Illustration couresty of Sara Andreasson @saraandreasson

From our respective home offices, we’ve been scanning the web over the past few days to collect tips and resources for designers, illustrators, and self-employed creatives during the Covid-19 outbreak. While it’s a scary time, it’s also heartening to see so many projects, initiatives, Zoom meet-ups, and open-source Google docs organized by the design community to keep spirits high and money flowing.

Below, you’ll find our selection of tips for supporting and nourishing the creative community, finding remote jobs, working from home, and generally keeping your sanity while social distancing at home. Please feel free to add your own tips and resources for fellow designers, illustrators, and creatives to our open-source Google document. Stay safe everyone ❤️.

Support freelance artists, small presses, booksellers, small type foundries, and more:

  • Support independent foundries, and discover new, cutting-edge fonts. We love getting lost in the list of indie foundries on Type.lol. 
  • Purchase fonts-in-progress and nurture the practices of up-and-coming type designers and students via the platform Future Fonts.
  • Get under a blanket and order a bundle of alternative comics from publishers like Breakdown Press, Nieves Books, Samandal, and Koyama Press.
  • With Printed Matter’s Los Angeles Art Book Fair and other book fairs cancelled, now is the time to order a stack of tomes from your most beloved design presses. We’ve just stocked up from Occasional Papers, Drawdown Books, Co-Co Press, Primary Information, Inventory Press, and Spector Books. Counter Print is offering to send customers videos of books they’re interested in. 
  • Now’s also the time to order that illustrated print you’ve had your eye on. We’ve been loving the Risograph designs sold via the web stores of Colorama, Earthbound Press, and Tan & Loose Press. And if you’ve had a zine idea in the drawer, why not finally make it a reality and print it with these small scale printers, too?
  • As a part of your efforts to support indie bookstores, consider financially supporting booksellers directly—for instance, McNally Jackson Books, beloved NYC institution, has just (temporarily🤞) laid off nearly 80 booksellers in anticipation of revenue loss.
  • Don’t buy books from Amazon (which is deprioritizing book deliveries right now anyway); instead, support your local bookstores by shopping online through sites like Indie Bound and Bookshop.org.  
  • Purchase gift cards from your favorite book, design, and comic shops. Brookyln’s Desert Island Comics is offering 20% off on gift cards this week, or you can spend $30 for a mystery bag of illustrated goodies.
  • Subscribe to Stack for ongoing support of independent magazines, delivered straight to your door. 
  • If you want to go a step further and donate your skills, you could design merch for your favorite bars, restaurants, or small businesses that are currently closed. We’ve been loving the sweaters and tees sold by NYC bar Beverly’s to help raise the funds needed to pay their liquor license during the crisis. Or, if you’re savvy at social media, lend your design skills and know-how to a local, small business less familiar with online marketing, and help them transition their business to a delivery service. You could also volunteer with Designers to Combat COVID-19.
  • Donate your home computer’s down-time to COVID-19 research by downloading and running crowdsourced distributed computing platform Folding@home.
‘No Culture with Corona’ by Anna Rupprecht @annarupprecht_studio

Find jobs + save money:

  • Students can now register for free access to Adobe’s Creative Cloud through May 2020. Here’s more information on how it works.
  • Apply for AIGA’s Worldstudio Scholarship. The awards, which range from $2,000-$3,000, benefit underrepresented and economically disadvantaged students who are studying photography, illustration, and design disciplines in colleges and universities in the US. Deadline for the 2020/2021 scholarship is April 15.
  • Take a deep dive through this comprehensive artist resource list, which includes opportunities and financial relief options available to artists of all disciplines.
  • Scan this spreadsheet by Word of Mouth that lists interdisciplinary, remote-friendly employers. Here’s another list of established remote companies. 
  • Follow AIGA’s weekly Design Jobs listings, which is actively sourcing and flagging remote positions, too.
  • For designers in New York, this semi-curated job listings doc is being updated with design listings.
  • For anyone running your own business, Holly Howard, a business consultant and educator who comes highly recommended by several of our designer friends, is offering a 3-hour webinar called “Master Class in Crisis.” Payment is offered on a sliding scale.  
  • If you’re a director of owner of a design agency, you can also join Ben Steers’ Slack group for sharing resources and opportunities for any businesses that are struggling.
  • The fashion label Pyer Moss is offering a $50,000 grant for “minority and women owned small creative businesses who are currently in distress.” If this is you, email them at wanttohelp@yourfriendsin.nyc. 
  • Junior-year design students around the world: Apply for the Type Director’s Club’s Beatrice Warde Scholarship, which is $5,000 toward tuition and a year’s membership to the TDC. Deadlines have been extended to April 1st.
  • Take a look through the Remote Design Kit google doc, a crowdsourced resource for designers to get work related to the coronavirus outbreak. 
  • Scan a few jobs boards creating specifically for remote designers, such as Remote Design Jobs, Design Remotely, and Working Nomads.
  • If you’re in a hiring position, or are able to commission a freelancer right now, consider hiring an individual listed in this ‘Designers in need of work during the COVID-19 pandemic’ spreadsheet. 
  • Take a look through this handy resource list, Help for Designers and Businesses, from the Type Director’s Club.
Image courtesy of Cachete Jack @cachetejack

Collaborate—but at a distance:

 

Image courtesy Lauren Humphrey @laurenhumphrey92

Teach yourself a new skill:

  • Learn all about variable fonts and how to design them with this very handy Variable Fonts Primer.
  • AIGA members at the Sustaining level will receive 40% off an annual premium subscription to Skillshare. New AIGA members, at any level, receive 2 months free. 
  • Proof, generate, and animate fonts all night with Dinamo’s Font Gauntlet.
  • Discover new design tools to play with via this, this, and this are.na channel.
  • Watch live talks by designers and creatives that are streaming on Instagram via @LiveTalkFrom, a new design handle intending to “fight quarantine, boredom and, most importantly, to instill hope.”
  • Tune into Adobe’s Creative Summit on March 31, which will now be online and free.
  • Similarly, this year’s Adobe 99U Conference will be online and free. Stay tuned for more details and information on how you can attend.
  • If you’ve been itching to get into animation, why not submit a clip to Hellavision Television? The video-zine’s current call for entries asks for animations themed “Cursed/Blessed.”
  • Brush up on your business know-how: Online business coaching service The Role Model Way is offering its “Artist Business and Goals Roadmap Course” for free during the COVID19 period.
  • Learn how to make your own mask with MaskOnCollective (but remember, masks don’t protect, they can only reduce the risk of infecting others).
  • Create your own artwork encouraging others to stay at home, wash their hands, stop hoarding at the supermarket, or keep a six-foot distance to others. We’ve been highlighting some of our favorite designs on our Instagram—stay tuned to see more!
Image courtesy of Cachete Jack @cachetejack

Entertain yourself:

 

Add your own tips and resources for supporting the design community during the Coronavirus outbreak via our open-source document.