Every day, we come across things in our roles that make us cringe – some things you may not even notice anymore, and others might make you grit your teeth and your whole body tense up.

In this article, we’ll list our top cringe-inducing things that brand managers around the world have endured, and I’m sure you’ve experienced them in one way or another.

Packaging design is everywhere – we interact with it everyday.

According to a study by the Food Marketing Institute in 2008, there are around 47,000 packaged products available in the average supermarket.

With this in mind, it’s surprising to see how many crappy packaging designs on our shelves!

Are you struggling to get out of bed before midday whilst in lockdown and practising social distancing?
Are you getting addicted to the snooze button on your alarm?

Like most people in the UK, I’ve been working from home and social distancing for just over 2 weeks now - rarely leaving the house.

To be honest, I’ve quite enjoyed working from home - I’ve found an increase in my focus and been able to channel the extra time gained from not commuting into my passion projects.

If you’re looking at starting to create nudenotes, infographics are the best place to look for inspiration.

Infographics cut out a tonne of unnecessary research, which can otherwise get in the way of you just sitting down and creating some nudenotes.

Hosted by The Futur's very own design and branding gurus, Ben Burns and Matthew Encina, the series documents every step of the process in an honest and insightful way.

It’s a must-watch for anyone keen on building their own brand in the creative industry.

In this article, I’m going to share my nudenotes on this video series, complete with my key takeaways, plus a sprinkling of my insights.

2019 is coming to a close, and 2020 is creeping closer round the corner.

It’s the perfect time for creatives around the galaxy to take stock and build their knowledge, to step into the new decade with confidence and novel ideas.

It's that time of year again: the Christmas gift rush. 

We start frantically running around stores and clicking about online, desperately trying to find the best possible gifts for our friends and family, grabbing products we think will be a good match.

There’s so much choice out there, and it's only getting more and more difficult to find ‘the perfect gift’.

A new way of sharing ideas has been exploding on Instagram over the past couple of months… The Instagram Carousel.

In just 10 slides our design and business heroes are pouring all their wisdom and knowledge, all in bite size chunks we scroll right through in a few seconds, then forget in just the same time.

But how many of these carousels do you remember? 

We all loathe meetings- and we have all had cringe inducing moments because of them.

You probably come into contact with them every day – some of them you may not even notice anymore,  and others might make your blood boil every time.

In this article, I break down five cringe-inducing things that drive me crazy about meetings.

Are you an amateur or an expert?

A rookie or a professional?

I’m no psychic, but I already know the answer -- you’re an expert, a professional!

Now for the tough part: do you know what the difference is?

Forgive me, for I have sinned.

Seven years ago, I thought Comic Sans was a good font.

It pains me to type that, but it’s true.

Time might have passed, but I still know surprisingly little about design, so it’s time for me to sit down with design extraordinaire, Dean O’Callaghan, to learn the basics.

There are many times in a designer's career when you will hear and see things the make you cringe. 

I’m sure you probably come into contact with them every day – some of them you may not even notice them anymore,  and others might make your blood boil every time.

In this article, I break down six cringe-inducing things that drive me crazy as a Designer.

Have you read countless books about business, design, marketing, branding, or anything else, but find it difficult to remember the content after reading it? 

I feel you.
And I have a solution.

#nudenotes!

For those of you who have been following my Instagram feed know that every week for the past 25 weeks, I’ve been posting my booknotes on Douglas Davis’ brilliant book, Creative Strategy and the Business of Design.

Reading time: 16 mins

Want to know how to make awesome nudenotes (or sketchnotes), but don’t know where to start?
Step this way, my friend, and join the nudenotes revolution.

Reading time: 10 mins

As avid fans of GoT, and because we take our branding and marketing inspiration from everywhere, we’ve spent hours discussing storylines, character development, and the various themes and metaphors.

Looking back over the past eight seasons, we noticed, buried beneath the rubble of King’s Landing, something interesting and unexpected… Lessons in branding.

Reading time: 13 mins

In celebration of the final season of Game of Thrones and ten years of amazing television. I have created a series of nudenotes, which I have been posting to my Instagram feed . In the light of the seven, I present all these posts here, in one place there some bonus ones thrown in.

Reading time: 1 min

Many of you may be asking yourselves ‘What the hell are nudenotes?’. Simply put, nudenotes are a form of sketchnotes.

Sketchnoting is the synergy of sketching and note-taking into a single piece of visual communication. The goal is to better engage your brain with the content you are consuming, since your brain is using both the creative and logical parts of your mind. Learning this way improves the retention of the information, and as an added bonus, you get an awesome-looking piece of reference material.

Reading time: 1 min

Perceptual maps form a small part of a larger process of developing products, brands and services for consumers. This technique can be a tricky to master, but can be an effective tool for all creative professionals to help you understand where your product/brand sit amongst your competition from (and this is the important bit) your consumers’ perspective.

Reading time: 3 mins

One of the most universal principles within design, marketing, and advertising is understanding features and benefits, including the differences between them, and how to leverage them to create designs and communications that truly connect with consumers.

Reading time: 5 mins

We need to talk about Value…
As creative professionals, we talk about value a lot during the design process, sometimes without even knowing it. Everyone has a different perspective on what value is and how to get it.

Reading time: 4 mins

Is your packaging design the most effective it can possibly be? Where can you improve? How can you improve?

Reading time: 18 mins

There’s no denying it: we bloody love Christmas. That’s why, as part of our usual #sketchnotecookbook, we’ve put together a special festive edition, so we can celebrate the holidays the NSC way: with a dash of design, a sprinkling of sketchnotes, and a heaped tablespoon of indulgence.

Reading time: 5 mins

We’re all about developing our knowledge here at NSC, and we love a good book. So I’ve compiled a list of my favourite books that I’ve found both practically useful and inspirational in my design work.

Reading time: 1 min

Another recommendation from The Futur, I read this book because there was a gap in my knowledge about the business-side of design - here’s what I learned.

Reading time: 2 mins

I was recently working on some #nudenotes based on a Youtube Video by The Futur (love these guys, thoroughly recommend all creative people check them out. Chris Do, you are a legend!).

Reading time: 1 min

Another recommendation from The Futur, ‘Bigger Than This’ is such a useful book for those looking to build a brand from scratch or rebrand an existing business.

Reading time: 1 min