Hey, everyone!
It's week 45 of 2023, and this is my high five.
As you've probably noticed, I skipped the last issue due to an illness (I gave a heads-up on my IG). It took me a while to get back on track and work on something I could report on. I'm happy I can share some updates again!
Let's start with Nollie first. It's been a while since I shared the last update on how our up-and-coming creative studio is doing. There is a lot, but I have to be careful not to spoil everything too fast. One thing I can share is that we are currently running our first studio collaboration ever with our friends at Yiskra. We've joined forces for a shared client project that will make us busy for the next few months. If things go well, we'll have some results to show early next year.
I'm slowly increasing my commitment to sharing more of my work. I finally got the green light to share previews of Matchday, an older project I worked on at STRV. There is a new video on my Instagram showing a card unwrapping animation, and I got one more post coming with more previews from the app itself. The funny thing is that I had to replace all the real player photos and names because of the licensing. That's why you'll see AI-generated player photos and (funny) fake names in those upcoming social posts.
Another thing related to sharing is that I'm now looking into reels (IG) and shorts (YT) as a way to spice things up on my socials. There is another client project I'd like to show you soon, and I find it interesting to try a short "mini-reel" video. Something similar I made for Showreelz a while back. I really enjoy creating these short 15-30-second videos. It makes me curious how designers could leverage them more to promote their work. I saw a couple of people doing it already, and I'd like to push it even further regarding creativity and execution.
As we're getting towards the end of this year (there's only 2 months left!), I'm slowly planning the title/theme/topic for 2024. To explain for those new here: Every time I plan a new year, I give it a title. It helps me set my goals and focus on things that matter from a high level. I wrote more about this approach in the post #14. This year's title is "Focus on myself", and I will share a full report of how it went in my final post of 2023. Now, looking into what could be next, I have a few great candidates who could follow up on this year's theme. I take this whole thing quite seriously, and I'm also consulting with my life coach/therapist. We're forming the plan together, ensuring it all makes sense.
Wrapping up a few smaller updates into one to finish off: I have…
Finished reading Why Has Nobody Told Me This Before? by Dr. Julie Smith (mentioned in the previous post)
Attended the first Webflow Meetup in Czechia to support my friends Jan Losert and Tomas Mrazek, who spoke there.
Updated the Showreelz site with a new sponsor and planned updates for the next iteration (new layout and filtering).
Have a great week, and talk again soon!
A.
[This post was written by a human, not AI.]
Links & inspiration
Stuff I'm currently digging:
💻 Website - Harry Atkins - Creative minimal portfolio with fun grid view options and details (designed by ID-C)
🗂️ Resource - BLKMarket - A gallery for digital assets, textures and effects. Some pretty cool freebies are available, too.
💟 Icons/glyphs - Glyphy - Copy & paste fancy fonts + cool symbols ☞✺✐™. I have a similar Figma plugin as well, but this site has more options.
🧩 Plugin - Gradient Map - Someone finally made a gradient map plugin for Figma. No need to switch to PS for some of the basic editing!
🗂️ Resource - UI Colors Generator - Quickly generate color palettes, including usage examples and contrast check.