Like I mentioned in a previous post, we like to give our clients design choices to review and from those choices we (both client and designer) are able to develop the final design rather quickly. Website designs, brochure cover designs, and logo designs are all usually delivered to the client after 3 or 4 initial concepts are reviewed and then tweaked. Before we send our clients the preliminary design concepts to review, the graphic designers will send them to those staff members involved with the project for internal review.

As the key designer for a project, after about the 3rd design creativity starts to slow, ideas start to fade, and as the design problem begins to move forward to a solution, we are ready to move on to the next “problem”. Well, more often than not the request to do just one or two more designs comes through and immediate slouching of shoulders and uttering of sighs begins… for me at least. But, I know what will happen. After some time spent away from the project, stretching of legs and wrists, and hopefully some useful feedback for this “just one more” design, work begins.

And, while I haven’t been keeping record, I would bet money that the client, designer, and internal staff choose this “just one more” design. Why? While I have no proven answer, I would surmise that by the time you have worked through 3 or 4 designs you are ready to actually begin the final. Very similar to a musician tuning up before a performance or an athlete stretching before a big game. Artists are no different. Our creative mind needs to kick in, the left-side to right-side brain switch needs to occur, and we need to fall into the “zone”. Sometimes we nail the design on the first round, but I would again bet money that careful thought and planning have been going on for some time and that “careful thought and planning” is the warming up, the stretching our of creativity that moves the final design from a pile of elements to a final harmonized piece. 

My boys were on a mini vacation at their grandparents this weekend. I was really looking forward to having time to catch up on the things that are difficult to do with two very active, curious boys around. I suddenly discovered when the house was quiet and there was no one around to make a mess to clean up and no breakfasts or lunches to prepare, that I started to miss the little guys. My husband was at work and it was just me left to do as I please, and I had no idea what to do.

I have been so accustomed to having my boys around and keeping my eye on the clock, making sure that we stay on schedule… breakfast at 8, nap for the youngest at 9, take the 3-year old to the potty every hour or so, lunch at noon, naps for both at 1. Without my schedule and craziness, I felt a little off and wasn’t sure what to do with myself. Quickly, I put a plan together and I felt secure again. I went grocery shopping.

Similarly, I always prepare a plan of my day and week at DDA. I know what projects need my attention and which ones can wait until the following week. Website design concepts - for a returning client that we created (4)  trade show graphic panels for - are due in about 2 hours.  Then, two other projects that were being reviewed have been approved and interior magazine layouts for a flipbook project need to be tackled along with an interior website page design for a kitchen cabinet company.  So, I have my plan, my schedule, and know exactly what to do with myself.  

In a previous post, I was commiserating with an author who wrote an article about the use of typography for html websites and the restrictions that we, as graphic designers, experience. I went on complaining that technology for websites with regards to html typography hadn’t changed in 12 years. Well, if you read last week’s postings by Mick, our Director of Interactive Media, you, like me… are thrilled! Scalable Inman Flash Replacement (sIFR) is just the answer. It’s as if I called out to the Gods of typography and they heard me… just like when I was waiting and waiting for our window installer to call back, then had a dream about him building me a piano, and he called the very next day.

So, I decided to check out this new technology (this Godsend). I took about a half hour this morning and read through the documentation, the how-to-use files and sample files, and got to work. I would like to preface what I’m about to write by stating that I AM NOT A PROGRAMMER. I change what I need to change, upload what I need to upload, and save what needs to be saved. Sometimes it works and sometimes I fail miserably, but thankfully one of our very talented and personable programmers, Amy, is located two offices down from mine and always ready to help.

Basically, all that is required is setting the typeface in Flash, exporting it as a .swf file, and calling it up within the Javascript in the html page. Magically, at least for me, the type is just as I want it to look: search engine friendly, linkable, and selectable. I’m very excited to implement this new technology in future websites we design. We can now have the best of both worlds… great looking type on websites that work!

Now, I only hope someone reads my post about wanting a new SLR digital camera….

I color-code the projects in my task list depending on their status and the green projects are those that need my attention. Tasks are piling up today and turning green. The project that is on my mind the most is the DDA Poster Designs I wrote about earlier this week. This is the perfect example of a graphic designer acting as problem solver.

The problem: Design 7 posters that are timeless, informative, all encompassing, and (dare I say) sexy. They need to visually scream that we are (pardon the overuse of these phrases) “A one-stop shop,” with “everything-under-one-roof,” or a “full-service” advertising agency. We are talented beyond belief, customer-service oriented (no voice mail here, thank you), motivated, intelligent, and professional. Our services range from 3d animation to 2d illustration, corporate and medical training tools to photographs of garden tools, and much more! There are a handful of talented copywriters just upstairs and an entire video studio equipped with a sound booth and video/audio editing services. Need a custom logo design?… no problem. Want your logo animated?… again, no problem. The posters need to share a common design theme, work together, and be able to stand alone.

The solution: stay tuned!

My 3-year old is in the throws of the “why?” stage. He’s also going through some other stages as well, but I’ll save those for another time. “Why do we have tears?” Why do I have a mommy?” “Why is he a giant?”(said to a rather tall McDonald’s customer). We should all be so curious and observant. 

Graphic Designers need to be especially observant and ask many “Why’s” before, during, and after a project. In fact, it’s a great habit to ask Who, What, and Where as well. For example: Who is my target audience? What type of paper is this brochure being printed on? What resolution and color mode should I set up for this trade show graphic? Where is your literature being distributed? Where will people be viewing your website? Why am I using this font, these colors, and why will this layout be most effective for the client?

While it can be draining to answer rapid fire ”Why’s” throughout the day, I know that my 3-year old’s curiosity is something that we should all, as artists, graphic designers, videographers, programmers, animators, illustrators, and writers adopt on a daily basis.

Visitors to our Portfolio don’t often see what has gone on behind the scenes for each finished designed piece. What is shown in our portfolio is the chosen design, most often by the client, that has been printed, uploaded or burned to a CD or DVD. What they have not had the opportunity to view are all the concepts that were provided to the client to choose from. I like to give my 3-year old two choices. You can either have this or that, do this now or do it later, say you’re sorry or sit on the step. And, usually, it works. There may be tears, but it works. Everyone likes to have choices and most often DDA provides our clients with at least 2-4 choices to review before making a decision. We encourage client involvement and will provide our professional opinions and suggestions on designs - whether it be for a printed piece such as a brochure, logo design or trade show graphic, or a design for online or CD/DVD use such as a website, intranet, or video for CD/DVD. The designs that were not selected are saved in the client’s file and archived with all the other important files for that project. Since we do not use templates for our designs and each design is custom for our clients these other choices are usually not to be seen again. Until now… We will soon be offering, starting with our Logo Design portfolio, the option to take a peek at our DDA Sketchbook which will showcase the designs that were not chosen. It’s time for the unchosen to have their turn in the spotlight!

Before we moved into our new space, Dynamic Digital Advertising (DDA) purchased 7 wooden easel stands to place in different locals around our office to enhance a client’s visit and provide some visual eye candy for our 20+ employees. The graphic design department was asked to create a set of 7 posters, one for each department - DDA Corp, DDA Video, DDA CMT (Corporate and Medical Training), DDA Medical, Graphic Design, Website Development, and Programming. It’s an exciting project and one that I hope to begin today; roughing out some preliminary concepts and conceptualizing on how they will all work together as a unit and then taking them “one step further.” This “one step further” idea is and has been a key philosophy at DDA. 

You ask for a poster design and we may deliver a poster design along with a corporate video for use on your website. You ask for a logo design and we’ll prepare 10 logos that can make choosing one quite difficult. You ask for a website and we may deliver an interactive, search engine optimized, expertly written and designed website experience.  So, as we begin the designs for this set of 7 posters I do know that they won’t be just posters. They will become a website, a video, an animation, and an entire new DDA Experience. 

Today, I will complain. My first complaint is that 15 minutes into my drive to work I realized I forgot something very important and had to turn back to pick it up, and by doing so I woke up my 3-year old. Second, in my efforts to stop using plastic water bottles, the reusable water container I filled up and placed in my car fell and spilled all over the back seat. Third, as I was stopped at a traffic light, the gentlemen in the car next to me rolled down his window to tell me that something was hanging off of my front suspension. Great. So, I pulled over and deemed it non-life threatening and off to work I went.

Now, finally at work with my morning coffee, I decide to read a brief article about the use of type for HTML websites. This should have cheered me up since I’m such a font fanatic. It turns out that the article was one long complaint regarding designing accessible websites and the font choices designers are forced to use. How appropriate for today. I quite enjoyed reading this article as I have often struggled with wanting each DDA-designed website to look stunning, sexy, and load quickly with lots of searchable HTML text, but knowing that we are restricted to a handful of fonts that will show correctly on different browsers and multiple platforms. The writer of the article pointed out that great advances in technology for web typography have not surfaced for 12 years. Well, that is definitely a valid complaint. These restrictions can definitely pose a problem, but fortunately DDA’s degreed and experienced graphic designers work hard to find a balance between beautiful, user-friendly designs that can also be search engine optimized to perform well on search engines like Google.

So, Arial, Courier, Georgia, Times, Verdana, Tahoma and Trebuchet, the spotlight will still shine on you as for the time being (and hopefully not for another 12 years) you will be the font of choice for HTML-based websites.

Today, my day started at 4am. My 6-month-old son woke up with a hungry belly and thankfully he settled back down after a warm bottle. Then, I had the choice of crawling back in bed to listen to my husband snore, and hopefully catch another hour of sleep, or scurry on down to my computer to put the finishing touches on a trade show graphic design, which needs to be completed today. I might also add that this particular project was requested just yesterday and, not wanting to disappoint a good client, we accepted and got right to work.

I decided to take advantage of a quiet house. I made some coffee and headed towards my computer to ease the stress of this looming deadline. At this hour of the morning, the birds around my house were singing as loud as they could. Either they were as hungry as my 6-month-old was this morning or just happy to start a new day knowing the sun is scheduled to shine all day.  So, while I listened to the birds chirping away, I finished up the trade show graphic design and sent it off for client review just in time for my 3-year-old to wake up complaining about a boogie in his nose. 

Like smells, colors may mean different things to different people and stir up memories that would otherwise be forgotten. For example, every time I smell Garnier Fructis shampoo it reminds me of when I had morning sickness. This is a smell I don’t ever wish to smell again. Color and certain color combinations also carry around different meanings and create a mood, welcomed or not.

In the corporate world, companies adopt their corporate colors - brown for UPS, yellow for DHL and purple/orange for Fedex - and use these colors as the main focus of their branding. UPS has certainly taken their corporate color and created an entire marketing theme: “What can brown do for you?” Color choice, along with all the other ingredients to a successful design (typography, composition, photography, imagery, illustration), needs careful consideration before beginning a project.

Just now I got a phone call from a client requesting that their video animation be placed on a dark blue background to create a slick, classy look. While I am sure we can create a slick, classy video animation on any color background, for this particular client dark blue was chosen. Luckily there are some general rules when choosing the proper color and as with all rules there are exceptions. Except the rule about running with scissors. That should never ever be broken. 

Here are a few: Stay away from reds when designing for the healthcare industry. Yellows, reds, and oranges are great color choices for restaurants and the food industry as they have been proven to increase one’s appetite while blues have been proven to suppress ones appetite as people commonly associate them with mold or rot. However, blue is a great choice for very corporate companies that want to emote dedication, trust, and loyalty.