This year is my one-year anniversary at Pulse Marketing and what a year it’s been.

Being my first full-time graphic design job out of college, I never thought I would have learned and grown this much already.

Here are 3 things I wish I would have known a year ago, when starting this journey.

Don’t be afraid to be creative

I know this sounds like a funny tip, since I am a graphic designer, but above all, I am a total rule-following nerd. I love rules and sometimes, brand guidelines become a cage I struggle to get out of. Toward the end of this year, I began challenging myself to have more fun and to break free from that cage, while also keeping my designs well branded. This has been a process for me, but I believe I am finally naturally having more fun and exploring new ways to be creative.

Ask for feedback

Another nerdy thing about me is that I really do like getting feedback, as long as it’s put nicely. I always want to know how I can improve my designs or even myself. I know when I ask for feedback, it is coming from other unique perspectives. I personally place high value on this because everyone comes from different backgrounds and has wisdom from individual life histories.

I have always had this view, but when I started at Pulse, I was a little more nervous to ask for feedback from those with more experience. I knew they had quality wisdom to share, but I was afraid of looking like I didn’t know what I was doing. I had gone to school for graphic design, but had no real-life experience in the field yet.

What later clicked is that everyone is still learning and one thing I love about Pulse, is how willing everyone is to help each other grow. No one was judging me. This gave me confidence to start more openly asking for design feedback.

Become a life-long learner

To me, this is the most important thing that I wish I knew a year ago. Before graduating college, you have spent the last 21 years (if not more) of your life studying and learning. When I graduated, I was so excited to not be in school anymore and to just focus on designing, but no one told me how strange it would feel to not be a student anymore.

This caused me to change my perspective on post-grad life. I now look at every design project as a learning opportunity and I am more motivated to learn and grow in my own time as well. The difference now is that I get to study things I am passionate about. For example, I recently finished a HubSpot social media certification course and passed the exam at the end. Passing that exam gave me a sense of accomplishment I forgot about and craved. Now, I want to devote time to learning another language.

In summary, don’t be afraid to be creative, ask for feedback, and become a life-long learner. These are the top 3 things I wish I knew a year ago. Your top 3 may be completely different, but I challenge you to look back and evaluate where you have grown and what you wish you knew. I also challenge you to look at my top 3 and ask yourself if they are relevant to you and how you can apply them in your life.

Written for Pulse Marketing December 2018

Branding doesn’t just happen.

It’s drawing, searching for inspiration, and a lot of research. It’s many revisions, puzzle cracking, and hard work.

Additionally, it is a process that requires a lot of time, love, and consideration of the company being branded.

One of the first steps to developing an amazing brand is to research the company, what they value, and what their target markets value.

Embrace your findings in every decision you make when moving forward with the creative process.

The best part about the personal branding journey is that you already know you better than anyone else. You just need to figure out how you want to be perceived and what it is that your future client or employer may be looking for.

Just like with a normal branding process, don’t forget to keep these things in mind while moving forward.

Also, it’s okay to look at what other creatives are doing in your ideal industry.

In fact, I encourage you to use your resources.

Make a Pinterest board. Scroll through Behance. Read design books. Flip through some magazines. You might be struck with inspiration to try something you would have never thought of otherwise.

Personal branding is fun because you get to be extra creative and design in your most favorite ways, rather than designing for a client where your favorite design style or a large amount of creativity is not relevant to the brand. It’s also always a good idea to see what your competitors are doing.

Look at their work and think, how can I make myself stand out when compared to them for a potential job opportunity?

Then, when you are ready to start the creative process, question yourself while making every little decision. Choosing colors, typefaces, icons, textures, shapes, paper weights… There are so many decisions to make.

Think, what are my reasons for picking these colors and what is the color psychology behind them? Why am I choosing a square business card versus and rectangle one? What does this typeface say about me? Why am I choosing lay-flat binding for my portfolio versus perfect binding?

When I was taking my branding class in college, that was my biggest takeaway. Be purposeful about every single decision you make, no matter how small. Lately, I keep finding myself getting asked why my personal brand colors are black and yellow.

My personal journey with choosing those colors started off with me just really liking those colors. When I decided I wanted to use those colors for my brand, my professor asked me why? I was like oh man I don’t know, I just like them. I was pushed to think about feelings and adjectives associated with each color and realized why I liked them so much. They really do embody who I am. Black is edgy and classy. Yellow is happy and bright.

This is important because what if I wasn’t a happy and smiling person at all? Maybe I should have chosen another color? It would have sent me down another path toward discovering the color that better embodies who I truly am.

Intentionality is everything. It’s the difference between a good personal (or not personal) brand and a great one.

Written for Pulse Marketing