Meet Elliot Ulm: Graphic design content creator and really cool guy

TL;DR: The template sharing launch celebration continues! Say hello to three unique email templates designed by Elliot Ulm—a self-taught graphic designer renowned for his bold, personality-first content and designs. Get to know his story and grab your free templates!

Elliot Ulm is a Sydney-based graphic design content creator. His work attempts to honestly express the creative experience as a designer through graphic design itself, and he’s become known for his comedic takes on an industry that can sometimes take itself too seriously.

His online persona elliotisacoolguy has amassed over 500,000 followers across Instagram and YouTube, where he engages with like-minded creatives willing to experiment and have fun with design. And, as his social handles suggest, he’s a really cool guy.

Discover Elliot’s story, what inspires his work, and how you can grab three unique email templates designed by Elliot himself.

In partnering with Elliot for our Flodesk template sharing launch, we were curious about the story behind his iconic designs and the comedic persona that’s created a worldwide frenzy. We interviewed Elliot about his experience as a designer, entrepreneur, and content creator. Here’s what he had to say.

Growing up, I was always a big drawer and loved making art, but I never tried design until high school. We did a few lessons on how to use Photoshop when I was in year-nine art class, and I was hooked from there! 

I immediately downloaded a free trial of Photoshop on the family computer when I got home and followed every “cool retro vintage wallpaper” tutorial I could find on YouTube to grasp the basic skills. Design was very much a hobby for most of my teenage years until I started posting on Instagram, and things began to kick off!

Type-first, bold, and authentic. My work almost always involves humorous copy, so I find the best way to let that shine is to play with simple primary colors and loud fonts. It’s my way of translating graphic design memes into actual graphic design.

A little bit of everything! I am a classic example of a graphic designer who will point out any font they recognize in public and give a few critiques on any passing billboard...and proudly! 

So I’m always keeping an eye out for design inspo in the wild as well as spending an insane amount of time on Instagram—as being active online is part of the job. I find looking back on my past work can also be helpful to try and see what I had fun with at certain points and test whether there are more choices to explore.

I have a 3D clone of myself called Second Elliot that I made over the course of three months last year. He has his own AI personality and voice modeled after mine. I had to learn Blender, Unity, and some code to get him working, but he is complete, and I love him so much. I documented the entire process on my YouTube channel and it’s by far my favorite video I’ve made. I wish he were real.

I think it’s just made me have more fun! I never had a clear rule-set when starting or any kind of client or brief, so I was simply designing for the sake of designing. It’s made me more willing to experiment and make choices that align with my taste rather than following a marking rubric or client’s judgment.

Near the end of 2020, my Instagram page really started to take off, and I was getting some solid offers from big brands to collaborate on cool projects. After a solid few months of momentum and deals, I decided it was time to fully commit to content creation. 

I got a sense that my audience was ready to support me on that journey, and my engagement wasn’t slowing down at all, so it just felt right! I never thought I’d end up running my own thing. But I’m very grateful it all worked out the way it did.

It’s very easy to lose yourself when you start growing on social media. You can have one post that really pops off, and you can convince yourself that if you keep making that exact same style of content—even if you don’t like making it—that success will keep coming. But people follow you for you, and they’ll realize you’re not being yourself before you do! 

I’m now more myself than ever online, and the content I make directly reflects that. I carved out a corner of the internet for myself in the funny graphic design niche and never left!

Be yourself! Realize that your design eye makes your style unique. Trust your choices and experiment with what you think is good design—you’ll grow the more you design. Have fun!

I’ve set up a subscriber list for my print store so that I can easily email past or potential customers when I release a new series of prints or announce a sale. I find that email marketing works well for me, so I learn from what interests me and try to apply it to my email marketing.

Stability! Content creation is an attention-based gig, and if my pages aren’t growing it’s easy to stress out and worry about the future of my business. But having passive income means I have a solid baseline that I can build off of when working on new content. And new content drives print and asset sales, so it’s always good motivation to make new stuff.

Enjoy really cool templates from a really cool guy. Elliot designed three bold email templates exclusively for you to help build relationships with subscribers, sell your offers, and share what’s new. These templates are the perfect way to wow your audience and let your personality shine through in your emails. Claim yours now.