Sunday, 9 January 2011
Clients
Job Bags
Job-bag is a secure, intelligent resource solution for sharing media and marketing assets across all platforms anywhere in the world, twenty-four hours a day. Job-Bag empowers all members of management, sales, marketing and production without causing the usual bottle necks of busy design houses, marketing outlets and media ventures. No longer do you need to rummage through though traditional job bags in order to find copy, images, spreadsheets, word docs etc. Now all you need is a username and a login.
In Plain English...
Click a link from your website or intranet, and have full access to all your media assets, with the ability to upload/download and share files at the click of a mouse.
Job-bag is taking the grunt work out of what is killing business hours. What’s more it is a simple web browser interface not hidden by any computer mumbo jumbo.
Job-Bag’s foundation is an innate understanding of the needs of deadline-driven businesses where every minute counts, automated media asset repurposing gives publishers, advertising and marketing agencies, photographers and in-house marketing departments a true cost saving creative and competitive edge.
Job-Bag’s evolved by working with clients and understanding the need for a cost and time saving effective solution that not only reduces time, errors and servicing of assets, but also opens doorways to new revenue streams.
http://www.job-bag.co.uk/what.htm
Briefs
Account Handlers
Many design groups use account handlers. Some account handlers do a good job, but in most cases account handling leads to clients being divorced from the creative process and imagining that design is an invisible procedure. When this happens, problems ensue.
Forcing clients to deal with account handlers downgrades the creative process and turns it into a mess of indecision and rejection. There's nothing easier for a client than rejecting or brainlessly modifying work when someone with no personal stake in the project is charged with presenting it. It's much harder to tell a designer, or someone intimately involved with the creative production of a piece of work, that their efforts are rejected. Of course, this is why clients prefer to deal with account handlers; they can be bullied.
Furthermore, account handlers in agencies and big design groups often develop a greater loyalty to their clients than to their own creative teams. This is hardly surprising. They are encouraged to bond with their clients - thats their job. But clients sense this, and they rip creative work to pieces.
In the modern design studio everyone does the 'account handling', and every phone call, email, or meeting is an opportunity to 'look after clients'. For solo designers, the same applies. They spend half their time being a designer and the other half being an account handler - not to mention accountant, debt chaser, production controller, spellchecker, light-bulb changer and a dozen other roles. To put it as bluntly as possible - all designers have to learn to become account handlers all the time.
Graphic Design: A User's Manual by Adrian Shaughnessy
Psychology
Presentation
Grids
When detractors attack graphic design - Swiss design in particular - they point out that visual expression based on mathematical grids must be dull and inexpressive. In fact, the opposite is true. Grids means freedom. And what's more, artists have always known this.
Typography
Art Direction
Copyright
Few topics have greater potential for disaster than copyright. Designers and clients knowingly and unknowingly infringe someone's rights every day. Copyright is a minefield but few of us know where the mines are buried. How do we avoid being blown up?
Saturday, 8 January 2011
Paper
Specifying paper used to be fun. Today, choosing paper stock involves juggling issues relating to cost, technical matters and sustainability, and that's before we even start thinking about appearance and texture, or the role of electric paper.
Colour
Color is everywhere and conveys a message even if we don't realize it. While this message can vary by culture it pays to know what colors "say" in your own corner of the universe, and even what color means to your target market.
If you don't think that color speaks just complete this sentence, "red means ---- and green means ?" even a child will know what red means stop and green means go. If such simple ideas work for all of a given culture or market what could it mean to the graphic design of your website, brochure, or product if you know some of this information.
First let's start with the basics. The color wheel. We've all seen it. The color wheel shows the basic colors, each wheel is different in how many shades of each color is shown, but they are essentially the same.
Color harmony, colors that go together well. These will be colors that are next door to each other on the color wheel. Such as blue and green. In reference to clothes these colors match each other. Instinctively most of us know which colors go together when we dress ourselves every morning.
Color complements, colors that set each other off, they complement each other. These are colors that are opposite on the color wheel. Such as blue and orange.
Color depth, colors can recede or jump forward. Remember that some colors seem to fall back such as blue, black, dark green, and brown. Other colors will seem to step forward such as white, yellow, red, and orange. This is why if you have a bright orange background it may seem to fight with any text or images that you place on it. The orange will always seem to move forward.
Now you have the basics so let's go further. Just because to colors go together or complement each other doesn't mean that yo necessarily want to use them on your project. I opened this article with the meaning of colors now here is an example, keep in mind this is one example from western culture.
Color Survey: what respondents said colors mean to them.
- Happy = Yellow
- Inexpensive = Brown
- Pure = White
- Powerful = Red (tomato)
- Good Luck = Green
- Dependable = Blue
- Good tasting = Red (tomato)
- High Quality = Black
- Dignity = Purple
- Nausea = Green
- Technology = Silver
- Deity = White
- Sexiness = Red (tomato)
- Bad Luck = Black
- Mourning = Black
- Favorite color = Blue
- Expensive = Gold
- Least favorite color = Orange
So in designing your project it's important to know what colors mean. You can now see why a black back ground with green type would be bad, beyond being nearly impossible to read, if your target market thinks that black represents mourning and green makes them sick. There are exceptions to every rule of course.
So you may want to include some research in what colors mean to your target market. Colors that would get the attention of a teen would probably annoy an older person and the colors that appeal to the older person wouldn't get a second look from a young person.
Color may be one of the most overlooked aspects of design.
http://www.webdesign.org/web-design-basics/color-theory/graphic-design-using-color.12801.html
Commissioning Creatives
Print Spec
- Does your project need to be this size or can it be smaller? A reduced format could save paper, ink, water, carbon emissions in distribution and it may even save money on postage.
- Can you use lighter paper for your job? Avoid specifying heavier paper than is necessary. It may seem obvious, but 200gsm paper uses double the amount of wood fibre as 100gsm paper.
- Talk to your printer to check paper size availability and press size before designing your product. Many materials are available in a limited range of sizes and so simply shaving off a few millimetres may dramatically reduce waste.
- The most waste and cost-effective formats are A sizes, as all materials and printing presses are based around these.
- If your product is likely to be around for some time, design it to be updateable.
- Window envelopes cannot currently be recycled in the UK. Unless the windows have been cut/torn out, the envelopes will be removed from the waste paper when it is sorted. However, cellulose film for window envelopes is now available and although this is not recyclable, at least it will biodegrade in landfills.
- Don’t print more copies than you need just because it’s not going to cost much more.
- Make sure that the job has been proofed extremely carefully. This reduces the risk of a re-print or a job being pulled off the press halfway through.
- Keeping ink coverage to a minimum reduces the amount of environmentally damaging ink used and makes your product easier to recycle.
Think about the timings, and try to plan as far in advance as possible:
- Book time with your printer, and try to get quantities and paper agreed well in advance to stop emergency transport of materials, especially if buying special order recycled paper.
- Plan well for grouped, low cost deliveries.
The binding you choose can make your product pretty toxic and can also affect the recyclability of your design.
The most environmentally friendly method is wire stitching as staples can be easily removed during the recycling process and then recycled themselves. Singer sewing is not as good due to the cotton thread being more difficult to remove. The same goes for comb and wire-o bindings.
Glue is really bad news for recycling and can be pretty toxic, usually containing VOC-releasing solvents (see glossary).
FINISHES AND INKS
Foil blocking
These are polyester film coatings, many containing toxic chemicals and heavy metals. Foil blocking may make your product unrecyclable as it doesn't break down in the de-inking process.
Lamination
This can render a product unrecyclable and un-biodegradable and the lamination process emits high levels of VOCs. A recent study states that single sided lamination is recyclable though, providing it is not laminated with wax or latex. There are cellulose (wood-based) alternatives but these can be difficult to remove in the recycling process, so you might want to avoid lamination if your product is likely to have a short shelf life.
UV varnishes
UV varnishes are mineral-oil based, they contain solvents, the process uses a lot of energy, and as if that wasn’t enough, they cause problems for the recycling process. If you still want to use a varnish, go for aqueous (water based) coatings instead. They come in matt and gloss finishes – the gloss is pretty shiny although not as shiny as UV varnish.
Vegetable oil based inks
Most sheet-fed inks are now vegetable-oil instead of petroleum-oil based (with the exception of fluorescents and most metallics), typically containing three parts linseed to one part soya oil. By using vegetable-oil based inks you're reducing worker and environmental health hazards and avoiding use of a non-renewable resource.
However, there has been much controversy surrounding the huge expansion of the worldwide soya industry, so this is not a black and white issue. Read more
Heatset web inks still contain 30-35% mineral (petroleum) oil, emitting low levels of VOCs as they dry and can result in environmental and worker health hazards. Coldset web inks also contain a small amount of mineral oil.
Some inks go one step further by reducing the levels of environmentally damaging drying catalysts such as cobalt. However, this means that they dry more slowly than conventional inks.
Fluorescent colours
Unfortunately these are not available as vegetable-oil based inks.
Metallics
Metallics have traditionally only been available as petroleum based inks, but a vegetable-oil version has just come onto the market so ask your printer if they're using these yet.
http://www.lovelyasatree.com/printspec.htm
Preparation
Finding a First Job
Portfolio
"The process of impressing employers or clients with our design skills begins with the design of our portfolios. When we show them we are not only judged on the content, but also on the way we have designed them. A badly designed portfolio sends out a message: bad designer"
Writing a C.V
- Education and qualifications- concentrating on GCSE and beyond.
- Work experience- think about the skills you needed for, and gained from, these posts. Transmit a sense of achievement, say what you accomplished in your work. Show evidence of any leadership skills you used. Skills used / gained may be professional, technical and personal.
- Extra-curricular activities- positions of responsibility, membership of a sports team. Use your interests to say something of interest about yourself. It should be information with a purpose.
- General skills- for example a driving licence, foreign language skills, and increasingly computer skills.
- Leave out any irrelevant material.
- Avoid wordy CVs- make your points concisely. You should use the minimum amount of words to make the maximum impact.
- Avoid "flowery phrases"- make sure the words you use imply action and decisiveness.
- Make sure your grammar and spelling are correct.
- Make sure the CV is fairly short- many people recommend a one side CV. Bear in mind an employer can quickly lose interest.
- Keep rewriting until you are satisfied.
- Check your spelling and grammar.
- Check again for unnecessary material- for example putting "references on request" can save you space.
- Show your CV to someone whose advice you trust and listen to what they have to say- welcome constructive criticism.
- Print your CV using a laser printer on good quality paper.
- The covering letter must be tailored to each job opportunity and individual company. It personalises your approach to companies.
- Address the letter to the particular person with whom you wish to have an interview. ( Relate the letter to the specific needs of the company, and refer to particular skills in your CV that are of relevance. This will probably mean doing a little research into the employer, and looking back at the job vacancy advertisement.
- As with your CV a letter should be brief, relevant, easy to read, with the spelling and grammar carefully checked.