If you have spent time on the web perusing design blogs then you have undoubtedly seen MediaMilitia.com. MediaMilitia is one of the most popular design blogs on the net specializing in freebies, tutorials and great content. I recently had the opportunity to sit down at my computer and have a great email conversation with Jeya, Media Militia’s founder and head honcho, on freebies, their effect on design, creative freedom and even a little snowboarding thrown in for good measure.

JC@resourcehive

Seeing as how this is our first discussion here at Resource Hive I think we will start with a topic that is near and dear to both of us – Freebies. Obviously your site pumps out tons of free content every week (kudos on this btw, it’s always top notch and comes out like clockwork) and here at the Hive I am dedicated to trolling the internet and finding all the great free resources that I can. So that’s it. What do you think about freebies? (How’s that for vague and open ended?)

Let’s get this party started!

Jeya@mediamilitia

First off, thank you so much for interviewing me. I really appreciate all the hard work and effort you put into collecting and promoting the great freebies on the net.

I have been a designer for over 10 years now and have always loved collecting freebies to use in my designs. However, most of the freebies that I would find would either be too small for print or the lacking the quality I was looking for. I used to sell my images to sites like istockphoto.com but I always felt like they were taking such a huge cut in the profit. That’s why one of my good friends and I decided to start up MediaMilitia.com. It was a way for us to sell our designs and resources and take the full profit of the sales. We had a freebies section on our original site that we promoted so hard that we were getting a good amount of traffic to those freebies pages. We decided after having the site up for about 6 months that we wanted to switch the business model and start giving all of our resources for free instead of selling them. We took a big hit in revenue initially, but once we got advertisers on the site it was back to normal. Unfortunately, my business partner has since left Media Militia because of the time it takes to create the resources and the money coming in wasn’t what he was expecting. As of now I fully run Media Militia by myself. I do have a lot of people helping me out by contributing to the site. I am very grateful to have people in my life that see the same vision as I do.

Seriously what designer doesnt love freebies? They are a great thing to have at your disposal. You can just drag in the files into your designs and see if they fit. If they don’t, move to the next batch. Barley anyone has the time to go set up a shot with lighting of an aquarium to get some liquid ink images, just to see if it looks good in your design. That’s why sites that offer up freebies are key to designers. You don’t have to spend any time or money to see if it looks good or not.

3D Shatter Effect Tutorial on Media Militia By Arno Van Waeyenberg

JC@resourcehive

I couldn’t agree more…I know for me freebies allow me to keep prices lower for clients that are on a limited budget. Case in point I just did a t-shirt design for a new clothing brand that are just getting started. The design I did uses their logo, some skulls from a free vector pack from thegoldenblack.com and some splattered watercolors from one of Media Militia’s watercolor pack. Now sure I could make a much cooler shirt by hand drawing the skulls and vectorizing them and then getting some splatters that are just right by throwing paint at some paper in my back yard…but the use of freebies cut the price more than in half for them. They are happy with the design and price (and the speed which I could finish it) and are now coming back for more intricate designs. A win win for everyone.

On some level though do you worry that you are losing out on profits by giving away so many resources? One of the things that always drew me to your site (and before I started the blog I had downloaded a lot of resources from you) was that you had so much there for the taking. Most sites offer a few freebies that represent a section of their pay services but to get what you really need you have to “show them the money” (yeah I know, horrible) so to speak. But you have taken the over the air tv/radio approach. Give the content away for free and then let the advertisers pay. Do you wonder some times if you could be making more by giving away free samples, like at Costco, and then using those to reel in the customer to buy the real thing?

Jeya@mediamilitia

Awesome man! I am glad to hear you used our freebies on a t-shirt design you made. That’s the joy in my life, hearing that Media Militia’s freebies are being used in products and advertisements. That really is what makes me keep motivated and pushing the site even harder. Thank you!

“That’s the joy in my life, hearing Media Militia’s freebies are being used in products and advertisements”

Do I worry about losing profits? Well for the most part, yes that thought enters my head all the time. I am constantly thinking of new and innovative ways that could generate more income. The thing is, is that I love the idea of giving away our resources because of the pure simplicity of having to deal only with generating advertising income. The problem with offering free samples and reeling in customers to other “premium” packs is that I feel we lose what is awesome about Media Militia – That we create all of our own resources and we offer a ton of them for free. I don’t want to cloud my mind and start to get greedy on what we release to be free or not.

Many design sites are starting to do offer subscription services, a members only area to get better content. Sure that pulls in extra revenue, but it truly hurts the traffic and loyalship to your site. I personally can’t afford to have a subscription to all the sites, just to get a cool tutorial or design pack every once in a while. One idea I have been toying around with is adding a donation button. Sounds pretty lame at first but it gives the viewers an option to donate what they think it is worth to them then. That is the win win for me and my viewers. There are a pretty good amount of sites that make good, and I mean really good money accepting donations. Wikipedia and Leo Laporte pull in great money. You just have to do it right and not be too obtrusive in asking.

It truly comes down to the more money that Media Militia can pull in, then the more I can direct that money to the creation of more freebies and good content. Which in turn brings in more traffic and more revenue. The idea is really simple, it’s just getting to that point is the hard part.

Jeya sporting his moustache for MoustacheMay.com

JC@resourcehive

You make a great point about how adding subscription portion to your site and how it would hurt loyalty and traffic to your site. I remember when psdtuts added their subscription section (which is currently about the only subscription I hold) and the uproar it caused. I still see people posting and complaining when new “plus” tutorials come out and how they can’t afford the price to see them. It really is a decision that has to be made on a case by case business and can really effect how your business succeeds or doesn’t.

The thing that draws me to creating free resources that people can use as they see fit is the creative freedom that it engenders. If I decide that I want to create some free textures for download there is no one there to tell me what they want them to look like or that they don’t need a texture but an ink splatter or a vector skull, I love that freedom. But on the flip-side that freedom can make it harder to create, sometimes having the ability to do anything can actually lead to a creative roadblock, where unlimited possibility actually makes it impossible to create something.

Someone who talks a great deal about the creativity that limits inspire is Mark Rosewater. He is the current lead designer of the Magic the Gathering Card Trading game and has written extensively about the behind the scenes work that goes into creating the 1000s of unique cards printed every year. The point he makes over and over is that by placing limits on what you are designing it forces you to be more creative as you have to think of different ways of accomplishing what it is you want to do. Have you found that to be the case, do limits actually breed creativity or do you find them limiting?

Jeya@mediamilitia

Good question. I want to think that I truly push the limits of what I can do. I am sure you have heard the quote, “There are no limits except those we make for ourselves.” This is true, yet placing some limitations on things like productivity tasks will actually make you more efficient. I place limits on myself like working on only one project at a time. This way I will not to get too scatterbrained and try to create everything. The people close to me think that I am a “work alcoholic” and that all I do is work. This is one limitation that I should be putting into effect into my life. I should be putting limits on myself, like not working on the weekends or past 6PM. But who the hell can do that? My true passion in life is design. I enjoy every second of the creation process and marketing the success of Media Militia.

“There are no limits except those we make for ourselves.”

You brought up a good point in that having too much creative freedom can actually hinder the creation process. With certain limitations placed like sticking to the plan, you can overcome the problem of creating anything. If you have an idea, keep with it and work on it till the end. Sometimes the end product might suck and you have to put it off to the side and say screw it. The cool thing though, is that you will have finished the task at hand and got from point A to point B. When I decide to not release a project, I will always come back to it later down the road and clean it up and be able to release it.

JC@resourcehive

I know what you mean about half finishing a project then coming back to it. My hd is full of half finished work that just hasn’t gone the way I planned. Eventually I get back around to it and finish it up. I also find that I could spend literally forever tweaking and changing, trying to make the current project I am working on perfect. I don’t even think of myself as a perfectionist per se…but I can always find something that could be better. Eventually I just make myself say its done and move on. I can still go back and look at almost any piece I have done and find things that I wish I had done differently.

That quest for perfection is what I think drives every designer/artist. The problem is that it’s something so ephemeral and fleeting. We all know when we see that piece that just transcends the sum of its parts and becomes truly remarkable…but trying to recreate that moment again and again is very difficult. I think that’s why we end up with so much copycat work in design. People see something truly magnificent and they want to emulate that…but in so doing they cheapen their own work as it loses some of that creative spark needed to create the truly magnificent. Now don’t get me wrong, I’m as guilty of this as anyone else but it is really stifling to one’s creativity.

A perfect example of this phenomenon is the movie industry. Someone makes an interesting and different movie that does remarkably well in the box office, for example the original Spiderman movie. Next thing you know there are hundreds of super hero movies, some good but most just meh…until you reach the moment when they “Jump the Shark” (for all those that don’t know the phrase “jump the shark”–which has officially jumped the shark–comes from an episode of Happy Days when the Fonz went water skiing and jumped over a shark, signaling how the show had become a parody of itself). I have been working on some shirts for a new brand and have been looking at emptees for inspiration. Probably 8/10 shirts are ultra gore in a bright/neon color palate. each one trying to be more violent and more garish than the last. Before that it was all about the “Affliction Style” whose shirts you can now purchase at Marshall’s for about 1/10th of the price, and I could go on and on with examples in every type of design. Why is that? Why do we as designers feel the need to turn into lemmings at the first sign of success for a new style?

Jeya@mediamilitia

Good ol’ Happy Days. You have to love the Fonz.

In my opinion, designers are pushed to copy styles because of the current trends in the market. Now is it the client, the designer, or the consumer to blame for this? I would have to say the consumer is the reason why we have so many “Affliction styled” t-shirts in the market. It’s hot and trendy so they buy it. The consumer is the real lemming in this puzzle. It is what the majority of people are buying that makes companies push out more designs that all look the same. It’s sad that it is this way, but it all comes down to money in the end.

There are so many designers out there pushing the limits on new designs and trends. It just takes one new style to catch on in the design community and it will evolve and grow and soon you will see it everywhere. It’s a pretty amazing thing to see a style start and go through the design community – tutorials, freebies, and finally end up on t-shirts and advertisements. We all have to make a living and if the client wants tattoo styled designs then you will most likely be making it for them. If you can afford it, try to sway their opinion or turn them away! As designers, we should be pushing new ideas and styles to our clients and encouraging new design.

I hate to say it but sites like Media Militia that offer design resources and tutorials are also to blame in this copy cat process. When people are downloading stock photos, vectors, and textures, then everything ends up looking the same. If you really want to push yourself as a designer then you should be creating everything from scratch with your own style applied to it. You should be designing something that is uniqe and establishing it into something that you can genuinely say you own. Every designer is different with different objectives. Some are what I call layout designers where they can easily just grab resources and stock and add some type to the design and call it a day. I am not saying there is anything wrong with that, but if you really want to outshine then you should be looking into developing and advancing yourself to bring new trends and styles into the marketplace.

Design an Intense Particle Illustration using Photoshop on Media Militia By An1ken

JC@resourcehive

I think too that a lot of the copy cat designing in the world comes down to fear on somebody’s part. Either fear of the client of doing something different that won’t pan out, or fear on the part of the designer being afraid to present something out of the box to the client for fear of not getting the job to fear of the consumer being afraid to take a step away from what is cool/popular. In my mind this fear is what keeps things from changing and evolving and instead makes people play it safe and stay in their comfort zone.

A great example of this popped up just last night. We watched the Olympics so we could see Snowboarding Halfpipe and specifically so we could watch Shaun White. Snowboarders as a whole tend to be a more progressive group, continually pushing the envelope further and further–as an aside I think this is why designers tend to be drawn to the Xtreme Sports world, they are just more progressive as a whole and more willing to try something new. White’s first run was good enough that he was guaranteed the gold. On his second run his coach told him to do the Double McD (a double McTwist – 3 rotations 2 flips, he is the only snowboarder in the world who will even try it). He made his run. On his next to last trick he landed a little sketchy and lost some speed, the announcers even said there was no way he would go for the big trick at the end. Then moments later there he is, twisting and spinning. It was without a doubt one of the most amazing things I have ever seen. Absolutely no fear. Snowboarding has changed so much over the last handful of years, and it mostly because of White (and other riders like him) who consistently push the envelope and try to do something new. I think that fearlessness is something as designers we should all push towards. Trying to cast off the chains of fear and make something new and exciting.

Excuse me as I climb down off my soapbox. I think we are pretty much done here. Around 10 emails and 2500 words have taken us from Freebies to design methods to design trends. Jeya thanks so much for this interview, it has been a blast. We will have to do it again.

Jeya@mediamilitia

I live in Reno, NV which is at the base of the Sierra Mountains. I have been snowboarding for almost 15 years and have seen first hand how snowboarders have progressed year after year. It is all about feeding off of others. When you see that a trick is possible and see how it is done, then you try to replicate it. This goes back to what we were just talking about with the whole copy cat idea. Shaun White is one of the main snowboarders that is pushing the tricks further. Next year you will see people doing the tricks he pulled this year. The good thing about progressing in design is you won’t break any bones.

This has been a really great experience for me participating in this interview. It’s always nice to take a step back and contemplate what’s going on in your life. I hope everyone the best of success in the future and remember to eat your whole fortune cookie or else the fortune won’t come true. Take care…

Thanks again to Jeya for making this happen. You can check out all of his work, freebies and tutorials over @ MediaMilitia!

BLACKOUT by Demen1

Now my favorite part about this piece is the way that everything flows together. All of the elements just fit together perfectly. I really like the way the flourishes interact with the other elements, complimenting everything without overpowering as flourishes can. The layering and lighting give the piece real depth and the background compliments it all. The color scheme is great and the typography is spot on. Really a great piece with a lot working together. In lesser hands it could be jumbled and overdone but here everything is just right. Great work Demen1!!

For our inaugural post I want to start with a designer/illustrator whose work I really admire: Jeff Finley. This is the album cover he did for Beauty is a Black Hole. First lets take a look at the piece:

Beauty is a Black Hole - Jeff Finley

So why do I like this piece? Well first off I love the splash of color overlay right over the center…it kind of looks like a flame and I love its contrast with the otherwise monochromatic color palette. It goes without saying that the illustration is great (Finley’s always are) and the textures (both the light grunge patina and the tape) are great. But what really caught my eye and what I think really sets this apart is the Typography. Now I’ll be honest and say I am a sucker for Typography…but the work on this is top notch. The hand kerning on the block face title is great–the join on the T and Y in beauty for example shows great attention to detail. I also like the use of italics and the secondary type face is great. Just great attention to the small details that can really set a piece apart. Great work Jeff!!

You can check out the full piece over on Jeff’s portfolio site here along with some clips from the video tutorial he put together. Check it out!

This is a new Suns vs Spurs wallpaper…enjoy!

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Here come the first round of the playoffs. Go SUNS! Hope you enjoy!

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Grab this as a wallpaper too!
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