Earn money by expressing your unique creative vision. Melissa Galt will help you zero in on the talents you already have to successfully build a thriving base of enthusiastic customers for your work. Building a business around your strongest creative talents brings ease and abundance to your life as you spend more and more of your time on your work instead of on a day job. In Design Your Business Blueprint, you'll identify your strongest and most monetizable creative skills and develop a plan for turning those skills into a profitable business. Melissa will help you identify potential clients and coach you through the the process of packaging and presenting your products and services to them. You’ll learn tips for communicating the value of your work and pricing strategies that will help you escape the grind of an hourly rate. Melissa will also help you develop a consistent system for generating essential referrals so your business continues to grow and thrive for the rest of your life.

Life is our most important project. But it’s also full of constraints and challenges, just like a design project. Not everything can be the most important thing. So how do you prioritize work, play and family to live your life to the fullest? Join renowned designer Ayse Birsel as she walks through a series of questions and visual exercises designed to help you reflect on your work/life/creativity balance based on her book, Design the Life you Love.

Did you know that you can turn your sketches, drawings and doodles into patterns? Join Bonnie Christine for an introduction to creating patterns to use in your very own fabric prints, stationery designs, website backgrounds, cell phone covers, and much, much more. This course will take you through the process of working with Adobe Illustrator to create digital versions of your artwork. You’ll learn tips and tricks for working in Illustrator and how you can use the software to create repeating patterns of your very own drawings. Bonnie will guide you step-by-step through the process of transforming sketches and tracings into vector art which can be used for an endless array of printable and online projects from customized stationery to computer wallpaper. You’ll also learn how to assemble your collection of designs into a portfolio you can use to impress potential collectors and buyers. This course will lay a solid foundation for those new to Illustrator and open up exciting new possibilities for people already familiar with the program. If you are ready to bring your drawings to life in new ways this class is for you.

No matter how beautiful your work is, it won’t sell if it’s not presented in a polished, professional way. In Design, Print, and Build Your Own Portfolio, Bonnie Christine will take you through the complete portfolio design process, so you’ll feel confident about showing your work. Bonnie Christine is a surface pattern designer and mother hen of the Roost Tribe, an inspirational community for creatives. 

Steven Heller is a legend in the world of design and his influence on the industry cannot be overstated. When CreativeLive visited Heller in his NYC studio, we talked about his life-long passion for design and why history matters. Heller has authored more than 170 books on design-related topics and the list continues to grow. In this candid conversation, Heller discusses the logos of legendary designer Paul Rand and why design literacy is important. He talks about the role of history in a contemporary designer’s work and how being well-versed in what came before you yields better results.

Paula Scher, one of the world’s most acclaimed graphic designers, has pushed the boundaries of visual communication for over three decades. Iconic, smart and unabashedly populist, her images have entered into the American vernacular. She began her career as an art director in the 1970’s and early 80’s, when her eclectic approach to typography became highly influential. 

Lance Wyman is a master of transforming public spaces through branding and is most noted for his iconic work on the 1968 Mexico Summer Olympics identity. Lance’s work resonates today, as much as it did when he first began in the 1960s. Join us for this installment of the Civilization Design Lecture Series to learn more about Lance Wyman – his work and his legacy.