Episode 139 How Freelance Can Supplement Your Design Business

Posted on by Carina Gardner

Where does freelancing fit in with launching a design career? In this episode of Make + Design, Carina breaks down all the reasons that freelance work can be a vital part of learning to design, getting experience, and learning to work with clients. Listen in for great tips on how to be successful with freelancing. 

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Download Carina’s free guide: The 7 Tips Nobody Will Tell You About Becoming a Surface Pattern Designer here: http://eepurl.com/dN2RcY 

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About Carina Gardner:

Carina Gardner is a fabric designer, paper designer, and design educator who is passionate about helping other designers fulfill their creative dreams by teaching them her strategies for making money as a designer. She has a Ph.D. in Design and taught design at the University of Minnesota before starting Carina Gardner, Inc.

Carina Gardner, Inc design brand has been featured in dish ware, holiday decor, sewing patterns, and more. Her exclusive Design Suite Program helps creatives make money designing as they learn to design. Her programs include Illustrator and Photoshop training, surface pattern design, paper design, Silhouette & Cricut file design, and running a design business. She started the Make and Design Podcast so that she could share inspiration, stories, and experiences about design and life with crafters and designers.

Find out more at https://www.carinagardner.com

Check out her most popular program, Design Bootcamp, here: http://www.carinagardnercourses.com/designbootcamp

Episode 138 Surface Pattern Design for Beginners: How to Get Started

Posted on by Carina Gardner

Surface Pattern Design work is a hot field in the marketplace right now. So how do *you* get a career in surface pattern design started? Tune in to this episode of Make + Design to get Carina’s expert advice on where to start! As usual, Carina gives you real-world examples that help you become the best that you can.

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Download Carina’s free guide: The 7 Tips Nobody Will Tell You About Becoming a Surface Pattern Designer here: http://eepurl.com/dN2RcY 

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About Carina Gardner:

Carina Gardner is a fabric designer, paper designer, and design educator who is passionate about helping other designers fulfill their creative dreams by teaching them her strategies for making money as a designer. She has a Ph.D. in Design and taught design at the University of Minnesota before starting Carina Gardner, Inc.

Carina Gardner, Inc design brand has been featured in dish ware, holiday decor, sewing patterns, and more. Her exclusive Design Suite Program helps creatives make money designing as they learn to design. Her programs include Illustrator and Photoshop training, surface pattern design, paper design, Silhouette & Cricut file design, and running a design business. She started the Make and Design Podcast so that she could share inspiration, stories, and experiences about design and life with crafters and designers.

Find out more at https://www.carinagardner.com

Check out her most popular program, Design Bootcamp, here: http://www.carinagardnercourses.com/designbootcamp

Episode 137 Why You Aren’t Getting What You Actually Need from the Free Stuff

Posted on by Carina Gardner

Everyone loves free stuff and the internet is full of chances to get free stuff. But are the endless freebies available online really getting you what you need?

 On today’s episode of the Make + Design Podcast, Carina discusses the drawbacks of relying on free stuff and gives concrete examples of how investing in yourself (and an inexpensive course) will help you level up much more quickly.


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Download Carina’s free guide: The 7 Tips Nobody Will Tell You About Becoming a Surface Pattern Designer here: http://eepurl.com/dN2RcY 
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About Carina Gardner:
Carina Gardner is a fabric designer, paper designer, and design educator who is passionate about helping other designers fulfill their creative dreams by teaching them her strategies for making money as a designer. She has a Ph.D. in Design and taught design at the University of Minnesota before starting Carina Gardner, Inc.
 
Carina Gardner, Inc design brand has been featured in dish ware, holiday decor, sewing patterns, and more. Her exclusive Design Suite Program helps creatives make money designing as they learn to design. Her programs include Illustrator and Photoshop training, surface pattern design, paper design, Silhouette & Cricut file design, and running a design business. She started the Make and Design Podcast so that she could share inspiration, stories, and experiences about design and life with crafters and designers.
 
Find out more at https://www.carinagardner.com
Check out her most popular program, Design Bootcamp, here: http://www.carinagardnercourses.com/designbootcamp

Episode 135 Why Flirting Isn’t Enough

Posted on by Carina Gardner
Lots of people “flirt” with the idea of becoming a surface pattern designer or paper designer. Fewer people commit to the idea and even fewer make it their Plan A. Where do you fit in?

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Download Carina’s free guide: The 7 Tips Nobody Will Tell You About Becoming a Surface Pattern Designer here: http://eepurl.com/dN2RcY 
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About Carina Gardner:
Carina Gardner is a fabric designer, paper designer, and design educator who is passionate about helping other designers fulfill their creative dreams by teaching them her strategies for making money as a designer. She has a Ph.D. in Design and taught design at the University of Minnesota before starting Carina Gardner, Inc.
 
Carina Gardner, Inc design brand has been featured in dish ware, holiday decor, sewing patterns, and more. Her exclusive Design Suite Program helps creatives make money designing as they learn to design. Her programs include Illustrator and Photoshop training, surface pattern design, paper design, Silhouette & Cricut file design, and running a design business. She started the Make and Design Podcast so that she could share inspiration, stories, and experiences about design and life with crafters and designers.
 
Find out more at https://www.carinagardner.com
Check out her most popular program, Design Bootcamp, here: http://www.carinagardnercourses.com/designbootcamp
 Watch this episode as a video at https://www.makeanddesign.com/

Episode 133 What Level of Designer Are You?

Posted on by Carina Gardner
Carina talks about the 5 levels you can hit as a designer. You could be at any one of these stages, but the goal is always to get to the next level! Identify where you are and where you want to be!

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Download Carina’s free guide: The 7 Tips Nobody Will Tell You About Becoming a Surface Pattern Designer here: http://eepurl.com/dN2RcY 
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About Carina Gardner:
Carina Gardner is a fabric designer, paper designer, and design educator who is passionate about helping other designers fulfill their creative dreams by teaching them her strategies for making money as a designer. She has a Ph.D. in Design and taught design at the University of Minnesota before starting Carina Gardner, Inc.
 
Carina Gardner, Inc design brand has been featured in dish ware, holiday decor, sewing patterns, and more. Her exclusive Design Suite Program helps creatives make money designing as they learn to design. Her programs include Illustrator and Photoshop training, surface pattern design, paper design, Silhouette & Cricut file design, and running a design business. She started the Make and Design Podcast so that she could share inspiration, stories, and experiences about design and life with crafters and designers.
 
Find out more at https://www.carinagardner.com
Check out her most popular program, Design Bootcamp, here: http://www.carinagardnercourses.com/designbootcamp
 Watch this episode as a video at https://www.makeanddesign.com/

Episode 132 Strategic Thinking with Crista Grasso

Posted on by Carina Gardner
Carina welcomes her friend Crista Grasso on the podcast to talk about strategy, systems, and team! As designers we are always looking for ways to up level our business and Crista knows alot about taking companies from single entrepreneurs to growing and scaling.

Listen to Crista’s practical tips for building systems in your business and thinking strategically!

You can find Crista Grasso at https://www.leanoutmethod.com/ for more on how she helps businesses scale! You can also check out her podcast at https://www.leanoutmethod.com/podcast.

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Download Carina’s free guide: The 7 Tips Nobody Will Tell You About Becoming a Surface Pattern Designer here: http://eepurl.com/dN2RcY 
__________


About Carina Gardner:
Carina Gardner is a fabric designer, paper designer, and design educator who is passionate about helping other designers fulfill their creative dreams by teaching them her strategies for making money as a designer. She has a Ph.D. in Design and taught design at the University of Minnesota before starting Carina Gardner, Inc.
 
Carina Gardner, Inc design brand has been featured in dish ware, holiday decor, sewing patterns, and more. Her exclusive Design Suite Program helps creatives make money designing as they learn to design. Her programs include Illustrator and Photoshop training, surface pattern design, paper design, Silhouette & Cricut file design, and running a design business. She started the Make and Design Podcast so that she could share inspiration, stories, and experiences about design and life with crafters and designers.
 
Find out more at https://www.carinagardner.com
Check out her most popular program, Design Bootcamp, here: http://www.carinagardnercourses.com/designbootcamp
 Watch this episode as a video at https://www.makeanddesign.com/

Episode 131 Why Imposter Syndrome Is Just Comparison Syndrome

Posted on by Carina Gardner
On today’s episode of Make + Design, Carina talks about Imposter Syndrome. She finds that Imposter Syndrome only pops up when we compare ourselves to others. In that way, it’s not really Imposter Syndrome, it’s Comparison Syndrome. Have you ever had a moment when you look at someone else’s work and you think, “Wow. I’m not as good as them.” The feeling that gives us often makes us feel like an imposter. One tip that Carina gives us is to make sure we’re not comparing ourselves to people we shouldn’t be comparing ourselves to. A new designer should not compare themselves to someone who has twenty years of experience. Another way to avoid comparison is to celebrate that someone has created something beautiful for us to enjoy. The last way to overcome Comparison Syndrome is to focus on getting better at our skill as a designer. Also, if we ask ourselves, “Why not me?” then it will keep us motivated to continue to work hard and win. Finally, a great way to get over Comparison Syndrome is to find a Community that will support us and help us to level up. When people come together and work together to make everyone in the group better then the temptation to compare disappears. 


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Download Carina’s free guide: The 7 Tips Nobody Will Tell You About Becoming a Surface Pattern Designer here: http://eepurl.com/dN2RcY 
__________

About Carina Gardner:
Carina Gardner is a fabric designer, paper designer, and design educator who is passionate about helping other designers fulfill their creative dreams by teaching them her strategies for making money as a designer. She has a Ph.D. in Design and taught design at the University of Minnesota before starting Carina Gardner, Inc.
 
Carina Gardner, Inc design brand has been featured in dish ware, holiday decor, sewing patterns, and more. Her exclusive Design Suite Program helps creatives make money designing as they learn to design. Her programs include Illustrator and Photoshop training, surface pattern design, paper design, Silhouette & Cricut file design, and running a design business. She started the Make and Design Podcast so that she could share inspiration, stories, and experiences about design and life with crafters and designers.
 
Find out more at https://www.carinagardner.com
Check out her most popular program, Design Bootcamp, here: http://www.carinagardnercourses.com/designbootcamp
 Watch this episode as a video at https://www.makeanddesign.com/

Episode 130 Who Was the Best Mr. Darcy with SuiKim Friedmann

Posted on by Carina Gardner
Carina’s sister and Etsy expert SuiKim Friedmann joins the Make and Design podcast today. The sisters laugh a lot and discuss which version of Pride and Prejudice they like the best.  They also take a deep dive into what it takes to set up an online coaching and mentoring program. This includes talking about how gratifying it is to see help people along in building their own careers. Their discussion takes them into a listing of pros and cons to programs that give you just course content and programs that include mentoring and masterminding. SuiKim talks about the learning curve she has faced in implementing a coaching program. Find out the power that joining a mastermind unlocks. SuiKim calls out Carina for not listening to her last appearance in episode 116. 

You can find SuiKim’s work at www.suikim.com. Who gets their first name as a domain name? Awesome! We checked out “carina.com” to see if it was available and someone has put up a pretty purple flower at that site for all the world to see. Shucks. 

Find her on InstaGram at suikimfriedmann. 

Find out more at http://www.carinagardner.com

Want to become a designer? Check out Carina’s next Design Bootcamp at http://www.carinagardnercourses.com/designbootcamp.

Episode 129 3 Powerful Design Strategies You Don’t Want to Miss

Posted on by Carina Gardner
On today’s episode of the Make + Design Podcast, Carina talks about three powerful design strategies that will help keep you motivated and leveling up. These are strategies that will help you get paid for your design work. 

Strategy one: you need to work smart and hard. You need to be going out of your way to work smart. As you do, you will get better at design to the point that design work can become relaxing and happy even. 

Strategy two: Repurpose EVERYTHING. If you draw something and use it in one medium, use it in all the mediums! Carina gives us some great examples of how to do this and lets us know that something that is repurposed needs to be transformed and formatted correctly across the mediums. 

Strategy three: Do the math. What does Carina mean by this? She explains that calculating your work rate and how many designs you can do per day will allow you to calculate how many designs you will be able to release in a year. The more content you create, the more you will earn. If you don’t “do the math” then you may fall into the trap of not producing enough to win as a designer. 

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Download Carina’s free guide: The 7 Tips Nobody Will Tell You About Becoming a Surface Pattern Designer here: http://eepurl.com/dN2RcY 
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About Carina Gardner:
Carina Gardner is a fabric designer, paper designer, and design educator who is passionate about helping other designers fulfill their creative dreams by teaching them her strategies for making money as a designer. She has a Ph.D. in Design and taught design at the University of Minnesota before starting Carina Gardner, Inc.
 
Carina Gardner, Inc design brand has been featured in dish ware, holiday decor, sewing patterns, and more. Her exclusive Design Suite Program helps creatives make money designing as they learn to design. Her programs include Illustrator and Photoshop training, surface pattern design, paper design, Silhouette & Cricut file design, and running a design business. She started the Make and Design Podcast so that she could share inspiration, stories, and experiences about design and life with crafters and designers.
 
Find out more at https://www.carinagardner.com
Check out her most popular program, Design Bootcamp, here: http://www.carinagardnercourses.com/designbootcamp
 Watch this episode as a video at https://www.makeanddesign.com/

Episode 128 The Difference Between Photoshop and Illustrator

Posted on by Carina Gardner
Today on Make + Design, Carina takes a quick look at the differences between Photoshop and Illustrator and gives some of the reasons that good designers use both tools. Photoshop is super useful for everyday things like editing photos. Illustrator is the main tool for professional designers though. 

The first difference that Carina goes into is the difference between pixels and vectors. In Photoshop, every image is divided into tiny little squares. When you enlarge pixels, the image begins to distort as the squares get bigger. In Illustrator, images are divided into vectors, which is just a line. When you enlarge an image in Illustrator, it continues to keep the same high quality. Illustrator is the place we’ll be for drawing and designing. Photoshop is great for brochures and photos.

The next difference that Carina delves into is layering differences. In Photoshop, we use the laying system to keep things organized. In Illustrator, layering is not as important. The pallet system allows designers in Illustrator to leave design work all over their artboard, which can help with creativity. Carina cautions designers who spend most of their time in Illustrator that it’s easy sometimes to forget to layer in Photoshop and things get disorganized quickly.

The place where Photoshop really shines is in the difference between .jpg, .tif, .ai, and .eps files. We all use JPEG and TIF files in everyday life. AI and EPS files aren’t used as often in everyday life and even our Illustrator files end up as JPEGs for final production. This is the biggest reason we need Photoshop. We want to give our end user a variety of ways to use our files.

Great designers use both!

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Download Carina’s free guide: The 7 Tips Nobody Will Tell You About Becoming a Surface Pattern Designer here: http://eepurl.com/dN2RcY 
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About Carina Gardner:
Carina Gardner is a fabric designer, paper designer, and design educator who is passionate about helping other designers fulfill their creative dreams by teaching them her strategies for making money as a designer. She has a Ph.D. in Design and taught design at the University of Minnesota before starting Carina Gardner, Inc.
 
Carina Gardner, Inc design brand has been featured in dish ware, holiday decor, sewing patterns, and more. Her exclusive Design Suite Program helps creatives make money designing as they learn to design. Her programs include Illustrator and Photoshop training, surface pattern design, paper design, Silhouette & Cricut file design, and running a design business. She started the Make and Design Podcast so that she could share inspiration, stories, and experiences about design and life with crafters and designers.
 
Find out more at https://www.carinagardner.com
Check out her most popular program, Design Bootcamp, here: http://www.carinagardnercourses.com/designbootcamp
 Watch this episode as a video at https://www.makeanddesign.com/