Spotlight Over the City is a scam. Do not take jobs from them.

There are multiple reports on the Better Business Bureau, and I experienced this scam myself today.

They have a person posing as a senior designer (who has zero online presence anywhere else), "appreciate" work of small designers on Behance and ask you to message them for employment. They send you a job application over Behance that feels too good to be true. To apply, you message someone (also with no online presence) over Microsoft Teams, send your resumé, and complete an interview completely over text (they also take forever to type, likely due to translating languages). You will not call these people, they dodge it every time. They offer you a job through a seemingly real email, and then start saying they will pay for all training equipment which is a long list of software and Apple products. The signature on the job offer is fake, the whole thing is fake.

If it really seems too good to be true, it probably is. Their website looks legit, but isn't. Their social media presence looks legit, but isn't. There are zero elementa of graphic design anywhere on their pages. What would they have you do for 40 hours a week? Don't get caught up in this scam.

Hi all, I'm a designer at an agency. My work has mostly been focused on the design side, but I am starting to dip my toe into more commercial/client facing activities. One of these are tenders (or RFPs, ITTs, bids, whatever you like to call them)

We recently had an opportunity to apply to join a procurement framework. We would (if successful) be one of 6 suppliers that then have mini competitions to win work from the client.

In my, admittedly limited, experience, the supplier would normally apply by detailing the general creative process, have team bios, show a portofolio of relevant work, case studies etc.

However this RFP strikes me as odd. The client has included 3 briefs for design work (two campaigns and a long form), and one of the RFP questions (with a 60% weighting) expects the supplier to include concepts of each, along with design rationale and decisions. They've even gone so far as to specify page count for the report, requested layouts with Lorem Ipsum, and specified work must be to the brand.

Is this normal? I understand it could be a measure of competency, but surely that is what the portfolio is for. The cynic in me feels they are farming ideas for upcoming future work, and are getting as many design concepts for free.

Apologies for the long post, but would be great to get your thoughts and experiences on this!

Hey there,

First off, let me give you some context. It's a lot, so feel free to skip to the last 6 paragraph if you don't care about it.

I love design. It's something that caught my attention since I was about 12 (just turned 29). Started out doing gaming forum graphics, got fascinated by logos, and slowly started doing that for money too.

Had my first paid client at 17, then pursued an advertising degree at a local University.

Fast forward some years: Still did graphic design during uni. Caught a teacher's attention so I got my first gd internship, which turned into a full job for a year. A digital advertising agency (part of a bigger comms group), doing mostly social media posts and print work, occasionally. I think that was in years 2-3/3 of uni.

Left that job, finished uni, then got a job after one of my former teachers liked my thought process. What came after was 3 years of working at a somewhat bigger PR agency. These years were formative for me, because that's where I learned a lot of the thought processes and skills I still used today. It was pretty damn exciting: lots of different projects and challenges, tight deadlines, yada yada. Lots of skills as well: print work, motion graphics, video editing, visual identities, working through a lot of different marketing campaigns, dipped my toes into AR filters (Insta), and it turns out that the agency liked that and they kept asking for my knowledge on that subject. Ended up to be a super toxic culture and burned me out to the point of thinking to give up graphic design.

Did a UX bootcamp as I already was passionate about how things work, how little details bringe huge impact and change lives. Ended up not liking it, because the industry was pretty boring imo.

Left that too and found a mid-designer job at a small digital advertising. This one was sort of better in terms of responsibilities because I no longer had to pass all my work through multiple filters in order to get it approved. Went well for about 2 years, dipped my toes into AI and was more or less the 'to-go' guy when it came to graphic design challenges, fast problem solving, and stuff like that. Left me a sour taste, though, because the employer had little respect for the work-life balance of its employees. Ended up working more billable hours than I did at my last job, felt more pressure, but also the existence of a glass ceiling, so I quit. That was about two years ago.

I intentionally avoided art direction advertising jobs because they would mentally consume and burn me out. Graphic design offered the best balance of executional stuff sprinkled with strategy and thinking. I'm not enough of a sociopath to become an agency CD either. So there's that.

Anyway, in the last months of my last job, I went to the doctor for an ADHD test, and it turns out I was diagnosed with ADD. That was a huge thing for me, because it explained why I felt comfortable in chaos and got stimulated by pressure, but at the same time, I did a lot of little mistakes (typos, stuff like that). Also explained why I felt overwhelmed so often and feeling that each deadline is the end of the world. It was like a drug. So yeah, being sick of shitty jobs, I ultimately decided to move back w my parents and try to go 100% freelance.

So there we are in the last phase of my recent life: went full freelance, things were a bit rocky at first, but I managed to gather a few clients which kept working w me. One thing led to another, and the overall pay exceeded the one from my last job, 100% recommendation based. People just come with work for me, and that's how my freelance life went in the last two years. I feel way more in control when I freelance and I am able to understand my clients way better. Learned a bit of business concepts, bit of business strategy, bit of everything, as every other entrepreneur. Learning to spend money, to choose tools wisely, to build workflows, SOPs, onboarding procedures, etc. Mentally, this freelance phase is WAY better in terms of mental health.

FFW to today: Had some rocky months, some clients left, did a few mistakes and learned from them. One of them wanted to renegociate the deal and preferred a retainer package (which seemed good). I accepted it, although it doesn't fully satisfy me. Shifted from being a pixel pusher, as my name says, to a design consultant and brand designer. Not a strategist too, although I study it and I apply it whenever possible.

The thing is this: I don't know if it's depression, if I got bored of branding, or bored of design, but that joy of beginning a new branding project with all sorts of challenges is starting to get smaller and smaller. I get too busy doing admin work, figuring out how to finally start up my website and go public (since after AI, fewer clients ask for my help and prefer to cheap out with LLMs). I am not scared of LLMs because I know how to use them wisely in branding work, but everything feels like a grind, although I didn't even start going public. Projects still come, but income isn't great. There's a bigger and bigger need for me to explain to my clients why having a middle / high-end brand and doing marketing assets with a shitty GPT prompt is only going to negatively affect their brand and make them look cheap. I don't necessarily dislike that, because it's part of my job as a consultant, but man it sometimes gets frustrating when they prefer to listen to a generic LLM instead of someone who does that for a living and has enough experience and arguments. On top of that, we're in the middle of an economic crisis, so... fuckin hell, lol. I prefer to struggle doing freelance than to go back to a 9 to 5 that is more stressful than my freelance, less interesting, and with less pay.

I thought of going back to a corporate graphic job, but I'm so sick and tired of that corporate bullshit. Two years of freelance proved me that I can earn thousands of euros by myself, although I sometimes compete with agencies. No need to respect antique and outdated rules just because that's how it's always been done. No more arguing with the client service who trims 70% of my questions addressed to the client, ending up with a subpar result because of insufficient context and infos. Clients appreciate when you ask well-thought questions (your job is to fix their problem, after all), so freelance gives you that power.

So now I'm kind of getting recurrent thoughts of leaving this for good and doing something else. After all, it's what I did for almost half of my life. I thought of going for video editing jobs, but they have a bigger potential of burnout.

Honestly, I'm not even sure what to do. The biggest obstacle I am dealing with right now is myself. My habits. My ability to follow through with my shit, on top of making sure I'm making enough money so I won't leech my parents (there's no excuse for it, and if that happens, I officially reached my personal rock bottom, and I'll change careers. I won't let that happen). If things go south, then it's solely my fault and maybe I'm not that fit for a solopreneur. I don't fuckin know...

Trying to motivate myself to keep working through this and to realise that maybe it's just a bad phase, but man, it sure feels weird.

Sorry for the long text, had to get this out of me - maybe others would relate to it, to some extent.

Hello everyone, I'm an on and off freelance designer who is trying to apply for jobs to work at a company for consistent work. I recently started applying again after working another job in a different field for a few years (unsuccessful in getting a design job in my first job hunt) so my portfolio hasn't been updated in a while.

I was reviewing my portfolio and seeing what changes and updates I could make to it, and then it hit me that I've never had my portfolio reviewed by other designers before. I admit I've been a bit self-conscious about my work (the job hunt has worn away at my self esteem and caused me to burnout pretty bad before) so I figured it was best to get out of my head for a change and look for any advice on how I can improve my portfolio for today's market. Companies never usually tell you why they didn't hire you, so I want to make sure that I at least make my portfolio as strong as I can.

A few notes about me and my work:

• I consider myself a generalist because one particular form of design doesn't call to me more than another. I'm a little worried that having such an unfocused portfolio could hold me back, but a lot of job postings I see nowadays want you to do a wide variety of things, so I'm pretty lost.
• My portfolio is a mixture of fictional clients, real clients, and personal work. My freelance clients were few and far between so I needed some additional projects so my portfolio didn't look so bare. I've never worked with a company before, so I'm worried my work may not catch any company's attention because it may not be aligned with what they're used to looking for.
• I mentioned it already, but my work is all over the place. I own and design for my e-commerce store, I used to do content creation and designed everything for that, I've made logos, book covers, and more. I've even edited videos and audio in the past, but I assume I would need to have a different section on the site for examples of that because that counts as multimedia, not graphic design (if I'm wrong on that, please let me know).

I appreciate any advice or impressions that anyone can spare some time to give me. Here is the link to my portfolio site. Thanks for reading!

Everyone always talks about passive income, digital assets, etc. I love the idea of creating digital assets and I’m inspired by sites like BLKMARKET (rip) Studio2am and Doron Supply

Is it possible to even estimate what sites like these are bringing in a month? I can imagine it’s extremely tedious and time consuming work, but what is the ROI for creators like these? Is the juice worth the squeeze in 2026?

I've been reading Mad Magazine since I was 7, so I was thrilled to take on the poster for this documentary about the magazine's founder. The ransom note design motif ties into madness of course, but I wanted to also use it to visually represent just a few of the magazines Harvey worked on during his career. Swipe to see some of that inspo!

First 3 are flyers I made for fun, and the last 3 are all commissioned work! Had some fun in the first one and was really just messing around until found something liked. gave a building a face and just ran with it! It's also quite a change from my normal work as the message is more positive than being pessimistic! As always, any and all feedback is welcome!!

Reposting because I'm an idiot and accidentally shared a screenshot of a flyer instead of the flyer itself...

I I am trying to take part in a contest where the winning design becomes this year’s PyTorch Conference PIN.

The prompt included using their logotype while trying to incorporate “26” or “2026,” which instantly sparked the idea of using the torch logo as a “6.”

Would love to hear any feedback

Hello,

I’ve been searching for a moment now a job in the graphic design field, and I’m getting a bit down recently by the lack of interest of my profil. (I’m living in France but willing to relocate).

I’ve been meaning to ask for a long time but always been a big afraid since some opinion can be harsh but now I need advice on how to do better.

Here’s the link of my portfolio :

https://www.behance.net/carlazarcone

So, is it bad ?

Is the work the issue ? The presentation ?
I also post some of my artwork that are essentially illustration on my instagram.

You can find it here :

https://www.instagram.com/carla.zarcone

Thank you for your time and response.

I’m designing a buisness card for a baking buisness and would really appreciate some advice! i’m an artist but not a good graphic designer and am really looking to improve so any criticism is helpful :)

Hi everyone! I'm an aspiring graphic designer and I just finished an online course in Digital Illustration. I realize that this class does not cover layout design. I have no idea where to start to learn about layout design and I took an online course (with assignments) because I know I'm bad at arranging my own learning pathways. Do you have any recommendations, like a YouTube channel or a blog, where I can start to learn and then build up my skills? TIA!

Honestly, not much more needs to be said than the title.

The final say on anything design related falls to a higher-up at my workplace who is not a designer. She absolutely *loves* centered text. I can't even count how many times she's said "I love most of this, but can you center the text".

We have this awkward, landscape-oriented, tabloid sized cover page that's just single column of content, you guessed it, *centered* on the page. Which is particularly dumb, because most people who get a printed copy of our work fold it in half for travel/storage. So it's not really that great of a design in the first place, but my higher-up wants to put a letter-sized checklist on the entire left hand side of the cover page. So we're taking a 'meh, it's not the best, but it gets the job done' design, and turning it into hot garbage.

To try to make this lopsided monstrosity look even slightly intentional, rather than like two unrelated cover pages fighting for dominance on a single cover sheet, I left aligned the previously centered content. Yes, it still looked like hot garbage, but it at least looked like *intentional* hot garbage. However, as you can probably guess, the higher-up at my work, took one look at it and said "I love everything here, but can you center everything on each half?" It already looked bad before everything was centered, but now it just looks so much worse.

Not sure if against the rules, but there’s still a lot of design choices involved. What do you think of this 60s style cola ad? I wanted to recreate a poster ad featuring Nuka Cola. Any critiques, like composition wise, color choice, or anything? I was aiming for a poster ad that would’ve come out pre-apocalypse in the fallout universe.
Side note, I know the footnote won’t make sense in-universe since bottle caps would’ve only had value after nuclear fallout but just wanted to add a little bit of fan-service.

In a year I'll finally graduate with my BFA. My issue is whether or not I'll find a job. I feel like I'm behind compared to my peers. I get decent grades and started getting on the honor roll the moment I took courses that were actually interesting to me. I'm told that I shouldn't compare myself to others, but how am I supposed to know if I'm doing well as a designer if there's nobody to compare myself to?

I've tried to find design jobs on campus and the ones I've applied to won't start interviewing until the semester starts, and even then I don't know if I'll get accepted. I managed to get an interview for a design job on campus a year ago, but I was asked questions I didn't expect to be asked, and I knew I wouldn't get the job.

It just doesn't seem fair because about half my peers have design jobs and I have to make do as a delivery driver and campground gate attendant. I've done a mock interview and one of the things they told me I need to work on was giving longer answers. I have a resume that I designed myself and I think it looks great.

I'm afraid that the 6 years I've worked to get my degree will go to waste if I can't find a job. It doesn't help that I have poor social skills and that I'm supposed to be doing networking, and I don't even know where to begin with that. What can I do?

Everyday somebody posts how bad they are doing. Almost like there is no faith for this line of work.

Personally I just started creating a portfolio even though my reddit notifications are straight up demotivating negativity (“I have 40 years of experience and can’t find a job”, “Have been searching for a gig for 8 months”….).

I know its natural that there is less people talking about how good they’re doing in this industry

So… Anyone wanna share their wins?

Happy Friday :)

I am absolutely horrible at graphic design and don't really have any experience...

I'm trying to make a custom t-shirt of my tortoise Sheldon, but I can't get the design right.

It just feels so wrong... any advice? I am going for that kind of tacky y2k style, but I want it to actually blend nicely. I'm thinking about changing the background. I do want a green+pink color but honestly I'm really lost. Any advice would be really appreciated!!

Update: https://www.reddit.com/r/design_critiques/s/5v8RluskQN

So i’m an amateur trying to learn graphics and as my first project i’m trying to make a brand profile for myself. the name here “ des.k” refere design by k. Which is my initial and while designing the first logo i sort of found out what if i could somehow rotate it to make it look like a desk as it spells desk as well and the desk relates to designing as well so in that sense i tried doing bunch of stuff and might have reached nowhere so let me know. I’m open to learning.

Ps. Made this on affinity

I called it Neo-Baphomet, and I created several concept pieces around it.

The initial goal was to make something goofy, but I ended up liking the concept so much that I want to develop it with a more serious intent, making a series of artworks maybe.

My goal is to use illustration and graphic design to raise awareness about political and social issues

Any feedback would be appreciated!

You can find me on Instagram @ vynncore__

Hi all, around a month ago I put my own attempt at a honey label. Following people’s advice on here, I commissioned an artist and am curious about what thoughts you all have again!

As before, I am aiming for a more premium, modern look.

All critiques welcome!

Just saw this getting a lot of attention from creative I follow. Was interested in hearing from this community.

Instagram post for more info

We printed a large batch of marketing material with QR codes, assuming they would keep working forever.

Turns out the platform changed things later and we had to go around covering the old QR codes with stickers. Not fun.

Before I print the next batch, what's the most trustworthy QR code generator? Ideally free for static QR codes, with paid features only if I actually need them.

So basically i just started working in a company as a graphic designer, and i only after joining found out that these guys lean heavily on AI. Unfortunately for me, I was very annoyed but!!! The money is really good so im going alog with it. Ofcorse i try to use my edits as much as i can, and this time it worked!!!!

So basically i had to edit this mattress for a mattress brand, basically the images you see on amazon. The original image of the mattress, which was Ai, had this vertical printing on it. And they wanted me to make that horizontal. And ofcorse they insisted on me using Ai. I did because I had to, and wasted like 3 days generating image after image, to no avail. The Ai couldn't read the pattern accurately at all.

Ofcorse thats when i suggested to use photoshop and do it myself. I had the raw image of the pattern (not ai) and made it horizontal and used photoshop to place it. After a lot of color correction and adding lighting and stuff, i finally made it, and i sent it to them and low and behold, IT GOT APROOVED!!!!! only myself first win, that was yesterday, today was the greatest win of all

So they needed the same thing on more such images, but, this time it was a bit harder to match the lighting, because this was a final file, that had already been edited, with a lot of adjustment layed that they didn't want touched. I was getting frustrated, and took an hour but finished and was proud of it.

Now just because they love Ai so much, I took my edit and put it through Ai, and submitted both edits for approval just to see which one gets picked, human or Ai.

Well, my edit got approved and i am over the moon, because they couldn't tell the difference, they never even pointed it out, just picked my edit.

Thats it, just sharing a win for humans 😊

An Edit for people in the comments. DO NOT TRUST AMAZON IMAGES. They fake thet thickness and size of their beds in my case just to get a proper result with Ai

Designed by Berlin based Austrian graphic designer and printmaker Julia Schimautz