Graphic Design

It’s all in the Mind of the Beholder

It’s really easy to get lost in how pretty things look when designing things. While aesthetics are important in design, we shouldn’t lose sight of the fact that we need to communicate a message first and foremost. I will illustrate this concept by quoting here some comments I made for recent makeover projects on About Desktop Publishing. Other designers have made comments about the look of design elements, how to allign them and so on, and rightly so. However the way you chose to convey the message and the reasoning behind it are very important as well, it’s the backbone of the creative process, which also helps with the positioning of various design elements.

Graphic Design and Graphic Arts, The Graphical Expression of… Whose Message?

After looking at some of our makeover projects and a meeting I had in my design studio today, several concepts just keep lurking in my mind.

I remember some time ago I was a fairly big supporter of the fact that design is art, and posted a poll in the About Desktop Publishing forum. While I still think that, I view this in a different way now.

Art is often regarded as the expression of self. It has to comunicate something, and that communication will be very subjective to the beholder, but what you communicate as artist is your message, something that was created by your mind and you realise through artistic means. The means you use can be paintings, drawings, or any number of graphical arts that can include the use of graphics software.

A Spec Work “Adventure” – Investing the Right Time for the Job

Every designer at some point will come across a client who wants everything done yesterday. They give you a “brief” in the evening, they want the design the morning after. Then you follow the instructions and that isn’t what they wanted.

I had a client just like this the other day (alas not the only one) but this one was fairly difficult to deal with. He also requested something that was graphically incorrect and even almost impossible to realise. It wasn’t just about a colour that doesn’t go well with another. It was a request that was very similar to asking to set a fire by throwing cold water on wood.

The job comes on my desk in the morning, at 9:30 with the request that I get it done by 11am. The client calls at 10:45 asking me if I did it…

Smashing Magazine – Crank Up Your Design Radar

I now resigned to the fact that I simply cannot read magazines. As much as I try, I always wind up looking at their design, at the ads, at their layout… Same for flyers, I might look at them when I wouldn’t normally consider them, I might not even care for the content, but I ...

Design Adventure of the Day

Here I am on my way to work, half asleep on the train. Two studends are sitting nearby and at some point one goes,”A gradient filter is… hm… makes you go from dark to light, and maximises… Damn! I don’t remember and I just studied it!” So, still half sleeping, I raise an eyebrow and ...

Create a Portfolio in 6 Days

Self promotion is very important for freelance designers. If you want to get clients, you need to let them know you exist, you need to tell them what you can do, and, most of all, you need to show it to them. To that end having a portfolio is not an option, and it is ...

Adobe CS3 Overview

Adobe released Creative Suite 3 today, which is probably their biggest release ever. Since the merge with Macromedia a lot of speculation has gone on about which programs were to make it into the Suite and which ones were to be ditched. For the web designers who were wondering, GoLive has been replaced by Dreamweaver, ...

Function Comes First

I was travelling to work by train, as usual. I guess I am not in the best of moods when I am still fresh from bed, but I was getting really irritated by the doors between compartments. I don’t know how many times I have had to help elderly people get through them because those doors are really heavy. Surely the person who designed them was thinking of a way to make sure the doors closed themselves without mechanisms that could wear off. Impeccable logic if it wasn’t for the fact that people can’t even open them. Yet there are several trains like that.

Another time, still travelling by train this time for totally ludicrous reasons, I notice the train has nice glass doors between compartments. I go though one and take a sit, wondering whether there was the same designer behind this idea. It didn’t take long to realize that it probably was the same designer. The door kept banging and the noise was really annoying. If it didn’t bang, it still made noise because of the vibrations of the train. This door was easy to open, but it never really closed.

Find the Design Element that Is Just Right

Have you ever opened a magazine, read an article and wondered, “How did the designer think of THAT design element?”

This is a question I have asked myself so many times that I lost count. Then I again I haven’t been counting. As a designer you need to know how to visually communicate a message, that’s the essence of your job. Yet sometimes you see an article about cows and you see a bell or a stylized face of a cow used as a bullet. Or you are doing a car catalogue and you notice that the page numbers have the same elements of the logo of the car. Sometimes you manage to think at those things in a snap, while other times you just have a design block. What do you do in that situation?

Business of Design Online Launches

Having a degree can be important in the design business, especially for people who look for firms to employ them. Let’s not forget what having a degree means, that is having the knowledge to use whatever communication channel to effectively deliver a message, whether it be through a flyer, a poster, a website or anything else you can think of.

Fear not, however, because BoDo (Business of Design Online) has just launched. This is one of the most brilliant ideas I have seen. I’ll let the people behind BoDo tell you what this new blog is about.