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.
With that in mind, we’ve put together our top 8 articles of 2019 so you can read through the best of the best and kick-start 2020 armed with the knowledge you need to succeed and grow — plus, we’ve thrown in a couple of bonus articles that we loved putting together.
In this article, our co-founder and Marketing Lead, Tassia Agatowski, combines two of her passions — marketing and the environment — to create a comprehensive guide so you can make your business more sustainable and environmentally conscious.
Sustainability is becoming an expectation that the public is setting on businesses, so get ahead of the curve and make sure that sustainability is one of your organisation’s New year’s Resolutions.
For more on sustainability and marketing, follow Tassia on Instagram.
At NSC, we’re all about supporting startups, creatives, and small business owners, so we sat down with a member of our creative community, Kim Morris, to chat about her business venture: Inku Design.
Kim’s illustrations are bright, bold, and beautiful (just like the artist herself!), and she takes inspiration from everything from Chinese and Japanese culture, to feminism, humour, typography… anything and everything!
Check out more of Kim’s work as Inku Design here.
23 Ways to Promote Your Product
For those with startups, it can be daunting to promote your product or service.
This in-depth guide lists the ways you can market your product so you can pick and choose which promotional activities best suit your product, your brand, and you.
Nudenotes are a creation of our very own Dean O’Callaghan, co-founder and Creative Lead at NSC.
Essentially, nudenotes are a form of sketchnotes — but rougher, more raw, unedited and unfiltered.
Nudenotes are a learning device: they help you to absorb the information you’re reading, watching, or hearing in a way that you’re more likely to recall.
Join the nudenotes revolution now to ramp up your learning technique for 2020.
See more of Dean’s nudenotes on his Instagram.
You may not realise it, but the packaging of your product can heavily influence your consumer’s buying decision.
So you need to know how to make the most of it.
As a packaging designer by day, Dean knows the ins and outs of this specialised niche, and has put his knowledge into a handy guide for you to browse.
In order to truly succeed as a business, you need to know where your products fit in with your competition.
This is perceptual mapping.
It’s hard to know where to start with perceptual mapping so Dean has written this deep dive so you can beat the competition in 2020.
Creative Cringe: Designer Edition
We’ve all been there — no matter what industry you work in, which profession you follow, we’ve all experienced Creative Cringe in some way or another.
Creative Cringe is a term we’re coined that refers to those little things that make you grind your teeth, twitch or pull that awkward I-don't-really-agree-with-you smile™.
In this edition, exhausted design extraordinaire Dean O’Callaghan explores the different Creative Cringe’s he’s encountered as a day-to-day designer.
15 Lessons Game of Thrones Can Teach Us About Branding
The creative community of NSC joined forces to put this one together — we all love Game of Thrones, and we all love branding, so we all had different ideas of what branding lessons we’d all spotted in the hit HBO show.
It’s well-worth a read, for GoT lovers and Thrones-newbies, so check it out now!
Valar morghulis.
BONUS: Disney Business Wisdom
Who doesn’t love Disney films?
Another collaborative piece from our full creative community, this article has all the nuggets of business wisdom we’ve gleaned from a lifetime of Disney films
Any excuse to re-watch Beauty and the Beast!
BONUS: #booknotes - Creative Strategy and the Business of Design
#booknotes are a series of nudenotes by Dean O’Callaghan, based on his massive library of books on design, branding, business essentials, life hacks — anything he can get his hands on!
Dean’s been gifted plenty more books from Santa to nudenote, so stay tuned for even more nudenotes next year!
That’s it — our top articles of 2019!
We’ve got much more in store for 2020 and beyond, so register for our newsletter to get our latest articles sent straight to your inbox!
If you have anything else you’d like us to explore, or any suggestions for nudenotes for Dean, feel free to get in touch!
