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ANIMALS

2007-10-28T22:21:00.000-07:00

ANIMALS

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How To Improve Your Publicity Design
Shaun Crowley

Freelance designers who specialize in marketing materials are in high demand. As a result, freelance promotions designers can make up to $80 per hour. So what specialized skills do you need to be a publicity designer?

Actually, you don’t need any. To move into freelance publicity design, all you need to do is:

1. Familiarize yourself with the conventions of direct selling promotional materials and

2. Develop a basic understanding of your clients’ marketing goals.

I’m a copywriter and I work with designers. I prefer to work with designers who understand the marketing aims of the graphic design assignment I hand to them. I tend not to call upon designers who design visuals that are unsuitable for the sales messages I am trying to communicate in my copy, however good the design looks.

That’s why the tips I reveal in this article are not really ‘design’ tips. They are practical tips aimed at giving you clarity when you interpret your brief. If you want tips on what colors or effects to use, this article isn’t for you. If you want ideas to help you plan your approach to publicity design, read on.
Direct selling promotional material

Direct selling promotional material has one objective: to sell. Every copy section, every photograph, every flash box, every graphic—should reinforce the selling power of the publicity piece.

But surely your job as designer is to make direct selling promotional material look attractive?—it’s the copywriter’s job is to sell the product, right? Wrong. Your job is the same as the copywriter’s: to sell the product. Making the piece look attractive is important, but it’s a means to an end. The real goal is to help your client increase their sales.

So what approach should you take to sell a product through design? Here are 5 questions to ask yourself as you’re reading the brief:

1. WHO IS THE CUSTOMER? What sort of people will read the publicity and buy the product? A clear description of your target audience will help you gauge what sort of feel your design should have. The look of your design should always reflect the preferences of the customer, not your own preferences or the preferences of your clients.

2. WHAT ARE YOU COMMUNICATING? What emotions should you convey? What specific things should you draw the reader’s attention to? Read your client’s copy carefully. Use the message of the copy, especially the headlines, to inspire the ‘message’ of your design.

3. HOW CAN YOU REINFORCE THE MESSAGE OF THE COPY? Is your design consistent with the messages in the copy? Can you increase the impact of the copy message in your design approach? For example, if you’re designing a brochure for some computer software, and the dominant marketing message seems to be that the software is ‘easy to use’, your design should reflect clarity and freedom, maybe with lots of white space and clear copy sections. In short, don’t rely on your client to brief you properly on what the design should achieve. Take the initiative to work it out yourself.

4. CAN YOU SHOW PRODUCT BENEFITS? Can you demonstrate how good the product is through your choice of visual? Can you show how the product makes a real difference to people’s lives? Read through the copy and make a note of all examples of what the product does for the user. Then think about how you can demonstrate people benefiting from the product in your graphics and choices of photos.

5. HOW CAN YOU PRESENT THE PRODUCT? Can you show the product? Even better, can you show people using the product? Publicity that shows people is proven to be the most successful at driving sales. Good publicity should encourage readers to imagine themselves using the product—so show people of the same demographic using the product! Get as many pictures of the product as possible, and work these pictures into your design.

In marketing, successful design isn’t necessarily the best-looking, it’s the design that best complements the selling message of the copy, thus leading to more sales. Ugly publicity can be successful if it effectively communicates the selling message in a persuasive way for the target audience. Pretty publicity that wins prizes isn’t necessarily successful publicity.

If you want to learn more about improving your publicity design, start by learning about what makes good copy. Work out what the copy is doing and you’ll have a better idea how the design should reinforce it. My advice: Read a good copywriting manual.
Design custom brochures

Brochure design is challenging. The brief to produce an attention-grabbing cover with clean, consistently attractive pages can be daunting. Where do you start?

Remember your best-practice approach for designing publicity. Think about the reader and think about the essence of the product, service, or company that the brochure is selling.

Below are 13 tips for designing custom brochures that sell.

1. Find out what worked in the past. Take a few minutes to go through past publicity with your client to identify a successful look. If the target audience responded well to a particular style of publicity, there may be no point in reinventing the wheel.

2. Ask your client if the company has a house style and if your brochure should be consistent with it.

3. Keep in mind the product’s or company’s brand values when you are creating your general look. Ask your client to come up with five words that reflect the company’s brand image and try to respond to them in your design.

4. For a general starting point, communicate an idea, a visual metaphor, or emotion that is associated with the product. Search the royalty free photo sites like Getty-Images or I-stock for images that respond to the general mood—but bear in mind your client will need to pay to use them.

5. Focus the visual idea on the product’s Unique Selling Proposition. The U.S.P. is the one thing that readers will find most desirable about the product that is only true of that product.

6. Make the headlines stand out. Reinforce them with visuals if possible.

7. Use photographs as visual anchors. Faces help to humanize the design and make the product or company feel warmer and friendlier. Photos of people who reflect the target demographic work well because they help readers to imagine themselves using the product.

8. Ask yourself what consumer-need the product responds to, and use this as inspiration for your visuals. Some designs work well because they remind people about the nasty things in life they seek to irradiate, then present the solution with a photo of the product.

9. Use visuals to demonstrate the product:

- If the copy is highlighting a benefit, show somebody benefiting.

- If the copy is highlighting a feature, show it (for example, if it’s a small hand-held, show it to scale in someone’s hand; if it has lots of components or is part of big package, take a collective pack shot.)

- If the copy is highlighting the product’s popularity, show lots of people, preferably using the product.

- If the copy is guaranteeing the product, give it a guarantee stamp.

- If the copy is offering a money-back guarantee, show cash or a check.

- If the product is endorsed, show the endorser using the product.

- If the copy is leading with an impressive statistic, show it visually in a table or graph.

- If the product solves a problem, show a ‘before’ and ‘after’.

10. Each spread of the brochure should seek to catch the reader’s attention anew, to keep readers hooked so they carry on turning the pages.

11. Keep to a consistent style but try to let the design evolve with each page. A good brochure should tell the product’s story; it should have a beginning, a middle, and an end. Try to reflect this in your design.

12. Give the reader two options: to skim read and pick up the core messages from the headlines, sub-headings, visuals, and captions… And another option to read the headlines and the body copy linearly. Do this by creating a reading area where the general body copy fits into, but also pull out some of the additional copy messages, visuals, and flashes to catch the attention of wandering eyes.

13. Recommend using printing techniques to reinforce the message of the copy, such as spot varnishes, holograms, die-cuts, unusual folds, indented pages, additional pantones, and pull-outs.

You may have noticed that most of the 13 tips above are based on an analysis of the brochure copy, using the messages in the copy as a starting point for the design. As a copywriter and campaigns manager, this is the first thing I want a designer upon briefing. The number of times I have received design proofs that don’t attempt to reflect the sales message in my copy … let’s just say I never ask those designers to work for me again.

I look for designers who have an awareness of my marketing goals. I look for designers who will sit and read my copy, and will only start to conceptualize the design when they have analyzed the copy. I look for designers who combine artistic talent with some basic marketing knowledge to help them interpret the brief.

And I’m not alone. I’m sure I speak for most campaign managers and copywriters. In short, these are the words of your prospective clients, so take heed. If you want to get ahead of the competition in the publicity design arena, you need to learn the basics of marketing and copywriting.
Buy a copywriting manual

Learning the basic rules of marketing and copywriting is easy. Forget about the expensive courses, you can learn the essentials with a good book. The three best are:
The Copywriter’s Handbook,

Robert W. Bly (Owl Books, 1990)

A clear, comprehensive guide to the business of and techniques used in advertising copywriting. Includes guidance on the tasks of a copywriter, the copywriting business, and how to write a variety of different printed publicity including public relations material, radio and TV commercials, speeches and sales literature.

Teach Yourself Copywriting,

Jonathon Gabay (Teach Yourself, 2001)

A guide for anyone who needs to know how to produce advertising and marketing materials. The revised edition includes chapters on e-mail and Internet marketing and covers new theories and practices in copywriting.

100 Copywriting Tips for Designers and Other Freelance Artists,

Shaun J. Crowley (Shaun Crowley E-publishing, 2006)

My book, written specifically for designers, reveals 100 copywriting tricks-of-the-trade including guidance on planning and conceptualizing web and print publicity, how to produce publicity that sells, and how to marry your copy and visuals together. Click here to download it.

Freelance POP display design and exhibition display design

Freelance display design is one of the most challenging areas of publicity design. You only have ten seconds to grab people’s attention and lure them over to the product or exhibition stand. At the same time, your design must be consistent with the product’s or company’s brand image, and communicate its sales message immediately.

Here are 10 tips for effective POP display design and exhibition display design.

1. Always think about who the customer is. Who will buy the product? Who will be drawn to the display? What are their likely ages, genders, occupations, incomes, personality types, goals, and aspirations? Use your knowledge of the customer to inform your design.

2. The headline is king. It is the mouth-piece of the display. Your design must reinforce the strengths of the headline to help communicate its sales message immediately. Keep the headline simple and easy to read from a distance.

3. Use compelling images for eye-catching impact. Images have more impact if they are clear, specific, and definable. For example, an image of a telephone on a plain background is more likely to grab attention than an image of indefinable objects such as bubbles, wisps, or stripes.

4. Remember that faces tend to grab more attention than inanimate objects.

5. Use the best quality images you can. Urge your client to buy the more expensive photos, not the cheap free images. Make sure the resolution is sufficient for large exhibition panels. All images must appear crisp and vivid at full size.

6. If you are creating multiple display banners, brand your display with a visual theme, so people recognize and remember it. Most importantly, the theme must connect to the brand in some way, either via the logo design or the message of the slogan. It’s no use people remembering your design if they can’t attribute it to the company or product.

7. If appropriate, try to include the product in the visuals you use. Make the product look as good as possible. Make it 3D, make it glow or sparkle, make it jump out and look desirable.

8. Always conceptualize your display so that the product is presented or demonstrated in the best way possible. Don’t hide or embed the product, make the design revolve around the product so the product commands maximum attention.

9. Jazz-up your POP displays by using different types of materials. You don’t have to print on cardboard—try using acrylic, canvass, or glass—but make sure the material you use is consistent with the product image.

10. Strive for a unique look. Find out what other types of designs your display will be competing with, and use this to inform your approach. For example, if no one else is using fluorescent colors, and this is consistent with the brand image, use fluorescent colors. Maybe you can use lighting to your advantage. Gizmos like battery powered lighting or interactive features help give the display a unique look.

Why don’t you write the POP displays yourself?

In many ways it makes more sense for the designer to conceptualize, write, and design POP display design, rather than work alongside a copywriter without a working knowledge of Photoshop. As a copywriter, I may have visual ideas for POP displays in my head, but unfortunately I can’t illustrate them as credible ruffs. A design brief will never capture the vividness of my original idea, so somewhere along the line my idea becomes diluted. Consequently, my designer and I often find it hard to work on POP displays together. I know from colleagues that this happens quite a lot.

So why don’t you write the thing, as well as design it? You’ll be offering a unique and in-demand service to marketing departments.

As with most POP display briefs, you don’t need to write much copy, so you don’t need to be a master of the written word. Just learn the basics of copywriting.

Conclusion

- Direct selling promotional material has one objective: to sell. Making the piece look attractive, although connected, is a secondary goal.

- You need to think about the customer and the message in the copy before you sit down to conceptualize your design.

- You need to improve your knowledge of marketing and copywriting to improve your publicity design.

- A good copywriting manual will give you an overview of marketing practice, so you know what your clients want, and what your publicity designs should achieve.

Shaun Crowley has worked as a freelance copywriter, marketing consultant, and communications manager for a major UK publishing company. His new book

100 Copywriting Tips for Designers and Other Freelance Artists is available for download at www.copywriting-designers.com

HAPPY BIRTHDAY

2007-10-23T07:39:00.000-07:00

HAPPY BIRTHDAY

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Graphic design is about communication, not about "making things pretty" and is a skilled profession. Designers are more than people who own expensive software. You hire them for their knowledge as much as you hire them for their creativity. Design is not "art", it is commercial art; design has to serve a purpose.

Software is only ONE of our tools, and simply buying design software won't automatically enable you to create a successful logo any more than buying a guitar makes you a successful musician. Hiring a designer may even cost less than buying the correct software.

Logo design is a very complicated process, and something that designers spend years learning to do properly. Some even devote their career to specialization in corporate identity. Creating a successful mark is a lot more complicated than it looks. An effective logo is not generic... it is the essence of the company as you want to be perceived by the world.

Designing a successful logo is more than typing the name of a business and placing a graphic picturing what the company does beside it. (Honestly, can you imagine how much that would do for your image if you were a proctologist?) Here are some tips that will help you to design more effective logos:

Step 1: brainstorm. Who is the client? What sets them apart from their competition? What is their mission statement? How do they want to be perceived? Who are their target customers? What impressions do they want their logo to make on people? What do they make or do? Think of key words that describe their company. How can you work those ideas into a logo design? How can you boil down the company's beliefs, values, mission, and everything that makes them a unique entity into one simple, identifying mark?

Think of every word you can that you would associate with the company. Make a list of synonyms and a list of anyonyms. Use a thesaurus - or use www.visualthesaurus.com - and brainstorm in words until you can't think of any more words.

Step 2: sketch and doodle. Before you even touch the computer, you should sit down with some paper and a pencil and start sketching out some ideas. These don't have to be perfect, just get the concepts and spacial relations down on paper. See which ideas are good, which don't pan out, what needs work, what shows promise. It's all about developing a successful concept at this stage. Your software can seriously limit your creativity, so don't let it get in the way. Sketch about 5 or 6 pages worth of ideas. They don't have to be magnificent... and you don't have to show them to anybody. Think about the words you brainstormed while you sketch. How can you represent all those ideas in a simple, effect mark? Narrow it down to the 5 best concepts and really flesh those out.

Step 3: Once you have some promising sketches ready, scan them into your computer and open your vector software. This could be Adobe Illustrator, Macromedia Freehand, Corel Draw, or another vector based program for scalability.

Photoshop is NOT a vector program, and should not be used to design logos.

Graphics made in Photoshop are not scalable. To be honest, while most people think that Photoshop is good for everything under the sun, its primary use in print design is for photo editing.

Did you ever wonder why Adobe Creative Suite includes InDesign, Illustrator, and Photoshop? Why Corel Suite includes Corel Draw and Photopaint? Each program has specific strengths and is designed for specific uses.

Page Layout: InDesign, Corel Draw, Quark XPress

Vector Work: Illustrator, Corel Draw, Freehand

Photo Editing: Photoshop, Photopaint

You can turn your raster based sketches into vector images with the trusty pen tool. Since vector images are based on mathematical lines and curves which can be enlarged or reduced to any size without losing quality.

Ultimately, it's all about resolution and some day the client might want to have their logo put on a billboard... if the resolution is just not there, it is going to be a problem.

Step 4: Logos should be designed in straight black and white (read: NOT grayscale), with no screens, gradients, bevels, drop shadows, filters, or other effects. If you want to add these things later for a web version of the logo, fine. But be sure to develop your concept without relying on them. If the concept doesn't work in black and white (no shades of gray, JUST black and white) then there is likely something technically wrong with your concept.

Chances are that at some point the client will want to imprint the logo on a stock form, have it flat foil stamped or engraved on an award or nameplate, or reproduced in some other medium that will only allow a one color image.

Since you don't want the great logo you are working on to look like a shapeless, meaningless blob under those circumstances, it is best to start your design in straight black and white to ensure that it will work effectively in all possible scenarios.

Step 5: Bear in mind the fact that your logo will need to be easy to read and recognize when it is shrunk down to the size of a nickel. A logo has to "work" at all sizes, from very large (like on a billboard) to very small (like if it were engraved on a pen).

Avoid design cliches, like swooshes, starbursts, and their ilk. These are already incredibly overdone, and they all start to look alike after a while. (See some examples here http://lekowicz.com/library/logohell/logohell.html ) Since you have a very short amount of time to make an impression on potential clients, your best approach is something simple, unique, and memorable.

After you have a polished concept you can add color and effects as desired. Bear in mind that a one or two color logo will typically be less expensive to print or embroider when the time comes.
I hope that this information helps to shed some light on the logo design process.

Copyright (c) 2007, Adrienne Turcotte, All Rights Reserved

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2007-10-09T06:10:00.000-07:00

Becoming an animator

SO YOU WANNA BE AN ANIMATOR?

by Shanna Smith

The term "persistence of vision" describes the optical phenomenon that makes animation possible. The human eye retains an image for a split second after the source of the image disappears, so when 24 frames per second of an animated film zip through a projector, the flow of motion on the screen looks seamless.

The same phrase could also be applied to the mind-set of a young (or not quite so young!) person who has his or her heart set on becoming a Disney animator. For generations, the debut of each Disney animated feature film has ignited in the minds of thousands of individuals the desire to be a part of the marvel they see on the screen.

What does it take to be a Disney animator? What spectrums of talent and elements of training are needed to produce these wonder-working "actors with pencils" called animators? We recently put these questions to Frank Gladstone, Manager of Animation Training for Disney, who works out of the Disney-MGM Studios at Walt Disney World.

Gladstone begins by explaining that natural talent will come out at a young age. Every parent knows that a child with an artistic bent considers the family home a vast and inviting canvas. Such children "draw all the time... everywhere, on everything. They see Mommy and they try to draw Mommy. They see the dog and they try to draw the dog," Gladstone says.

Children go through different phases as they explore their skills. Three that Gladstone cites are: 1) The very young child who tries to render his or her own creative fantasies. Mom or Dad may not be able to recognize it as such, but according to the child, that blue scribble is a dinosaur eating an ice-cream cone! (And who is to say it isn't?) 2) The older child who is fascinated by visuals, who sees cartoons or illustrations and attempts to copy them as accurately as possible. (This "draftsman" stage may be difficult and frustrating - more on this later.) 3) The high school student who goes back to the beginning and gives free rein to the imagination, rather than adhering to straight copying.

"This is the bridge," Gladstone says. "This is when someone may be a serious artist. If they draw things they see - the real world - that is a big jump. The intent to interpret what they see in the three-dimensional world is, for me, the tell-all that somebody's interested in art in a serious way."

Getting to that "bridge," that third phase, though, requires passing through phase two - easier said than done.

Gladstone explains, "Most young people who start drawing are trying to make things as accurate as possible. They work very hard to get the eye right, and that's where a lot of people get discouraged.

"There's a certain strength in being an artist, he says "in that at some point every artist I know is trying to draw Mom or Dad and somebody will come up behind them and say `that doesn't look like that.' This is when many people's art career ends."

He continues, "The only time they'll draw again is if they can copy something exactly, which is why many people are good at drawing from a picture, but they can't do the other [draw from life]. The person who is strong enough to say `So what? It's my version of this'- that's another step."

Practice is paramount to maturing as an artist. "Go to the zoo and sketch: draw your friends," Gladstone suggests. "Drawing people and their animals, trying to capture something that's moving - this kind of thing comes with time. It's not something that many children do early on. It comes with experience."

Milton Gray, in his book Cartoon Animation: Introduction to a Career, recommends studying animated films frame by frame, using a VCR or laser videodiscs.

Gladstone agrees. "I had the opportunity to put an old-time print of "Pinocchio" on a Moviola and spent an entire night going through the scenes I like frame by frame and finding out how they created that movie.

"It won't teach you everything," he warns, but, "we still do that. We still study how [certain segments] were done - how did Frank Thomas approach this problem. It's a very good way to do things, but it's only one of the ways."

Hand-in-hand with practice is formal art training. A young person, brimming with talent though she or he may be, needs structured schooling to make animation a career.

"They're not going to get a job here when they're fifteen years old," Gladstone says. "We recommend not only high school, but additional schooling as well - hopefully a college degree."

This schooling would, of course, have art as its primary focus - not merely drawing, but other disciplines as well, such as painting and sculpting. Milton Gray recommends studying actors and books on acting, learning something of staging, choreography, and principles of music.

Beyond the fine arts, some background in history, geography, the life sciences, et al., makes for a more knowledgeable, flexible animator.

"You have to bring things to the table," Gladstone explains. "Half of doing Disney-style feature animation is the ability to draw, paint, run a computer, or whatever, but the other half is communication skill. We find that people who have some post-secondary education are more well-rounded, more adapted to the needs of our studio.

"We realize," he adds "that not everybody can go to college, but we seem to see more seasoned players if they have." Can you be an animator without being able to draw? Gladstone replies, "If a kid wants to do animation and he or she can't draw, there are ways to do that. There always have been ways to do that - stop-action, pixilation (which is stop-action using people instead of objects), things like that. Now there's another one, the computer. You don't have to learn to draw to learn how to animate on a computer."

He cautions, however, "Computer animators just have a very fancy electronic pencil. If they can draw traditionally, they're that much ahead of the game. In all the computer work that I've seen in my life, [work] that has really pushed the animation limits - not just the movement limits, there's a difference - the animators have either come from traditional areas or had good traditional skills."

These skills, be they traditional or high-tech, can be utilized in a variety of ways. An animated feature film employs the talents of a wide variety of artists. Animators make up a fairly small population of the people that create an animated film. There are also assistant animators; in-betweeners; breakdown, background and layout artists; effects animators; storyboard artists; visual development or inspirational artists; computer animators; and graphic designers - to name a few!

All these individuals work as a team (hence the importance of communication) during the long, arduous process of producing an animated film. Gladstone gives an example of how the artist (in this case the layout artist), director, and art director work together. These individuals interpret the storyboard into the various sets, backgrounds and foregrounds for each shot of an animated film.

"The layout artist has a lot to do with the lighting of the film, the scope, the way the camera moves through the sets," he explains. "The layout artist is in a very great way the cinematographer of an animated film, deciding what the camera is going to see and where the characters will be blocked in a scene."

The in-betweener has traditionally been looked upon as the first rung on the ladder of a animation career. Although there are exceptions, Gladstone says, "Most people come up through the ranks, starting as an in-betweener and working their way up to an animator. I think that's a good way to do it. Eventually, if they become an animator, they will have had the experience of the people that follow them up. They were there before."

So, the path is charted - now, where to go for the all-important formal instruction? There are many schools that offer good fundamental art programs and consistently produce graduates with the skills necessary to become Disney animators. These schools are by no means the only choices available to the future animator.

Gladstone speaks from experience, "If you need to go to a state school - great! Find a state school that has an art program and take the best advantage of it you can. Learn how to draw well. Draw better than everybody there. If you can only go to trade school, great! Go to trade school and do it that way."

The various roads to an animation career all demand hard work, discipline, and patience. We asked Frank Gladstone what crucial advice he would give animators. He responded, "Keep trying. Don't get too frustrated. Realize your potential, be honest with yourself, and apply yourself to whatever that particular goal is you want to reach."

It takes, in a word, persistence!

For information on the Disney Animator Training Program, please write to:

Walt Disney World Casting,

P.O. Box 10,000,

Lake Buena Vista, FL 32830-1000.

HELLO

2007-10-07T05:11:00.000-07:00

HELLO

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Back to Basics - Theory of Logo Design

by Paolo Pace

You know what? There is actually no easy answer to this question. It isn't something you can just slap together and it can't be read out of any one book- the information on how to create a great logo comes from research.

The research that is necessary to create an effective brand starts with your design savvy. Next you must investigate the company for which you've been commissioned to design for. Let me make clear that learning about a company cannot be done by simply nosing about for an hour to see how it ticks, rather it must be thoroughly understood from the perspective of its clients. What do they want? What are they looking for and what do they see when they look at your client's business? By speaking with employees, owners, partners and clients, mingling these interviews with solid facts about that particular industry you end up with solid clues that will help guide you to the beginnings of a successful business.

Where one logo succeeds for a restaurant, the same likely will not be true if used for Wall Street, simply because the needs of the clients are different. People looking for a place to eat may be looking for good food, a comfortable environment, and all for a modest price. A logo that communicates this feeling will draw new clients, while one that appears too rigid and all business might turn them away.

If a logo meets the need of the company and keeps the target market in mind, is visually striking and illustrious, can be easily reproduced, uses a limited number of colors (for reasons of reproduction costs), and still looks first-rate when scaled down, then you have yourself a winning brand.

Your logo must also be emotionally charged as it is often the very first thing a prospect client sees of a company and will likely make their impressions based on it from there. If stability is what you wish to convey then you will need to work the logo so that it instills that kind of an emotional reaction from the viewer.
Some basics

A basic starting point is to choose your fonts (serif or sans serif) and set your color scheme. If you have already determined the emotional goal of your logo then font and color choice will be more about fine-tuning rather than any kind of struggle. It is essential to have a basic understanding of color otherwise you may convey the wrong message with poor color choice, so take the time to update your knowledge base on the subject whenever you can.

Consider your shapes carefully. Rounded edges versus sharp corners can mean the difference between aggressive and passive messages. If the company you are designing the logo for wish to convey action and excitement then using smooth, curving shapes may not be the proper solution.

There are basic tricks to use during the process of designing a logo to ensure that it is not only aesthetically pleasing but also balanced. Try simply turning your design upside down to test the shape of your design and then look at it in a mirror. If the paper is thin enough I also put it up against a window, image-side down, in order to see through the sheet. Without realizing it we sometimes load our shapes and text too much on one side and by using these tests you can help prevent such occurrences.

One of the strongest methods of breaking down a logo to find its finer points is to get opinions. Approach your peers and have them analyze your work. Often they will see things you have overlooked and advise solutions. Although you should prepare yourself for the critique as it is never easy to take and in the wrong frame of mind you might take the wrong advice. By keeping an open mind and being confident in the parts of your design that work you will avoid feeling defeated and instead will flourish with the new ideas and advice.

Copyright 2000-2002, Paolo Pace All Rights Reserved

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THANKS

2007-10-06T10:29:00.000-07:00

THANKS

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160-year-old Institution Leads Automotive Design Industry in Innovation

Rachael Taggart

April 2005

Coventry School of Art and Design continues its tradition of excellence by offering Alias StudioTools technology to faculty and students

Walking onto Coventry’s 30-acre campus, one can’t help but notice the juxtaposition of old and new. Modern architecture and ancient ruins don’t compete with each other, but rather co-exist in an exciting state of tradition and innovation. And there couldn’t be a more perfect environment for its School of Art and Design, a place that honors the past while pushing the envelope of futuristic invention. On this unique campus, faculty and staff of the automotive design program work with each other and with industry partners in state-of-the art facilities using only the best tools.
History

The Coventry School of Art and Design began in 1843 with the original purpose of restoring decorative woven silk items. Since then, it has grown to include four broad subject areas, including its famous, award-winning transportation design program. In 2004, Coventry was named Best Design School in the World by the Automotive Design Competition (WADC), which is hosted by the Canadian International Auto Show. For more than 30 years, Coventry has been offering degree-level training in the exciting field of transportation design and has more recently added additional post-graduate study, research and consultancy. Two years ago, the on-campus Advanced Digitizing and Modeling Laboratory opened its doors to provide full-sized vehicle design and styling facilities. Coventry is always striving to lead its students and faculty into the future by providing state-of-the-art facilities and industry-leading tools used by top design experts.
Tools and Resources

For more than 10 years, Coventry has been using Alias StudioTools. Initially the software was used as a research tool, but soon it became an indispensable way of enhancing the Masters students’ experience. Two years ago it was introduced to second-year students so that by graduation they too would be well-versed and ready for employment in design studios.

“I think it goes without saying that the medium used by graduating car designers has to be that provided by Alias StudioTools. It is both the industry standard and, for us, an essential component in the automotive designer’s toolkit,” explains Mike Tovey, Dean of Coventry School of Art and Design. “Without StudioTools, they won’t even make it to the starting line.”

Over 100 students began learning StudioTools in their second year and will be heading out to the workforce next summer. Faculty expect these students to make a big impact on the industry. “Our results have been better than expected,” says John Owen, principal lecturer at the school. “Our intention is to provide designers with good Alias skills as the norm, and we hope that this first group will break the mould.”
Students

Coventry School of Art and Design has graduates in every European automotive design studio and several further a field. Many hold senior design positions in such firms as BMW, Mercedes Benz, Ford and Land Rover.

“Car manufacturers are looking for designers who not only have good modeling skills, but also strong design and presentation skills,” says Owen. “We aim to give them that.”

Adrian Sellers, an American studying automotive design at Coventry, looked at various schools and chose Coventry because “the program is more practical rather than theory based.” His strong 3D background lead to his leadership role in the Renault “What’s the Next Big Thing?” project. Teams from four schools around the world had to produce both a clay and virtual model with flat work, animations and renderings using Alias StudioTools. And, they only had 10 weeks in which to do it.

“My experience with StudioTools helped me to visualize things more easily,” says Sellers. “It is probably one of the most versatile tools for design and can easily become a part of your work process.”

Charles Drury is another Coventry student who worked on the project. “Using StudioTools lets me express my ideas in 3D without having the craftsmen skill and ability on a physical level. On this project we were able to produce extremely high standards of accuracy using this software.” Drury has an arts background and was able to get up to speed on the technology in a 10-week introductory course.

Owen is in his 15th year of teaching at Coventry and feels very proud of his students’ achievements and their ability to harness today’s tools. He spends a great deal of time ensuring that they have access to the best facilities and software packages.

“We chose StudioTools because we don’t want the software dictating how the form should be. It has three or more ways of doing everything and serves our students ideas without dominating or changing them,” explains Owen. “Other tools seem to make decisions about what should be done without the finesse and accuracy we want.”

The Future

Coventry School of Art and Design continues to strive to be the best design school for years to come. By maintaining existing collaborative projects with the design and manufacturing industries and forging new ones, it continues its tradition of innovation and quality.

“International networking and collaborative design are key ingredients for multinational car companies,” says Dean Tovey. “And we will depend on a whole host of technologies, like Alias StudioTools, for modeling and representing these designs of the future.”

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GOOD NIGHT

2007-10-06T08:43:00.000-07:00

GOOD NIGHT

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Creating a copy-design advertising concept that sells
Shaun Crowley

Freelance designers who produce marketing materials will know that design and copy should be developed together to work well.

But sometimes there isn’t enough budget for teaming with a copywriter. Or the client needs a project in a hurry. That’s when being able to produce concept and copy in addition to design can be a powerful business advantage.

It goes without saying that an ability to write is fundamental. But you don’t have to be a copywriter to produce strong concepts and write copy for many smaller projects.

Think of the concept as a hook, a lead-in that will grab readers’ attention and persuade them to read on. Think of the copy as a fulfillment of the concept’s premise, the fleshing out of the product story.

Avoid trying to do too much, bombarding readers with multiple copy and visual messages. For any piece to be persuasive and memorable, its design, headlines, visuals, and copy must work together to communicate one single and strong message.

As idea starters, below are thirteen simple concept/copy approaches. Each has been proven to help deliver sales results.

1. Focus on a particularly persuasive benefit.
This is a fail-safe approach to communicating the product message in advertising. Brainstorm a list of product benefits and focus on the benefit your reader will find most appealing.

Product: Beds. Headline: “Turn your back on aches and pains”. Visual: Profile of woman, back to camera, lying comfortably on a mattress.

2. Create a need—then show how the product fulfils it.
A proven way to position a product is to show how it solves a need or a problem. The problem can be real…

Product: Kitchen appliances. Message: “Everyone knows showers are more efficient than baths. So why do dishwashers work like baths?” Visual: Photo of shower cubicle alongside product.

Or the problem can be imagined…

Product: Teaching (recruitment drive). Headline: “Children have an energy and spontaneity that just aren’t found in many office jobs”. Visual: Happy child contributing in a classroom activity.

3. Focus on the product’s Unique Selling Point.
The product you’re selling doesn’t need to fill an obvious gap in the market to have a Unique Selling Point (USP).

A USP can be a fact about the product (such as sales history, brand reputation, or product origination)…

Product: Muesli. Headline: “The original Swiss muesli”. Visual: Idyllic Swiss landscape.

A USP can be a product feature (something the product has that no other product has)…

Product: TV. Headline: “Color like no other.” Visual: Bright-colored paint splashing across a television set.

Or a USP can be a product benefit (something a product does that no other product does)…

Product: Educational text book. Headline: “At last, a coursebook that puts you in control of your lessons”. Visual: confident looking teacher walking into the classroom..

4. Associate the product with a connected idea, feeling, or emotion.
Metaphor is commonly used in consumer advertising, corporate-identity, and brand-building publicity. It can be particularly effective in activating an archetype that connects an emotion with the brand.

Product: Cognac. Headline: “Let the conversation flow”. Visual: Glass of cognac in focus; a group of people in conversation after dinner out of focus.

5. Prove how popular the product is.
People trust popular products because they are seen as reliable and imply good quality. Popularity messages also respond to deep emotional needs to feel part of a community.

Product: Telecommunications. Headline: “Thousands of people are coming back to XYZ Telecoms”. Visual: Woman opening door to friendly telecoms engineer.

6. Use a case study.
Case studies prove validity by showing how people have already benefited from the product in the past. They are particularly useful for highlighting success stories, before-and-afters, or for demonstrating the versatility and universality of the product.

Product: Weight-loss milkshake. Headline: “I lost 18 pounds in just one month on the ThinQuick Plan!” Visual: Before and after photos of individual alongside close-up of product.

7. Endorse the product.
People trust respected figures in society. Your lead copy could be a published testimonial—or have the client pay a respected figure to put his/her name to the product.

Product: Rowing machine. Headline: “The Gold Standard”. Visual: Snapshot of Olympic rower presenting product, with his signature.

8. Tell the product’s story.
A product with an interesting background has real news value, and news makes for an attention-grabbing message, appealing to the reader’s sense of curiosity. Product stories can also initiate desire for the product by developing the reader’s emotional attachment to the brand.

Product: French Beer. Headline: “When Edmund Willims created Bertillon Noir, he didn’t just break the mould. He broke the law.” Visual: Melodramatic black-and-white photo of character nervously hiding behind a door.

9. Put the product to the test.
You can ‘test’ the product to highlight its key features such as convenience, strength, versatility—or to show how the product compares with the competition.

Product: Battery. Headline: “Duromax lasts up to three times longer than conventional alkaline batteries”. Visual: Battery-powered toy rabbit beating his competitors in a race.

10. Announce something new.
The word ‘New’ is one of the most powerful words in advertising copy. Sometimes the most effective message is simply to announce the product’s newness.

Product: Cat food. Headline: “Introducing new finest cuts from Feleba”. Visual: Plate of gourmet cat food hidden by a silver cover.

11. Guarantee the product.
A guarantee quickly dissolves any scepticism your reader has about the reliability of the product. Guarantees can be based around results, quality, durability, strength, customer satisfaction, a commitment on behalf of the company, fixed price promises, and lowest price claims.

Product: Golf clubs. Headline: “Guaranteed! Cut six to eight strokes off your game… or your money back!” Visual: Product photo overlaid with guarantee stamp.

12. Announce how much and where to buy.
If the product is particularly good value for money, you can’t go wrong with “the three Ps”: show the Product, show the Price, and show where to Purchase.

Product: Clothes. Headline: “Back-to-school sweat-shirts from just $4. at Berkleys (opposite MacDonalds)”. Visual: Photo of mothers and children choosing sweatshirts in-store, with map of where the shop is.

13. State the offer.
People are always looking for a bargain, which is why the word ‘Free’ is another powerful word in the advertiser’s lexicon. If you have a good offer to tell readers about, lead with it.

Product: Newspaper. Headline: “Get a free Mozart CD in tomorrow's Sunday Bugle”. Visual: Huge ‘FREE’ flash alongside product.

This list of advertising concepts is hardly exhaustive, but can be used as a framework for brainstorming ideas. Whatever your concept, ask yourself this: “Am I effectively communicating the product message through my headline, visual, and body copy?” If you’re not, the chances are your concept is too complicated—you need to strip it down and focus on just one thing.

Shaun Crowley is author of 100 Copywriting Tips for Designers and Other Freelance Artists, available at www.copywriting-designers.com

THANK FOR THE ADD

2007-10-06T08:38:00.000-07:00

THANK FOR THE ADD

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At the Interview
Adrienne Thibodeau

At the Interview

The big day has finally arrived! You're prepared, you're confident, and you're ready to go knock their socks off. Here are some tips that will help you put your best foot forward at your next interview.

Common Scents

You already know that it's a good idea to pass on strong-smelling perfume, cologne and aftershave. It's also a good idea to avoid coffee, garlic, and strongly scented foods before a job interview. Avoid smoking immediately before the interview, too, as the residual smell of smoke may irritate your interviewer's allergies. Carry breath mints or gum to freshen your breath before the meeting, but be sure to discard gum before entering the building.

Timing

Plan to arrive 10 to 15 minutes early for the interview. Preparing for the unexpected by having your clothing laid out ahead of time, your paperwork and portfolio together and ready to go, and knowing the location of the office (as well as alternate routes to get there) will virtually ensure that you arrive on time. Just as you don't want to be late for an interview, you don't want to arrive too early; it can give the impression that you have nothing else to do. You definitely don't want your potential employers to think that that you are desperate for a job, or that your time is not valuable. If you reach the interview site more than 15 minutes early you may want to wait in the car or take a walk through a nearby shop to pass the extra time.

Frame of Mind

Think of the interview as your 'first date' with the company, for that is largely what it is. At this point, you're meeting to get to know more about each other, and to see if you're both interested in pursuing a relationship together. This is a chance to decide if this company would be a good place for you to work.

Remember that many interviewers are not fully trained in hiring, and that they are under pressure to find the right person for the job. The person interviewing you may be as nervous as you are. A friendly, respectful attitude can go a long way in putting you both at ease, so be sure to do your part!

Don't forget that you are being evaluated from the moment you arrive at the interview site. If you carry a cell phone, be sure to turn it off to avoid unnecessary distractions. Be sure to be pleasant and courteous to everyone that you meet; if you are hired, these people will be your coworkers, and many interviewers will ask other employees that you interact with for their opinions of you.

The Waiting Game

If you are asked to wait, choose a seat that is facing the hallway (or door) that you expect the interviewer to approach from. Greet anyone who comes through that door with eye contact and a smile, and you will be sure to start off on the right foot. Your goal is for the interviewer to perceive you as someone they would want to have representing their company.

First Impressions

Your appearance and mannerisms will say a lot about you before you even speak a word. Be confident and relax. Breathe deeply, and think over the key points that you want to address to help yourself stay focused while waiting.

Keep your portfolio and interview materials in your left hand so that your right will be free to shake hands with your interviewer without any needless shuffling. When these first few moments go smoothly it will go a long way towards setting your mind at ease.

You're On!

Let the interviewer take the lead, and try to meet them at their level in tone, tempo and pitch. If they seem very formal try to respond formally, and if they seem excited and energetic, try to answer in kind. At the same time, it is important to be yourself, so don't attempt to "fake" who you are, simply try to match their attitude within the bounds of your own personality.

What you say is important, but the interviewer will remember the overall impression that you made over the wording that you used. Most interviewers prefer a candidate who is comfortable with their vocabulary over one who is constantly struggling for a word that is just beyond their grasp. Avoid using "filler" words like "um" and "uh" whenever possible.

Body Language

Listen closely and show interest. You can do this by maintaining eye contact, leaning forward slightly. You may be nervous, but try to remain in control of the messages you send with your body language. Don't fold your arms across your chest, this is often viewed (subconsciously) as a defiant gesture. Don't fidget or bite your nails, and don't touch things on the interviewer's desk. Make regular eye contact, but don't stare.

Answering Questions

A positive attitude is important. Focus on your strengths, and if you are asked to discuss your weaknesses, be prepared to explain what you are doing to correct them. Remember that your goal is to show the interviewer why they should hire you. Never speak badly about a previous job, a former boss, or coworkers.

Never interrupt the interviewer or try to finish their sentences. If you do not understand a question, it is better to ask for clarification than to pretend that you understand.

Keep your answers brief and on topic, and the interviewer will ask for more information if they need it. Once you have finished answering a question, pause, and if the interviewer does not respond after a moment or seems to be waiting for something, don't talk just to fill the silence. It is usually better to ask the interviewer, "does that answer your question?" than to resume talking in hopes of getting it right.

Don't speak in generalities. Provide examples from specific situations whenever possible. This is often a good way to showcase some of your past achievements.

Be honest with yourself and your interviewer about your experience and your abilities. Dishonesty is often easy to detect with a basic background or reference check, and is a surefire way to disqualify yourself from consideration.

Watch the interviewer for clues that the interview is drawing to a close, and be prepared to ask about the next step. This can be as simple as asking when a hiring decision is expected to be made. Be sure to reiterate your interest in the position (if you are, in fact, still interested) and thank the interviewer for taking the time to meet with you.

After the Interview

You may find it helpful to record your thoughts after an interview and to keep those notes in your job searching journal. Include how you felt before, during, and after the meeting, areas in which you felt confident, and areas that could use improvement. This can help you to refine your interviewing skills so that you are better prepared for future interviews.

It is also advisable to send a personal 'thank you' note to the person who interviewed you, thanking them for their time and reminding them of your interest in the position.

Copyright © 2007, Adrienne Thibodeau, All Rights Reserved

LOVE

2007-10-06T08:26:00.000-07:00

LOVE

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How to Find A Trusted Graphic Design Company or Web Designer
Horatio Farquaar

July, 2006

It's long been held that trust goes a long way in building strong long term design relationships. Building all your hopes and dreams with one designer could leave you high and dry when they up their rates after you've committed to a job. So how do you go about finding a trustworthy graphic design company?

Word on the street
Some of the hippest young gunslingers are to be found hanging out in the gin palaces and opium dens of the ghetto. To the uninitiated this might seem like a frightening place to look for someone trustworthy to carry out your design brief but perservere and you may get to hear about some secret design meeting going down in the backroom of some crack festooned fleapit. Welcome to the shadowy world of the design behemoths.

Playing the field
With so many unscrupulous designers hawking their shoddy services, it pays the prudent design buyer to play off these scampa among each other. For instance one designer may be offering free lollipops with every logo design. Armed with this information, approach another design agency and see what kind of sweets you might be able to get from them in order for you to place an order. Who knows by this method of going back and forth you may be able to aquire a whole sackfull of candy at no extra cost. Sweeeeet!

Get to know your designer intimately
Mixing business with pleasure can be a dangerous pastime but when you are looking to build a long term design relationship, sometimes being bedfellows makes common sense. In much the same way as you would be unlikely to stab your husband or wife in the back (unless of course you wanted to murder your spouse in which case this makes perfect sense) it stands to reason that a designer you are regularly giving one to is probably going to be more receptive to your picky demands.

Money - the route of all evil?
So far we've discussed the psychological neccessity of maintaining a trusting relationship between designer and client. The other, sometimes neglected aspect is a sound business trust between the two parties. Ask yourself this question: is that shifty looking graphic designer going to be dipping into your wallet as soon as you're out of the room? If the answer is a probable yes then kick the devil into touch.

Listen to your heart
At the end of the day building up a trustful design relationship has to emerge from both parties. It's all very well you doubting the designers sincerity and to be fair who hasn't thought at one stage or another that a designer is ripping you off? But it's also important to trust your gut feeling about a person. There are a couple more points that you should always be aware of. Ginger haired people although renowned for their hostile nature are 99% of the time fairly honest. Blonds will steal your last penny and leave you with some hideous design work.
Mindtap Graphic Design Resources is your single point entry into the UK creative industries. We are looking to create a unique site where you can access information on UK graphic design, UK logo design, graphic design tutorials, graphic designer careers, graphics software, graphics tutorials, graphic designers, logo creation, freelancer resources, graphic designer jobs, employment, web page design, free graphics, website designers, artworkers, graphic clipart and any other associated graphic design resource.

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POSTERS

2007-10-06T08:21:00.000-07:00

POSTERS

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10 Steps to Attract New Clients for Your Graphic Design Business

1) Start with existing clients. I’ve heard that the best clients for a graphic design business are the ones that you already have, so make it work to your benefit. Send regular newsletters or emails to educate your clients about your graphic design services. Give them a reason to call - a different limited time offer every month.

2) Referrals, Referrals, Referrals. Don’t be afraid to ask clients for referrals - especially after the job is done and you have WOWed them with your graphic design talents! Again, give incentives - “For every new client you send my way, I’ll give you 25% off your next design job”, or something similar.

3) Photos or Visuals. Create a portfolio for your graphic design business that you can present before and after samples and explain why you took a certain approach. Did the client ask for something specific that you were able to incorporate? Or did your client create a “portable” portfolio with testimonials and educational materials for your clients to keep and possibly display at their office for you? Of course, online graphic design portfolios are huge. Don’t have one? It’s time to create one. Take a look at All Creative Portfolios and other creative portfolio sites in order to get your graphic design services displayed.

4) Press Releases. Write a short, one page article about your graphic design business and services you provide and submit it to local and national publications. These are great because they are FREE! Be sure to have high resolution files and/or photos available upon request should they publish the article.

5)Mailers. Target people recently moved to the area who could benefit from your graphic design services/product etc. There are many low cost postcard printers out there - maybe work out a trade for printing and design?

6) Give and get help from people in related fields. Don’t be snooty - we are all just trying to make a living, right? If someone contacts you and asks for your graphic design expertise, give it to them! Chances are it will be remembered and rewarded in the future. You never know - they could turn out to be your next business partner!

7) Give and get help from surrounding businesses. Hand deliver a promotional offer to nearby businesses with a special offer included. Be sure to respect places that don’t except solicitation. Be brief if you leave something with them - they are busy, and don’t want to be bothered, but may appreciate a local person with an offer they can’t refuse.

8 ) Call your client after the job is done. Ask them questions about the service/product you provided. Can you improve something? More than anything, people will appreciate the follow up and will be more likely to remember you for the next project they need help with.

9) Educate and Motivate. Speak in the community - local schools, professional organizations, etc. What made you want to become a graphic designer? How do you feel graphic design contributes to society?

10) Stay current in your field of graphic design. Stay educated up on new technology, new techniques, etc. Try to schedule time each month to do research online or at the library.

Also, take a survey of clients you already have on WHY they chose you over another provider. This will tell you what your marketing message should be. Results oriented marketing depends upon testing, tracking what works and what doesn’t, being persistent and learning from mistakes.

Find out more information about promoting your freelance graphic design business with the following articles.

Submitted by Hancey Design - http://www.HanceyDesign.com/

Technorati Tags: self promotion, graphic design, graphic designer, graphic design business, graphic design career, design career, business, attract new clients, promotion, marketing

KISS

2007-10-06T08:19:00.000-07:00

KISS

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Logo Design
Adrienne Turcotte

August, 2007

Graphic design is about communication, not about "making things pretty" and is a skilled profession. Designers are more than people who own expensive software. You hire them for their knowledge as much as you hire them for their creativity. Design is not "art", it is commercial art; design has to serve a purpose.

Software is only ONE of our tools, and simply buying design software won't automatically enable you to create a successful logo any more than buying a guitar makes you a successful musician. Hiring a designer may even cost less than buying the correct software.

Logo design is a very complicated process, and something that designers spend years learning to do properly. Some even devote their career to specialization in corporate identity. Creating a successful mark is a lot more complicated than it looks. An effective logo is not generic... it is the essence of the company as you want to be perceived by the world.

Designing a successful logo is more than typing the name of a business and placing a graphic picturing what the company does beside it. (Honestly, can you imagine how much that would do for your image if you were a proctologist?) Here are some tips that will help you to design more effective logos:

Step 1: brainstorm. Who is the client? What sets them apart from their competition? What is their mission statement? How do they want to be perceived? Who are their target customers? What impressions do they want their logo to make on people? What do they make or do? Think of key words that describe their company. How can you work those ideas into a logo design? How can you boil down the company's beliefs, values, mission, and everything that makes them a unique entity into one simple, identifying mark?

Think of every word you can that you would associate with the company. Make a list of synonyms and a list of anyonyms. Use a thesaurus - or use www.visualthesaurus.com - and brainstorm in words until you can't think of any more words.

Step 2: sketch and doodle. Before you even touch the computer, you should sit down with some paper and a pencil and start sketching out some ideas. These don't have to be perfect, just get the concepts and spacial relations down on paper. See which ideas are good, which don't pan out, what needs work, what shows promise. It's all about developing a successful concept at this stage. Your software can seriously limit your creativity, so don't let it get in the way. Sketch about 5 or 6 pages worth of ideas. They don't have to be magnificent... and you don't have to show them to anybody. Think about the words you brainstormed while you sketch. How can you represent all those ideas in a simple, effect mark? Narrow it down to the 5 best concepts and really flesh those out.

Step 3: Once you have some promising sketches ready, scan them into your computer and open your vector software. This could be Adobe Illustrator, Macromedia Freehand, Corel Draw, or another vector based program for scalability.

Photoshop is NOT a vector program, and should not be used to design logos.

Graphics made in Photoshop are not scalable. To be honest, while most people think that Photoshop is good for everything under the sun, its primary use in print design is for photo editing.

Did you ever wonder why Adobe Creative Suite includes InDesign, Illustrator, and Photoshop? Why Corel Suite includes Corel Draw and Photopaint? Each program has specific strengths and is designed for specific uses.

Page Layout: InDesign, Corel Draw, Quark XPress

Vector Work: Illustrator, Corel Draw, Freehand

Photo Editing: Photoshop, Photopaint

You can turn your raster based sketches into vector images with the trusty pen tool. Since vector images are based on mathematical lines and curves which can be enlarged or reduced to any size without losing quality.

Ultimately, it's all about resolution and some day the client might want to have their logo put on a billboard... if the resolution is just not there, it is going to be a problem.

Step 4: Logos should be designed in straight black and white (read: NOT grayscale), with no screens, gradients, bevels, drop shadows, filters, or other effects. If you want to add these things later for a web version of the logo, fine. But be sure to develop your concept without relying on them. If the concept doesn't work in black and white (no shades of gray, JUST black and white) then there is likely something technically wrong with your concept.

Chances are that at some point the client will want to imprint the logo on a stock form, have it flat foil stamped or engraved on an award or nameplate, or reproduced in some other medium that will only allow a one color image.

Since you don't want the great logo you are working on to look like a shapeless, meaningless blob under those circumstances, it is best to start your design in straight black and white to ensure that it will work effectively in all possible scenarios.

Step 5: Bear in mind the fact that your logo will need to be easy to read and recognize when it is shrunk down to the size of a nickel. A logo has to "work" at all sizes, from very large (like on a billboard) to very small (like if it were engraved on a pen).

Avoid design cliches, like swooshes, starbursts, and their ilk. These are already incredibly overdone, and they all start to look alike after a while. (See some examples here http://lekowicz.com/library/logohell/logohell.html ) Since you have a very short amount of time to make an impression on potential clients, your best approach is something simple, unique, and memorable.

After you have a polished concept you can add color and effects as desired. Bear in mind that a one or two color logo will typically be less expensive to print or embroider when the time comes.
I hope that this information helps to shed some light on the logo design process.

Copyright (c) 2007, Adrienne Turcotte, All Rights Reserved

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GOOD MORNING

2007-10-06T08:13:00.000-07:00

GOOD MORNING

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Is it Flash or is it Just Me?

Is it Flash or is it Just Me?

Maybe I am just clueless, but I have a hard time seeing the benefits of using Flash (or related technologies) on a website. Let me elaborate a bit on that. I cannot see any benefits of using Flash on a business site (as opposed to entertainment purposes). I get a good bit of e-mail from readers wondering why we do not Flash the magazine web pages or have nice big fat animations and graphics on the site. Well I first think that these people never tried to script flash to be viewable on all popular browsers, and still make it easy for non-flash browsers to navigate. The maintenance overhead on the site would be horrendous. We can barely keep plain good ol HTML looking the same in most browsers on a day-to-day basis. I am sure that those of you that create web pages or use Flash know exactly what I mean. I think it would be great to have a totally Flashed TIEMdesign- The Graphic Design Magazine, but I cannot find a volunteer to insert and maintain (daily) the code in the 1800+ web pages that comprise TIEMdesign website.

Animations and large graphics are also cool, if they serve a purpose. If not, please save me from falling asleep or getting bored and leaving before the page loads. Only a small percentage of users have T1 (1.5mbs) or broadband connections. Remember the largest majority of users still have 28.8-56k analog modems. I love nice graphics, but there are ways to lighten the download time. We at the magazine learned the hard way that readers will not wait for large graphics to load; they will simply go elsewhere. We tried large splash page graphics and were losing over 18% of our readers right there on the main page, we finally changed to a light graphics and text version and reduced the loss of readers to under 4%. The facts speak for themselves.

If someone can invent or re-engineer the Flash (or flash related technologies) format that does not require a plugin and will show properly in almost any browser then I think it would be more appropriate for use in almost any situation or web site. At least freeze the development of all Flash graphics (or related) formats and wait for the browsers to catch up before adding new and neat things to the technologies and formats. I am just more than slightly tired of constantly updating my browser, plug-ins and extra software just so I can view a single web page. So please slow it down and let it mature before adding anything spiffy or new.

Dont get me wrong, I think Flash is an excellent medium, but too much of one thing can be detrimental. Just like in the old days of the Web, people went crazy over the Blink tag (just gouge my eyes out right now if I have to see one more blink tag).

Allen Harkleroad
TIEMdesign

Copyright (c) 2000, Allen Harkleroad, All Rights Reserved

FUNNY

2007-10-06T08:11:00.000-07:00

FUNNY

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Top 10 Tips - Designing the Right Logo
Russell Arsenault

For small businesses, creating a logo is one of the most important stages of a company’s infancy. A professional image can take you a long way, distinguishing your company from the competition. Unfortunately, not everyone is a stellar graphics designer. Even if you choose to outsource your logo project, you’ll still need to provide a minimum level of guidance to the design firm. In light of this, here is a concise set of design tips written to ensure your logo perfectly suits your needs.

1. Keep it Simple!

These are probably the best words of advice, and it ties into almost all of our upcoming tips. A complicated design will not only make your logo difficult to reproduce and maintain, but you will also fail to engage your audience. The logo is the ultimate ‘elevator’ pitch to your potential clients and business partners. You don’t have time to recite your entire business plan in an elevator pitch, and the same concept applies to corporate logo design.

Sometimes when a design isn’t working out right, there will be an inclination to add elements and complexity. Often times, it’s better to start over with a new concept or remove distracting elements rather than add them.

Simplicity isn’t always an easy thing to ahieve, as you don’t want your logo to appear too boring or conservative. This is why at the end of the day it’s best to leave it to logo design professionals.

2. Engage your Audience

The good logo should above everything entertain and engage your audience. Your design should not be so literal that the message is spelt out for them. They should be given the opportunity to discover the meaning and intention of your logo themselves. If people are able to discover the ‘trick’ of your logo within a reasonable amount of time, this will help to create a memorable and entertaining experience between you and your audience.

Too much abstraction will on the other hand work against you. If the logo is too obscure, the message that you are attempting to communicate will be lost, and so will your potential client. Remember, today’s consumer culture is accustomed to very intense and stimulating media, and therefore you cannot be too demanding on your audience.

3. Logo Longevity – Think Ahead!

The durability and longevity of a logo is worth considering. Although it’s impossible to see into the future, it is useful to picture your company 10-15 years down the road, and think about what kind of products and services it will offer, if any at all! Even the strongest companies update their logo every 15 years or so, but often the changes will be subtle in nature. Very seldom will they take on a radical re-design.

For small start-up companies, it may not be the end of the earth if you decide to change your logo after even a few years, depending on what transpires with your company. But it’s always nice when a logo design is able to stand the test of time.

4. Vector is Better

Although it’s tempting to use detailed illustrations and complex 3d effects in a logo, chances are that it will not serve you well. Clean, crisp lines with very limited colors are almost always more effective than an illustration or complex 3d rendering. A well-drawn vector-based logo will provide you with the contrast and balance that is so important in logo design. New capabilities in vector based programs can now give you the illusion of a 3d effect without losing contrast, using tricks such as the canter effect.

5. Adaptability - Be Ready for Change

Your logo should be flexible enough to adapt to every business situation. If a logo is too literal or specific, you may have a hard time using it when catering to different markets.

Generally speaking, the best thing for small business start-ups is to have an icon and logo-type designed at the same time. This will allow you to use the logo as a stand-alone image, or use it along with the type-font name as well. Often times, companies will use only the icon on its products and packaging materials. This is a common practice among software companies and book publishers.

6. Make it Memorable

A great logo design will imbed itself into ones sub-consciousness. This can happen for a variety of reasons, but for a logo to be memorable it needs to use simple lines and be very easy to recall from memory. A good test to ensure that your logo design is memorable is to show it to a friend and ask him/her to retrace it a week later. A good design should use a recognizable shape or element for it to be easily remembered.

7. Relevance – Keep your Products and Services in Mind

A memorable logo is great, but it should also get your customers to start thinking about the products or services that you offer. You should ensure that the logo relates to your business in some shape or form. Yes, the monkey can sell just about anything from cigarettes to cell phones, but there’s a limit! Isn’t there?

8. Choose your Colors Wisely

Colors can play a very important role in logo design as they can illicit different feelings and emotions from us. Interpretations of color may vary depending on age, gender, and cultural demographics. Your choices of color should therefore be considered carefully depending on your target market. Also, colors tend to follow trends, just like in fashion. A new, vibrant company may want to follow the current trends, whereas a bank may want to stay with a more conservative color set that will serve then well for them over a long period of time.

Try to keep your selection of colors down to two or three. Too many colors will increase your cost of production and make it more difficult to reproduce.

One interesting idea that we’ve seen used is to change the color of the logo on things like business cards and stationery depending on the market segmentations of the clientele.

9. Uniqueness is Key

This should be straightforward. You want to be sure that your company is easily identified among your industry and competitors. Be sure to carefully research your industry and target market before embarking on a logo design. You need to know and understand the common styles of your industry, but you also need to make sure that you don’t infringe on anyone else’s trademarked logo.

10. Versatility Pays Dividends

One of the most important attributes of a good logo design is versatility. You want to portray a consistent image across all of your marketing materials, including signs, letterhead, business cards, products lines, and web sites. Often times, a complicated logo design will work fine on a website or billboard, but when you shrink it down to fit on a pen or coffee cup, the illustration or lettering will become illegible. Your logo should also work well in black and white.

You may often find that many start-up companies and even well-established law firms will not consistently brand their logo across all their marketing materials. They may have their logo on the front door of their office, but will end up using something different (or nothing at all!) on their website. In order to build brand recognition you need to market your logo and image as consistently as possible. Be sure that when you’re having your logo designed that you receive all the file formats necessary for use in your various marketing channels.

Russell Arsenault is the Marketing Director and Editor at LogoBee.com. LogoBee has been in logo design industry for over six years, providing custom logos and stationery to businesses around the globe.

HEARTS

2007-10-06T08:07:00.000-07:00

HEARTS

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Color Part 1: Accuracy
by Erin Ferree

Color is one of the most difficult parts of a design to show accurately to a client. Color perception can be affected by many factors, including:

Human perception:

~~ The way each person sees color can vary, depending on the structure of the individual's eye. This is particularly true in the range of the color blue. Colorblindness is another factor in an individual's perception of color, which can be either very slight (and almost unnoticeable to an individual) or quite severe.

~~ Colors can also impact each other when placed side by side - either through reflection or as a visual illusion. To demonstrate this, hold a piece of bright-colored paper or object next to a white piece of paper near a sunny window. The white paper will take on some of the color, to become a pastel shade of the bright color.

Home computer and printing technology:

~~ The average computer monitor will show slightly differing colors depending on how the computer is set up, the type of monitor (for example, flat-panel LCD monitors tend to show colors as more blue), how the brightness/contrast is adjusted, and many other factors.

~~ Inkjet and home laser printers, while great for convenience, often do not have the color range that professional printing machines do. This is most obvious in the case of bright colors, especially dark or complex colors (colors made up of cyan, magenta, yellow, and black (CMYK) all mixed together), and in the tones of blue, aqua, and purple.

Web color vs. printed color:

~~ The color of your logo and/or any other graphic elements on your website may be different than the colors on your printed materials - this has to do with the color palette that websites use in their graphics (see the article RGB vs. CMYK color), with the color palettes that the web browsers use (see web-safe color, below), and with your and your clients' monitor calibration.

~~ Web-safe colors are available, meaning that the colors will look the same regardless of a viewers' monitor type - provided that their brightness and contrast settings are set to the same levels. There are millions if printable colors and only 216 web-safe colors, thus we advise treating website colors differently than printed colors, and we suggest that you choose both a web-color palette as well as a printing- color palette for your business identity.

Professional printing technology:

~~ Colors can vary between printing processes. If some of your materials are printed with a four-color digital or traditional printing process and others are printed using the Pantone color system, some of the colors may not match owing to the differences in the processes.

~~ Colors can also vary between presses or digital printers, depending on their setup or calibration, so if you print materials at different times or on different machines, they could appear different. In many aspects of your graphic design, such as your company logo, you want to ensure that your colors are as accurate and consistent as possible across different media, printing processes, and monitor displays. You also want to strive for as much color control as possible among the different elements of your brand that you have printed when using different printing processes. This is done by comparing your Pantone color choices to their four-color equivalents, for example, to ensure that the two are as close to matching as possible.

There are also a few ways that we can minimize or overcome these inaccuracies and misrepresentations:

~~ Using colors available through the Pantone Matching System (PMS colors). Printers mix these colors to the exact specifications shown in the Pantone books, so you know exactly what the colors will look like on the finished product. However, this printing method only allows for printing in one, two, or three colors and can be more expensive than some of the four-color, digital printing methods available today. However, many digital press shops offer only onw or a few types of smooth, white paper. Press printing with Pantone colors allows you to choose from a wider range of textures and colors of paper, which then adds a new color element to your materials that includes the color of the paper itself.

~~Knowing how your corporate colors will translate. The Pantone system also offers a set of books that show how the Pantone colors will translate to CMYK - an important factor to consider if you will be printing some of your materials in two or three colors and other materials in four-color (full color). With these books, you can easily see how your chosen Pantone color will translate to CMYK, so that you can print your materials in the most economical way.

~~ Home or commercial laser printers will often show an approximation of the final color. When color matching is somewhat important, but not essential to the success of the project, we suggest proofing your colors on a good-quality color laser printer. The printouts from these printers will simulate four-color (CMYK) press results, though they won't match exactly, due to the differences in their calibration versus that of professional printers.

~~ For four-color (CMYK) printing where the accuracy of color is essential, many printers can produce "match proofs" - proofs that show very accurate color. These proofs will cost about $100 for a letter-sized page. This process will also will extend the production timeline of your printing job by several days for production and approval, but the proofs will give you an accurate representation of the color of your final job.

These tips should help you achieve good color consistency, and to get the results that you expect from your color.

YOU ROCK

2007-10-06T08:03:00.000-07:00

YOU ROCK

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Viral Engineering for Graphic Designers

Gary Dickson

August 15, 2004

In 1995 Milton Glaser wrote that graphic designers would need to create a new narrative to restore respect for their existence. And indeed since Mr. Glaser penned that essay there has been no shortage of proposals outlining what that narrative might be. Author, communicator, strategist, tactician, marketer, anthropologist these are just a few. The profession of graphic designer has been in the midst of a huge identity crisis grasping for some new analogy to explain what it is we do. The problem is largely driven by shifting technology. First we embrace the personal computer, which tricks us into doing our own production work. Fine. But then along comes the Internet, and who wants to do the production work for that writing code for goodness sakes! It has become more about manipulating the tools than the creative process.

So here I am throwing yet another hat into the ring. As if there weren't enough ideas flying around out there already declaring what this new narrative should be. I would like to approach it from a different and, I believe, unique perspective. In 1976 Richard Dawkins wrote about memes in his book The Selfish Gene. For those of you who may have never heard of memes, let me briefly explain what they are. A meme is an idea that spreads through society just like a biological virus. In much the same way that a virus uses a host cell, a meme uses minds. They both use a host to replicate themselves. When I discovered memetics in the mid 90s I was completely blown away. Memes are idea viruses and what is a designer, if not a creator of ideas? Some in our field may dispute that, but, at the very least a designer is a processor, translator or packager of ideas. Examine for a moment the lowest denominator here. If we are the packager of ideas then what that really makes a designer is a memetic engineer or an engineer for idea viruses viruses of the mind.

In order to fully understand this analogy, a fundamental understanding of viruses is in order. A basic biological virus exists for one purpose to propagate as many copies of itself as possible. In order to do so it is made up of two components a protein shell and a code which is housed inside the shell. The sticky protein shell is formed with uniquely-shaped nozzles covering its surface. When the right host cell is found, these nozzles link the virus to the cell and inject the viral code into the cell. Once inside, the code reprograms the host, turning it into a virus-making factory. Memes function in exactly this way they are ideas that, once attached to our minds, use us to replicate and spread themselves through the populace.

We are in a unique position as designers. While it is our job to see that our client's message spreads as effectively as possible, we also have an opportunity to enhance or add to that message. At the very least, our design should act just like the protein shell of a virus. A bad design, a design which ignores the content and the target, may sometimes help an idea to spread simply because it has a cool factor. This kind of design works, but not well and not for long. A properly engineered collateral virus is content and target relevant. In other words, it takes into consideration the ideal host that it is targeting, as well as the message that needs to be spread.

Ultimately, design can (and should) go one step further and actually become part of the message being delivered to the targeted host. While good design is content relevant, great design will actually merge with the content to communicate something about the client, the message and the audience. Content delivered without design is just like a viral code without its protein shell ineffective and short lived. Design is a crucial element in helping a company to spread its message. Whether the bearer of that message is a logo, business letter, brochure, package or Web site if it is poorly designed, it is much less likely to be taken seriously by its target (i.e. the protein shell sticks poorly, sticks to the wrong target or doesn't stick at all).

The spectrum of viruses that a designer may engineer for clients is broad.
Good design by definition (well, my definition, anyhow) is design that addresses the client's needs. It is content-relevant as well as target-focused and as such may be referred to as a horizontal marketing virus. But there is another form that we commonly generate. Intentionally or inadvertently, we sometimes create a viral message that is separate from the clients. It is the design itself a design virus which propagates vertically. Flip through graphic design publications for about two minutes and you will see style treatments that spread rampantly amongst designers. I'm sure that this in a way is a real ego stroke for the designer who originated the form. But more often than not it happens at the expense of the client. It is unfortunate that this type of virus is often developed with complete disregard for the needs of the client. It is irresponsible design, executed without regard for content and/or target.

One of the most interesting, and sometimes dangerous, characteristics of a virus is it's perpetual drive for mutation. This is particularly the case with a design virus which spreads vertically. A graphic designer takes a design idea that they've seen elsewhere and riffs off it to produce something of their own (happens all the time). Often this is very flattering but sometimes it is infuriating. If mutation does not occur, or if it is not extreme enough, then frankly it is plagiarism. In addition to the theft factor, another danger when this happens is that often it ignores the project's intended purpose. It may spread through the design community just fine this way, but at the same time build a very bad reputation for graphic designers, as the objectives of the client are completely ignored. If a virus is propagating vertically, mutation should be seen as absolutely essential. The client's best interests should be fully addressed which nearly always necessitates a major mutation.

Sometimes the mutation factor is planned for from the beginning. Establishing brand standards does exactly that. It can be a very cool and strategically positive thing. Certain mutations will introduce characteristics that prove beneficial or even essential for the propagation of the newly formed virus. After several rounds of mutation the virus may have evolved into something completely different than the original. In the biological world, the virus you had last year probably doesn't even exist today. If a biological virus does not mutate it quickly becomes extinct. Wouldn't it be exciting if design evolved at that same rapid pace? That would require us as designers to be vigilant in our efforts to generate ever more relevant form. Unfortunately, there are a lot of dinosaurs still out there in the world of design!

Call us what you may I honestly believe that we are engineering viruses of the mind. The next and larger question, if we are doing our jobs and producing viral materials to let loose on the world, regards ethics or morals. But that is a topic for another article.

In 1989 Gary began doing color prepress production. In 1998 he earned his BFA in graphic design (graduating from CCAC with distinction), was an intern for John Bielenberg and went to work for Horton Lantz Marocco in Seattle. In 2000 Gary left HLM to open his own studio - Epidemic Design. Please visit his studios website and view his work at http://www.epidemicdesign.com or contact Gary here.

Copyright © 1998-2004, Gary Dickson, All Rights Reserved

PUNK LOVE

2007-10-06T07:46:00.000-07:00

PUNK LOVE

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The Business Side of Design Part 2 - Marketing

Bob Nicholl

September 1, 2004

When starting a business, most of us will have a small client base already in place. This usually consists of friends, family and contacts from previous jobs and school. The first few weeks will be reasonably busy, you may even make a little money. Unfortunately this will dry up fast. Uncle Joe won't need any more business cards for a while. At this point you better start marketing yourself if you ever want to be able to quit that day job, rent that first office, hire yourself a couple of designers and become a real agency. You are going to have to build yourself a diverse and substantial client base. The way to do this is through an aggressive and regular marketing campaign. Word of mouth will only take you so far.

There have been many, many books written on the subject of marketing. Far too many for me to get into here. I urge you to visit your library and check out a few. See what has worked for others and then adapt their techniques to your own circumstances. The fact at the bottom of any marketing campaign is this: For every hundred or so people that learn your name and what you do, only two or three of them will respond. Only one of them will actually hire you. Understanding this simple formula is key to your success. A reasonable goal for a new designer is one new client a week. If you can maintain this average you will succeed.
Your budget will determine the kind of marketing you can do. Chances are that at first your marketing budget will be pretty small. So your first marketing tool will probably be business cards. That's all right, they are penny for penny your most valuable marketing tool. Here is a big tip; when you order your cards do not get 500, get 5000. Then give them to EVERYBODY!!! Give them to your friends, family, coworkers, church members, softball team members and your book club. Ask these people to keep a few handy in case they ever hear of anybody needing a designer. Keep a bunch of them on you at all times and give them to everyone you meet. Remember you have to hand out at least 100 of them in order to get that one client. Here is another big tip; Ask for a card in return every time you give one away. Collect these cards and every couple of days enter them into your "Potential Client" database. These cards are little gems of information containing all the contact info you need for a potential client. Imagine how impressed Jill of the big fish widget company will be when you have all of her information immediately at hand.

Most small businesses fail due to a lack of working capital. Most of the time the reason they have no working capital is due to a poor marketing mind set. Marketing is all too often considered a chore. Usually just when a company needs it the most is the time when the marketing budget is slashed. This is an important fact to consider for two reasons:
The first is for you as a designer to recognize when this starts happening to you. You can't allow yourself to fall into this trap. When we as designers don't have any paying work to do it just means that we have more time to be marketing ourselves. I'm going to let you in on a little secret. Marketing can be fun, that is if you treat it as the challenge that it is. It's one of the few areas in business where you can unleash all that artistic creativity that you have bottled up inside you.
The second is so that you can recognize when it is happening to one of your clients. Then it is up to you to change their mind by persuading them that marketing their company through you is the only way to save it. Sometimes it works.

Here's another big tip; Make friends with the gatekeeper. This is the person who controls access to the people you need to see. Whether they're a secretary, receptionist or personal assistant these are the people who can make or break your relationship with a business. Treat them with respect. Any time you stop by to drop off a leave-behind be sure any give one to the gatekeeper too. Chat with them for a few minutes whenever you call. Executives tend to come and go but good Gatekeepers stay. And maybe, just maybe they can persuade the new boss not to go with his golf buddy's son who is really, really good with PhotoShop.
So instead of watching Oprah or hitting the beach during a slow period. Put on some nice clothes, pick a busy business part of town and walk into every business and every office you pass. Don't try to make a sales pitch. If the Gatekeeper is busy just introduce yourself and hand them 3 or 4 cards and some kind of leave behind. Then politely ask them to pass them on to the people who make decisions on their marketing. If at all possible get cards and names from them in return. If they are not busy chat with them first for a few minutes. Treat them as if they are important and not just part of the furniture. If you do it right they will never realize they have just had a cold call sales call.

One final thing, It will be very tempting to abandon your marketing campaign once you get to a comfortable level of success. You will land a couple of Big Fish clients and the money will be rolling in. It will be very easy to convince yourself that you are too busy and it's too much bother. Well believe me, the big fish will go away. He will leave for any of a hundred different reasons. If you don't have another big fish and a few small ones to replace him, your business could be in big trouble. A strong and diverse client base will generally only contract your services once or twice a year. They add up though believe me. A solid client base will make you bullet proof when that big fish you worked so hard to land is wooed away by another designer. A solid client base will always be in a state of flux. Businesses will go under. Businesses will place a new person in charge of dealing with you and this person will know another "much better" designer. For whatever reason unless you constantly add new clients to your base it will dry up fast.

Copyright 2004 Bob Nicholl, All Rights Reserved

SEXY

2007-10-06T07:44:00.000-07:00

SEXY

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The Business Side of Design

Bob Nicholl

August 15, 2004

Part I - Getting Started

OK so you’ve worked your butt off for two or four years. You’ve worked and studied hard. You’ve become a master at PhotoShop, Illustrator and InDesign and that hard earned degree hangs framed on the wall. You’re all set to take the world by storm with your cutting edge designs. You have a portfolio full of student designs, half a website and now the question is…. Now what?

This is the question facing hundreds of newly graduated Graphic Designers every year. You may choose to seek employment with an already established design firm doing designs for many different clients on many different subjects. You may join an “in-house” design department of a larger business or perhaps the art department for a commercial printer. If web design is your specialty you may seek employment with a local ISP or the web department at an ad agency. All of these career paths will allow you to express your skills and talents under the supervision of someone else. Finding one of these jobs is another whole article which I will cover at a future date.

A lot of you will wish to go the entrepreneurial route and work as a freelancer. The rewards of choosing this career path can be enormous. Being your own boss, setting your own work hours, staying home with the kids. However, In reality to succeed in this career path will require enormous self discipline and a superior work ethic. I will attempt here to offer some advice on how to get started. This advice is based on my business degrees, my many years working for a very successful small business owner and my own failed attempt at a freelance career. My failure was because I discovered that I do not have the proper personality for sales. Salesmanship will be a huge part of your job so consider carefully whether you can talk to people you just met as if you have known them for years. And persuade them to hire you.

The first and most important thing to understand is that you are not an artist. You are a business. And like all businesses your goal is to sell a product. In this case the product you are selling is your own artistic skills and abilities. Your ability to interpret and project the customer's message through the media they desire, be it a website or the printed page. Understanding this is key to your success or failure. By grasping this simple concept you now have several thousand years of basic business principles to draw on. And this is a good thing. So put away your artists hat and only take it out when you are doing actual design. The rest of the time wear your business hat and treat that stunning layout you just finished as the piece of merchandise it has become.

So where do I start, you ask. You start quite simply at the beginning. Sit down and make a list. Lock the doors, turn off the phone and sit down for a couple of hours and list everything you need. This list will be very informal so don’t worry about categories or priorities. There will be plenty of items that you don’t know you will need, don’t worry about it. You can always add them later. Imagine a job, go through it in your mind from first contact with your client to delivery of the final product. Now list every single item that you will need to accomplish this. List everything from your choice of wardrobe for the first meeting to the packaging of your final delivery. Include office supplies, computer equipment, software and furniture. Be sure and include items that you already have.

Congratulations! You just started your Business. You have taken the first small step towards your goal. Sit back and enjoy it for a minute. Give yourself a small pat on the back. Your business is no longer an abstract idea floating around in your head. It’s now down on paper. It’s real. You still have a lot to do and many details to work out though so don’t rest for long.

When viewed as a whole, starting a business can be a pretty intimidating thing. All of the hundreds of details can be overwhelming. A designer friend of mine once called me and told me that she was overwhelmed by the prospect of designing and preparing a 100 page manual she had been asked to bid on. She was worried that she couldn’t handle it. I told her to forget about a 100 page document. What she really had to do was 100 one page documents. When viewed in this light she felt a lot better because she had designed lots of one page documents before. My point here is that any large project such as starting a business is really composed of many, many small projects. Completing your list was the first of these and you have already accomplished it. Now take that list and organize it, prioritize it, break it up into small manageable chunks and make a list of them.

This is the point where self discipline becomes a factor. You need to set aside an hour or preferably two hours every day. Talk to the roommate, the spouse, the children or parents and explain that you need this time. That during these hours you are effectively at work and unavailable. Divide this time up into half hour segments and devote each segment to one of the items on your list. If you do this, over time slowly but surely you will cross items off the list, then entire sections. Progress will become apparent and your goals will start to fall into place.

One of the first items on your list should be the Business Plan document itself. This is a tremendously important tool for you. If properly done it will force you to focus your thoughts, energy and time. It will show you the details of what you need to accomplish and when. There are a ton of books and courses available on how to write one. I recommend a piece of software called “Business Plan Pro” It will take you step by step through the whole process and at the end give you a document suitable for presenting to banks, potential investors, etc.

Another item at the top of your list should be contacting your local SBA (Small Business Administration). The SBA has a lot of fine resources for you including the SCORE (Service Corps of Retired Executives) program These are real retired business people who volunteer their time to consul and help people just starting out. Go to http://www.sba.gov and check them out. But also plan a visit to their office. Your taxes pay for these services so use them.

Remember every task large or small starts with a small step. When you accomplish enough small steps you end up achieving your goal.

Copyright 2004, Bob Nicholl, All Rights Reserved

NAUGHTY

2007-10-06T07:43:00.000-07:00

NAUGHTY

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Scrap Booking Online with Word Perfect and Corel Graphics Suite

Anne Hart

September 15, 2004

Now you can email your entire scrap book to relatives and friends around the world.

Comparing CorelDRAW Graphics Suite 12 to WordPerfect Office Suite 12 For Scrapbooking Online.

Making Time Capsules of family history using graphic design and desktop publishing software? Scrap booking newsletters and journals with photos and illustrations online or emailed are becoming popular to send around the world because they weigh nothing. Do your newsletters feature more graphics or text? If you want to design newsletters, how do you choose between CorelDRAW12 and WordPerfect Office 12? What does CorelDraw Graphics Suite 12 offer the newsletter designer? How do you compare the two software applications to see which one to buy or both if you want to create newsletters, whether for business or your annual family history time capsules?

“I complete design tasks twice as fast because the tools reduce the number of steps required to finish jobs,” says Jim Kendall, of Memory Way Time Capsules, (memoryway@hotmail.com), a Northern California freelance newsletter designer who specializes in genealogy. “I can create graphics in CorelDRAW12 and quickly pop them into all my text-based WordPerfect 12 office documents because switching between files is very easy.

“The tools reduce the number of times you have to click on your mouse to finish jobs. The reduction in the number of steps is due to the three integrated graphics applications and other tools in one package.”

What’s the result? Bottom line, it’s time saved as well as finger movements on the mouse reduced.
“I like the one-step control of the Smart Drawing tool,” says Kendall. “The intelligence recognizes shapes and interprets freehand. My forms are balanced. All I do is put the object where I want it, turn on the Dynamic Guides, and watch the guides change so I can position objects with fewer steps, and snap to different points.”
“WordPerfect 12 is for my text material, and CorelDRAW 12 is for my visual work, “says Kendall. “Options are important. So that’s why I chose WordPerfect Office 12. I generate PDF documents from WordPerfect 12 and Presentations 12 without Adobe Acrobat or other PDF-generating tools. My whole collection of newsletters can be saved as a PDF document or book,” says Kendall. “It’s important to be able to optimize the size or resolution of PDF files, and WordPerfect Office 12 has a powerful PDF publishing engine.”

When you compare CorelDRAW Graphics Suite 12 to WordPerfect Office Suite12, which are best for promoting your writing through newsletters? Both applications are used for creating newsletters. Which one will you use? That depends upon whether you are creating a graphically-rich family history newsletter or time capsule and want to use visual. If your newsletter or time capsule is graphically-rich, CorelDRAW Graphics Suite 12 is the ideal software because it is the easiest graphics suite to use for newsletters or time capsules.

To make a time capsule family history newsletter, layout your page using CorelDRAW. You can layout one page at a time. Then use Corel PHOTO-PAINT for digital imaging, that is working with photos or other digital (electronic, computerized images) art work, illustrations, or photos. What you get in CorelDRAW are hundreds of clip art photos and images. You can overlay your own family photos on top of the clip art textures and images as a second layer to form a background of various places or clouds, for example.

These applications, combined with the suite’s vast collection of photos, clipart, and fonts let you design either a professional-looking newsletter or a family history time capsule, a memorable album or container of the highlights of your life or any one else’s.

If you don’t want to design a lot of visuals into your family history chronicle, use Corel’s WordPerfect Office 12 to create a text-based newsletter. Use the software package’s newsletter template. It’s the best alternative to Microsoft Office. You can use WordPerfect 12 to create that annual family history newsletter that you send out to all your relatives or advertise your genealogy business.

What do you do with all those annual family newsletters you send out to relatives each year at holiday time? Gather them all together from each relative. Newsletters have gone out each year for many years for some families. Put them into a book. One of the best newsletters you can create from family highlights is a book.

Here are several ways of turning family history newsletters into a publication worthy of binding as a book or putting on the Web or in a time capsule as an heirloom:

Take a number of family history newsletters and use Corel’s WordPerfect to publish as a PDF file format. In that way, your newsletters are optimized for document distribution, editing, or the Web. You can access family history contact information from your address book directly within WordPerfect 12. Then you can use Perfect-Expert to detail your projects. Create versatile spreadsheets of genealogy time tables or do 3D charting of your family trees.

Convert your family history into meaningful 3D-rendered charts. Use the graphics tools to manipulate photos and drawings or other visuals. Best of all, a family history time capsule or compilation of yearly family history newsletters deserves to add stunning multimedia. Enhance your family newsletter presentation with movies, animation, and MP3 or WMA sounds. It’s all done with Corel WordPerfect12.

You can play the slide shows for family members or genealogists or send them to the Web. Use Show on the Go, which is in WordPerfect12. Then publish the slide shows to HTML documents and send them up to the Web for a time capsule in cyberspace online.

What’s CorelDRAW? CorelDRAW Graphics Suite is a vector editing program that includes Corel PHOTO-PAINT for bitmap-editing with photos and images that are saved as bitmap image files. How many times have you found photos saved as bitmap images on the Web? Now you can work with photos and images saved as bitmap files using CorelDRAW Graphics Suite.

CorelDRAW 12 for illustration, page-layout and vector drawing includes Corel PHOTO-PAINT 12 for professional digital imaging; and Corel R.A.V.E. 3 for motion-graphics creation. The whole idea is that the new tools emphasize reducing design time so productivity is increased. Users can snap to any or all of the following: Node, Intersection, Midpoint, Quadrant, Tangent, Perpendicular, Edge of objects and lines, Center, Text Baseline or Printable Area.

Training:
Available in online, printed and CD-ROM formats, WordPerfect Office Suite 12 training resources are provided by highly qualified Corel training partners, all of whom offer customers easy-to-follow instruction on how to maximize their usage of WordPerfect Office 12 the industry's most value-priced, feature-rich Microsoft(R) Office-compatible office suite.

"Corel-approved training tools are the best way to maximize the value of an office suite that's recognized for its ease of use--whether you buy WordPerfect Office 12 in-store, online or bundled with a new computer," said Richard Carriere, General Manager of Office Productivity for Corel. "With over 20 million existing users as well as thousands of new users choosing WordPerfect every month, WordPerfect Office 12 training resources are designed to suit a user's training needs, regardless of their preferred medium."
Copyright 2004 Anne Hart, All Rights Reserved

FRIENDS

2007-10-06T07:40:00.000-07:00

FRIENDS

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Alias SurfaceStudio

Rachael Taggart

April 2005

Even when you work at the cutting-edge of design, it's not everyday that you get the opportunity to apply your talents to a ground breaking 74m motor yacht, and play a pivotal role in bringing such a large project to successful manufacture.

But that's exactly what happened to Alias® training and design consultancy Bluesmith, when Kerry Kingston took a call from Redman Whiteley Dixon (RWD), the award-winning UK marine design agency.

Setting New Standards With SurfaceStudio

The commission from RWD was for the exterior design of Ilona 4, a luxury motor yacht developed for experienced mariners who have circumnavigated the earth four times, which would ultimately set new standards in technology, innovation and elegance. SurfaceStudio™ - part of the StudioTools suite of industrial design solutions from Alias, the world's innovation leader in 3D graphics technology - played a major role in the development of this landmark vessel, from the visualization stages to exporting data for final manufacture.

Founded in 2002 by Kerry Kingston and Lee Irvine, both former Alias employees, Bluesmith specializes in using Alias software to create accurate 3D CAD models for the automotive, packaging and product design industries. An authorized Alias training centre and StudioTools beta-tester, the company takes its Alias expertise and equipment into clients' offices and works side-by-side with their creative teams.

"We are both compulsive Alias sculptors and image-makers," says Kingston. "We started Bluesmith because Alias software is used by some of the best designers in the world to develop the most innovative products. Working on those projects and training those designers mean that we are constantly developing and stretching our skills. We get to work in some great environments and with some really talented people."

Design Pedigree With Alias

Bluesmith enjoys a distinguished client list, including packaging and product design consultants Design Bridge Structure, Siebert Head and Frog design, corporate giants such as Philips and Unilever, marine designers Dubois Naval Architects and Redman Whiteley Dixon, and Jaguar Cars, Land Rover and Bentley Motors. It was an automotive connection that led to the initial contact from RWD.

"They had heard about us through the car design grapevine, and knew we had the surfacing skills and technology they needed for Ilona 4," says Kingston. "The elegant, rhythmical forms of RWD's deck designs were similar in complexity to the lines on a luxury car. RWD had a really strong vision of how the design would come together through the visual relationships of the three decks, and the shapes that were created as you moved around the yacht."

SurfaceStudio - Great for Marine As Well As Automotive

"Traditional yacht design CAD systems are great for laying out complex deck designs, but for this job we had to give the designers detailed control and visualization of some very complex doubly-curved surfaces. For RWD, the ability to get their `hands on' an accurate representation of such huge surfaces and fine tune the contours was a revelation. They were passionate about their design and determined to create a stunning visual impact. With SurfaceStudio software we were able to give them an unprecedented level of control," she adds.

Ilona 4, which has set the marine design world on fire, incorporates an afterdeck helipad and hangar, a 33m master suite, accommodation for 18 guests in six staterooms, and a cosy 14-seater cinema. She also houses 28 crew and staff. An elevator connects all five of her decks. Only a cutting-edge exterior would do this impressive specification justice.

Before approaching Bluesmith, RWD had initially worked with Bumblebee Studios, a 3D animation house in Rotterdam, to visualize Ilona 4 for the owners. There, Maya®, Alias' Academy Award-winning 3D animation system, was used to create and refine the shape of the exterior design.

It All Started With Alias Maya 3D

RWD then called on Bluesmith to develop and deliver the full 3D CAD models for the boat builders in Holland. Bluesmith were provided with the native data from the Maya models of Ilona, plus detailed 2D CAD drawings of the decks, and a physical model.

"The animation was a great starting reference for us," says Kingston. "We were able to take the yacht design straight into SurfaceStudio and quickly build the detailed 3D CAD models from there. The beauty of working with SurfaceStudio is that we could apply the same high-quality surfacing techniques to Ilona that are deployed daily in the automotive industry."

In particular, it was the ability to directly sculpt the CAD surfaces in SurfaceStudio, in the same way that clay or foam models can be honed in the real world, that enabled Bluesmith to quickly get the main surfaces blocked in. The detail blends were then crafted in using the advanced surface tools, particularly the Curvature options in the Bi-Rail tool.

"The key to it all though was the visual feedback you get with SurfaceStudio," says Kingston. "We could tumble smoothly shaded models on the screen to assess the highlights and relationships of the surfaces, and then use the analytical tools to examine every small blend and feature for the perfection that the designers demanded."

When it came to outputting the data for Ilona 4's manufacture, Bluesmith were confronted with a novel problem.

"Mobile phones, and shampoo bottles are easy to mill out as prototypes or final mould data, but you can't do this with a 74m yacht," she says. "So, we worked closely with the boatyard in Holland and developed a technique where we sent out finely cut, full-size, cross-section data from SurfaceStudio that they could use to accurately implement the design."

SurfaceStudio Fires The Imagination

Kingston says that Bluesmith worked "on-and-off" for about a year on the project. "Quite often we'd camp ourselves and our machines at RWD's offices and develop the designs on-site. We all worked together very well: the designers' demands for the perfect surface pushed our skills to the limit. The control and interaction that SurfaceStudio offers really fired their imaginations, and gave them the ability to try out lots of ideas and alternatives."

On her maiden voyage, a "shakedown cruise", Ilona sailed from Rotterdam to the Straits of Gibraltar, enduring a Force Eight northwesterly gale on the way, before stopping off in Cyprus so that the owners could board. Then it was on to Israel for a 3-week cruise.

"RWD have kept me up to date with the progress of Ilona 4 through her build and launch," concludes Kingston. "I was working on a small shampoo bottle project when I received the e-mail with the photographs of this huge beautiful yacht, and the contrast of scale sank in! It was a real treat to see how she looked at sea, and to see the forms and shapes we labored over come to life so successfully on the water."

ANIME

2007-10-06T07:37:00.000-07:00

ANIME

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Designers Don’t Speak ‘Legalese’
Carl Grivakis

More than a simple piece of paper, more than a handshake, a contract is a legal document tying together a designer and a client into agreement on a project. The contract is used to protect both you and your consumer and anyone who runs at the mention of the word ‘contract,’ your better off letting them go. In good faith someone comes to you because they need help, they need a solution for advertising/identity/branding or something else, you offer them your services, but you also must offer them an agreement.

What to put into a contract:
Project Details – Scope of work, what your actually doing, what your charging for the work and printing options as well as anything else needed to be mentioned up front.

Schedule – Outline delivery dates, and scheduling for both when you and the client touch base to make sure the project stays on track. This schedule should include times for clients to submit their content and times for when you plan on showing concepts, comps, and finished art…detail time for printing too if your handling this aspect of the project.

Copyright and Licensing – Here you need to cover who owns what…are you selling the artwork outright, or selling them the right to use it exclusively. Also mention whether you’ll use the work for self-promotion, and your right to compensation if the breech copyright.

Liability – Here you need to CYA on liability if a campaign is not successful or pulled for censorship or other sorts of nasty things, also cover typo’s and errors like that. If a project is proofed and signed off by the client, then it’s ready for press.

Payment – This is an outline of when you’ll be paid, how much, and how often. Cover late charges and interest, or payment plans as well.

You can come up with a contract template and cater it to each project as needed, some resources can be found in books, or on the web at sites such as www.creativelatitude.com.

Even though your likely to ignore this advice initially, everyone does eventually get burned. The contract is the legal document that outlines your agreement with the client…be sure to use it. I learned this lesson the hard way, getting burned earlier this year for 4 spot illustrations and I found resources for contracts afterwards. I recommend keeping the language on your contract simple and to the point, this will avoid confusion with the client later, also pick up a book on contracts for creative professionals. Good luck!

About the Author - Carl Grivakis - Graphic Designer and Production Artist as well as a design ethics enthusiast. Located in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts he is the founder of PowderKeg Graphic Design and Tapp-d found online at www.grivakisgraphics.com/html/wordpress

Copyright (c) 2006, Carl Grivakis, All Rights Reserved

CUTE

2007-10-06T07:30:00.000-07:00

CUTE

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Free Graphic Design Software that Doesn’t Hurt Your Wallet
Allen Harkleroad

August 6, 2007

While Adobe Photoshop, Adobe Illustrator and Adobe Dreamweaver are the unequivocal tools of choice for the professional designer, there are alternatives for those that don’t have a large software budget.

I use Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign, Quark, and Acrobat on a daily basis. I also use many free open source tools and have found several that work nearly as well as their commercial cousins.

Just because a tool is open source doesn’t mean it isn’t a good tool to use. What matters is that you are able to design (or learn to design) without spending a fortune in software.

Anyone who is thinking about doing digital graphic design or are already immersed in the design industry open source graphics software is something worth looking at. While many of the open source applications don’t do everything the commercial product do, they can still be adapted to fit your needs.

GIMP

First on the list would be GIMP (GNU Image Manipulation Program). GIMP is very similar to Adobe Photoshop and is free. The latest version has many features that are found in Photoshop and some that aren’t. You can download and use GIMP on Windows, Mac OSX and Unix/Linux. Photoshop only currently runs on Windows and Mac OSX.

Inkscape

Inkscape is very similar to Adobe Illustrator for illustration. It runs on Linux, Windows and Mac OSX. It uses the SVG format so that Inkscape files can be imported into other graphics applications (both open source and commercial). Inkscape is free and licensed under open source.

Nvu

Nvu is an open source HTML editor. While it doesn’t have all of the features found in products like Dreamweaver, FrontPage, Web Expressions or SharePoint Designer it does exactly what it is supposed to do, namely edit HTML web pages. Nvu runs on Linux, Windows and Mac OSX. Nvu is free and there are a good many extensions that enhance Nvu.

PDFCreator

PDF Creator is a Windows printer driver that allows you to print to the PDF format. You can also use it to create JPG’s, TIFF’s, BMP’s, PCX, PS’s (postscript) and EPS’s (encapsulated postscript) file. It has quite a few features and is handy for creating PDF’s of documents and files. It is free (even for commercial use) and is licensed as open source.

Scribus

Scribus is an open source desktop publishing application similar to PageMaker, Quark and InDesign. It runs on Linux, Windows and Mac OSX. Features include CMYK color, separations, IIC color management and even PDF creation. Scribus is free and licensed under an open source license.

There are may open source (free) graphic design software application out there, the ones I’ve mentioned above are well supported, have many great features and don’t cost one penny to use.

From beginner to skilled professional there is a place for open source graphics software on your computer and your daily workflow.

HUG

2007-10-06T07:27:00.000-07:00

HUG

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Archetypal advertising and design
Shaun Crowley

We are all aware of how advertising has changed over the decades. What started as ‘Here’s the product, now go and buy it!’ advertising in the 1950’s, has turned into ‘Here’s a feeling, now feel it!’ advertising, in which products appear as personalities, metaphors, and emotions.

Advertisers have drawn on psychological theory to target people’s emotional needs in consumer advertising, where buying decisions are more likely to be spontaneous or heavily influenced by spontaneous and often unconscious emotions.

“The words of the prophets are written on the subway walls”

These days, we are bombarded with promotional messages and visuals everywhere we go. They are present in subways, on TV, in magazines, in the street, and even on the clothes of the people walking by. In fact, everything we do exposes us to advertising imagery in some form or other.

So why is it that we don’t feel overwhelmed by such a relentless wave of provocative icons? How come none of us feel compelled to read each of the subway billboards before we get on the train? How come we don’t remember every single TV advertisement during the break?

The reason is called desensitization. It’s a process in which our brains learn to filter out periphery messages. This filtering is done subconsciously—which is why we are often aware we saw a particular advertisement, but unable to recall it.

Finding out how desensitization works has led cognitive researchers to conclude that our subconscious does a whole lot more work than previously thought.

The power of the subconscious

Cognitive research in the 1990s tells us that subconsciously our brains are aware of everything around us all of the time.

This means as we wade in this vast ocean of icons, our subconscious must decide which of the messages deserves our attention, and which ones don’t.

The theory of the subconscious’s role in encoding advertising messages has paved the way for a rebirth in Jungian archetypal theory. If we subconsciously filter out external messages and images, then surely advertising must ‘talk to the subconscious’ to retain its impact.

For consumer advertising to remain effective, it must be informed by an understanding of the deeper, unarticulated, subconscious needs of its target audience. These needs are what Jung refers to as ‘archetypes’.

Jung’s archetypes

Jung never made a definitive list of archetypes. However, a few of the most clearly-recognized archetypes are listed below.

- to be immortal (keeping fit, keeping healthy, keeping clean)

- to be loved (being mothered, finding a partner, being popular)

- to be sexual (seducing, hunting, indulging)

- to be secure (investing in the future, feeling part of a community, being protected)

- to be reborn (transforming oneself, overcoming an obstacle, being saved, transcending to an after-life [or given rights to do so], thrill-seeking)

- to be a child (being care-free, finding purity, connecting with the past, beholding a treasure, uniting opposites, changing the future)

- to be a saviour (guiding, saving, caring for others)

- to be a trickster (being subversive, being mischievous, making people laugh, crossing boundaries)

- to be wise (learning, experiencing, teaching, advising, being fatherly)

- to protect (nurturing, mothering, defending)

- to provide (gathering, hunting, giving)

- to be heroic (winning, being a pioneer, exploring, expressing one’s individuality, finding status)

Archetypes in advertising

Look hard enough, and you’ll see that a lot of advertisements draw upon one universal, deep-seated need (an archetype). They tug on the readers’ primitive emotions, and plays to their deepest needs, ambitions, desires, and sometimes, fears.

Advertising that reaches out to an archetypal need is usually the most persuasive, whether you’re selling calculators to city bankers or toilet tissue to consumers. You should always be aware which of the following motivational drivers your client’s product responds to, and if possible, subtly integrate that knowledge into your design approach

Many different motivational drivers may be at play at the same time, and two or more can join to become one. For example, a calculator can draw upon the wise (advising), secure (being protected), and heroic (exploring) archetypes. Toilet tissue can draw upon the healthy (keeping clean), loved (being mothered) and secure (being protected) archetypes.

Archetypes have negative as well as positive associations. Here we have focussed on the positive aspects, as it is usually positive archetypes that people respond best to in advertising.

Expressing archetypes through images

Images are more effective at communicating unconscious feelings than words. That’s because we are not always able to articulate or recognize archetypal feelings through language.

Whereas language is a surface level communication tool bound by conscious thought, images often go deeper to engage fears and emotions people may be too embarrassed to admit to, or not even aware of.

That’s why the visual 'hook' of an advertisement is pretty important, as every designer knows! Images don’t merely grab attention – they offer the subconscious a bridge between the product and the relevant archetypal need the product fulfills.

Think about which archetypal needs that your client’s product addresses. When you’re conceptualizing, think about a visual that communicates an appropriate archetypal benefit.

How do you know if an image is archetypal?

Consider the visual you plan on using for your next ad campaign. It may be vivid and eye-catching – but is it emotive? Is it archetypal?

To investigate, start by dissecting the psychological demographic of your target audience. Discuss with your client which primal motivators are most likely to be shared amongst the demographic, and which of those the product responds to.

Here are a few basic motivators:

- To feel attractive
- To feel fit and healthy
- To receive acclaim
- To be liked
- To be appreciated
- To feel important
- To feel secure
- To feel relaxed
- To be independent
- To have more than others
- To have fun
- To gain knowledge
- To eliminate worry
- To save embarrassment
- To avoid feeling guilty
- To stop fear

If you see patterns emerging, find an appropriate visual metaphor that communicates the archetype your reader subconsciously aspires to activate.

For example, many people working in sales are thrill-seekers. Closing a sale isn’t just about making money, it’s about the thrill of the chase. Images symbolizing hunting, heroism, and resurrection can have profound appeal.

Obviously, we must be careful not to over-generalize. Although archetypes are universal (so Jung suggests), their representations and projections may not be.

For example, the 'mother' archetype may be symbolized as an image of a lion in the dream of one person, and an image of a tree in the dream of another.

Yet within the boundaries of specific cultures, some archetypal images can have common interpretations, such as a phoenix rising from the ashes (resurrection/rejuvenation); monsters hiding in the dark (the ‘shadow’ archetype); cowboys (the ‘hero’ archetype); and poltergeists (the ‘trickster’ archetype).

These images are passed down through generations via myths and stories, and are kept alive today through movies, TV programmes, and advertisements.

Blockbuster products fulfil archetypal needs

Using archetypes in marketing can go far deeper than choosing a visual for an ad. It can inform the whole branding of a product.

Lots of companies draw upon the ‘Wise Man’ archetype to brand their products, such as Worthers Original sweets and Mr. Kipling cakes. Some draw upon the ‘Hero’ archetype such as Malboro cigarettes and Gilette razors.

Products in which the actual functionality responds to archetypal needs are likely to be most successful. The iPOD is perhaps the most archetypal of archetypal products, appealing to the mobility/freedom of youth that goes way back to the roaming nomad.

Where next?

Theories around the collective unconscious have never been so important than in today’s modern society, where we move away from an age of broadcasting and into an age of globally shared individual experience.

As fast as marketers find new ways to infiltrate the chosen media of consumers (such as blogging, You Tube, and MySpace), ‘consumers’ are increasingly becoming resistant to interference, striving instead to take ownership over their media and to shape their own landscapes.

In this new consumer environment, can advertisers find effective ways of projecting archetypal meaning to their brands?

Shaun Crowley has worked as a freelance copywriter and marketing consultant. He currently works as a communications manager for a major UK publishing company and is the author of The Freelance Designer's Self-Marketing Handbook and 100 Copywriting Tips for Designers and Other Freelance Artists.

MISSING YOU

2007-10-06T07:18:00.000-07:00

MISSING YOU

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The ultimate design brief
Shaun Crowley

Your design can only be as good as the brief you worked from. The best projects are borne from briefs that are open enough to inspire ideas, while being specific enough to feel workable. Shaun Crowley shows how you can elicit these kinds of briefs by providing clients with briefing templates.

Picture the scene. You’ve just landed a new client, who hurries a brief to you for a marketing brochure. There are a few holes in the brief, but instead of asking for constant clarification, you get to work. Later you’re told the design “isn’t quite right”. Before you know it, the client is refusing to pay.

Familiar story? All too familiar for most freelance designers I know. Ambiguous design briefs are infuriating. What’s worse, clients who set you up to fail often go away thinking you stuffed up.

So what can you do to avoid this?

The only way is to formalize the briefing procedure. I say this as a client myself; when I hook up with a designer I need a formal brief at hand. It helps me turn the gobbledegook in my head into well-articulated language. And it reassures me that my designer has some pointers to refer to after we meet.

Unfortunately, clients who aren’t familiar with the design process don’t see carefully-written briefs as a high priority. This may be because they don’t have time. Quite often, it’s because the client hasn’t made fundamental decisions about the objectives of their marketing collateral.

By supplying your client with a briefing template and briefing tips, like the ones below, you can elicit the information you need from a few carefully crafted questions. You may even draw attention to the things your client hasn’t thought of—like “Have I got all the artwork my designer needs?” or even in some cases “Who am I targeting with this item?”

A formal handover template gives you the opportunity to offer a few pointers, so the client learns how to get the most from your talent. It’s a frame of reference when you meet to discuss the assignment, and a point of review if your first proofs don’t pass muster.

Remind your client that a formal design brief is not unnecessary red tape. It’s there to ensure your client gets value for money from your service. The trick is to educate your clients without patronizing or victimizing them. Maybe post the templates on your website and offer a link to them in your email correspondence. Make the templates subliminally accessible for your clients.

Maybe then, you can make that dream design brief a reality on every project.

Good things to include in your design brief:

Title of item
Delivery mechanism and marketing objectives
Format
Budget and schedule

What are you providing the designer with

Product shots, website screen shots, photographs, diagrams, etc. (Check these are high-resolution.)

General description of format

Describe any formatting issues you have arranged with the printer

Description of target audience

Occupation, gender ratio, average age, nationality/location, psychological demographic, lifestyle preferences

Message objectives

Hierarchy of copy messages, treatment of headlines, body copy, visuals, product samples, call-to-action.

Where to look for inspiration

Give brief examples of style / overall look you want the item to achieve. What aspects of the product or branding can be used as a starting point for the design? What feelings or metaphors reflect the spirit of your product or company?

What not to do

Also give examples of what the design shouldn’t include and what styles to avoid

Tips for briefing a designer

1. Think about the message of the design.

Offer guidance to help the designer marry the “look” of the item with the “voice” of the copy.

2. Don’t prescribe solutions.

You are paying for the designer’s ideas, so avoid the temptation to tell the designer what to do. Instead, be clear about what the item needs to achieve, so the designer can explore ideas. This is where you need the designer’s expertise.

It’s rarely a good idea to give a designer a mocked up layout – they will simply follow your instructions which are not necessarily making the best use of the space.

3. Do your scheduling before you brief a designer.

Make sure you schedule the whole project before you brief a designer, incorporating appropriate feedback and incubation stages. Ask your designer to inform you in advance if deadlines or set budgets are unrealistic.

4. Formalize design briefing.

Carefully word your brief in an email or as a front page to your copy, and use this as a reference point when you meet. Always brief designers face-to-face, or on the phone for smaller projects.

Shaun Crowley has worked as a freelance copywriter and marketing consultant.

He currently works as a communications manager for a major UK publishing company and is the author of The Freelance Designer's Self-Marketing Handbook and 100 Copywriting Tips for Designers and Other Freelance Artists, both available for instant download.

Copyright © 2007 Shaun Crowley

GOOD DAY

2007-10-05T20:15:00.000-07:00

GOOD DAY

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The elements of design are used, and often combined, to create graphic works. They should not be confused with principles of design, such as balance and white space, but rather components such as color, type and images. Presented here is a list of the most commonly used elements in graphic design.
Shapes

From ancient pictographs to modern logos, shapes are at the root of design. They are used to establish layouts, create patterns, and build countless elements on the page. With graphics software such as Illustrator, creating and manipulating shapes is easier than ever, giving designers the freedom to create them at will.
Lines

Lines are used to divide space, direct the eye, and create forms. At the most basic level, straight lines are found in layouts to separate content, such as in magazine, newspaper, and website designs.

This can of course go much further, with curved, dotted, and zigzag lines used as the defining elements on a page. Often, lines will be implied, meaning other elements of design will follow the path of line, such as type on a curve.
Color

Color is an interesting element because it can be applied to any other element, changing it dramatically. It can be used to make an image stand out, to show linked text on a website, and to evoke emotion. Graphic designers should combine their experience with color with an understanding of color theory.

Type

Type, of course, is all around us. In graphic design, the goal is to not to just place some text on a page, but rather to understand and use it effectively for communication. Choice of fonts (typefaces), size, alignment, color, and spacing all come into play. Type can be taken further by using it to create shapes and images.
Art & Illustration

The use of illustrated work and fine art in a design can determine its character. It can be anything from a logo to a fully illustrated CD package. Graphic designers may create their own artwork, purchase it, or commission an artist to create an exclusive piece for a project.
Photography

A powerful image can make or break a design. Photographs are used to tell stories, support ideas, and grab the audience’s attention, so the selection is important. Stock photos can be purchased at all price levels on many websites, or photographers can be hired for project-specific shoots.
Texture

Texture is a unique element because the audience can feel it. Paper selection, from thin to thick to matte to glossy, can affect the overall perception of a graphic work. People will often give more attention or credit to something on heavier stock. Aside from paper choice, texture can be used in limitless, creative ways, such as in package design.

These elements can be used in countless ways. In the end, a combination of the elements you choose, how you alter them, and where you arrange them on a page will determine the success of a design.

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