A Graphic Design Warm Up Video

I’m back at my desk from the longest stretch of time off I’ve ever taken. I feel equal parts invigorated to start creating again while simultaneously finding myself walking around the house like the Forrest Gump meme where he wakes up in the house before everyone else and doesn’t know what to do with himself. Five minutes ago I had the thought that maybe I should pick all the lemons off the tree, juice them, and freeze them into ice cubes to save for later. An hour ago I had the idea of designing a new protest poster or writing a Substack article titled “Driving Across America Will Break Your Heart,” inspired by 1) driving across America this past week and 2) listening to a cover of Pocahontas’s “Colors of the Wind” and crying over my keyboard because it was so beautiful. Upon reflection, perhaps I just need a nap to recover from that long-haul drive and from staying up until 1 am last night catching up with friends. I count myself lucky to even have the luxury to entertain these thoughts and to be tired from such activities.

Picking Work Back Up

Essentially, I’m in the throes of figuring out how to jump back into the saddle of work. This morning I was going through the pile of mail stacked on the kitchen table, and I shuffled through one of those awkwardly large and floppy coupon mailers that come in the mail for free. These days, they don’t actually have any coupons for us to cut out, but they sure do show some flashy deals.

So here’s the part where I ask you to join me in a quick graphic design warm-up. I have found that no matter how advanced one gets in their career, we will always be asked to mock up price tags, digital sales banners, or some sort of product sticker. So we might as well give it some practice and have the files at our fingertips to reference and pull from when the marketing director comes knocking!

Time to warm up!

I set my timer for 35 minutes. I got the idea to record my screen at minute 13, and if you’d like to zone out for a few minutes and watch me work things out in my mind… please enjoy and join me in this type of warm-up!

Read more