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  Photo from AIGA

2015 will be a year of change in design spheres. According to Paul Boag, co-founder of Headscape, there are some big digital rumblings afoot that will change the landscape of web and graphic design jobs for years to come, and the key to future success is being able to adapt.

There’s nothing like a job interview to make your palms sweaty. You want—no, need that job so badly that you become nearly paralyzed with fear that you’ve got kale stuck in your teeth. But that's hardly the worst job interview gaffe. So brush your teeth, check your outfit, and prepare to prevent these job interview mistakes.

Teamwork, cooperation, collaboration… it always looked so easy on Sesame Street, but here on earth, it’s not always so simple. Everyone on a team has a collection of personalities with strengths, weaknesses, quirks, talents and varying levels of ego, disagreement and distraction. Detangling difficulties in order to reach a blissful level of collaboration is always a challenge—but one that’s worth it when a plan comes together.

Are you a remote worker? Do you find yourself traveling for business, running from meeting to meeting, or bringing your laptop to the local coffee shop? Then you are one of the 5% of all workers in non-family businesses who work at home at least one day a week according to USA Today. Have a full-time office job? Fast Company suggests you should be working in a coffee shop on occasion as well. Switching up your work environment can stimulate your creativity and productivity.

So you have a knockout PowerPoint presentation. Great. But you're the presentation specialist; you’ve got to connect with the audience and get them to jump out of their chairs and buy whatever it is you’re selling—be that a service, product or a great idea. You need to go beyond PowerPoint.

As a presentation specialist, it’s your job to keep people’s attention, but in our world of consistent sensory input, that's becoming increasingly difficult to do. Winning over the hearts and minds of a distracted audience requires a killer presentation that makes both eyes and ears perk. Incorporate these elements in every PowerPoint presentation you create to make people forget about their email inbox and incoming texts for five minutes.

Diets, budgets and bold projects—oh my! It’s New Year’s resolution time again, which means that if you’re a graphic designer, it’s also time to remodel your portfolio! In fact, the Brooks Institute recommends doing a portfolio revamp once a year at the very least, and anytime you complete an impressive project, you should update and upscale your portfolio to reflect your latest and greatest work.

Have you ever taken notice of companies that update or re-design their websites on a seasonal basis? Seasonal web re-design--like the placement of Christmas banners or Easter imagery on a homepage--can take a lot of effort to maintain. Yet many businesses engage in this type of regular maintenance. Although it is extra work, many companies find that the benefits of seasonal web re-design make it all worthwhile.