When working with a team or other designers in your own company it’s great to have that constructive feedback to help improve the quality of your work. Having a great feedback structure in your business really helps maximize your creative abilities. Though you do get great feedback from your professional peers, sometimes the feedback can become expected or not as impactful as someone who has not seen your work before. Sometimes the lack of new or original feedback can be a struggle when in the workplace.
A great thing in general to do is find people in your local community either through events, school, or just people you’ve met through your daily life that are in the creative industry. Talking to them and sharing experiences helps better yourself in many different situations. There are always instances were your creative friends can share how they deal with difficult clients, sites where they found new ways to accomplish design tasks, or the latest app that helps your workflow, etc. Unfortunately the area I’m in doesn’t have a large creative community. Having a strong media community helps get young adults and others interested in the field opportunities locally, which Fredericksburg has still yet to grow.
Through my efforts of FredXchange I’ve met a variety of creative people in the area. Being in an underdeveloped creative community I sought out various avenues to help build a better structure to which locals can meet each other and build either mentorships, creative feedback support, and overall productive networking. With the help of some local designers, we helped create the “FXBG Design” meet-up so that other designers can network with their peers in the area. We’ve had a couple of meet ups so far and we’ve already begun working on a project together to show off all of our combined creative talent; a creative resource site to help promote the talent locally so small businesses and such can contact any creative for work.
With Studio 15 becoming a great place for creatives to meet and help give back to the youth in the area. Within this growing design community, I’ve been able to help out others with their projects and give outside feedback, meet some great people, and help start something that needs to happen in the area. Together, we now have the ability to help build a design standard for the area and since the city is so small to the point were everyone knows everyone, the quality of products locally will only get better over time. Being a city in the middle of marketing heavy Richmond and mobile heavy DC, our own 
identity is something that the design community needs to build in order to have a larger presence. Media is everything and it’s reflective of its active or inactive design community.
