Content marketing is visual in the eyes of a graphic designer. At the end of the day, Maysoon unwinds and plays with her cat, Christopher. “This was my first job out of college, so I learned how to work in a team and autonomously, how to communicate, time management, how to deal with stress, and of course making an infographic a day has made me a better designer and illustrator,” Maysoon says. “I’ve learned more about what I’m capable of and more about the programs I work with.” What it takes to create an infographic Maysoon is an infographic maven, able to turn a written outline into a custom visual story in just six to eight hours. I’ll let Maysoon explain this one: “I usually start by reading over the outline I’m working on and familiarizing myself with the client’s branding,” Maysoon said of her own approach to creating infographics. I also like to look around on Google Images, Pinterest and Dribbble for some inspiration. It’s usually never a smooth process start to finish – there’s a lot of moving things around and testing out different techniques.” Designing someone else’s vision No two brands are the same, so working with clients requires a lot of hands-on time spent getting to know their brand aesthetic, their goals and their audience – and that goes for everything from writing to creating videos to developing a strong social presence. One of the challenges that awaits her is turning a written outline into a visual story. What’s on the graphic design horizon? While currently there is a trend toward nostalgic designs like retro lettering and “paper-y” textures, it doesn’t mean every brand should start using these elements in their graphics.
Images speak to us in a way words alone cannot. This is as true in content marketing as it is in life, and it’s what makes our graphic design team such an integral part of Brafton’s creative core. Designing custom, branded graphics for a variety of clients, each with their own style guidelines, is no small feat.
We asked Maysoon Shafi, our Senior Graphic Designer in the Boston office, to pull back the curtains and reveal a little bit about life as a graphic designer at Brafton. Maysoon, who’s celebrating her two-year “Braftiversary” next month, came to us with a world view, having lived in eight cities across three different countries before settling in Boston to attend college. By the time she arrived in Beantown, Maysoon had cast aside her childhood vision of veterinary school (even though she’s still a self-proclaimed cat lady) to pursue her newly discovered passion: design.
“I taught myself in my last two years of high school and had a lot of free time on my hands. One of the things I did when I was bored was play around in Photoshop – I liked making small graphics and photo manipulations.”
While teenage Maysoon fancied herself a pro early on, she headed to college to hone her skills and prepare for a career in creating. Her hard work paid off, as she stepped out of her cap and gown into a graphic design job here at Brafton with the acumen, skill and talent to dive right into designing stunning infographics for our clients.
“This was my first job out of college, so I learned how to work in a team and autonomously, how to communicate, time management, how to deal with stress, and of course making an infographic a day has made me a better designer and illustrator,” Maysoon says. “I’ve learned more about what I’m capable of and more about the programs I work with.”
What it takes to create an infographic
Maysoon is an infographic maven, able to turn a written outline into a custom visual story in just six to eight hours. It sure is a good thing she says the best part of her job is getting to be creative. She even wishes she had more time to do so! So what does it take to develop an infographic? I’ll let Maysoon…
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