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I am … and I do …

My name is Luca Molnar and I am a 20-year old digital artist from Hungary. I’ve been working in the industry in past 5 years and I’m studying illustration at the university. My works have been featured on several design blog and in some magazines (Computer Arts, Advanced Photoshop). I’m also writing tutorials quite often; actually I just finished one for Advanced Photoshop issue 82. I am also a member of KDU, my clients include Ogilvy, Midori and MTV Networks. You can check out my works on my website, www.lucamolnar.com

I got into designing …

When I was in high school a guy held a presentation about web design and Photoshop, so me and my best friend went and I liked it. After that I was starting reading tutorials and stuff, but for about 2 years I only cared about web design, and then realized how horrible boring that was. I started creating illustrations and basically that’s the story.

I get my inspiration from …

From anywhere. More specifically I always listen music while I’m working; I’m crazy about all kinds of arts.  I can stare at pictures for hours; I’m also inspired by nature and by great artists. I have a huge weakness for beautiful music videos, lights and fashion magazines.

In the beginning I promoted myself  … . Now I am marketing myself …

This is probably the hardest question, this is the question every new designer is interested in. At the beginning it was really painful, I mean the money was horrible and the clients were even worse, at the top of it I wasn’t a good illustrator at the time either. Anyway I was sending messages to anyone I thought maybe could give some work, I’m talking about freelance projects. Well, this wasn’t really working. Now I’m represented by an agency, so I get commissions from there and sometimes I’m also working on some projects with the KDU, other times the client just see my works and sends me an email.

I think the future of design …

I love talking about it, so thanks for asking! I think we will see more abstract stuff and in general everything will be more artistic, since the designers become better and better. Probably we will see more geometric forms and more gray and pastel colors. I think the illustrations will be more clean and elegant.

3 websites I couldn’t live without …

• KDU- www.thekdu.net
• My website www.lucamolnar.com
• Twitter – www.twitter.com

You can find me …

Anywhere, really. I’m on Facebook. Twitter, Behance, my website. Probably there are many more, but these are the most important.

Some of my designs …

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Another year has passed, 2010 is about to end and I will try to summarize the year in this post. I think that is a good way to share some experiences so we can learn with each other, as that has been the whole idea of Abduzeedo since the day one. There’s also a post at Seth Godin’ blog called “#YearInReview What did you ship in 2010?” which motivated me to do the same here in this article.

So what did I ship? Well I have to say it’s pretty hard for me to say what I shipped, I could list a bunch of sites I did, freelance projects and presentations I delivered, however I will share with you some things that happened in my life in consequence of the decisions I make in the beginning of 2010, it’s much easier since my whole idea for 2010 was stay on the road as much as I could and meet new people.

The last year started with a big change, I decided to go to San Francisco in mid January with the Wellknown.as team, which I barely knew them, in order to finish and released their app. It wasn’t an easy decision since I had just come back from another trip and the right thing to do was to settle down a little bit, but I decided to take the plunge.

The idea was that we would go and work on that project 24/7 in order to finish it, however I ended up doing much more than working, I’ve visited new places, met people I really admired and made new friends.

Meeting New People

In another post I wrote called What I have learned after almost 4 years of Abduzeed I mentioned about the importance of traveling in my life.

This year I spent 6 months away from home, I haven’t planned none of that the only thing I did was say yes to the opportunities I had and because of that, a whole new series of opportunities were created, and with them new things happened. I had the chance to meet some amazing people, guys like Vitor Lourenço (Designer at Twitter), Everaldo Coelho (Designer at Apple), the mighty James White, Bert Monroy, Trey Ratcliff, Zorana Gee (Adobe), Rodrigo Mazzilli and Divoxx (Wellknown.as), Demian Borba and family, Jacob Cass, Francois Hoang (AoiroStudio) and many others.

With James White in San Francisco at the FITC

Abduzeedo Meetup São Paulo

I also had the chance to speak in design conferences and universities in Brazil and USA, which was simply awesome!

I am really thankful for that because that led me to a whole new direction in my life and gave me much more motivation to do what I love, and everything only happened because I decided to go to San Francisco even though that decision didn’t make much sense back in the day.

Future

Out goals for 2011 for Abduzeedo are the same as the day one, keep sharing things that inspire us and also share as much as we can about things we learn. We are also increasing our team of contributors with Nathan Weller and Marcos Torres now and others I’m sure in the near future. Besides that we have a big surprise scheduled to May, but we still cannot talk much about it, so stay tune.

Another goal for Abduzeedo is a revamp in its design, as you have already seen, I’ve been posting some new designs like the new logo that can give you a hint about the direction we are heading to, so we are going to a much more minimalistic approach in order to focus even more in the content.

2011 Poster

Google

When I started Abduzeedo 4 years ago I didn’t plan anything, I never imagined it would grew or have the amount of traffic it has today, I did because I love to talk about design and also I had to do something after losing everything in my office’s robbery.

Today I can say that what started as a side project has become the biggest promoter of my work changing my life completely. If I hadn’t started the blog I’m sure I would have never gotten the chance to work for the clients I worked, met some people I met and also gotten a job offer from Google.

Back to the beginning of this post, lots of things happened in my life in 2010 and with all this things came more decisions to make. One of them was a very important one, that was working for Google. So in 2011 I will be leaving Zee and moving to California where I will be joining Google as Senior Graphic Designer. I’m just waiting for my VISA

I’m sure this decision I made is just the beginning of a series of new things that will happen in my life and that is what makes life so exciting, I know I will love some and must regret others things that will happen but I will have to go through them in order to learn that.

So I’d like to thank all of you for the amazing support you have given to Abduzeedo and I wish you all a fantastic 2011 and don’t be afraid of change, embrace it. Follow your passion but always remember what Barry Schwartz says in his fantastic book The Paradox of Choice:

“The secret to Happiness is low expectations.”

Happy 2011 to all!

2010 in Images

San Francisco

Apple Event at Yerba Buena San Francisco

@amlight and my new baby, MacBook Pro 17 SSD in Raleigh, NC

Photoshop Battle

Abduzeedo Porto Alegre Meetup

Speech in Canela, RS

With Alexandre Keese at Photoshop Conference 2010 in São Paulo

Zorana Gee at Photoshop Conference 2010 in São Paulo

Pacific Highway 1

Waiting in line to get an iPad

After spending the night in line for the iPad launch in San Francisco

With Vitor Lourenço at Dennys in San Francisco

Visiting Adobe HQ in San Jose, give a little presention over there

With Vitor Lourenço, Rodrigo Mazzilli and Rodrigo Divoxx

Visitng Macworld

With the master Bert Monroy

Poster of the Photoshop Battle in Porto Alegre, Brasil

With my parents in San Francisco

With Everaldo Coelho in San Francisco

Speech at the Platt College in San Diego, big thanks to Demiam Borba

With Francois Hoang in NYC

Abduzeedo Meetup in Curitiba, Brazil

At the iSeminar in Recife, Brazil

San Francisco, the city by the Bay

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1000’s of Freelancing Jobs and Freelance Projects available for Freelancer starting from Web Design jobs, SEO works, Writing freelance jobs, Software Development, Data Entry Jobs, Sales and marketing, web promotion. Greatlance is a hub of Freelancer where we can find freelancer for our exact need. Find Freelance designer, Freelance SEO Expert, Freelance graphic designer, Freelance content writer.

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Few freelancers work according to the standard eight-hour daily schedule. With remote working opportunities available to almost every designer and home-based offices now a common occurrence, it’s even more difficult to find a designer working to the traditional work schedule than it is to find one enjoying a work style that’s based on nothing more than their own preferences.

Experts call it the blurring of work and life, claiming that technology is responsible for integrating work so firmly in our time.

I think it’s more than that — the result of work schedules that aren’t built around output, but hours spent in the office and projects that simply follow us everywhere. As much as a flexible schedule can be a blessing, it’s an absolute curse when it interferes with our free time.

These nine strategies won’t bring you closer to your work; they won’t allow you to check your email from the top of a mountain, and they’re even less likely to help you manage the office from another country. They’ll help you do the opposite: enjoy your time not spent working, create a schedule that doesn’t stick you with endless freelance projects, and design a workweek that puts you in control of your freelance design efforts.

1. Use Time Management Apps

It’s impossible to reduce your work hours without a solid understanding of where they’re going. An all-night design and development session may lead to output and results, but it’s utterly valueless as a piece of data without an understanding of what you spend it doing.

Applications like RescueTime let you track your work hours, giving you an understanding of when you work and what you do.

I like RescueTime for tracking hours and applications and websites I use while being productive — it gives a simple breakdown of the applications that cost you the most time, allowing you to work out which are best blocked.

Other useful tools include E.gg Timer and Kukuklok — a simple stopwatch application, and a basic clock for alerting you to finished time blocks and deadlines.

Measure and manage — it’s that simple.

2. Invest in an Office Space

Smart freelancers rarely think of their expenses as wasted money — they think of any spending as an investment in greater productivity, greater visibility, or greater output.

Whether it’s money spent on advertising or the latest software, the goal is the same: improving an aspect of their business which would otherwise sit stagnant.

Your goal in improving productivity isn’t saving money, but earning more of it. Serviced offices are like any other business investment — they’re worthwhile when they lead to an increase in output and income.

Monitor your average workday output across different workspaces and ensure that you’re always in the best one — it might be worth spending money to reduce distractions.

It doesn’t even have to be an office outside of home; you can invest in more equipment or even remodeling work in your home office to make it more conducive to your personal productivity.

3. Remind Yourself to Work While in the Office

Lifehack.org published a guide to home office productivity just over two years ago. While slightly outdated and a little debatable — not all people work better with music, for example — it’s a solid list of ways to improve your productivity at home.

Anti-productive distractions and time-wasters are much more common at home, and sometimes it just takes a small change in habits to eliminate them.

But the most important tactic seems to have been missed: remind yourself to work. Some freelancers suggest taping a reminder to the top of your computer screen, while others insist that it’s an internal decision.

Whichever strategy you use to remind yourself of looming work deadlines, ensure that it’s something you repeat to yourself whenever distractions begin to appear.

4. Create a Support Team

Sometimes work becomes too much. You’re stressed out, lacking any motivation to continue with your projects, and thoroughly in need of a vacation. After emailing your major clients and letting them know that you’ll be unavailable, you get a last-minute message from someone you’ve worked with before: there’s a task to do, and they need you to complete it straight away.

These situations appear constantly while away from the office, and they’re a sure-fire way to begin worrying about the strength of your connections with clients.

Instead of panicking, create a network of other freelancers that can step up and help you in these situations. A quick email to your network can help you preserve client connections, even when out of the office.

5. Take Vacations Regularly

Who says you need a decades-long career to take a sabbatical? Freelancers are in a unique position — not only do they have more freedom than other designers, they’re able to spend time reflecting on their business and working out exactly how they can improve it.

I think regular breaks is an essential addition to any freelancer’s business strategy — observing how you work may give you new perspectives on how to improve it.

After your next major project, take a month off to work out how you can make your business less of a liability on your personal time.

It often takes less than a week of reflection to realize that what you have now isn’t something that can last for decades. Whether it’s time to develop a new revenue stream or simply a reason to change your approach to clients, a sabbatical can improve your focus.

6. Monitor Your Output

It’s one thing to examine the time you spend working, and another to actively work on improving the way you complete tasks. Tools like RescueTime and E.gg Timer allow you to effectively track hours spent working and applications worked in, but they don’t allow you to record how much of that time lead to real output and measurable results.

Record work sessions using two metrics: time spend versus output. Tracking hours alone will lead you to confuse time spent working and the results of that work, while measuring output alone can lead to hours spend working at a dizzying pace. Record both and you’ll gain an understanding of how you are most effective — something that’s essential for cutting out non-essential work.

7. Practice the Art of Technology Minimization

Next time you’re experiencing a state of productivity that can only be described as "anti-Zen," ask yourself how you would fare with no technology. Obviously, your computer would remain if you need it to do your work, although it would be almost completely on its own — no internet connection (unless you need it), smartphone, or instant messaging tools would keep it company.

As catastrophic as that situation might seem, it’s rarely one that’s unproductive. The biggest problem for digital workers isn’t a lack of technology or a limit to its ability, but a dilemma caused by having access to too much technology.

Sometimes all it takes to become productive is switching your router off and working without the Internet.

8. Automate Your Tasks

There are two types of activities for freelancers: critical activities and non-essential, but somewhat important activities. The first includes major projects and work related to looming deadlines, while the second includes personal finance changes, long-term billing, and replying to email. The first type of activity is more important, but which one do you think costs freelance workers the most time?

Lifehacker, a productivity blog, has attempted to fight back against "crutch" activities for years, going so far as to create a complete checklist of activities that just aren’t that important, yet tend to cost a lot of time.

The most common choices for eliminating wasted time are automation or elimination.

Make the choice to cut out certain "busywork" activities entirely, or at least automate them to free up more time in your schedule.

9. Be Realistic with Your Work Load

A lot of freelancers are constantly searching for more clients, all under the guise that more business will inevitably lead to more income, more freedom, and more success.

There’s no inherent advantage to managing more clients — only a large amount of disadvantages for your work-life balance.

The most important metric for any freelancer isn’t the amount of clients you manage or the quantity of projects that you can take on, but their potential to generate income.

Expand your business and it will end up requiring more input from you, all for an output that may not scale with growth.

There’s nothing wrong with staying small, especially if it results in a more manageable client base.

Related Content

• 10 Google Chrome Extensions for Boosting Your Productivity
• A Beginner’s Guide to the Business Side of Freelancing
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• Related categories: Productivity and Project Management

Mathew Carpenter is an 18-year-old business owner and entrepreneur from Sydney, Australia. Mathew is the owner of AddToDesign, a website which provides value added design buzz, along with Design-Newz, the premier source for aggregated design news. Follow Mathew on Twitter: @matcarpenter.

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Related Blogs

• Related Blogs on Pro-Freelance

One of the major problems that face any freelancer is the unstable income, which vary depend on the projects flow and the client availability. Many designers and developers have been into this dilemma for a while that make them feel afraid from turning to freelancing career. On the other hand, the recent recession circumstances drive many IT experts to depend totally or partially on the freelance projects.

In this small article, I will find the solution to this dilemma through banner advertising on your blog using BuySellads advertising network. The blogging concept has succeeded to give every one the place on the web. However, you can write your own tutorials, share ideas and resources that interest others in your career such as design or developing…etc.

The idea is that if you have a blog that is able to drive some traffic from the web. Then you can sell banners on your site which can drive you monthly flow of money that can assure you stable income. The process seems to be as easy as creating a blog on Google blogger or create a blog on your site using WordPress. Actually, this is the first step.

The second step is to try to drive more traffic to your blog. There are millions of articles that cover the tips of how to get traffic to your site, but the most important tip is to become unique and try to add your own content. This will give you stable growing traffic. In further article, I will cover how designers and developers can drive traffic to their blogs and sites.

Finding the place where to sell banners on your site is another important issue, as many advertising networks is complicated to deal with and some others do not have the enough clients to be able to provide you with advertisers. One of the most comprehensive advertising networks on the web is BuySellads.

BuySellads is a featured advertising network that is remarked as efficient user-friendly application. As you do not have to go through complicated requests and forms from other advertising networks. All you have to do is to create an account, submit to your site and a representative will get back to you once your blog or site is approved. BuySellads index your site and allow publishers to see it along with your site data.

You can also have more than one site in your account and set the prices for each banner or group of banners in each site. The good news is there is no bidding, so you do not have to get into bidding on your advertising space. The publishers see your price and sell the advertising space based on this price. All you have to do to integrate your advertising space is to add BuySellads code to your site and the sold banners will be filled dynamically and you got notified when a banner is sold.

Along with the above easy-to-use process, BuySellads provides multiple methods to withdraw your earning through wire-transfer, check and Paypal.

While many designers and developers do not have a skills or the time to contact advertisers directly to sell banner spaces, you can depend on BuySellads to handle banner advertising in your site or blog.

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Each participating user was asked leave a comment in the giveaway article or tweet about the article and then leave a comment with their Twitter ID. There were a total of 17 participants to the giveaway and each got an ID number, corresponding to their comment number from 1 to 17. To determine this winner we used Random.org List Randomizer.

The Winner

• webbografico - comment ID#5

Thank you all for participating and be sure to subscribe to our blog to receive updates and notices regarding future giveaways.

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5. FlashEff Premium Unlimited License Giveaway Winner

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The Prize

• The prize for this giveaway is a professional 1 page PSD to XHTML conversion offered by SnobbySlice.

The Sponsor

SnobbySlice takes your design, in many formats, and then converts it into “code” which makes it ready for the web (you may have seen it on the web before as “Convert PSD to HTML CSS”). Essentially they take your mockup of what you want your site to look like, and then convert that image into a working page on the web! Oh, and as they say they aren’t actually snobs, they’re just snobs about coding.

You can find out more about SnobbySlice on their blog or by following them on Twitter.

How can I participate ?

You can participate to the giveaway in two ways :

• share this article on Twitter to your followers and just post as a comment here your Twitter ID.
• or just post a comment on this article. One word is enough.

Notes

• The Giveaway ends on August 30th 00:00 CET. All comments submitted after that date won’t participate.
• The winners will be determined randomly using the random list generator at Random.org.
• Be sure to enter your email correctly so we can contact you after the giveaway has ended.
• Comment only once. Multiple comments with the same email address or Twitter ID will not be considered.

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5. Free PSD to XHTML Slicing Contest

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In this showcase, you’ll see 30 examples of watercolor effects and brush strokes in web design.

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About the Author

Angela Rohner is founder of the css and flash design gallery, TheBestDesigns.com which she started in 2001. She works as an Art Director and Front End Developer in Dallas, TX. In her spare time, Angela works on personal/freelance projects, paints portraits, and rides her bike as much as possible. You can find her on Twitter or her Personal Website.

Where do you look for sources of inspiration?

I look at most of the popular design and illustration galleries. I also subscribe to a number of printed magazines like Print, Communication Arts, and Computer Arts. With all these design resources, I still try to look for outside sources of inspiration from architecture, fine art, and nature. It seem the best type of inspiration comes when you are least excepting it. I also find that asking people not involved in the industry what inspires them, can generate some great finds.

What is your favourite aspect of __? (Graphic design, logo design, illustration, blogging)

I love creating something and sharing it. I have been in involved in fine art and crafts throughout my whole life. The best part of creating artwork and projects digitally, is the immediate results, and with the internet, it is easy to share it with others. I also love it when someone appreciates a project the same way I do.

What are your top 5 favourite websites?

• ffffound – I love the variety of inspirational images on ffffound.
• FreelanceSwitch – This site helped in giving me the confidence to pursue a full-time freelance career.
• CSS Tricks – Great screencast and articles related to CSS.
• Smashing Magazine – Great articles, freebies, and roundups.
• Google Reader – Not sure if this can be considered in the list, but I spend a lot of time reading through my RSS feeds.

Who do you look up to in your field?

I look up to Collis Ta’eed. I’m sure everyone knows, but he is part of the team responsible for Envato, bringing us Psdtuts+, Vectortuts+, the rest of the Tuts+ sites, Freelance Switch, and many more. I look up to how he makes a living creating well designed content rich websites.

I also really look up to all the designer and illustrators that are constantly pushing themselves to become better. I can’t say that I always have that determination, it is very inspirational.

A few weeks ago on Inspiredology, we covered a post about cartoons. We focused on cartoons and characters being used on the web. Vectips has a great illustration of a character at the top; Where did this stem from? And do you think it has been a successful aspect of your blog.

The Vectips character was originally created for my stock illustration portfolio. When I first started Vectips, I used the illustration to promote my stock portfolio. When I saw that people were actually reading Vectips, I realized having the illustration for sale on iStock could be hurting the Vectips brand. I started seeing the character illustration on other websites, so I changed the illustration to more of a self portrait and eventually took down the illustration from iStock.  It was a little lesson in branding for me!

How do you come up with tutorials for Vectips?

What is your process of creating a tutorials from start to finish?

Sometimes coming up with tutorials in hard. I try to create tutorials that are relevant to current trends in the industry. I also try to create tutorials with simple techniques that can be applied to many other projects.

To start a tutorial, I usually do a little research on the the subject the tutorial is about. Next, I create the final image keeping in mind the steps to create the tutorial. Then I write out the tutorial while creating the final image again, taking screenshot as I go along. Then it is off to posting the tutorial or sending it off to another editor to be published.

What sort of social media tools do you use and find the most successful?

Twitter has been a great tool for me. It keeps me connected with readers and other designers. I use Twitter as another vehicle to share useful vector articles, tutorials, and freebies that I find that might not constitute a full blog post on Vectips.

Stumble Upon has also been great in generating traffic, but it doesn’t seem to generate the same type of community that Twitter does.

What piece of work are you most proud of and why?

That’s a hard one. I guess I would say Vectips is the piece I am most proud of . For me, I like to do things quick and move onto the next thing. With Vectips, I constantly have to update and maintain it. So for me, I am proud that I am sticking with it. Moreover, I am happy that readers find the information useful! There is really nothing better than being thanked for helping out.

What would be your perfect dream project?

I don’t really have a dream project. I like working for myself and not under the guidelines and limitations of client projects. Even though this is not reality, I would love to just to come up with interesting brands, websites, and illustrations for fun!

What advice would you give to someone starting out in the design industry?

I would advice someone starting out in the industry to always stick with it. Be passionate about design, but also realize you are going to need a thick skin. Someone is always going to be better, someone is always going to hate your work, and you will always have to deal with problematic clients and projects.

I would also suggest to always be thinking of the future. Think about what signing a contract, no-disclosure, or anything else will do to your future. I’m not saying this to scare you and I’m not saying don’t ever get into a contract (contracts are actually a good thing), I am saying just be careful you are not selling yourself short. It can be hard starting out, but don’t agree to something that you might be kicking yourself about down the road.

Looking into a crystal ball, what do you think will be the next design trend?

I think that the shiny Web 2.0 style will start to phase out. In turn, I think softer satin and conservative style graphics will become more popular. This trend will be strengthened by the current world economy. I think companies will not want to look as flashy and boisterous as they might look. Grungy and hand-drawn styles will also make a bigger splash as backlash to the Web 2.0 style. I really think the most successful designers are going to be very versatile when dealing with trends. They will have to rely more on basic design principles rather than sticking to a trend. Something I am still learning!

What can we expect from Vectips in the upcoming year?

I’m starting to dabble in video, so look for something in that realm soon (hopefully). I also want to engage the Vectips readers more. I know there are a lot of people out there smarter than me when it comes to vector art and Illustrator, so I would like to tap into their knowledge and share it with other readers. Maybe some more interviews, forums, or workshops?