Love what you do: Interview with Emanuel Sa
Meet Emanuel Sa, a 25 year old, Graphic Designer from the country of Portugal. We had some time to speak to him about the many aspects he learned over the past 3 years he spent designing and figuring out what he wanted to do with his life.
He talks about his life before and after design, freelance work and shares some insight for finding your own style.
Hey Emanuel! Can you please introduce yourself to our readers?
I’m Emanuel Sá, 25 years old, a Graphic Designer from Portugal.
How did you first get interested in design?
Well, I’ve always been interested in art, in many aspects and since I was young I knew I wanted to work in that area of work. I focused my studies around arquitecture but soon found that what I really wanted to do with my life was design, which most people were still figuring out. After I dropped out of The School of the Arts I started studying and designing on my own, 4 years ago. After about a year of interaction with Laurent Baunmann, Jonas Rask, Phil Antoni, I started freelancing.
You talk about interaction with other designers. What exactly is Iconlicious, your personal company or a collaboration of sorts?
Iconlicious started as a collaboration between me and the great Brazilian designer, Marcelo Marfil. Marcelo was starting his career at the time and I thought he was a great partner to do something with. I wasn’t wrong their were just some differences we had to work out, such as the future we wanted for Iconlicious, not own own specifically. Marcelo made the decision to try to work on his own, which I encouraged and understood and from what you can see, he was clearly right. Not much has changed though, we collaborate a lot and maybe, in the near future you can see something like Iconlicious out soon. For now, Iconlicious works as a showcase of my Portfolio, stuff I have been working on for the last 3 years.
I love the style of icons you create. Can you talk a little bit about the process you take to create each one?
It’s not much different than most of my colleagues, most of the concepts start after some brainstorming with the client, some sketches are done and once a concept “clicks” we render it in Photoshop.
You talk about Photoshop. Is that the only software you use to create your magic?
For now, yes. It’s not a perfect tool but it’s the best thats offered at the moment.
When your not designing your?
I love sports, especially football (European). Other than that you can find me on the beach in the summer. Freelance work can sometimes be an unfair position to be in but you need to learn to control it by scheduling your time wisely to make sure you don’t get an infinite amount of work at once.
The most important thing you have learned over the past 3 years of doing both freelance and personal work would be?
Love what you do or go do something else.
Be unique; find something you can improve on and be great at it.
Thanks for your time Emanuel, any last words or thoughts you would like to share with our readers?
It’s important to have references but it’s also important to identify what you need to learn from those references. If you keep searching references you’ll hardly develop your own style. My main advice for someone starting is, get to be technically perfect and then disconnect from everything else and just do what YOU love and enjoy.
Thanks for your time and insight Emanuel!
http://www.twitter.com/emanuelsa
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