Blog

Design Leadership

What is Design Leadership?

6 things that are important qualities of a great design leader.

Freelancing

How to get freelance work as a designer. I’ll also share my number one tip that helped me get freelance work time after time. Useful stuff to help you dance the freelance.

Hit me up if you need some freelance work done, I’m available!

Be a kind Designer

How to be a kind designer, not just a good designer. Taking my cue from an inspirational conversation between Chris Do and Kathryn Dyer, I discuss being gentle and kind as a designer.

What is an ECD?

Have you ever wondered what it is that I do as an Executive Creative Director? I discuss my role and responsibilities. I also share the mystery around my black T-shirts.

Struggle

Chris Do, from The Futur interviews Kathryn Dyer in this absolutely beautiful conversation about personal struggle, vulnerability and self-help.

DoubleTake

DoubleTake by FiLMiC Pro

FiLMiC Pro is one of the best video camera apps for the iPhone & iPad, and they recently released a new app called DoubleTake which allows you to take advantage of multi-cam recording allowing you to record on two cameras on your phone at the same time.

If you have the iPhone 11 Pro, then you are able to use two of the four available cameras, which include the selfie camera. This could be great for recording yourself while shooting a scene or have close and wide shots of the same subject.

Best of all, it’s free!

Do you need talent?

Do you need talent?

Do you need to have talent to be a designer, or is design something you can learn? Often people ask me this question when trying to decide whether a career in design would be good for them. You can learn to be a designer, but that does not mean you are a talented designer.

IGTV is failing

I noticed this week that the IGTV button is gone from the apps home screen and when you upload a new video, it prompts you to upload to IGTV.

If TikTok is anything to go by, it’s clear that there is a demand for video, but in what format. Seems people’s ability to consume long-form video has diminished. But then what’s happening with YouTube?

I’m not equipped to give answers, possibly just a theory on what I think is happening.

I believe that short-form video content is something people prefer to consume on their mobile devices. Quick, fast and effortlessly, if not mindless consumption. While content viewed on YouTube is sought out.

If YouTube content is sought after, then why would IGTV fail? My theory is that you watch it on your phone and people don’t generally have the same attention span on the smaller device. I don’t think people are watching longer YouTube videos on their mobile devices either.

I was considering ditching YouTube at the end of last year, but given the poor uptake of the IGTV app, monetization etc, it’s not looking like IGTV is the right solution, even though more video is being consumed over mobile every day.

My new strategy will be to make short-form video content for mobile and long-form content for YouTube where someday I will be able to monetize my channel and hopefully earn an income sharing my wisdom.

Be sure to check out my YouTube channel and Instagram.

Design Books

I share some of the design books and I have been reading over the past year which I recommend. Books I mention in my video

This Is Service Design Doing https://www.thisisservicedesigndoing.com

Burn Your Portfolio https://www.amazon.com/Burn-Your-Port…

Do Cool Sh*t https://www.amazon.com/Do-Cool-Sh-Bus…

Design the Life You Love https://www.amazon.com/Design-Life-Lo…

Manifest Now https://www.amazon.com/Manifest-Now-I…

Atomic Habits https://www.amazon.com/Atomic-Habits-…

Made to stick https://www.amazon.com/Made-Stick-Ide…

Solving Product Design Exercises https://www.amazon.com/Solving-Produc…

Meeting Design https://www.amazon.com/Meeting-Design…

Form Design Patterns https://www.amazon.com/Form-Design-Pa…

Expressive Design Systems https://abookapart.com/products/expre…

Design Systems https://www.amazon.com/Design-Systems…

Web Design https://www.amazon.com/Design-Evoluti…

I need your questions

I’m considering switching from weekly videos to almost daily videos/vlogs, and I need some help creating content.

I could just write a list of topics I feel I could discuss, which is what I currently do.

However, in an attempt to be more relevant and connect with my audience, I’d like to answer your design questions and help you solve your design problems.

Please feel free to email me hello@craigjamieson.com and ask away.

Thanks