You make a convincing argument. And since Plus will do, it's only $2.91/mo. What's another few bucks in a slew of subscription services to keep my life in order?

Appreciate the perspective

Merp. I used iCloud until I switched over to the Dark Side thanks to Google Fi. Can't stand the mobile conglomerates...

My lord... the typesetting on that site is absolutely terrible

Awesome

My advice would be to focus less on attaining any specific certificate or certification and more on creating a portfolio that represents not only the work you are capable of as a designer, but also who you are, how you do that work, and why you do it.

I personally don't have agency experience, but I would like to think they are less concerned with any certifications and more with the actual person they are hiring.

I also don't know much about design certificates, but I imagine that with design being the (somewhat) subjective field that it is, any certification you earn would be for proficiency with software which should already be reflected in your work.

Your Dribbble portfolio is solid, but it doesn't reveal much about who you are as both a person and a designer. It also appears a bit one-sided, and while I get that branding & illustration is your forte, a lot of agencies are working with existing brands and might not be as in need of a designer of your specific skillset than one who demonstrates a wider array of skills (UX, UI, DR to name a few).

Just my $0.02 in the end, but I think you would be better served to spend some time seeing how you can widen your skillset & portfolio. Maybe working some of those logos into web & print collateral to display your proficiency across all mediums.

There are lots of resources out there to help you build a website to portray your brand (rather than just your work) without needing too much coding knowledge, and doing so will help demonstrate your willingness to learn new things and expand your expertise.

Hopefully you'll get some more responses (and some to my opinion) from those in the community with agency experience or simply a different view on things.

Is that really reducing usability though? I don't think more content necessarily entails better usability

Not saying the redesign is necessarily better, but I would argue it's a lot easier to scroll down a page than it is to decipher what's going on when there are 17 posts showing at once? But, to each his own

Yep. Worked for DraftKings until about a year ago, and the dev / engineering team has always had a good chunk of ladies. Now that I think of it, they were some of the best devs there

Nope, but there is a site for girls of a different color...

http://www.blackgirlscode.com/

This is great. The 'A List Apart' article is one I've stumbled across in the past, but never gave much attention to. Definitely going to give this a good read through and put into practice. Thanks

Palettes*