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!
__________ 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.
On today’s episode of Make + Design, Carina welcomes master of negotiation Susie Tomenchok. With years of experience negotiating deals for some of the largest companies in the world, Susie came to the realization that negotiation goes on all around us in every facet of life. Susie tells us about one of the opening stories in her new book, “The Art of Negotiation without Manipulation,” where her kids negotiated with her at Target. Her kids came up with a system that would allow them to get Susie to buy them what they wanted at Target by using negotiation tactics.
One of Carina’s big takeaways from the book was that the person who she negotiates with the most is herself. Susie then walks us through a story of a friend of hers in the corporate world who needed to negotiate with herself to work up the inner belief that she deserved a promotion at work. Part of Susie’s friend’s inner negotiation was with the excuses and rationalizations she was allowing to hold her back. Carina and Susie then share experiences from their own lives to show how often this type of inner negotiation happens. Often the inner negotiation has to do with how worthy we feel for an opportunity that’s in front of us.
Susie teaches us that when we get a “no” answer from someone that a “no” is data. It gives us a reference point so that we can understand what needs to change in order for something to work out. Don’t retreat from a “no.” Lean into it and get curious about the “no.” Ask questions. Find out more. Have a conversation. Another aspect of navigating these situations is having the ability to restate our value proposition, to ask the question “how does this feel?” and then to practice silence. The silence is where the other person will fill in the data that you don’t know.
Susie also teaches us about anchoring. Anchoring is generally the first number thrown out during a formal negotiation. The final result is usually somewhat close to the starting number. One thing, Susie tells us, that makes our anchor stronger is to compare the anchor data point to past results and experiences. This helps the other side know that your anchor is reasonable and gives them value for the stated amount. Providing this explanation also creates a space where the other side starts to mentally prepare to say “yes” in the negotiation by imagining how the deal fits in with their situation.
Carina asks whether it’s better to be the anchor or to let the other party be the anchor. Susie tells us that it’s best to anchor when we are really clear about the value of our product or position and about what we want out of the negotiation. If we are not really clear on our value proposition then it can be better to let them go first. If you let the other party go first, though, Susie tells us that you must be ready to get them back on track if their number is way off from where you want to end up. Susie and Carina talk about the differences between personalities that like to anchor versus personalities who would rather not be the anchor. Not being the anchor allows you to get additional data by learning more about the other side’s process and the factors that go into their decision making.
Carina asks Susie to go into detail about a story in “The Art of Negotiation without Manipulation” that leads to the statement, “Shine a light on any opportunity. Always assume it is up for grabs.” This section of the book taught Carina to look for opportunity in every situation. Susie tells us a secret: the story Carina is referring to is actually about herself. Susie teaches that a question to ask ourselves when we’re facing an opportunity that we’re talking ourselves out of is to ask “why not me?” She concludes that all successful people feel like they’re not ready for the opportunity before them at some point, but they push through by finding a reason to answer the question, “why not me?” Carina has seen that among people who are otherwise equal, the one who will succeed is the one who believes in herself. Susie’s hack is to see herself in other people’s eyes. People tend to see us in a good light so it’s a lifehack to see us ourselves the way that other people do.
__________ 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.
About Today’s Guest Susie Tomenchok is an expert negotiator who has negotiated deals for some of the largest companies in the world. Susie’s new book, “The Art of Negotiation without Manipulation” is available at www.booknegotiation.com. Also check out www.negotiationlove.com for a freebie from Susie! Susie’s Instagram feed is full of everyday tips and stories about the negotiation that goes on in our everyday lives. Find it @susietomenchok.
On today’s episode of Make + Design, Carina talks about the progress that designers make over time. She talks about taking a somewhat embarrassing (for her!) trip down memory lane when she recently searched for herself on the internet. Over 15 years of search results, she saw a lot of progress in her design work. She had a similar experience when she taught college, seeing the huge improvement that design students made from their first year of college through their senior year of college. While going to college is a great way to get a design education, Carina doesn’t recommend college for those transitioning into a second career. For those looking to start a second career, finding a great, year-long program that teaches specific skills is the better way to go.
Carina invites all of us to go back and look at our design work so that we can see the improvement and progress that we’ve made over time. She encourages us to stick with it because good things will come as we continue to work and improve. __________ 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.
Today on the Make + Design Podcast, design expert Carina Gardner gets real about what it takes to make a full time living as a surface pattern designer. In Carina’s opinion, there are a lot more possibilities beyond “surface pattern design” and she goes into other ways designers can expand their thinking to give themselves more revenue streams with their work. Carina knows many designers who make five-figure salaries in a year. She then delves into what it takes to earn a six figure salary as a designer. 1. You have to get faster in Illustrator. 2. You have to have multiple streams of income. 3. You have to know the right markets where you can sell your products. She goes into more detail in her Design Bootcamp and into a *lot* more detail in her Design Suite program. Carina spends some time talking about ways that designers who push themselves into 3D design not only open a new market to sell their designs in but they also level up their 2D, surface pattern design work.
Carina tells us about the three purposes of her Design Suite program: 1. Learn how to design. 2. Learn how to produce great design work. 3. Learn how to make money as a designer by placing products in the best markets. Carina knows the best markets with the lowest barriers to entry and shares her insider knowledge with her members. The first step to learning more about Design Suite is to attend one of Carina’s Design Bootcamps (link below).
__________ 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.
On today’s episode of Make + Design, Carina talks about flow state and not just how to find it but how to create it. Carina has discovered that to be the best designer possible producing the best work, she needs to get into flow. Flow occurs when you are so absorbed in the thing at hand that time stands still, you don’t notice the things around you, and you find yourself in an amazing state where you just move forward. Sometimes we don’t notice we’re in flow until after the fact. Flow state has a lot of amazing benefits: your enjoyment goes up, your ability goes insane, and you even get a dopamine hit. For Carina, there are some really specific things that get her into flow. As you evaluate when you get into flow, pay attention to the things that got you there (did you have a big block of time or was it something else?).
__________ 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.
On today’s episode of Make + Design, Carina delves into one thing you can do to change the trajectory of your business: becoming incredibly, crazy fast in Adobe Illustrator. Carina gives us a great example on how getting fast in Illustrator increases your pay rate since you can produce so much more work. Carina’s advice is to spend less time in the dozens and dozens of features in Illustrator and to focus on developing proficiency in the 10 to 20 actions that professional designers use ALL THE TIME.
How long does it take to get fast at Illustrator? It will take a few months but the *key* is to be in Illustrator every single day. Those who spend time every day will get better, fast, more efficient and will increase their pay rate and explode their growth as a designer.
__________ 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.
On today’s Make + Design Podcast, Carina wants to help us become next-level designers because next-level is the level where you get paid for your work. To help us, Carina shares three mistakes that we should avoid. Mistake number one is designing at the same scale all the time. Find out what Carina means by this and why it’s holding you back from leveling up. Mistake number two is keeping your spacing and negative space consistent across all of your designs. Listen in to see why this is such a pitfall. The last mistake Carina warns us about is to design a piece for just one medium. Listen in for tips on how to design something that works across multiple platforms. Carina loves sharing these kinds of practical tips so that you can learn to think smart and strategically as a designer.
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.
On today’s episode of the Make + Design Podcast, Carina gives us five ways to generate new ideas. Carina tells us the story of going to a movie with her kids that, at first, she didn’t want to go to but that she ended up loving and being inspired by.
Here are the five tips:
Change your environment. Find out what happens for Carina when she changes her environment–whether it’s moving to work from bed, from a hammock outside, or just from a different room in the house.
See something outside your normal range. This means getting outside your comfort zone and seeing, doing, or listening to something outside of your regular routine and comfort zone.
Do something outside of your comfort zone. This means planning a new experience outside of your comfort zone and then doing it. Find out how this is different from number 2 and how these new experiences have inspired Carina!
Make sure you are self aware, especially about your inner self talk. Listen to Carina’s tips on overcoming negative self talk and how it will help you unlock your creativity.
Don’t discount the ideas that will be hard or uncomfortable to implement. Carina tells us about her shift from surface pattern design to 3D design work as an example of a difficult, uncomfortable process that she implemented that has worked out well for her.
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.
Carina is joined on Make + Design today by brilliant business woman Annette Walter. Annette shares her career trajectory with us and then gives us great advice on how to run a business. Anyone who becomes good enough at their trade will eventually need to shift into business administration and leadership. She tells us how we can stay grounded as business owners when we have less time to do the thing that originally brought us success because we are spending so much time working on the business instead of on production.
Annette also tells us about a tool called the “Core Values Index.” It’s a tool that allows you to discover your strengths and learn to surround yourself with people who make up for your weaknesses as you build a team.
Carina and Annette continue the conversation by looking at things to consider when building a team for the first time. As you build a team, you’re really creating two audiences for your product: the internal team and your external customers. Building a team will allow you to get rid of the tasks that you don’t like to do. Annette also walks us through the beauty of using a T-chart to decide how to grow your business. The advice that Annette shares is essential for anyone looking to start or grow a business.
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.
About Today’s Guest Annette Walter is a brilliant business owner, consultant, and podcaster. She got her career started in the banking industry and then founded a full-service real estate company in 2008 that was later acquired by Berkshire Hathaway. Today she owns two companies, Timber Industries, which is the world’s largest woman-owned palette distribution company, and a business growth operational strategy coaching and consulting firm called iEvolve Consulting. Find Annette’s work at https://ievolveconsulting.com/ and on Instagram @ievolvedaily. Find Annette’s Podcast, The Entrepreneur Evolution Podcast, can be found on Apple and Spotify
On today’s episode of Make + Design, Carina gives us a list of three ways that you can start thinking differently from the competition in order to make it as a surface pattern designer. A surface pattern designer is a designer who focuses on creating 2D designs. Fifteen years ago a surface pattern designer would have been called a graphic designer. The new title is fun though!
Tip #1: See the world in shapes. Design is a learned behavior and anyone can learn it. Listen in to see what carina means by “see the world in shapes,” a vital skill to becoming a professional surface pattern designer.
Tip #2: Shift your style mindset to disrupt the marketplace rather than to copy the marketplace. Find out how producing something that’s different can set you apart from the competition.
Tip #3: Pay attention to negative space. What is negative space and how can you create great negative space? Carina walks us through it (hint: does your negative space attract eyes to your designs or detract from them?).
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.
