so
you can have a little nosy at the other designs and then I also have my pin
which I think is my pride and joy I love it so much so this is the soul and fire
pin it says when it wants to focus it says create a life you love and it has
four different colors in it so it's got a green a lime green a pink a yellow and
a blue and it's in the gold metal it's just a regular pin you know with a cute
little back bit of information on the card and again this card is eco-friendly
recycled card so once you've taken the pin off you can just chuck this in your
recycling and it will get reused
stock take is done now I'm gonna have a little break dance interlude because
I've been sat on my butt all morning
lunch is done I've just had my lunch sat down here and watched some YouTube
videos or just one I ate it really fast actually I need to
fill my water up top tip for working from home stay hydrated I'm gonna
relocate to the bed I always find that I can't sit in one place for too long and
I'll either move to my bed or go downstairs in the conservatory or
something because working from the same room every day can be counterproductive
so if you're also needing to work from home right now or work from home and find it
quite difficult then I recommend switching up your space so go
downstairs sit in a different room sit on a different chair that kind of thing
I'm now gonna start working on the new weekly planner I'm almost there with the
design I think the layout itself is completely fine I'm gonna print it out
and double check just need to do the background because that's the bit I want
to change mainly and I can't figure out what to change it to but first I thought
I would show you the old one so this is the one that I currently am using on my
desk I showed you earlier in the vlog the main thing I want to change was I
want to split this column more because I thought this was quite long for a to do
list so I figured splitting it up might help that I really like the colors but I
feel like the design could be changed a little bit and I wanted to change the
title too so that's what we were working with I've since designed this little thing
on Adobe Illustrator so all I did was kind of drag in the existing design and
adjusted it a little bit and I've been playing around with the headers and the
different columns I've had a few different versions going on and then as
you can see I've chopped this column up a little bit so it's now shorter and it
says next week so the idea is that anything that you don't complete gets
moved into this column and then I've also added these stars so I want to put
them as like top priority so even if you write a really long to-do
list and don't get everything done you can't really beat yourself up about it
as long as you get those top three things done that's the idea and I need
to work on something to put in this border here so that's what we're gonna
do right now I think I'm gonna try it on my iPad using procreate of course
so I'll screem record that again and we'll see what sort of ideas we come up
with
I think I'm making progress with planner design I'm not 100% so I'm gonna sleep
on it and come back to it top tip if you sort of create things and then get stuck
sleep on it walk away from it for a bit and come back because looking at it with
fresh eyes always helps one of my uni tutors told me that um yeah I've spent
the past couple of hours writing subtitles for videos editing videos I've
also filmed a video so I've not filmed it's it's not really graphic design
related but that's all my work from home jobs done for the day so yeah I hope
you've enjoyed this little insight into a day in my life
it is now 7:15 p.m. and I've got a little bit more work to do and then I'm
gonna sign off for the day but I feel like I feel like it's all boring laptop
stuff right now I've not got anything exciting to show you I'm gonna reply to
some comments and yeah a plan some cool new videos so I hope you enjoyed the
video thanks for watching as always and I'll see you tomorrow for another one
bye