5 Top Tips for Designers Working Remotely

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Using a tool such as a Datacolor ColorReaderPRO enables you to record any physical swatches you may have stuck to the physical fabric/moodboards in the office so you can access them at home. This will help you to continue to play with palettes and develop interesting harmonies, digitally.

As the majority of us around the world face a period of self-isolation and working from home, we wanted to help all creatives band together and weather the storm. Joanne Thomas, Head of Content at Coloro, shares her five top tips for designers working remotely to help us all get through these strange and anxious times together.

Get Inspired

Google is offering virtual tours of over 2,500 museums and galleries across the world, meaning you can seek inspiration from New York to Seoul, all from the comfort of your own home.

Tune into virtual webinars, design talks and keep your creative mind occupied and connected to the community. Sight Unseen is streaming live from Instagram at 2pm (EST) everyday with fresh creative content, where viewers are encouraged to ask questions and share their thoughts.

Virtual Mood Boarding

Build your physical mood boards online in a virtual space that allows you and your team to easily view, edit and add notes. Free platforms such as Go Mood board are perfect for this.

Record Your Colour Fabric Swatches Digitally

Using a tool such as a Datacolor ColorReaderPRO enables you to record any physical swatches you may have stuck to the physical fabric/moodboards in the office so you can access them at home. This will help you to continue to play with palettes and develop interesting harmonies, digitally.

Build Palettes Digitally

We all of course work with the Adobe Creative Suite, however, other helpful tools such as our Coloro Workspace, where you can build and adapt palettes digitally before sharing them with your team virtually, are also out there to help (for free). Other platforms such as Color Mind allow you to pull palettes directly from uploaded images. Just beware, as always, that you may be viewing on a different screen that’s not fully calibrated and potentially in a different light environment than you are used to. Wondering how to create accurate light sources at home? See these tops tips from Coloro’s Head of Technology, John Newton.

Try and Get into a Routine that Feels ‘Normal’

Plan out your working day and be flexible with what works for you best. Set boundaries that stop your work from creeping into your evenings. On your lunch break, go out into nature (if you can) or seek inspiration from these pioneers of colour – here’s a great book or two that inspired me: James Turrell: A Retrospective and Josef Albers: Interaction of Color. Finally, so much creative work and ideas are born from collaboration, so make sure you get onto group hangouts to share ideas, tips and advice, maintaining that vital sense of community.

The next few weeks will be a challenge and full of change, with our design community getting used to life away from having the usual tools at their disposal. However, this time also brings opportunity to reset and introduce more agile, connective approaches as we persevere through.

Finally, myself and the rest of the Coloro creative team are always on hand for any help you may need and we are eager to hear of any tips you may have to share with the creative network.