2022 was an amazing year.
Apart from getting married, I got to work on some really great projects. The Google Doodle was the icing on the cake of course, but I’ve also included some other accomplishments this year…
Portraits of Paradise IP announcement
Portraits of Paradise is an NFT collection that I released in January 2022. It is a collection of 1/1 illustrations inspired by some of my favourite landscapes of Trinidad and Tobago. These pieces were all illustrated over a period of time spent in Tobago at the start of 2022. Now that the collection of 36 pieces is sold out, I am going to be giving…
Google Doodle - Steel Pan
About two years ago I received a message on Instagram from an Art Director at Google requesting my email address. The following day I received an email with an NDA and then the brief for the project…
Head of House NFT Process
Last year, I was introduced to NFTs through a couple friends and decided to jump right in. A popular trend in NFTs is the Profile Picture NFT aka PFP…
McDonald's Illustrations : The Process
What do you do when you’re on holiday and McDonald’s asks you to work on 3 illustrations for them to celebrate their 10th anniversary in Trinidad & Tobago?
You say yes and thank your lucky stars that you cleared your week in advance.
The brief for the job was simple…
Creating a Portfolio to Get Hired
A designer’s portfolio is basically the “proof in the pudding” that both clients and agencies look at before deciding if to hire you or not. You can have a good resumé or a degree from a top art school, but if your portfolio falls flat you will most likely miss out on a lot of jobs. It is the visual representation of what you have done and achieved in your design career.
I get a lot of questions from designers looking for…
PAZ coffee: The Design Process
In 2019 PAZ Coffee & Kitchen launched in Trinidad & Tobago with their first product - Cold Brew Coffee. PAZ was founded by three sisters who shared a passion for good coffee and wanted to enter the burgeoning craft coffee scene in Trinidad. They had originally approached my design company, Backyard Design, to create their branding back in 2017 when the ideas was still in its infancy. It wasn’t until a year later in 2018 that they approached BD to put the branding to use and to design the packaging for their line of Cold Brew coffees. This would be their first product to market so it was important that the communication and launch was spot on…
A Day in the life of a Graphic Designer
When I was starting out as a designer I always wondered how other designers spent their time. This video above showcases a some-what average day for me. Obviously everyday is different depending on what I’m working on or what deadlines I have, but I wanted to show a more or less average day.
Here is my day:
5:30am: Wake up
6am: Get out of bed and get ready to workout
6:30-7:30am: Work out (Either gym or walk)
8:30am: Breakfast
9am: Check emails and do other admin related tasks (make payments, follow up on invoices etc)
10am: Start designing and working on any projects that I have going on
12pm: Lunch
12:30pm: Back to work, usually go through emails, check in with the team and then start back designing
3pm: Take a break
5pm: Back to work, usually on personal projects such as the vendor illustration project I’m working on now. Or I might listen to podcast/skillshare tutorials
7pm: Done for the day, I’ll usually have dinner then read or watch netflix to relax before bed
9:30/10pm: SLEEP
Let me know if you enjoyed looking at a day in my life, and leave a comment if you want me to make a video on something else.
Mural Painting with Sissons Paint
I was recently commissioned by Sissons Paint to design and paint a 22.5 x 10 foot wall at their flagship shop in Trinidad. Murals always pose a challenge, and this was no different, so I want to share some behind the scene as to what exactly goes into creating something like this…
4 Years of being self-employed
A day out drawing at the Botanic Gardens
I recently started drawing lessons with the renowned artist Edward Bowen. Every week we meet up and go somewhere to do some drawing from observation. This week we went to the Royal Botanic Gardens, and I made this video which shows a couple time-lapses of the drawings that I completed. I hope you enjoy.
The Making of: Kes The Band's We Home album art
Personal Branding for Designers
I recently spoke to a University of the West Indies (UWI) design class and the topic of personal branding came up in the Q&A. One of the students was working on their personal branding and wanted to know my thoughts on logos for designers. I think a lot of young designers place a lot of emphasis on what their logo looks like but when agencies are looking at portfolios, the most important thing is…
Back Home
100 marchers by Colin Gill
After 8 long months in the UK we are finally back home! The closure of the Trinidad & Tobago borders meant that our 2 week trip turned into 8 months of lockdown trying…
5 Accounts to Follow (September Edition)
Here is the second edition of “5 accounts to follow,” if you haven’t seen the first installment make sure to check it out. Let’s get right into it, these are 5 accounts that I think are worth following!
How I Created the Kes "We Home" Cover
Kes’ new live-album just came out, and I’ve been getting a lot of questions recently about the process of creating this album art. Here, I will outline what was done from the start of this project through to completion.
To give some history to how this project even came to life, it all started in February of this year. A couple weeks before Carnival I posted an illustration of Kes on to Instagram. From there, I got a DM from Kes saying…
5 Instagram accounts worth following (August 2020 edition)
Once a month I will share a few Instagram accounts that I think are worth following. I love coming across new content (and sharing is of course caring), so hopefully you will enjoy these accounts and this content as much as I am.
Take aways from drawing everyday for 100 days
Check out the difference in the hand drawing on day 1 compared to day 100
April 7th 2020 to July 15th 2020.
Exactly 100 days.
I set myself the goal of drawing every single day for this timeframe. The only rules were that I had to fill one page in my sketch book, and it had to be a drawing from life, no doodling. “Draw what you see” as…
The 100 day Project - Day 10 update
10 days ago I was sent a link to the 100 Day Project’s landing page and was immediately drawn in (no pun intended.) The only problem was that I couldn’t decide if to do…
Buju Banton Stage Graphics
Gargamel bussin’ some dance moves in front of the graphics I designed
A year ago Buju Banton performed for the first time after a 10 year incarceration with a huge concert in Kingston, Jamaica for the start of his Long Walk to Freedom Tour. I was contacted by North Eleven who were tasked with creating the concert visuals…