Craftin' desk by lalalaurie on Flickr

Burnout happens to the best of us. Writers get blocks, so do designers and any other creative professionals.

What do you do when this happens to you? Do you just let it pass? Trudge through it and create mediocre work?

No! Get a Hobby

Sometimes you need to break away from your work. Break away from the computer for a day, gather your wits and learn something new.

Or, as our friends at Graphic Design Blender recently wrote – Create Something Amazing.

They aren’t the only ones. We’ve found various sources suggesting that quality leisure time is important for productivity and creativity.

But that doesn’t make sense…

Actually, it does.

Spending more time on yourself and less on work can really bring the 80/20 principle into focus, if nothing else.

When you rearrange time to accomodate your hobby, you will start to notice that your work can be managed in smaller blocks of time. By compressing your time, you streamline your work.

If you make a conscious note of this streamlining, you can apply it to future work blocks, as well. Especially when you don’t need a recharge.

Refreshment and Accomplishment

Exciting hobbies and quality down-time also make you feel more energized and refreshed when you actually DO tackle your work.

We recently tweeted a TED talk about happiness and productivity – go ahead and watch it.

For those of you who don’t want to watch it, here’s a nugget from Shawn Achor’s talk that holds weight with the concept of happy hobbyists being better workers:

90 percent of your long-term happiness is predicted not by the outside world, but by the way your brain processes the world. [...] 75 percent of job successes are predicted by your optimism levels[...]

This is astounding. So why not develop a hobby that keeps you happy, refreshes you, makes you feel accomplished, and improves your chances of success?

Some Tips on Picking a Good Hobby

“Picking a Good Hobby” implies that there are “bad” hobbies. And there are – you probably shouldn’t be doing recreational drugs in your down-time if you want to be a good worker the next day.

But when we put destructive habits aside, some hobbies are still better than others. Here are a few tips to help you pick a decent hobby to keep you happy.

1. Don’t let it be work-related. Work-related hobbies will just remind you of work. That’s dumb. If you’re going to have a hobby, make it at least moderately different than what you do on a daily basis for money. Graphic designers? Maybe you could sculpt in your down-time. It’s still art, but it’s away from the computer, and there’s a gap between professions.
2. Pick a hobby you can feel accomplished about. That sense of accomplishment that you get when you complete something huge gives you energy and confidence. Pick a hobby that you can get that same feeling from. This is usually caused by creating something, but many people get excited and energized at the end of a good book.
3. Budget some time. We already said that you should take a day when you’re feeling burned out from work, but you should schedule some regular time in your week to develop some skills related to your hobby, or spend a block of time each week working directly on your hobby.
4. Budget your attention. No hobbies can be a bad thing. Too many hobbies can be equally detrimental. Try to focus on just one or two hobbies at a time. Otherwise you won’t be able to get that sense of accomplishment – you’ll just get frustrated that your skills aren’t developing fast enough.
5. Pick something you’re passionate about. This is probably the most important one on the list. If your hobby is boring to you, or you don’t enjoy it – don’t do it. You won’t feel happy about doing something you don’t want to do. And who knows? You might be able to turn this hobby of yours into an income in the future. At least enjoy the work you do.

So what do you do?

Josh’s hobbies include reading fantasy novels and illustration. Allysia likes to hunt for recipes and read fanfics in her down-time. What about you? What are your favorite past-times? Let us know in the comments.

That’s where ‘Save for Web and Devices’ really comes in handy.

Need a JPG?

Or a PNG (yay!). Or a GIF (sometimes yay!).

Then slam down Ctrl + Shift + Alt + S [For Windows]or Command + Shift + Alt + S [for Mac] to bring up the ‘Save for Web and Devices’ dialog.

From here, you should know what to do. No more clicking on that nasty ‘File’ menu in the upper left. You have an overly-long keyboard shortcut to do that with, now.

This one actually saves us a lot of time at Nascent. From chopping files to emailing drafts, if your client doesn’t have Photoshop/Illustrator and a Dropbox account, web and devices is the way to go.

What’s Your Favorite Shortcut?

Let us know your major time-savers or elusive unicorn shortcuts in the comments. We’d love to hear ‘em!

Influence Map Meme by fox-orian on deviantART

So you know your ethics. You know your “foundation.”

And hopefully you’ve developed a USP.

What Time Is It?

Image time. Or imagine time, whichever you prefer.

This process is something that we find many designers don’t do, but we can’t figure out why. It’s so useful.

Create an Influence Map. You can call it a concept board if you want, but create a visual influence map for your company.

How do you do this? We’ve found that using this template on deviantART is the easiest route.

If this seems a little bit daunting, don’t worry, just open up your favorite word processor and start pasting in images.

What You Should be Looking For

This is a creative process, so don’t limit yourself. Just start looking for any imagery (logos, web sites, photographs, illustrations, etc.) that you think would be beneficial to a designer when they’re working on your project.

Ideally these images will contain the color scheme that you had in mind, a style, and physical objects that relate to your business somehow. (For example, the budding plant logo for Nascent signifies birth and development in design).

Why Your Designer Will Love You

Because this fun exercise you’ve done yourself will give your designer a HUGE insight into your company’s vision.

With a solid USP and an influence map you’ve done a large portion of the brainstorming process that a designer goes through at the beginning of a project.

That’s not saying that you’ve done the work for them, but you’ve helped them out immensely. In our opinion, even with your original influence map, a designer should be prepared to make another.

Designers tend to have more resources for finding images than clients, we know where to look. We can take your screenshots, photos, etc. and find great alternatives that can actually be used in your final design. (We also have experience in instilling emotions and ideas into design.)

Next Week

Next week we’ll take a look into some professional methods for actually beginning your identity creation.  Robin Landa has outlined a few different processes in her book Designing Brand Experience: Creating Powerful Integrated Brand Solutions.

So, until next week, let’s get some feedback. Clients and designers, feel free to leave some comments.

Mountain - Alaska's Denali by blmiers2 on Flickr

We’ve mentioned it before, and for the GTD crowd out there, it’s become second nature. But everything you do that’s related to productivity in design needs to be broken down into micro-tasks.

Your brain is an excellent tool for organizing and task management, but only if you train yourself to do it the right way.

Your Boss Just Told You To…

Edit the copy for an entire web site by the end of the week? Damn, that sucks.

So, what do you do? Set a date on the calendar? That means you’ll probably procrastinate.

No, break down the entire project into micro-steps.

“The person who removes a mountain begins by carrying away small stones.”

-Chinese Proverb

The Small Stones Method

This concept is very similar to the GTD method of setting a next actionable step, but involves a bit more foresight.

You’ll want to analyze the entire task at hand, and break it all down into manageable chunks. The smaller these chunks are; the better.

For the editing example above:

Edit Entire Web Site’s Copy (Without Committing Suicide)

• Create or obtain list of every page in site.
• Create a manuscript for each page (Copy/Paste existing content into word processor).
• Run a spell check on each to determine which pages need most attention.
• Edit 1 page on the “most attention needed” list.
• Edit another page on the “most attention needed” list.
• [Continue]

Already these mini-projects are looking much more manageable. Of course, you could break these down into even smaller stones to make the work look easier.

Instead of editing 1 page at a time, edit 1 paragraph at a time on the pages that need the most attention. Small steps like this will have a huge impact on the final result. You’re also cutting out unnecessary work by not editing an entire page of content. (80/20 Rule, anybody?)

By the end of the week you can show your boss a moved mountain. And if there’s rubble still at the base of the mountain I’m sure he’ll understand that he set a nearly impossible task that you completed to a degree that most others wouldn’t have been able to.

But the Creative Process is Different

The above was a great example of  ”grunt work.” But the creative process for designers is much different.

Designers usually have a more fluid approach to tasks, even if they have a rigid overall structure. How do we adapt this micro-task process for design?

Easy: Mind mapping.

On paper or on the computer, mind mapping is typically the more fluid structure that designers need.

This is mostly because it’s more visual. Artists and designers see lists and they balk.

When they see an intricate web of thoughts spread out across a page, they can start on the outside and work their way in.

Even creating the mind map tends to be a more creative experience than simply writing a list. It’s like a spider weaving a web, then the thoughts are like dew drops the next morning. Maybe that was a bit poetic and extreme, but you get the idea.

When you mind map like this, you’re crafting, not drafting.

Fluid Changes

Mind maps also offer something else to a designer that a simple list doesn’t – the ability to change and add items without worrying too much about structure.

Have a random thought that’s relevent? Find the correct parent node and make a new child idea. Simple as that. Even the most structured lists can’t offer that kind of quick-scanning simplicity. Words in a list blend together too much.

Any other thoughts? Tell us about your ideas for task management. How do other designers out there break down the mountains and move them? Let us know in the comments.

Ctrl+Tab / Command+}

Ah, switching tabs. Talk about time-saving.

Unfortunately, it’s not so similar between Macs and PCs this time. So…let’s go ahead and start this week’s keyboard shortcut for designers with the Windows version:

Ctrl + Tab

Windows kids,  you have an easy time with this one. Ctrl + Tab will cycle through your open browser tabs and Adobe tabs quickly. From left to right.

If you want to go from right to left, that’s easy too. Just add Shift to the mix, so it’s Ctrl + Shift + Tab.

You may notice that the placement of your hands is a bit awkward for cycling left…so we suggest remapping your keys to the Mac equivalent, which is:

Command + } or Command + {

Notice that the } and { are actually the “uppercase” equivalent to ] and [.

This means that the shortcut is actually Command + Shift + ] and Command + Shift + [.

That’s much easier to comprehend when you’re trying to memorize the shortcut, and your hands can reach the keys easier.

It’s All About Saving Clicks

Give your mouse some rest, learn these shortcuts, one per week, and you’ll notice a massive increase in your productivity.

Also, your mouse won’t get worn out so fast. After all, a mouse can only handle a few zillion clicks before those buttons give out.

If you have any more suggested shortcuts, let us know and we’ll get on it.

Happy computing!

(Oh, and we hope everybody had a great Valentine’s Day. We’ll be back on track with out Client-Ed articles next Monday!)

Clouds by karindalziel on Flickr

When Adobe stopped offering their CS Subscription Service, we were a little bit disappointed.

It was a fantastic way to keep up-to-date on the applications we used the most, and it provided a cost-effective way to use a piece of software on a per-project basis.

Is there any good news?

Well, yes. Kind-of.

As most designers have probably noticed over the past few weeks, social media is abuzz with news about Adobe Creative Cloud – the CS Subscription replacement.

Adobe has been somewhat vague about the pricing for those of us who want to only use certian applications, but we suspect that there won’t be an option, now.

So what does that mean? You’ll have to be more careful about your time management on a project, and you’ll have to pay attention to the application cost for each estimate you create.

More Bad News

As we mentioned earlier, Adobe has been vague about pricing. The Adobe Creative Cloud FAQ states that subscriptions will be starting at $49.99 a month for 1-year plans.

What about the part-time freelance designers that need to use CS6 for just a month or two? You’re probably SOL.

If Adobe starts operating their subscriptions like rental real-estate, that means a month-to-month subscription will cost significantly more.

But hey, maybe they’ll surprise us with a low price-point.

Finally, How to Use This Info

If you have steady work that will pay for that $600/year bill, go for it! It’s much less expensive than buying CS6 Master Collection, that’s for sure.

And it’ll be broken into payments instead of a whopping bill up-front.

If you’re a part-time freelancer, you’re just going to have to wait for more information. But regardless of Adobe’s new pricing table, you’ll want to roll the cost into your freelance projects.

Comment Away

Let’s hear from other designers. What do you think about the switch to Creative Cloud? Are you worried about the cost? Any advice on using the subscription service? Let us and everybody else know!

Alt+Tab / Command+Tab

Welcome to Nascent Studio’s new series of articles! The Keyboard Shortcut (of the) Week.

Today we have a classic shortcut that should help immensely with task switching, as that’s what it’s designed to do. Switch tasks…

Alt+Tab

For Windows designers out there, flip back and forth from Photoshop to Illustrator or InDesign by pressing Alt+Tab on your keyboard.

Windows 7 currently has a very nice interface for task switching using Alt+Tab, with a small preview thumbnail of each open window. Now you can glance at whichever window you want to have open and just tap a few keys to get there faster than moving your mouse and clicking around. Brilliant.

Command+Tab

For our Mac users out there, the task switching shortcut is almost the same. Just mash down on Command+Tab instead of Alt, and you’re good to go.

The interface is almost the same and the animations are very nice.

The Challenge!

This series of articles is to discover the most useful keyboard shortcuts for a designer’s life, then challenge other designers to use one per week to develop the habit and increase your productivity.

So whether you’re a designer or just a curious, nerdy client, follow along and learn some good keyboard habits.

brainstorming. by Addicted2Addiction on Flickr

We’ve spoken about corporate identity and brand design, so let’s actually get you started on the path to a great corporate identity and a well-recognized brand.

This will be a multi-part series that will guide you step-by-step through the identity creation and design process. By the end of this mini-course, you should be ready to go with a great brand package.

Let’s get started.

Brainstorm Your USP

A USP is your Unique Selling Point/Proposition. This is the basis for your company, and it has to be UNIQUE.

Your USP can’t be “I want to sell pancakes,” it should be much more specific than that.

Try “I want to sell low-cost pancakes with gourmet flavors to night shift workers that have a constant craving for breakfast food.”

Or “I want to open a pancake shop with “alternative” employees that offer great service while insulting the customers in a playful manner.” (Similar businesses have a similar concept and they’ve succeeded, believe it or not).

How Do We Get There?

First, pick your favorite brainstorming method – FreeMind on a laptop for us. You can use pen and paper, a whiteboard, or just a word processor.

It really doesn’t matter. Just figure out something that you’re comfortable with.

Now think of every word that describes your company. The morals your company portrays, the quirks your company prides itself on, and anything else that pops into your head.

Do this alone, then with a friend or company partners if you can.

Link it All Together

Look at your storm of brains and pick out the words that “click” the most with you. The words that seem to hold the pure essence of your company.

Now write them on a separate list and let that list curate in your mind for an hour, a day, a week. However long you need to come up with a unique service offering that will appeal to your clients and customers.

You now have a USP, it might need some work, but it’s a start. Revise it as necessary, but don’t make it boring. Keep in mind that this is for branding and identity use, it doesn’t have to be “front end” – it’s not your slogan, it’s how your company behaves.

Get Ready for Next Week

We’ll continue the next stage of your brand identity development next week. You have your USP, now it’s time to figure out some company imagery (via inspiration).

We’d love to get some designer and entrepreneur feedback on these articles, so if you have any tips about developing a USP, leave a comment and follow our Client-Ed RSS feed.

Glimpse of Josh's Workspace

Note: This post is a couple of days late, it was saved as a draft and I forgot to schedule it, my mistake.

This is an article that I (Josh) have been working on for quite some time. Changes in productivity, systems, and furniture can change the way your day goes drastically, and our recent changes have definitely changed the direction of this article.

It started as a preview of our operations for clients and now we have an article focused on time for our peers.

The Value of Time

This is something that, until very recently, I hadn’t been able to comprehend. I was scattered, busy at all hours of the day (and night), and I didn’t get to spend much time with my friends and family.

Now I understand that productivity isn’t about getting as much done as possible, but it’s about maximizing my work time (and limiting it) so that I can enjoy my time with my wife during my free time.

Allysia (the Mrs. and my business partner) has her own schedule, but I’d like to share a rough idea of mine.

Time Blocks

I’d like to point out that I only “schedule” things in time blocks, not specific times of day. I have a variable sleep schedule that forces me to work when I wake up, whenever that may be.

So here it goes:

• Hours 1-2 – Wake up. Walk the dog. Get ready for work. Read my news feeds while eating a healthy breakfast.
• Hours 3-6 – First block of Work Time. I focus on completing my daily to-do list early in the day. This usually involves one of two design projects that we take on at a time, otherwise I focus on building things to sell on the Envato Network or learning something new (software, code, etc.)
• Hours 7-8 - Two-hour lunch break. I like to work out before I eat lunch, either a full-body workout with weights, or Yoga on days that I’m feeling tense. The rest of the time in my lunchbreak is dedicated to reading (for pleasure) and getting some fresh air with our dog.
• Hours 9-12 - Second block of Work Time. This is where I try to focus on our second design project. I also pull up my “GTD Next Action Steps” list and work on as much of that as possible if time permits.

That covers the most rigid parts of my daily schedule for the studio – my day starts at approximately 7 a.m. and ends at 7 p.m. on normal days. The rest of my day is more fluid than this. I’ve also found that if I keep this routine fairly fluid as well, then I’m a happy camper.

Note: For those of you familiar with the Getting Things Done philosophy, you may notice that I have a daily to-do list in addition to my “Next Actionable Steps” list(s). I would like to make a point that my daily list pulls directly from my next steps list. The additional structure gives me more of a framework for my days. This extra bit of pressure pushes me to be slightly more productive during my two blocks of work time.

What Was the Point?

Well, I’m simply sharing what has worked the best for me.

I highly encourage my work-at-home peers to try something similar with their time. Set aside some strict work time and set reasonable goals for yourself using a system (like GTD).

If anybody has some suggestions on “editing my day,” then leave a comment. I’d love to hear them.

Multitasking Kills by Daquella Manera on Flickr

Recent (and old) articles around the internet have indicated that multitasking is the devil. Well, maybe not the devil, but a productivity killer, anyway.

We support this ideal of no multitasking, and that’s part of the reason why we don’t take on more than 2 projects at a time.

Multitasking is a Myth

A person can’t actually multitask. A multi-core computer processor can, but a brain can’t.

A person actually experiences rapid task-switching, meaning that we can’t concentrate on two things at once. Just one thing at a time.

And when we switch back and forth, what happens? We lose concentration and time.

According to this article, our productivity can drop as much as 40% when we’re multitasking due to lost concentration.

The Solution

Work on fewer things at once. Or simply focus on one thing at a time.

This is part of the reason why we only take on a very select few projects at a time. If we don’t have to worry about 3 projects at once, right now, then we can focus on one project in the morning, one project in the afternoon.

And the results? Better designs for our clients, less stress for us.

How should you use this information?

By doing less task-switching yourselves. See if you can plan out specific blocks of time for specific activities, ignoring everything else during those blocks of time.

More than that, try to focus your drive on fewer projects at a time. Need a site for your business and it’s tax-time, too? Pick one task and do it, once that one’s finished, move to the next.

It will make a huge difference in both your personal and professional lives. Imagine the relief of only dealing with 1 thing at a time.

Suggested Tools

We have a few suggestions on what you can do to help with this new “No Multi-Task-Switching” ideal.

It all boils down to:

• a lock for your office (especially if you work at home)
• some noise-canceling headphones
• a playlist with nothing but instrumental music

A lock keeps people out. They can bash the door down or be very loud if they really need your attention.

Noise-canceling headphones help you ignore people when they are just being moderately loud.

And an instrumental music playlist will keep you focused without accidentally affecting the language centers in your brain.

What about the rest of the single-taskers out there – anything else you would suggest to clients in order to avoid multitasking? Or another good reason to avoid multitasking? Let us know in the comments.