I originally made this coronavirus icon for the Noun Project. Their approval turnaround is currently 4.5 months, so I'm releasing the art for free here in hopes that it can be of use now.

The package contains svg, eps, and png files. Download the package.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

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I’ve been a fan of the Noun Project for a while. At first as a customer, then as a creator. I started by uploading a few icon rejects from my hard drive. You know, those leftover Illustrator bits all designers have hanging around.

Last fall, I decided to take the passive income experiment further. I challenged myself to figure out the Illustrator pen tool once and for all by creating a collection of icons. They say collections sell better, and I wanted to put that theory to the test. I ended up creating two collections: one in outline style and one in fill style. If the first few months are any indication, it's true.

Noun Project Pros:

• Unlike other stock sites, there’s no way to view by popularity so you can’t game the system. It’s very much set it and forget it for me.
• It’s a great way to make a little money from your Illustrator graveyard.
• The monthly “Cha-ching!” royalty emails make me smile.

Noun Project Cons:

• You can’t make changes yourself to your icons or keywords. All changes must be requested by email.
• There are only two rights options: CC0-No Rights Reserved (Public Domain) or Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY). For the latter, people have to either credit you as the author or pay to use your icon without credit.
• Unless you upload a massive amount of icons, you won’t get rich. Current rates are single purchase, $1.20 (fixed); subscriptions, 40% of the total shared subscription revenue (last month this was .11); API usage, 40% of the total shared subscription revenue (last month this was .02). Then there are the free downloads.
• There’s a Google alert on my name, and I’ve never received an alert from an icon credit for a free download. Ever. Last year, I had 4,711 free downloads. So much for the honor system! If I spent a lot of time making these, that would bum me out enough to cancel my account. But for now, I'm content with the warm fuzzy of contributing to the world's visual language.

Despite the cons, the Noun Project is a great little experiment in passive income. It blows my mind that a little clock originally made for a client handout in 2013 has been downloaded 5,967 times. The way I see it, it’s like someone handing me ten or twenty bucks every month. Who can argue with that?

Have you had any experiences, good or bad, with passive income or the Noun Project?

The post How I more than doubled my Noun Project passive income appeared first on GiansantiDesign.

Here’s why: After years of working at home, I started sharing a studio with a crappy wifi situation. Instead of letting it drive me crazy, I embraced the sad internet situation and started to work offline as much as possible when I’m there. Total productivity boom!

The only downside? Accessing my digital planner there was frustrating. So I started experimenting. For months, I printed out a weekly calendar layout from Apple Calendar and marked it up with the week’s events. It was ugly, but it did the trick and taught me a few things:

• As a visual person, seeing the white space in my week really helped me plan my time better than having it in list form.
• A vertical planner worked best for my brain.
• Carting a loose piece of paper back and forth in my bag was a recipe for disaster.

Next, I started looking for an off-the-shelf paper planner with a vertical layout that didn’t offend my design sensibilities. Tall order! This one [link removed] comes closest so far to doing everything I need.

It has an area to jot down action items for each day. I keep a separate “life” to-do list, so each week I’ll assign a few items from there to the days on the planner. Dishing out that list in easy-to-implement bits has finally whittled it down to a happy level.

The planner also has a notes area in the margin where I write the status of every project on my work schedule, leaving a little space after each one so I can update statuses as the week progresses. Nothing elaborate. Just the project name or abbreviation and status.

Every Friday, I spend about 5 to 10 minutes transferring appointments and deadlines for the upcoming week from my digital calendar (currently Apple Calendar) to the planner. I block off chunks of time (including travel to and from) for every meeting and appointment. This lets me easily see when I’ll have large blocks of time for creative work.

The key to planner success is to think of it as a planning tool NOT a calendar. That means I don’t go crazy filling out events beyond the upcoming week. Since I cross off events and items as completed, there’s really no need to keep the planner after the year is over. And since it’s only filled out one week ahead, if it went missing, I wouldn’t freak out.

I can't tell you how much this method's helped my productivity. What's working for you?

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It’s taken me a few months to get used to working from a laptop (thank you, Dropbox!) and packing a lunch, but I'm really starting to enjoy the new routine.

Bonus: Having a separate location is making it easier to stop work at a reasonable hour. Rumor has it that the Delavan is haunted, so I don’t want to be there too late!

Stop by 270 to say hello the next time you’re in the building!

Updated 2/24/20: Thanks for the memories, 270! It’s back to home office with cats mode for me.

The post New studio, fresh perspective appeared first on GiansantiDesign.

But what about those times when the answer isn’t so clear?

Assuming there’s room on your plate, if you can answer ‘yes’ to most of the following, it might be worthwhile:

1. Is the work for an organization or cause that you believe in?
If you’re going to design for free, it better be for something you care about.

2. Will it expose your work to a larger audience?
Pro bono work can be a great introduction to other (paying) organizations and causes. It’s also a fun opportunity to collaborate with people outside of your regular client base.

3. Is there an efficient creative review process?
If you're volunteering your work, you don't want it to suffer death by committee. The organization should benefit from your contribution and you should end up feeling good about it. If a million people are involved in approving the design, that's probably not gonna happen.

4. Can your contribution be credited?
Will the work carry a credit or a link to your website? If not, can the organization give you a shout out in some way? Asking for credit isn’t selfish since you’ll promote them as well by making people aware of your contribution.

5. Does the project give you a chance to expand your skills or work in a different style than usual?
Pro bono work can be a great way to build up your portfolio in new areas or try something fun.

The #ShowUsCNY14 project hit four out of five for me. That’s pretty good!

I’m really looking to forward to sharing images of my favorite things about CNY with the world. Hopefully some of you will participate too!

The details:
#ShowUsCNY14 is a community-wide project harnessing the creativity of individuals and the power of social media to create a crowd-sourced tapestry of life in Central New York. From June 25–30, 2014, contributors will post images with the hashtag #ShowUsCNY14 to Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, or Google+. All of the submissions will form a real-time collage on RebelMouse. A jury (including yours truly) will select 30 of the best images for an exhibition at the Everson Museum of Art from August 21–30.

What makes you say yes to pro bono work?

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In its heyday in the 1920s, the hotel was described as "the most complete and perfectly equipped of the smaller hotels in New York State" by the Syracuse Journal. Eventually it closed, became apartments, and then sat vacant.

Today, under new management, the property is reimagined as a modern, boutique hotel and restaurant serving the Finger Lakes and the quaint town of Seneca Falls.

The rebrand's purpose: Recall the hotel’s grand history while cultivating a welcoming, contemporary vibe.

Client collaboration made this project especially fun to work on. Will update as more elements are rolled out. Watch this space!

The post The Gould Hotel | Recent work appeared first on GiansantiDesign.

Christie and I met on twitter, and I’ve followed her calligraphy journey there and on Instagram during the past year or so. It absolutely boggles my mind that she’s achieved so much in the short time that she’s been working on her calligraphy business. She’s a natural at it—and at teaching too.

As we filled the tracing paper with practice shapes and letters, I found myself drifting into an almost trance state. Look at how hard I’m concentrating here! (Photo courtesy of bedsidesign)

Calligraphy is completely alien to me. Sketching letters for a design or logo usually involves mimicking or tweaking an existing typeface. Resisting the urge to fill in letters with my pen was super challenging. In my coloring books, I was the kid who outlined the pictures in black crayon and filled them in with a heavy coating of waxy color!

There are so many variables to calligraphy—ink, paper, pressure. By the end of the workshop, I had a healthy respect for the creativity and control that go into making letters look effortlessly organic!

Maybe down the road—after much more practice!—I’ll incorporate calligraphic elements into a logo? Or maybe I’ll keep at it just for fun?

Either way, it's a perfect exercise to get the juices flowing. So much of graphic design is about control. Doing something hands-on opens up my thinking every time.

Where do your best ideas come from?

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The other night, I went to an old friend’s house for dinner. Midway between the salad (roasted beets, goat cheese, and field greens, yum!) and the main course, conversation turned to how much we’ve changed in the 20-plus years since we met.

Vainly (and comically) we then each pointed out how we thought our face had aged over the years. Funny thing is that I had never noticed the negative things my friend saw in himself and vice versa.

Then he dropped this truth—paraphrased because I didn’t know it would turn into a blog post at the time:

“We see ourselves statically, in mirrors and photos. But others only see us in motion.” (Talk about a perfect tweetable, right?)

On my way home, the bigger lesson hit me: Self-absorption is the enemy of your brand.

The best way to understand your brand is to look at it through your customer’s eyes. Meet them where they are. Walk through the world with them.

Otherwise, you might as well be talking to the mirror.

Have you ever been guilty of navel-gazing and lost sight of the big (brand lesson) picture? I’d love to hear about it in the comments.

p.s. No more cat photos for a while. I promise!

The post Why the mirror is the #1 enemy of your brand appeared first on GiansantiDesign.

It’s one of the hardest things for me to wrap my head around when I do web work since I come from the world of print.

Ready or not!

So today, I’m flinging open the curtains and going live with my next website update while I’m still working out the remaining kinks.

You know what? It feels pretty liberating!

I'm really curious though. How many of you have ever held off doing something because you worried you weren’t ready yet? And were you really not ready or was perfectionism getting in your way too?

Tell me in the comments!

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What do these things have in common, you ask?

I had plenty of mixed feelings about my Disney adventure at first—excited to spend time with family but not so sure Aunt Joanna would love the Disney experience itself.

Then, like magic, shortly before my trip, Marie Forleo tweeted a new-to-me quote from Walt Disney:

“Disneyland is a work of love. We didn’t go into Disneyland just with the idea of making money.”

Looking at Disney World through that lens really upped the appreciation factor for me. I learned that, regardless of my opinion on the work itself, it’s mighty hard to hate on someone’s work of love.

Seeing that first quote prompted me to look at more words from Walt, like this gem on how to succeed:

“Just do your best work—then try to trump it.”

Awesome!

Or Walt's profit formula:

“I suppose my formula might be: dream, diversify and never miss an angle.”

Almost 50 years after his death, Walt Disney continues to be relevant and his work still oozes passion—that’s a pretty magical accomplishment.

Have you ever learned a lesson from an unexpected source? Tell me in the comments.

Sources: How to Be Like Walt: Capturing the Magic Every Day of Your Life ( 2004), by Pat Williams, with Jim Denney, and “Walt’s Profit Formula: Dream, Diversity, and Never Miss an Angle” in Wall Street Journal (4 February 1958).

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