Inspired by Kate Andrews’ recent related post on sustainable typography

In my typography course project at Maryland Institute College of Art, sophomore students are designing packages for eco-friendly compact fluorescent light bulbs. Not surprisingly, eco-asethetics have inspired their work and became active parts of class discussion. We debated hotly the role that design plays in creating expectations for the quality of the product.

Many “green” products are relatively under-designed with simple typography and color palettes. This tissue box for Seventh Generation downplays the use of packaging to sell the product, but rather emphasizes the integrity of the product’s manufacturing process. Other pared-down samples utilized hand generated-typography, visuals lacking uniformity, recycled paper, low-saturation colors, broken typographic rules, outdated typefaces. (more…)

Back in February, amidst the feline army, I curled up to finally finish reading Lucienne Roberts’ book GOOD: An Introduction to Ethics in Graphic Design.” This is possibly the only book I have found and read that directly discusses ethics in Contemporary Graphic Design. Gathering a selection of opinions, from the likes of Ken Garland, Thomas Matthews, Deborah Szebeko, Sheila Levrant de Bretteville and Daniel Eatock, the book starts at the beginning of ‘Early Civilisation’ (p.21), and later discusses aspects of History, Philosophy (p.34), Law (p.44) and Politics (p.58). In conclusion the book presents a series of discussions with a collection of credible designers (p.113-192) - ultimately asking what it means to be a “good” designer. (more…)

Magazine covers usually aim to please. The idea seems to be that if a cover image offends as few people as possible, as many people as possible will buy the magazine. MOMA’s current exhibition of George Lois’s legendary Esquire covers proves the opposite to be true. Between 1962 and 1972, Lois’s provocative, opinionated, funny and sometimes even angry work boosted the magazine’s sales figures to hit record highs. The small but eloquent exhibition is a celebration of his vision. As in a strong, uncompromising vision imagined and executed by one person who was left alone by marketing departments and anxious editors. The covers are clean and simple graphically, often featuring a powerful photograph or photo montage against a white background. “There is no design,” said Lois, a sharp and ebullient 77-year-old native New Yorker, at the press viewing last week, “It’s the architecture of an idea.” (more…)

The concept of “green” typography may seem ridiculous to non-type-nerds and, yes OK, perhaps typography can’t conquer climate change, but it can certainly help communicate it! With these thoughts in mind, I thought it would be interesting to share some recent examples I’ve found of contemporary typography that truly redefine those terrifying visions of green (and tree-shaped) logos! (more…)

It’s a question as old as freelancing itself. How much do I charge my potential client? Too much and you risk not getting the job. Too little and you risk a lot of things: looking low-end, not getting enough to cover your time and costs, dooming future jobs to similar low rates…

There’s no hard and fast formula to graphic design rates, but it can be really helpful to know what other designers charge. HOW magazine recently published a survey on designers’ hourly rates that sheds a lot of light on this subject.

One particularly interesting point in the survey is that, no matter where you are in the country, the average hourly rate is $68-74. I don’t have any older stats on designers’ rates, but I think this survey goes to show that location is no longer an issue when choosing your rates. Perhaps if you live in New York on California you would charge more because of your higher cost of living, but your clients can simply seek designers from the Midwest instead. Consistent rates nationwide, I believe, represent the Internet’s influence on design job selection.

Another point in HOW’s survey to consider is that 82% of designers surveyed do not share their hourly rate with their clients. They instead opt for quoting entire job rates. As some participants noted, an hourly rate can scare of a client off. And if that quoted job is fair, you have an incentive to work harder and faster on it because that would mean more profit.

There are some helpful links at the bottom of HOW’s article to other information on charging for your work, and a “Webinar” about the topic.

This is all great for graphic designers, but web design jobs can add an extra layer of complexity to the pricing process.

In addition to charging for the design, you may also need to charge for programming special applications or hiring programming or QA help. In my experience, (more…)

HOW magazine’s In-HOWse Design Awards issue arrived last month and I was excited to see what’s been happening in other corporate design departments. The award competitions initiated by publications such as HOW and GDUSA that specifically showcase in-house work are evidence that there is a growing interest in what this segment of the design community is creating. These awards honor some great design talent that has been traditionally overlooked and even dismissed. They also address the challenges in-house designers face, some of which I would like to examine further.

As a creative director for a national real estate company, I have a responsibility to uphold corporate design standards and consistent branding messaging for consumers throughout the New England region. The national headquarters and its ad agency dictate our brand’s image, but we still have a little room to customize pieces for our regional markets. To some degree, I need to “police” printed materials created by marketing coordinators in several local offices to make sure they conform to the brand…not an easy task. But, just the idea having to conform illustrates my challenge. How do I keep my design staff inspired when we need to primarily stay “in the box”? How do I personally stay in the game?

I keep reminding my staff and myself that we only have one client and the very nature of our job is to support that client and its associates (the company that pays our salary). We have some creative flexibility with a few choice projects like corporate event invitations, logo designs and new development brochures, but our primary responsibilities are to pump out large volumes of pre-designed or template-based marketing materials. Hey, at least we get to design the templates! When we do get a custom design assignment, we usually provide three comps for client approval. I’ll say to the designers “let’s give them two ideas that stick with the formula and one that is just ‘out there’…whatever you want to do”. I try to inspire them to create something crazy that will at least get the client’s attention and maybe help them consider choosing a design that takes some chances. This allows the designers to stretch a little and also helps the client see that the company’s own design staff is capable of much more than just average work. It seems that our best designs are the ones that never get approved, but on several occasions we are able to persuade the client to take a risk and a really cool design actually gets printed. That’s enough to keep us all going.

Another challenge is to convince our “non-designer” colleagues that the department is not just an “arts and crafts” shop where all the fun people hang out. Our design staff was recognized three years in a row by winning in several categories of the GDUSA American Inhouse Awards. These accomplishments did not go unnoticed by our top management, who honored us with national press releases and local recognition. I am very thankful that these types of competitions are growing in popularity because they give in-house designers a chance to compete in their own arena. (more…)

While I firmly believe that words and pictures are in most cases all you to need to explain a concept, assuming you know it well, I’ll admit that video tutorials do serve a certain purpose. Some ideas and techniques, like layers and use of the Clone Stamp, just make more sense when you see the action unfold on a screen.

The overall quality of most Photoshop video tutorials has improved dramatically over the years, and it’s now pretty easy to find a lesson that speaks to your specific needs. Below are a few tutorials that I found both interesting and useful. It should be enough to get you started.

ScreenFrog has videos about Photoshop as well as other imaging apps. Most of the programs focus on either interesting effects or often avoided tools. I really like this tutorial, which explains the Pen tool. The Pen tool scares a lot of people, but if you follow along and work with the floral download, you’ll quickly get the hang of it. And as an added bonus, you get to see the video’s creator work in the German Photoshop interface!

Master the Pen tool with help from this ScreenFrog video.

One should expect good things from a site called TutorialChamp, and thankfully, it delivers. Most of the site’s tutorials explain really useful techniques, like removing wrinkles or coloring comic art. You can even learn how to place someone’s head convincingly on someone else’s body. Personally, I love the tutorial about flyers, because unlike most Photoshop videos, it delves into design as well as technique.

TutorialChamp’s videos are captioned so you can read along rather than listen, which is great if you’re at work.

Not surprisingly, a search on YouTube for Photoshop videos returned loads of content, but most of it is, at least to my mind, best avoided. Still, there are some diamonds in the rough. For example, YouTube user tutvid has created a few videos that are definitely (more…)

Stefan Sagmeister has created a blog in support of his new book, Things I Have Learned in My Life So Far. The site wholeheartedly encourages members of the public to share the lessons they’ve learned in their lives so far, but of course, there’s a catch. (C’mon, it’s Sagmeister.)

Laziness is Bad for the Soul by Kristina Critchlow

Messages can be presented using almost any medium, just as long as they are “written down beautifully.” So far, advice, such as “Sometimes believe what you read.”, and opinions, like “Laziness is bad for the soul.”, has been transmitted using everything from yarn to body hair to fish. I’m willing to bet this project is only going to get more interesting as time marches on. Stay tuned.

via the HOW blog

Unless you’ve been living under a rock for the past decade, you are no doubt familiar with Google’s logo. It’s a deceptively simple mark. In fact, it almost seems non-designed. Of course, that’s not actually the case. Not at all.

Ruth Kedar is the designer responsible for the logo, and in an interview with WebProNews, she talks at length about her process and the goals of the project. She also discusses the details. For example, she has this to say about the color choices:

The colors evoke memories of child play, but deftly stray from the color wheel strictures so as to hint at the inherent element of serendipity that creeps into any search results page…

Wired has more about the logo, including sketches of some of its earlier treatments, and Kedar again provides commentary. Together, these pieces make an interesting read. The Google logo has perhaps become more ubiquitous than any other mark, and the story of its genesis paints an interesting portrait of a certain period in web and graphic design history.

In a post earlier this week, I reviewed the latest version of Photoshop Elements. Elements has never been a hugely popular program, but I think the recent release is well-suited to the needs of at least some users. The same can be said of the CorelDRAW Graphic Suite X4. It’s easily overlooked, but actually might be worth considering.

Photoshop Elements and the Corel line of products aren’t the most popular apps out there, but they do have their uses.

The CorelDRAW Graphics Suite X4 is a complete creative environment, so any task you’d perform in Photoshop, Illustrator, or InDesign can probably be accomplished using Corel’s apps. That said, the Corel interfaces and many of the tools are very different than what you’ll find in an Adobe program, so the learning curve is steep. Still, the whole CorelDRAW package can be yours for just $429, so maybe it’s a fair trade. Here are some pros and cons to consider before you make a final decision:

1) CorelDRAW (the vector program) and Corel PHOTO-PAINT (the bitmap program) really are on par with Illustrator and Photoshop, but they cost a lot less.

2) The X4 update includes support for RAW files and has the ability to match colors across both Corel and Adobe programs.

3) CorelDRAW is both a vector drawing and page layout program, so you don’t need to hop to a different app when design your pages.

4) There’s a very powerful bitmap/vector tracing program included in CorelDRAW. It’s called PowerTRACE, and it’s far (more…)