{"id":59,"date":"2013-08-20T11:55:46","date_gmt":"2013-08-20T15:55:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/harrisweb.ca\/blog\/?p=59"},"modified":"2016-11-25T18:34:20","modified_gmt":"2016-11-25T23:34:20","slug":"good-graphic-design-what-is-it","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.harrisweb.ca\/blog\/good-graphic-design-what-is-it\/","title":{"rendered":"Good Graphic Design&#8230;What is it?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Is it a Colour combination?\u00a0 White space? Style?\u00a0 Great art?<\/p>\n<p>For me it is all these things and none of them sometimes.\u00a0 It is something else, that \u201cJe ne sais quoi\u201d that melds advertiser, media, message and observer.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Marshall_McLuhan\" target=\"_blank\">MarshalI McLuhan<\/a> (great Canadian Philosopher, look him up) said, &#8220;the media is the message.&#8221;\u00a0 And there are times I see this more clearly than others and other times I work on the instinct that this is true.\u00a0 As a result it is more difficult to work for someone I have never met.\u00a0 There are times when this is necessary, say when you are working with big corporation, or you are doing third-party artwork for a client of a client, but in general, I like to meet my clients: &#8220;the advertisers.&#8221;\u00a0 Hopefully clients can tell me their message, how they want it delivered (print, web, signage or vehicle-wrap) and whose attention they want to capture with the message.\u00a0 Armed with this information I set out to deliver a client-based unique design that delivers an impactful message to the intended audience.<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" width=\"1080\" height=\"608\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/xHZOXC4VSkQ?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"autoplay; encrypted-media\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>Are there rules?<\/p>\n<p>Sure there are and they apply most of the time.\u00a0 Would I use Disney Pink (Pantone 241) to market beer to truck drivers, probably not.\u00a0 So colour matters, as does shape, font-style and overall layout.\u00a0 The main point though is: get the message across, quickly and without ambiguities.\u00a0 Lots of copy might work if you are sending out an annual report, but too many things on a business card or vehicle-wrap just muddies the message.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/harrisweb.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/12\/squidoo-pic.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignleft size-medium wp-image-122\" style=\"margin: 0 15px 0 0;\" title=\"squidoo pic\" src=\"http:\/\/harrisweb.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/12\/squidoo-pic-300x274.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"300\" height=\"274\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.harrisweb.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/12\/squidoo-pic-300x274.jpg 300w, https:\/\/www.harrisweb.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/12\/squidoo-pic.jpg 452w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/><\/a>KISS &#8211; keep it super simple and a picture is worth a thousand words are great things to keep in mind.\u00a0 There are a plethora of stock image sites, some of them free, which offer high-quality, low cost stock photography that can help to get your message across. \u00a0Using stock photography showing a model that looks like your intended audience, or looks like how your intended audience wants to look, is a great start, add a tag-line that drives home the client&#8217;s message like: &#8220;we are the best&#8221;, &#8221; your life will be better if&#8230;&#8221; and a &#8220;call to action&#8221; which can simply be contact information, or &#8220;enter contest&#8221;, &#8220;redeem coupon&#8221;, or whatever the client wants the observer to do.\u00a0 Add the logo and you are done&#8230;<\/p>\n<p>Logos: Pictures are generally not good in logos because they are raster images (made up of dots) and usually look like they are made up of dots when you blow them up to print on a sign.\u00a0 So logos need to be a vector image, which means, for the most part, somebody drew them using lines and fills.\u00a0 Graphics programs will blow up vector images to billboard size without loss of image quality.\u00a0 The next thing is that the same logo must work, if printed in a single colour on the corner of an envelope, i.e. 0.75&#8243; high.\u00a0 Coca-Cola is such a beautiful example of something that will work in one colour on the corner of an envelope and can be blown up to 15 stories high and still retain its integrity as a visual symbol.<\/p>\n<p>So you have a colour palette, a picture that conveys emotion, a tag line, a call to action, and a logo.\u00a0 So go ahead and lay it out.\u00a0 This is where the rules really come into play.\u00a0 Think first of overall impact, will the intended audience stop and look or will their eyes just slide on by.\u00a0 The silhouette of a teen on a skateboard wearing an iPod comes to mind; grandma&#8217;s eyes don&#8217;t even recognize what it is, but every 16-year-old on the block gets it!\u00a0 Choose a font, something avant-garde (every generation thinks they are avant-garde, even if they don&#8217;t know what it means).\u00a0 Make the message clear and small (because young eyes see everything).\u00a0 And lead the eye to the call to action&#8230;&#8221;own one today&#8221; or whatever.\u00a0 Use the logo as a counterpoint to balance the design.\u00a0 Voila great design.<\/p>\n<p>I got a little off track in the paragraph above because the design was building as I was writing, but it does illustrate a design to an intended audience.\u00a0 Obviously if we were marketing to grandma, the picture would look like her, the colours would be different, the tag line would have to be bigger and plainer and the call to action would be more traditional&#8230;&#8221;available at The Bay.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>The 2 things that would remain constant in the 2 above examples would be balance and white space, not necessarily white, just space with nothing in it.\u00a0 Designs have to balance; they have to have flow, and the appearance of movement for the eye to follow.\u00a0 This is partly accomplished with empty space, because over-crowded designs draw the eyes in too many different directions.<\/p>\n<p>In closing, Feel your client, who are they?\u00a0 What message do they want to send?\u00a0 Who is the audience?\u00a0 What action do they want from the audience?\u00a0 Choose colour, fonts, and pictures and lay it out so there is interest at a glance, a clear message and call to action, with flow and balance in the design.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Is it a Colour combination?\u00a0 White space? Style?\u00a0 Great art? For me it is all these things and none of them sometimes.\u00a0 It is something else, that \u201cJe ne sais quoi\u201d that melds advertiser, media, message and observer. MarshalI McLuhan (great Canadian Philosopher, look him up) said, &#8220;the media is the message.&#8221;\u00a0 And there are [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":121,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[18],"tags":[53,54],"class_list":["post-59","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-graphic-design","tag-commercial-printing","tag-graphic-design"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.harrisweb.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/59","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.harrisweb.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.harrisweb.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.harrisweb.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.harrisweb.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=59"}],"version-history":[{"count":11,"href":"https:\/\/www.harrisweb.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/59\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":797,"href":"https:\/\/www.harrisweb.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/59\/revisions\/797"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.harrisweb.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/121"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.harrisweb.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=59"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.harrisweb.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=59"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.harrisweb.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=59"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}