Being a designer and a creative is about more than what I do at work, so here's a few things I've been working on outside of office hours.
My latest hobby is 3D printing and modeling. I took a few engineering classes way back in high school and really enjoyed the modeling, printing, and stuff-designing process but hadn't found the resources to explore it beyond school. I recently invested in a printer for my home, and have been trying to balance creating things that have purpose and aren't just generating plastic waste, with further developing my skills in the 3D and product creation realm.
If you're a designer, you know that comes with everyone you know asking if you can design something for them. My dad came to me a while back and asked me to create a decal for his helmet that we could cut out on my cricut and could serve as a reflective accent to improve safety at night since his helmet is black. He wanted something sleek, minimal and that didn't feel like the stereotypical flames or options that existed currently. After quite a few prototypes and trial and error, we landed on this design that flows with the lines of the helmet and vents, which ended up looking quite cool (and being a pain to figure out how to execute, turns out designing on a curved surface is a challenge!)
If you're not making stupid s**t with your fancy art degree, did you really get one? My dad routinely refers to his AirPods as "EarPods", so when he asked for loops earplugs for Christmas, it felt like the perfect opportunity to design some "EarPods" to gift him. I started with a base of the actual AirPods image, and utilized some traditional photoshop skills as well as some AI to create these whacky "EarPods".
Flipping furniture is such a fun way to breathe new life into old stuff. This has been an interest of mine since those early stay-at-home COVID years and has taught me a lot about wood working, construction, finishes and more.