I recently designed a logo for a 3D designer friend that’s nearing graduation from his program and thought I’d document the process and outline the steps I take. This will be a two-part post, the second being a broader view on branding oneself as a designer. This piece will be a more specific, step-by-step write-up on how I design my identities.
When I’m browsing the Web I find it very helpful to analyze a successful site and take away elements and ideas that will help my own work. In this post I’ll analyze a successful Web site’s design, businessweek.com. One of the most challenging obstacles in creating a Web site is displaying content in a clean, fluent, and user-friendly manner. It’s especially difficult with a great deal of content as seen in news pages. I want to analyze BusinessWeek.com’s successful outcome of showing a lot of content while maintaining an attractive and friendly interactive experience. Read the rest of this entry »
Many young designers complain that they’d be much better and feel more prepared if they had some experience, but have trouble getting any work or an internship to help build their portfolio and resume. I know from my own experience that an internship or agency experience isn’t necessary. With enough self-motivation anyone can build a high quality, professional portfolio and at the very least add freelance for some job experience to their resume. Below are a few tips to make this happen, all of which I’ve personally used.
To continue along the lines of my previous post on why simplicity makes better design, I thought I’d layout a few of my own principles on creating a simple and minimalist piece.
1. Content is king
I said it before and I’ll say it again: the final goal should dictate form. Before beginning any design, I clearly layout what it is I want to accomplish within the design. With my own portfolio design, for example, I wanted to display my mark above all else to help brand myself and display the work immediately afterward. If your goal is to brand a company, then your first step should be to inform the viewer of what the company is. Think small, think simple, and then grow. There’s no reason to start out by trying to create a great design off the bat, just start with the basics and create a design that works from there.
Design superstar Paul Rand said in an interview, “You don’t say I’m going to do art, you just say I’m going to do whatever you’re gonna do, but you never call it art. Art is just if you’re lucky.”
Art happens if you’re lucky.
This is especially true within graphic design. Content is king. The goal must dictate form. All too often, graphic designers, myself included, become lost in the artistic approach and our own visions so much that we lose sight of the point altogether. A graphic designer’s goal should not be to make something beautiful, not to make something that gains recognition or praise; but rather to accomplish the goal at hand. Rarely is the goal to make something stunning, but even when it is; there’s always a deeper purpose behind making something beautiful.