[Music] [Applause] [Music] sometimes [Music] [Music] my body's changing barely maintaining i've been seeking meaning [Music] [Music] i can really tell what's happening that it's all a part of the growing phase of seeing should you think you've been a stranger thing said it's 21-22 a part of the growing pains of things [Music] oh [Music] is [Music] things [Music] [Music] hey everyone what is up oh my gosh happy wednesday wednesday yes how is it everybody ah that's crazy oh my goodness this is so exciting hello elise what's up dusty hello angie thank you all so much for being here today my gosh i'm so excited okay well hey everyone welcome to my dream job journey a new kind of a new kind of event from adobe where we chat with special guests on how they achieve their dream careers i'm your host katrina trejos and i am the adobe creative cloud express evangelist shout out to everyone in chat hello jacinda we have lisa temple on our team that is hanging out in the chat with you all today we also have megan reinhart here powering the stream shout out to you megan hello everybody oh my gosh so many people here i love it kurt says good evening i appreciate being in your presence well we are honored to be in your presence as well awesome hello oh my gosh so many people here okay well let's get started today we are joined by shine webster and ariel robinson two brilliant creatives who run of their own businesses and are also full-time students we'll be doing a q a session and they'll also be taking us behind the scenes on how they use creative cloud express to create some really cool projects also stay tuned to the very end because we are having an after party in discord um and the discord vc i will share where the party's going to be at so here is the adobe creative career discord server we're going to be hopping in the party room and as you can see megan is there right now let's see if she answers what's up my game hello all right well we'll leave her in there but um this is where will this is where we will be hanging out during the stream or after the stream so um yes so we'll be hanging out over there and we're also doing a giveaway where a few of you could um be randomly selected for a mentoring session with shine and ariel and also possibly win a one a free one year creative cloud license awesome okay so if let's see lisa i'll be dropping links for everyone nice i'm highlighting some comments we got mauricio uh lisa join our discord server there you go awesome jordan says let's go shine nice you got some fans in here woohoo community showed out yes uh toyan says my room is so pretty thank you thank you i'm actively working on the set right now all right how do i okay this is how you hide questions okay or comments nice okay cool awesome so all right you too are you ready for some questions let's do it let's do it okay so we're gonna start with introductions for those out there who are just meeting you for the first time who are you and what do you do we'll start with shine hi everyone my name is shine webster i am a full-time college student as katrina mentioned and i'm also a founder of a brand consultancy slash creative studio called designed by shine crazy i know um basically what that means is i combine strategy and creativity across like different mediums like design brand strategy content creation stuff like that to design and grow awesome brands nice awesome ariel yes hi everyone my name is ariel robinson i'm a multimedia journalism student at north carolina anc state university and outside of being a student i am a multi-disciplinary artist i work with mediums like photography creative direction and i'm also the author of two books my first being the modern day black alphabet and the second being black hair care and color and i've used all of my skills to work in the marketing department uh some of your favorite companies that's awesome oh my gosh i didn't know you wrote two books my goodness yeah and i also made music so that's one of my mediums you guys seen one of my music videos amazing wow you two are on to really amazing projects um also just a note um we are taking q a from chat so if you have any questions at all feel free to drop them in the chat and then i will add them to our question queue um as we go throughout the session okay so the next question i want to ask is how did you get started in your career journey what were those first steps that you took towards this full-time student but also full-time creative business um endeavor uh whoever wants to start i'll start yeah [Laughter] okay you you go first on the next one all right um i'm just gonna go first because mine's pretty quick honestly it was kind of a whirlwind i started my business by accident so the summer right after i graduated high school i started selling t-shirts which was kind of the birth of designed by shine in its earliest phase so it started out as a clothing brand i totally did it for fun i didn't have a job at the time i was just getting ready to go to school and i just wanted to do something fun and creative um and then i met a business coach and won a scholarship and pivoted the business eventually turning it into my current brand design studio but it really just sort of started with me doing a clothing brand pursuing a passion project so i know a lot of people say that like business doesn't happen overnight but i truly do feel like my career so far has been kind of like an overnight success or whirlwind it's very just crazy how it happened that's amazing that's so cool um from my end mines is a little bit different i've always wanted to work in entertainment culture arts um and i had an instagram account since i've been in like middle school and so my first goal was to get to be the most popular out of my friends but it really wasn't until the pandemic when i was at home every single day i didn't have a job or obligations and every day i would wake up and create content and so i would say that was my first time being very consistent in my creation and from that that opened all the doors of the jobs that i've now had because i was creating these fake nike ads and taking photos at home just because it was fun and i wanted to post on social media but then it blossomed into me becoming this full-on creative wow that that is super inspiring and i think um continuing on that like so what was that exact moment where you decided or just knew that this was the right path for you yeah so sometimes i still wonder if it's the right path for me but the fact that i'm having fun i'm like it has to be but it really wasn't until so back in march of 2020 when i was creating like all of these graphics and one of my alums so an alum from north carolina ant deemed me on twitter and was like hey i really like the content you've been putting out let me connect you with one of my friends that works at the company and i'm like oh wow like that really exists like me creating this post just solely because i enjoy taking photos every day turned into me creating this connection and from there i realized that i could do this for real like i could actually create i could be in charge of what's being created and put out by companies just off based off the fact that i knew someone who wanted to connect me with someone else nice yeah that's awesome it's so funny that you say that that you feel like you still wonder because i was gonna say too i don't think i ever really realized or decided i think i'm i'm just here i mean i don't know i think it's kind of happened so now it's really an same thing for me like i really kind of started my business when we were really staying at home and there wasn't anything else to do so i never went into the intention of like i'm gonna do this and this is gonna be my career forever and i'm ready to like stake my claim and meet all these people like i just did it because i didn't really have anything else to do um and i don't know if i've ever to this day still made a conscious decision i mean i love what i do but i'm also totally open to whatever the future has for me so same nice nice okay i have a question in chat this is from shaista if i'm saying your name correctly please let me know or incorrectly let me know but what are some struggles that you had with starting your own business that's a good question um i would say for me because my business isn't your traditional business usually you think about a business being somebody who has a product and they're selling it and they're making money for me i am my business my ideas my ability to connect with other people is how i bring in my money i would say that one struggle that you have is like being afraid of not knowing or thinking that there's one way to do something and that's not the case if you are a creator and you want to turn your creations your ideas into money it definitely exists you just have to get creative with your approach so that might be putting out you know stuff on instagram or connecting with people who work at companies or are in roles that you want to um be in so one struggle that i had is being afraid to just try because you're you're afraid or you think people will deny you and somebody may but that's okay like you have to put yourself out there and you have to be very confident in yourself so i would say that having that self identity i still struggle with it today being confident but if you just continue to stay on a path that you really think is for you and doing things that truly make you happy you will naturally attract the things that you've always wanted yeah i yeah snaps um i would honestly say same as ariel i mean i think it really comes down to you feeling confident like i think the biggest thing is the sort of like analysis paralysis or feeling stuck in indecision because you don't know how to get to where you want to go or you don't know how to do what you want to do but nobody ever knows how before they do something new right you figure it out in the process and honestly if you know how to do something before doing it then you have nothing to learn so there's no point right so i think yeah being confident that you can learn how to do something or create your own way to do something and also for me i it's been a lot of time management and self-care and i think the biggest thing for me was also like learning about the way that i think learning about the way that um my emotions come up and how i process emotions has been huge like a lot of people don't talk about this but entrepreneurship is a huge self-discovery journey and if you don't have people around you that you can lean on for support or if you you know aren't taking the time to be introspective and give yourself the care that you need like it's hard you will face mindset spirals you will face doubts you will face um jealousy like these things come up but it's just about how you handle them and how you use them to kind of help propel you forward and so definitely like prioritizing self-care making time for your actual life outside of business is huge to me that i think those have been some of my biggest struggles that i still face yes snaps into that in chat we have so many people vibing with everything you just said jordan said love the hustle ariel toy and said so inspiring noel love this so inspired so good do work y'all andrea says awesome job ladies love seeing your progress and productivity i'm hoping that some of my students are in here tonight listening to and being inspired by your stories if any of andrea's students are in the chat please put your hands up um let's see lisa says self-care yes okay so there's when i do a lot of these interviews um one thing that always comes up in chat that i'm going to ask both of you is how do you combat or overcome imposter syndrome that is so common especially when you know like we have young entrepreneurs or or people who want to start their careers young like they feel you know that they might not know everything or to be good enough to be like a leader in the space or something like that so how do being business owners how do you all overcome moments of imposter syndrome yeah i think for me i mean i know people always say you know real imposters don't have imposter syndrome know yourself know your worth and those things are great and true and they make really good tweets and social posts but like easier said than done like what am i supposed to do with that so i'll let you in on some of my tips i'm i don't know i've never exposed myself like this before but honestly i have a folder on my computer called brag and it's like every kind comment every testimonial every award every screenshot just things to affirm myself and when i'm feeling doubtful because half the time these doubts these feelings of being an imposter are things we literally just make up like the data does not support this nobody is mad at us nobody is doubting us nobody's hating on us nobody's really checking for us like that except for ourselves our own egos so if we go back to the facts if we look at what our clients have said if we look at what our peers have said if we look at our linkedin right we can see what we've accomplished we can see that even if you feel like maybe you kind of just finessed this or you did it out of luck or you don't know how you did it there was still something in you that was able to accomplish something so just looking back at all the things that you've achieved thinking about what skills you possess that got you here looking at what people have said about you asking your friends what you know honestly i ask my friends for affirmation sometimes words of affirmation is my primary love language so for me it just goes back to finding those tangible reminders of i can actually do this yes that's amazing i do something very similar um i am i treat myself like a child i'm not gonna lie like i'm that adult who also is giving myself gold stars like go you that's so good and that helps me to like celebrate the small wins but also the big wins and that has helped me with my imposter syndrome i've noticed especially like just in the past a month how much my life has become better because whether for example i make music and this is something that i'm still very new to so somebody who might be farther ahead in their journey they might be getting 10 000 people to listen to their songs for me getting a thousand ears to listen to my song is a big thing it's really about the perspective that you're looking at things so when you have a perspective of i'm doing this for me and i'm happy for myself it's easier for you to pat yourself on the back as opposed to let me compare myself to what i don't have to someone else so similar to shine i have like lists on my computers where i'll write like all of my goals in red and then as i achieve those goals i'll go back and highlight them in green and seeing those reds turns to greens those things make me happy or i keep my to-do list so that i can see me exiting things out so finding those small things that you like that are rewards they help you to like combat your imposter syndrome also like having a jar and in that jar is like little notes and at the end of the year you open them up you're like oh i remember when i i wanted 50 likes on a project that i worked on and i got 50 people to look at my designs that makes you feel so happy and special and you realize like imposter syndrome really what has to do with what you don't have and you have to shift your focus to the things that you do have and when you find that genuine shift it it feels amazing so definitely just constantly reminding yourself that you are worthy and that there's not one way to do something um yes love that um okay next question lauren um asks how do you handle creative block when it happens are you the type to take breaks or grind grind grind yeah i can go first on this one i am definitely someone who likes to take breaks um i have a lot of things that i have to do on my everyday you know going through classes school working with these companies you know putting on an amazing live session like this i work in time blocks so that i don't get burned out and i don't force myself to do things so i've learned that if you take these breaks even when you're feeling your most creative if you take a break and completely disassociate your mind from whatever that task is you come back with a fresher perspective so for me that looks like i might be working on an assignment for an hour and then i decide i'm going to take a 15-minute break i close my laptop and i get on my nintendo switch and play mario kart and for that you know two minutes of me playing this game oh i'm thinking about it let's win let's win oh these colors are nice i'm gonna use this character and i'm not focusing on my work and then when i open it back up i'm like oh wow i didn't notice this so i'm looking at it with a fresh set of eyes so when there's a moment where i just can't get anything out i don't force myself i just completely shift my focus to something else and you'll be surprised how fresh your ideas are when you come back after you completely remove yourself from what you really want i'm the opposite i am yeah it's funny um i'm the type to grind grind grind because what i've realized um at least about myself is that normally when i'm experiencing block it stems from one of two things either one i'm afraid that whatever i make isn't gonna be good enough and that's why i'm like feeling blocked because i don't know what's going to be good i don't know how to get to the good result that i'm looking for or i'm uninspired and for me both of those things are easily remedied right if i don't think that i'm going to make something good enough then all i have to do is remove my self-judgment from the process and be okay to make bad things be okay to fail like i'd rather make something bad than not make something at all and so for me i just start putting out as much as i can until i can build something out of it because sometimes in the in you know in our careers and in business like we have deadlines and if we get blocked but some things do tomorrow like it's still due so we kind of have to find these little like ways to jumpstart our creativity and so it comes down to it for me again being okay to fail for a couple times um in order to get something in order to get to maybe a piece or a color or a font that's going to like get you to the next milestone or if i need inspiration then i'll go outside take a walk listen to music do something but yeah for me i i have to like push through the block or else i'll just probably not do it ever and just keep avoiding it so it's funny to see how we handle things differently yeah and i feel like i'm like in the middle of both of you because like shine if i'm stuck on something i'll grind it out until i finish the thing even though it is so ugly i would not pose this but then i'm like ariel where i will at that point once it's finished but it's not exactly where i wanted to be that's when i'll take the break because at least the base i like to get the base of my projects done and then take that time to like take a break and then come back to it later when i'm feeling a little bit more inspired so we it's so interesting to hear like all these different ways of working um okay we have another question here so this is from noel so earlier you mentioned that both of you do like so many different things and earlier you're starting music and shine you're going into entrepreneurship and um and like brand strategy and stuff so noelle asks could you touch on transitioning like careers into design i work in healthcare and i'm looking to transition into ux design and working on building my design resume so starting something completely new yeah um i don't mind starting to speak to this one so something that i've always learned from the moment that i stepped foot into college was to create the kind of work that you want to do so this applies to you whether you're you know a new grad whether you're still a student whether you're in your career but you're looking to transition i think the biggest key is to create the stuff that you want to do and put it out there so that it can get noticed i think that kind of is something that you can find throughout both mine and aerial stories of we did things for fun we did things that we wanted to do just because we wanted to do them and that's how we got found or that's how we got these connections and i think a lot of times there's a lot of pressure around like how do i get a job in this field or how do i get people to notice me or how do i make my resume stand out but we live in a really fortunate age of technology where people are getting discovered left and right and of course like that doesn't need to necessarily be your case or your story but if you create the work that you want to do that'll help you build your repertoire and help you get discovered by some chance so i would say like if you want to go into uiux and you want to kind of pivot your career that way um just start putting your work out there and it doesn't need to be finished right build in public um allow your kind of artistic identity to be formed in real time on social media so that people can be in that journey with you and and don't feel like you have to maybe wait until you're fully out of one stage to put yourself out there i guess is my advice yeah i absolutely agree i think that to get a little bit more niche with what shine is saying one thing that i've noticed especially just speaking to ui ux if you see a company who you really enjoy their brand identity and you would you could see yourself maybe doing it a different way do it a different way so for example like one of my favorite kinds of videos to watch on youtube are people who like build out full merch lines for an artist that they don't work with but they're like it'd be cool if i got to do it i would do it this way so that's one way that you could build your portfolio for example there's an app that you think is so cool but like their layout maybe lacks to you and you want to build upon that you can do that and you can put in your free time and don't feel like you have to have this loaded portfolio to get these opportunities because you just have to show that you have the dedication and the skill to do it and then also finding people who are in the positions working for the companies that you want to work for and really like connecting with them because you like their line of work you may think that there are cool people outside of their work and so really connecting with them getting to know them and you'll get to know yourself in the process because you'll see what it's like to actually be in these jobs so definitely connecting with the company but at a more deep level so connecting with the people who are actually in these departments creating these things and then also just having fun so if you see for example for me because i like to make these fake ads there may be a company that i'm super like into right now and i'm super passionate about and i'd be like you know what if i was in their marketing department i would create an ad like this and then just create it and then you can keep your ideas your personal ideas to yourself so then when you have these connections you can pitch yourself and then make money from it because that's what we're all we want a job we want to make money so easy way to still grow and learn without giving away you know the deets is to find companies you're already passionate with and insert yourself unprovoked and people actually like when you do this that is that is amazing i think yeah i think that's a really cool approach like you know these brands didn't ask for an ad but if you got there and created for them and then they see it you know it's it's cool that they can just like contact you and be like hey you know like um can you like create something similar like that's i feel like that's a really cool way to go about it and to go get noticed um okay so we have a couple people in chat asking about time management tips and like how do you balance a busy school student schedule while running your business and doing all of this creative stuff yeah i can go first because yeah this is my thing let me tell you people ask me this question all the time and let me there's a balance but sometimes there's not and i think that's really important to note that sometimes you are going to fall through the cracks and have bad days and sometimes you're going to have amazing days where you get everything on your time blocks so for me i have i keep my obligations in more than one place so on my calendar that's on my computer i have certain time books that we want to be here studying at this time or we want to be creating at this time or this is just some time to just think or do whatever i block off that time and then i have a physical calendar and to-do list up on my wall so i'm always reminding myself hey you have to do this hey you have to do this so writing things down but some days are not good days and i think that's a part of your balance too like understanding this so you don't beat yourself up if you're not at every single meeting or if you're missing like if you miss something hold yourself accountable but also ask yourself why did i miss this how do i feel and then figure out a new way so writing it down whether it's on your phone your laptop in physical writing so for me i manage everything by writing everything down and having a routine you have a routine it's hard to shake it so like waking up every morning at the same time like getting up and doing things your days aren't always going to be the same but if you put yourself into these this structure it's easier to be flexible around it as opposed to being flexible and not knowing what you're gonna do next that was so good time management is one of my weaknesses so you're speaking to me right now i'm gonna be super duper transparent with you on all on this stream and say that um time management is something that i really need to grow in but that's also an encouragement to you you don't have to be some perfect time managing guru to do it all and still you know be successful to whatever degree that means for you um but i've been really working on it so writing things down in my planner and my phone calendar and my google calendar is super helpful like ariel mentioned just having it like everywhere that i can see it just to keep me uh reminded but i think for me it's been a lot of energy management more than time management so i'm not super great about sticking the times being on time um i honestly double booked myself with a class so i'm missing class right now sorry professor um but for me it's all about the energy like sometimes i have energy for four hours at night and that doesn't really go with my work schedule for the next day or my school schedule for the next day but i have energy then so i think it comes down to me for me managing my energy and knowing when i'm going to be the most productive um and kind of building my schedule around that rather than like the hours of the day but cool all right so now i would like to pivot into going a little bit more behind the scenes about how you create the awesome stuff that you do on social so a little birdie told me that you all use creative cloud express to create some of your stuff um so we're going to go into that ariel would you like to show us how you made some of your pieces yeah so um first i'll give you guys like a little idea of what we're about to go through together so you have a little bit of context um one of the things that i did with my fake campaigns i created for these companies i turned them into products and today i'm going to be showing you guys how easy it is to create a graphic that can also live on social but but can be turned into a t-shirt a hat like a physical product for us it's going to be a blanket so first we're going to go into creative cloud and i already knew my dimensions so that's really important kind of having some things prepared before you go in to make this process as smooth as possible so for our graphic first thing i want to do is i'm going to change my background to an image that i took so very easy you go to your folder and you choose the background image so for us we're going to be doing a nike campaign this is like a nike graphic we're going to be focusing on kobe and his legacy so first i have the picture of the basketball goal and then i have another picture of me jumping and one of the tools i use all the time is a remove background feature it's super easy and it's very smart so as you can see that's a very clean job of me dunking this basketball so i'm just going to add that there that's one of my assets this will change them as i get more things onto our canvas so i'm going to go back and add another photo just to add some layers so we have our second photo i'm gonna flip it and i'm gonna also remove the background because i just want to make it more a part of what's going on in this graphic so super easy if you want to clean it up you can i'm not going to clean it up i'm going to make it larger just to have it on the canvas see you know the dimensions how big it is so i'm moving things around all very very easy features and i'm going to add another photo i'm going to add a pair of kobe's and you'll notice in some of my other blanket designs if you go on my website just having the aerial view of the shoes is just something that i do i just like it no real reason i just think it's cool so i'm going to add that in its usual spot that i put it which is in the corner so i know that's going to live there the other features i'll move around so i'm just moving that and then i'm going to go into our enhancements and i want to make it darker just because i want this to be a very subtle graphic but if you want you can change the colors you can really play around with your contrast brightness saturation there's no one way to do anything so when i'm in here creating i'm literally just moving around these features to just get what i want and then i'm gonna move it up in creative cloud express you get a lot of different options to move your items to um customize the way that they look so i decided i wanted to flip my background and i'm also going to flip my standing position so as you can see i'm just moving things around this takes a lot of trial and error because i'm still gathering my thoughts and then i see that i want to clean up my foot a little bit so as you can see i'm going in i do all this with my mouse on my laptop so you don't need any fancy equipment and i think that's something i really like about creative cloud because it's kind of like it's reading my mind like it knows what i want to do and then it meets me there so we want to clean that foot up a little bit and i'm going to zoom back out all very easy and you can see my cursor everywhere it goes nothing gets messed up so i think i really like that the control on this platform is great so i'm just going to play around with my enhancements again so we get some dimension going on so our different silhouettes don't blend in with each other i'm gonna move the background around and i wanted to add some text so there's one thing that kobe says a lot is that the legacy carries on and so i'm gonna go back in add the text i don't know where it went so i added the legacies carries on and one of my favorite features about adobe is the extensive amount of fonts that they have so you'll see me going through i love that beside the name of the font they have a little example and so i can visually see it and i'm like i like this font i'm not sure i'm not sold on it quite yet in my process but i really really like it i think it's cool usually though when i'm not doing a demo i kind of already know the font so i'll probably already imported the font from adobe fonts so i don't have to look through but just for the sake of this demo i'm going through all the fonts just so you guys can see that if you don't know what font you want you can have it and then you can curve it i'm not going to curve it i want to add an outline just to give it a little bit of depth so i make my thick outline that's just my own personal preference and i decided i'm going to add it to the corner the top corner so i turn the opacity down a little bit just so it can blend in but we're going to revisit the words again because i wasn't quite sold on how it looks now to me it doesn't look that cool so i go back into my photos and i'm going to upload my nike logo because this is a fake nike ad so we're going to remove the background so that it blends in and look how perfect that is like i just love that and then i wanted to change the color so i didn't want to use color because it gave me my background again so i had to get a little bit creative so i went to the filters and i just played around with this i had no idea exactly what i wanted to do um and then i went to multiply just so it blends in and yeah no i really that was super easy and so now you see me kind of jazzing it up a little bit i duplicated one of my silhouettes and i'm going to duplicate the second one and all these are super easy and if you don't know what a certain button means all you have to do is hover over and it'll tell you what it means and what it does and it'll also give you some controls on your computer that you can use for future references if you prefer to control with the keyboard and so i'm just playing around with the different filters i can put on the silhouettes so that they don't all blend in with each other but it's still very so because i didn't want to take away from the overall graphic but if somebody looks at this and they look close they'll be like oh wow that's three same silhouettes like it just adds that extra depth so i'm still adding filters and then i go back to my fox i'm like uh i'm not the biggest fan of this right now i think it could be changed a little bit so i play around with it and that's a part of the process like trial and error figuring out what you like and don't like um all things that i actually did when i was creating this so now i'm going to go to my design assets because i want to add something else i just don't know exactly what i want to add and what i really like about adobe creative cloud express is that they give you a lot of options to play around with so i added some texture um this is a very subtle thing but it just adds to this kind of diy feel that we're getting from this graphic so i add some texture i probably should add a texture last but i didn't so you'll see me move it around a little bit and move it down because i still i'm not quite sold on my font and so you'll see at the corner like once your font is activated it'll send you a notification so i go through the fonts again and then i just go back to the one that i had i was like i'm not sure if this is what i want to use but that's really a part of the creative process like you might not get it the first time but because adobe is so resourceful you will always will most likely always find something that you really like or that you can come to a conclusion so i realized maybe it was just the spacing and so i spaced it out a little bit and i think that added a little bit more of an edgy touch so i played around with my line spacing all things that are super easy to use and i was sold on this now i think it just adds a little bit more character to the graphic and so i went back to my design assets because i wanted to find something that i could add under the words and so that led me to you guys are gonna see it just a little checkerboard type of grid print that i'm gonna add to behind my words just to give it a little bit more dimension and so i thought this was just so cool and so interesting it reminded me kind of like that basketball net so i added that in just to give it some more dimension and so now wherever you look on the graphic it's busy but i like that it's busy because i'm a maximalist so i add that in and i decide to bring my words on top so i bring the opacity back up so it shines through i shine and yeah i was satisfied with this graphic it was everything that i wanted so i downloaded it so if you're going to turn this into a product i could post this on instagram but i wanted to take it one step farther so now we go back and i'm gonna blank canvas and i add my mock-up so if you want to put your graphic on a mock-up that's a it's very easy so for us we're working with a blanket design so i knew my dimensions needed to be five by six and so i uploaded my graphic back into this new project and i just added it so if i wanted to send this to my manufacturer they would have the graphic and the mock-up and so it's really easy because this is a high-quality png that i can put on top and now i have a nice little blanket mock-up and i could get this made into a real blanket which is so cool so i'm gonna download this as a png because that's a high quality and you get the option to do a solid color background or transparent but i wanted to do transparent and so now we have our blanket and that's how you make a blanket graphic on adobe cloud creative cloud express oh my gosh that demo was so good ariel thanks my mouth was dropping me entire time all right thanks i'm like i hope i'm explaining this correctly but yeah it's super easy that's the goal of that difference very easy nice all right shine take us behind the scenes of something that you've made social media is a huge catalyst for getting your creativity out into the world getting noticed getting connected with the right people so i'm gonna go ahead and show you how to create a super quick social graphic um just in my experience a little pro tip if you're taking notes some types of social posts that work really well and in sharing your process and like i mentioned kind of building in public self inventing as an artist online are um you know your story pieces of your work pieces of your process a lot of people are really into seeing your process they don't just want to see the final product so you know sharing sketches sharing works and uh progress time lapses things like that and social media is also really hugely pushing video content right now so i think video is just the quickest short form way to capture people's attention and share a glimpse into you as an artist and into your life so we are going to be creating a video cover a an ig reels cover story cover i do tv cover whatever form of video you want to use but i want to equip you with a quick little walk-through demo of how you could create something that's subtle easy but still eye-catching and and something that's going to give people a glimpse into your life and hopefully get some eyes on your work so we're going to open up express create 5g story dimensions because that's the same size as a reals cover i'm super into gradients right now most designers are so i'm just going to look up a gradient in the background section this is super on brand for me if you've seen my branding so i'm going to pick this one but you can pick whichever one you would like i'm going to scoot it over a little bit because i have a little vision in mind and then next we're just going to go over to text so something that i want to give you a little tip is that designers like really good designers are masters of typography but you don't have to be a master to design through your text so this is just a way to show you that like you don't necessarily have to include a ton of elements or ton of visuals to have a good design and like ariel i'm a huge maximalist but i just wanted to show you a little something outside of my personal style and yeah just out of my comfort zone honestly to to give you something that might be a little bit more relevant to you so i'm just going to type in the title of my video which is a day in my life so just make your text good pro tip is to just duplicate your text you don't have to start it over just keep duplicating and changing so that everything's the same size same font all that good stuff and if you notice i'm kind of breaking up some of the words into different text boxes there's a specific reason for that which i'm about to show you but you just have to wait one second okay so i have all the text here that i want to have for now and then what i'm going to do is just choose a font that's a different font to kind of spice things up a little bit so for this one i used new house grotesque and now i'm going to use nautica so this is like a cool cursive font that just adds a little flavor into the mix but it's still as you can see like it's still minimalistic it's still very simple um it's nothing too wild or nothing too hard um but it just adds a little bit of a little bit of flair to the design and then for this one i'll just choose one by looking at them so let's go with this so many options okay let's go with let's go with menken we'll go with menken a serif and then just scoot it over so it looks like it's one word and boom now you look like you're an expert designer because you've got all these different type designs so that's a little pro tip and then i'm just going to bring in a photo of myself you can add a photo of you i just like to use my brand photos because they're super easy to find ah okay okay then i'm going to use the remove background tool which is also one of my favorites because i love to collage and just put things together so remove background is my best friend cool make it big put it in the corner of the image and i actually want to add one more piece of text so day in my life will say as a content creator where are my content creators uh if you're a content creator say what's up in the chat okay and then something that i want to do this is also like very trendy right now so i'm going to show you how to do it through express go down here to shape make it the same color as the text hit mask text there we go hit mask text and make this bigger and then you can change the shape to this little rounded pill shape and now you've got this like super trendy design super cool makes you look like you're a type designer but you did it in a couple minutes using express so that's my super quick demo just wanted to show you how you can make a real cover video cover for a video that'll give people a glimpse of your life and hopefully get you noticed amazing oh my gosh so there you have it folks two very different styles and two different use cases all easily made within creative cloud express so um uh we have time for one more question and this is a big one so it might take a little bit of noodle scratching okay so one last question if folks were to take one important thing away from the stream also like your last piece of advice the most important thing that you want to leave with everyone what would it be yeah i'll start um i would say that there's not one way to do anything like there's no there are no rules right we get to choose what those rules are so i know for me a lot of times going back to that imposter syndrome especially with adobe's products i'm like i don't know how to use premiere pro or i don't know how to use this because it's too complicated and it's like this is not what the professionals do but it's like no you are a professional and you get to invent what the professionals do and if that means you're using creative cloud express or half the projects used on this platform you go over and use another project you are in control of what you're doing and where you're going and don't psych yourself out because it may not be somebody else's path because you're creating your own your own path so if anybody takes anything that you are the creator like you are the creator so get create whether that's your journey whether that's a physical product be in charge don't let someone take control over what you're creating because there's not one way to do it nice so good that is right up my alley too um if you know me or you follow me on socials you'll know i'm all about doing things your own way doing things differently so this is why ariel and i vibe this is why we're here together because we just we get it we're on the same page um i think my biggest takeaway is probably that it's closer and easier than you think sometimes and i mean i totally get like we all come from different backgrounds different places of privilege different connections but on the whole i think what i would want you to take away from this in my story and kind of watching me is that you never know what opportunity is going to be on your doorstep tomorrow you never know who somebody you know knows um something that i've learned is like i'll ask people like hey does anyone know uh someone who's in this industry and my own dad will be like oh yeah i have like five friends in that like i didn't even know that like you don't necessarily know what's um in your network or what opportunities are right next to you until you kind of open yourself up to them so for me it's definitely taking the leap um saying yes just taking the leap of faith not i don't want to say not caring about how you'll get there but not putting so much importance on knowing how to get somewhere before saying yes to doing it i have said yes to projects and lines of work and opportunities that i knew absolutely nothing about but i'm willing to learn in the process right i'll say yes and then learn how so then i can take the opportunity and learn something from it but i think not shutting yourself um out to opportunities because you don't know how or you feel under qualified or you're scared or you've never done it before just say yes take the leap of faith i never ran a business before i never did x y and z before but i was able to do it so you don't have to have experience directly in something to be good at it you have a lot of transferable skills you have um a unique approach a unique personality so don't discount yourself don't be the person that gets in your way somebody else wants to get in your way later and and say no or stand in your way that's their problem but don't be that person to yourself boom there it is mike drop and that concludes the q a session thank you so much for tuning in to the stream we hope you found inspiration and value from the session and i will want to continue the conversation over discord because like i said earlier we are having an after party so if you thought the q a is really short we have like 10 minutes left what the heck that's because we're continuing hanging out in the after party channel on discord um so you can ask more questions for shine and ariel and if you can't make it to the after party no worries you can connect with us on social lisa dropped our handles down below you can reach us on there um and yeah so for everyone who stayed to this part of the stream let's talk about that giveaway okay so we have three really fun remixable templates of course on creative cloud express and we want to know who your dream company or client that you'd like to work for is and we're going to manifest it we're going to put it out into the universe and we're going to put it on linkedin so um all you have to do is just click on one of these templates um and then have it load up and then all you have to do um there are three different kinds of templates so feel free to pick whatever speaks to you the most um you can change all you have to do is just change the photo i put in a placeholder here um and then you can also put the company name here so it's super easy i'll just do it really quick just click on the cutout hit replace and then all you have to do you can upload your own photo or if you have lightroom which i do um select photos wherever you have it stored and then it's just going to add it just like that you can just resize it and put it where it needs to be and then for the company company name of course i'm going to put adobe because adobe loki my dream job when i was first starting my post post-grad journey like no lie i was walking past the adobe building and i was like oh one day so three years later i am here so this exercise definitely works putting things out into the universe definitely works um but that is a subject for another day and then we're just gonna adjust the text so it looks like the adobe red and then boom there it is then you hit download and then you are going to post it on linkedin with the hashtag adobe dream job and express it for a chance to be randomly selected for a one-on-one mentoring session with shine or ariel and a free one-year creative cloud exclu subscription that is awesome bonus points if you post your design or link it to the challenge submissions channel in the creative career discord so in this channel right here the challenge entries so just post them here either a link from the linkedin post that you posted or posting the design on here um we will take a look at it and i can and we cannot wait to see what everyone made awesome okay so with that said thank you all so much for joining and thanks to shine and ariel for joining us this evening um this talk was amazing and i hope you all have a good rest of your night and i will see you at the discord after party all right bye-bye you
