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.

That’s where people get confused. “Graphical Arts” are very different from “Graphic Design.” In Graphic Design you use the artistic tools to communicate a message, like you would do for art, but while you might achieve that through your ideas, you are not trying to convey your own personal message.

Being a designer means first and foremost being a communication counsellor. Your client wants to get somewhere and it’s your job to make sure he gets there the best way possible. Of course you have your own taste and your own style, but that cannot and must not compromise what the client wants to communicate. You are a problem solver, you are not an additional problem the client needs to deal with. I know this is a much colder view of design, but even with this view in mind, you are still able to use your creativity.

Sometimes your solution will not satisfy your client. It may be because your client has different tastes, yet you know that your design concept communicates his message. Sometimes your design might actually not communicate what the client wants. It is possible. If you are a real professional, you are able to take the client’s input and decide whether it’s time to change what you have done, or to put on your counsellor hat and tell the client why your solution works best. This has to be an honest look, and you cannot afford to simply say, “I am misunderstood” and keep going your way. You will lose clients.

If you cannot objectively look at what you have done, then you are not doing design, but you are doing a work of art, as art is very subjective. Design is objective… to a degree. Personal taste and style will always influence anything that has to do with creativity.

The trick is to learn how to channel that creativity.

A very important step in achieving this is to understand the client’s brief. Ask questions, make sure you fully grasp the message yourself. Then it will prove easier to think of ideas that carry that message. It’s hard to relay a phone message to a colleague, if the line of your cell phone was breaking up and you didn’t understand half of what was said, right?

So, still half sleeping, I raise an eyebrow and think, “Maybe they are not talking about imaging.”

A third guy joins in and the same girl asks, “Since you have already studied it, what is ‘noise?’” He answers that he’s going to look at his notes and opens his copybook, he goes through his pages and says, “It’s something that doesn’t belong to a photo–then he looks at them and adds–Like a wrong colour or something.”

At that point I think, “Wait a minute” I kinda wake up and say, “Noise is dots on a photo, or scratches that don’t belong to the image.” Very simplified explanation of course and the word “dot” in the Italian version of that sentence makes more sense. The proper definition is here.

So I sit and think, “What the hell are people teaching at school?” And that’s when I think that having done tailored courses and on the job training actually helped me more than my design school. I thought my school was bad, but it doesn’t seem the only one.

What do you feel has helped you the most in your education?

Jacci Howard Bear has written a 6 day course that will give you guidelines, tips and directions that will help you put together a portfolio which will speak for itself. As she puts it:

“Desktop publishing or graphic design portfolios should be more than just a few samples thrown into any old folder. Potential employers or clients use examples of your work to help determine whether they want to hire you. The samples you choose for graphic design portfolios and how you present them can affect whether or not you get the job.”

This is an email course with lessons sent to you daily, however you can do the course at your own pace.

Remember that if you can’t present a good image of yourself, others won’t be compelled to put theirs in your hands.

And here is the news about it.

I ain’t going around with that scribble representing me. It’s a joke, not only to our country but also to our design industry. I know you all thought I am Italian, but really, my name is Elizabeth Brown. I swear.

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.

You have to realize that I have been in England for a few years and Italian trains had changed a bit in the mean time. While I might hate English food, I think their trains are a little better compared to Italian ones.

Finally, on another train, I see this nice glass door that slides itself open when you push a button. No vibrations, easy to open and it closed itself too.

Wow.

How long does it take to think of something so simple? Looking at the number of Italian trains that have doors with a problem or another, it must be quite long.

What does this have to do with Desktop Publishing? Functionality is the answer. When you design something you need to know that it will print. Your expertise will play an important role in this. You might need to go about things differently, while still obtaining the same visual effect, to make sure your design will print. For example you need to know that if you overprint a 50% black object (gray) on a red background, your gray will become redish.

This holds true also for the “communication value” of your design. I had an example of this some time ago. I was designing a flyer-map to show all the places where a certain type of wine was being served. Each place had wine from a different Italian region. Each region was listed separately, with a different colour for each (not my idea.) The client wanted me to put a glass of wine on the map on every point where the wine was sold, and they had to have a different colour, corresponding to the ones of the regions. On top of that, each glass had a number next to them, which showed the readers what shop it was and where the wine came from. I call that “overdoing it.” We had lots of different coloured glasses on a map that was already full of street names, as well as a bunch of bumbers. Some colours weren’t even showing well.

The purpose of the client was to stress where the wine came from, instead he was comfusing the reader. A bit like those train doors that either designed to close themselves but cannot be opened easily, or to open easily and then don’t stay closed. Eventually we just told the client that the numbers were enough and the colours were too confusing and weren’t doing the job, and I just used the key colour of the job, burgundy, for all glasses. Readers still knew what each place was and what wine they were getting there because of the numbers that were sending them to an agenda—which would have been there anyway even if the glasses had different colours.

I guess I should go onto trains first thing in the morning more often.

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?

If your job is based on a full marketing research, you will probably know what people think of when you say “drink” or when you say “soccer.” Thus you start using design elements that are related to those subjects to get your audience to dive into the article they are reading. Other times you just don’t have that marketing research and it isn’t required that you do one. You still have to communicate your message effectively, you have to pound in the head of your reader that you are talking about soccer and the various design elements serve that purpose. The article alone isn’t enough. The design elements around that article have to clearly tell that it’s all about football. Yet you still have a design block. You really don’t know what to associate to soccer.

Internet search engines and SEO techniques are often a good tool.

“How?”, you say, “I already have an article about soccer, I don’t need more information about it. And my magazine isn’t going to appear on Google’s top entries, it’s a printed product! I really think you didnt drink enough coffee, want me to make some more?”

While I thank you for your offer, I am pretty much convinced you can’t beat Italian coffee, so I’ll have to decline. Think about it. With SEO you discover the keywords people use to find out about to a certain subject and you get to know what they are interested in. This will help you approach something with the eyes of your readers. After all in a marketing research you find out what people need and want, and tools like Overture do that in seconds.

OK, now you know what people need and want, you know how to word your phrases to strike them in their soccer supporter hearts, but still that doesn’t tell you how to find good visuals. Yet it does. Now you know what words to type in Google Images, or Yahoo! or whatever you are using, and you will get a lot of pictures and graphics showing you exactly what people think when you say soccer, world cup, football, etc. While you should not use those images without permission, you now have lots of ideas for your design elements. You can use the same keywords in stock photography sites and find images you can actually use too. This simple method does not replace marketing research, but it’s surely helpful to get ideas while you design. Most of you are probably doing that already.

I have used the subject of soccer since it’s very familiar to people. It’s an easy subject to think with, so everyone can follow the article easily, I am sure you agree. However this very simple method can be used in other situations, with other subjects.

Now, how exactly do I know that soccer is familiar to most people?

I kept changing things around, you know—this title doesn’t work, maybe I should add a line, I shall move this… Eventually I just sat back and thought, “That’s it, I am going back to simplicity.” I took off the background, some decorative lines and simply used colour to get what I wanted. The page looked much more sober and, most importantly, it worked.

It might be really tempting to do really complicated and cool things when you have powerful software, but sometimes simplicity is all it’s needed. You’ll also find the most clever design is often the simplest.

They also report how desktop publishers often required to know web design and I can tell that the report holds true also in Italy and probably in other countries. Looking through job ads, I see many requests for designers who basically have to be able to do print design and web design, while bigger companies tend to leave the two separate.

Print and web design are very different and bigger companies seems to either understand this more or to have more resources to hire professionals who are specialized in those two fields.

There are also other interesting points in the report, but I’ll let you read Jacci’s article on it as she has done a really good job in summarizing it already.

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