Core77

Over at the Coroflot Creative Seeds Blog, Carl Alviani's just posted a very, very useful article on how to optimize--even exploit--your first year out of school (presuming you have a job, that is. If you don't have a job at that point, well, that's another article entirely). Here's tip #7 of 9:

7. Do something new every project. All those new skills you're picking up are going to be not-so-hot at first. You'll be tempted to stick with the same tools you've spent years sharpening, and rightly so: you're getting paid to be awesome, not flail around with something you just learned. There's a balance to be struck, though, because if you never practice your new skills, you'll never grow, and growing is what you came here for.

So here's what you do: make one thing in every project a new way. If you're used to doing marker renderings, pick one sketch and render it digitally. Or vice versa. At worst, you'll blow an hour or two on something that doesn't get used, but you'll have gotten to practice working a new way with a real concept under real constraints. At best, the new tool will spark you to see the project in a new way, and make everything else that much better. Win-win.

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