Desk of Tobias von Schneider

My favorite type of designers

There are many types of GREAT designers I've had the pleasure of working with over the past two decades and what I learned is that they are all not measured equally. Below are some of my favorites for the various circumstances. (FYI: very rarely does a designer inherit

by Tobias van Schneider

The writer’s secret for designers

For writers, first drafts are celebrated. In theory, they present opportunity and promise with none of the pressure. They say a wastepaper basket is a writer’s best friend.

by Tobias van Schneider

The skills companies want in a designer today

Through our How to Get a Job at X series, we’ve talked to 20+ companies about what they look for in a designer (and more interviews are coming). Now, comparing answers between each interview, we are beginning to see trends.

by Tobias van Schneider

How to procrastinate

How I turned my ability to procrastinate on pretty much everything into one of my strategies to get shit done.

by Tobias van Schneider

5 beautifully customized portfolios made with Semplice

Semplice is our portfolio system that allows designers to build a custom online portfolio without coding knowledge or templates. If you do have coding knowledge though, even a little bit, Semplice gets even better.

by Tobias van Schneider

The first tool we haven’t adapted to – because it adapts to us

As a small remote team working across creative disciplines, we depend on our tools to collaborate and get our work done. At some point, though, we began working for our tools instead of using tools that worked for us.

by Tobias van Schneider

How to get a job at Bobbi Brown

Bobbi Brown Cosmetics, as you might guess, creates beauty products for women. The company was founded almost 30 years ago and remains a popular, respected cosmetics brand today.

by Tobias van Schneider

How to photograph your work for your portfolio

As anyone who's ever created a portfolio knows, designing the site itself is the easiest part. Collecting, creating and organizing the content is the biggest hurdle and I'd venture to guess, the reason why most of us procrastinate on our portfolio. Capturing images is a big part of that.

by Tobias van Schneider

On avoiding overthink

Overthinking is a negative tendency. It’s implicit in the word “over,” too much. The problem is knowing what the "normal" amount of thinking should be. If it's possible to think too much, what’s the right amount? How do we know when we’ve hit it? When do we stop?

by Tobias van Schneider

When people rip you off

Recently, my team stumbled upon a paid theme that quite blatantly stole the Semplice.com homepage design. It’s not the first time I've seen a website or page design that looked eerily similar to something we've designed in the past. We were a bit puzzled by it and sent a friendly note to find out wh