Graphics design can be a great creative outlet for people who like to mess around with personal projects and flex their artistic prowess every now and then. I have worked with some awesome UX designers over the years and have been inspired by how good they are with the art of visual communication. So, while setting this website up, I decided to do its branding – logo, icons and infographics all by myself and in the process, get some basic knowledge about graphic designing. I sought some guidance from people who knew more on this topic and got myself acquainted with concepts around design prototyping, colour theory and vector art and also set aside some time learning how to use Affinity Designer. It might have been silly but I also thought at that time that this learning might help me visualise design concepts for my house.
Since it’s always better to learn while doing something for real, I set myself a goal of completing 100 t-shirt designs in 3 months and uploading it to a print-on-demand website. At the end of 3 months, I had more than doubled my initial target spanning it across 5 POD shops and even sold a few items. Of late, I may have slowed down in terms of uploading designs but I use Affinity Designer quite frequently at work for design sessions and for creating decks and mockups.
Here are two of my currently active POD shops (I haven’t been uploading any designs recently). Hope you like my designs.
And a big shout out to the guys at Serif – the team behind Affinity Designer and Affinity Photo – for setting a new industrial standard in the world of design by creating these awesome suite of affordable design tools that enable designers like us and make it easy for us to create and express ourselves. Do check these tools out.