By Pamela Park
Freelance graphic designers often have a myriad of clients and projects that they’re working on simultaneously. Because time is a limited resource, it’s super important to maximize the amount of productive hours spent in the actual design process, while minimizing any inefficiencies to your workflow. Just as you shouldn’t use a child’s crayon for a professional design, you shouldn’t use a clunky mouse or imprecise trackpad when you can use the tool preferred by top professional designers: a Wacom tablet.
Vancouver-based graphic designer, Lauren Gonzales, outlines the top three reasons why she uses a Wacom Intuos Pro tablet for graphic design to make her workflow quicker, easier and more enjoyable. In fact, Lauren says the Wacom Intuos Pro large was one of the first investments she’d made when embarking on her graphic design career – even before purchasing her Mac!
Having a Wacom tablet makes your life 1000 times easier and allows you to have 100 times more precision in your designs, illustrations, and photo retouching than a mouse or trackpad. It is the difference between finger painting and painting with a fine point paintbrush.
~ Lauren Gonzalez
Lauren posts regular tips for graphic designers on her social media accounts:
Instagram
About Lauren Gonzalez
Lauren has been a graphic designer for over 11 years and an artist since she was very young, drawing and creating everywhere she could. After majoring in animation/illustration she switched to graphic design and has been an avid Wacom user since day one of her design career. She remembers learning Photoshop at Art Center on a mouse and how when she was introduced to a Wacom, she couldn’t believe anyone was even allowed to use anything but this tablet to create on the computer.
After working in-house as a designer and then creative director for 6 years, Lauren set out on her own, building a design business from scratch. The first purchase she made before starting her new venture was a Wacom tablet, followed by her iMac computer. She had tried some other tablets here and there, but their drivers were not stable and the fluidity and reliability were much lower than a Wacom, so it was natural that her first investment was this vital tool.
After hitting many bumps and struggles of finding work in that first six months of her design business, she was able to overcome the rough patch and grow her design business to what it is now, a consistent client and income machine. After realizing how many other freelance designers were struggling out there, she created an educational business for designers called 4 The Creatives with the primary mission to stop creatives from being undervalued and provide a roadmap for them to build their own dream businesses that could give them a living doing what they truly love.
She continues to put out weekly design-related tips and tricks on YouTube and Instagram as well as runs her signature course program called the Consistent Clients Blueprint, where her students go onto setting up successful design businesses of their own.
