Archive for the ‘Tips’ Category
Wednesday, February 13th, 2008
I couple days ago I was just commenting to one of my friends how we designers can be really picky about certain designs. We use colors that we like, and we don’t think of the physiological impact this color has in a person’s mind. This affects the message we’re trying to convey. For example, do you remember a site that had really awful colors? Now try to remember a website that you don’t normally visit, where you have learned something interesting.
Even if your site has the most amazing design someone can ever create, if the content is poor, the site most-likely will be forgotten. It’s not the design, it’s the message. It’s true that a person that finds a pretty web site will stay there, but within the next couple minutes, due to the lack of content, this person will leave the site. On the other hand, if this person found what he/she was looking for, this new visitor will tell everybody he/she knows about this amazing web site. This is why you need to remind your customer’s, the design really matters, but the content matters the most.
Posted in Articles, Graphic Design, Tips, Web Design | No Comments »
Monday, February 11th, 2008
Carrying the message your customers wants, might be one of the greatest challenges you might find yourself with in the designing world. Specially when you work for a big company where many people have to approve your designs.In my personal experience is that the idea of the customer has “evoluved” while the concept was been developed. In some cases for example, it happened in the transpassing from person to person. This tends to happen when it comes down to web page designing, today they’ll like something, tomorrow it’ll be something different and so forth.
It’s because the message that the designer has is not conveyed to the customer. Maybe the customer was trying to say “coorporate”, but you were using the most cutting-edge Flash effect in the market.
Talk to the people in charge, that’s my best advice. Write down the ideas out of a brainstorming, and try to get the big picture of the concept.
Posted in Articles, Graphic Design, Tips, Web Design | No Comments »
Monday, February 4th, 2008
When you get the chance to design a logo, you need to make sure it’s going to work anywhere. This means that your logo has to work both for big and small sizes. Many times we design a logo and we completely forget about this.
Remember a logo is a milestone in the corporate image. Feel free to think while designing your logo: where is this going to be used?, how is it going to be printed?, etc. This will give you a more clear idea and will give you designing criteria.
I think it’s a very good idea that while you design the logo to can try to see how it looks in different sizes to see every single detail. Try it also in black and white because it might be used as well like this when printed at least once.
Posted in Articles, Logos, Tips | No Comments »
Wednesday, January 23rd, 2008
Dos:
- Do a professional design and print it professionally as well, not at home. Remember that a business card is your first impression, and those are the ones that last longer.
- Make sure you’ll be including your contact info.
- Always include your blog or Web site address, even if it’s only out of curiosity, they’ll visit it.
- Place key factors and interesting stuff about yourself.
Donts:
- Too much info, this will definitely confuse the reader.
- Print the info on one single page, don’t lose valuable space.
- Using low quality images will be printed with pixels.
- Readable fonts. Don’t use more than 2 font types per business card design.
- Using a rainbow of colors.
Source: Creative Advertising
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Monday, January 21st, 2008
Communication:
To be able to earn your money you need to prove to others that you can communicate effectively, whether it’s in an interview you have or with co-workers. Modern graphic designers have to communicate with many people from different positions and even customers to print in our designs their message.
Utility:
The thing of outermost importance in a design is it’s utility. The design has to be good looking, but also useful. These two characteristics are not easy to combine, but once you do it, you’ll have great success.
Technical knowledge:
Anything new that you learn will help you one day in a way or another. If you’re a web page designer for example, you don’t spend all day long doing codes, it’s always good to think outside the box and see other things that constitute the page.
Project management:
This is really important specially when we’re doing a big project. The designer that’s qualified enough to manage multiple tasks, will be above to the ones only receiving orders and doing 1 thing at a time.
Marketing:
If you have marketing skills you’ll be able to attract more clients, you’ll start developing that “click” that will make you have better bonds with customers.
Posted in Articles, Freelance, Tips | 1 Comment »
Monday, January 21st, 2008
Magnetic lasso is the fastest selection tool
Normally, if we want to select and object we use the pen tool and with it we choose the borders we want to remark. But, what would happen if we’re in a hurry and we need to do the selection fast? We can do it faster with the magnetic lasso and if it’s not perfect, we can go to Window > Paths and we make work path and fix it.
Layer Masks to help future editings
Once you have already selected the image, you have to go to Layer > Masked layer > Layer with mask > Reveal selection… and it’s done.
Benefits are simple, you’ll be able to edit the layer and not touch the original one and vice versa. You’ll save a lot of time. Now, what happens if you want to edit the image and not use the mask anymore? Go to Apply Layer Mask.
(more…)
Posted in Photoshop, Tips | No Comments »
