adpr 310 mideterm

The creative process

• Design is to understand the process of solving a visual problem

  • This means you’ll benefit from research, design briefs, and brainstorming

creative process step 1

• Project brief

  • A project brief is a document that outlines the following:

    • Description of the company

    • Goals and objectives

    • Target audience

    • Competitors 

    • Tone

    • Final project format

creative process step 2

• Research & discovery

  • Two types of research

    • Conceptual

      • The words and phrases that describe your client

      • Voice and tone

      • High end, casual, friendly, organic, formal, playful, professional, whimsical 

    • Visual

      • What visual references can you gather to help with design?

        • What colors and imagery are often used in your industry?

creative process step 3

• Mind mapping, sketching, and conceptualizing

  • Mind mapping

    • Do a mind mapping activity to generate ideas for your design concept

    • Begin making connections between the words to find ideas for imagery 

  • Sketch

    • Using your graphic and conceptual sources, begin creating quick sketches/thumbnails

    • Explore variations that bring elements together, and the look for ways to visually and conceptually support the concept

creative process step 4

• concept

• Rough draft

  • Choose your best concepts from your thumbnail drawings and create rough drafts in a design program

  • What is working? What doesn’t work? What might require more time?

  • Test fonts, colors, layout variations 

  • Analyzing rough drafts

    • Show your rough drafts to others for feedback

    • Print your drafts and hang them on the wall

    • Review with “fresh eyes” go for a walk, go to sleep, and look at your drafts again later

creative process step 5

• Presentation

  • Make edits to create a design ready to present

  • Present the design to your client

  • Gauge your client’s reaction and take notes about feedback

creative process step 6

• Revisions

  • Take the feedback you receive and improve your design

  • Once you’ve revisited the design prepare the final files for delivery

  • Send final files to client

a brief history of graphic design

• The roots of visual communication stretch all the way back to caveman times around 38,000 BCE

• Would put out their hands and use berry juice or pigment to trace them 

• Letting people know that they existed there 

• Samarian language, Chinese printmaking, and medieval ???

first logos

• Coat of arms used to represent family houses or territories in Europe around 1100 AD 

• Symbol for pubhouse so people knew they could find beer (which at the time was safer to drink than water)

• Graphic design really began after the invention of the printing press in 1440

  • The first mass produced print ads started in the early 1600s

lithography

• aphy

  • Introduced printing with colored inks in the early 1800s

    • While used primarily for recreating paintings for home decor, lithography also opened new doors for advertising

first graphic design agency

• Emerged in 1903 in Austria called Wiener Wekstätte

• Designer Paul Rand shaped the future of the graphic design industry with his logo designs and writing in the 1940

  • Paul Rand designed ABC, IBM, UPS, and more

digital era

• Slowly began in the 1980s with the mass-adoption of home computers

• Photoshop first released in 1990

  • The birth of the internet brought on 3D then flat design illustrative styles

design principles

• Guidelines, biases and design considerations that designers apply with __________

• fundamental pieces of advice for you to make easy-to-use pleasurable designs 

• All pieces of a design must fit together to form a harmonious and cohesive unit

• One design may use many design principles to be successful

  • RBG = red green and blue

shape/form

• Any 2D or 3D area with a recognizable boundary

• Shapes can be geometric or organic

• Can be transparent or solid

• Transparency in design is used to portray movement 

  • “Shapes can draw your eye along with color”

line

• Helps direct the eye

• Create emphasis

• Give a sense of movement

  • Straight, wiggly, zig zags, think, thin, dotted or dashed, frame elements with them

color

• Can create emotion

• Use the right color process (CMYK, RGB, HEX, PMS)

• Use color theory 

• CMYK - cyan, magenta, yellow, key (usually black) used for printing

• RBG - red blue and green, used for digital

• Hex codes - 6 digit alphanumeric code that represents a color

  • PMS - pantone matching system, standard eyes color system

repitition

• Helps ties lots of individual elements together

  • Crucial for consistent branding

negative space

• The space in between elements

• Also known as “white space”

• Adds style and elegance to a design

  • Leave yourself some breathing room when designing

texture

• Gives a tactility to design

• Refers to a a sense of feeling and touching

• Gives depth to designs

  • Use it sparingly and intentionally

balance

• Each element has a visual weight

• Adjust your design’s balance with scale and composition

• Helps a viewer’s eye travel through the content

• Creating balance

  • Symmetrical (formal) balance

  • All elements are balanced from the center, top and bottom, left and right

  • Creates formal and dignified layouts

  • Can lack strong sense of movement and visual energy  

  • Asymmetrical (informal) balance

    • More visual weight on either the left or right side while keeping balance harmonious

    • Can be more challenging to design _______________

  • Rule of thirds

    • Compositional guide that breaks an image down into thirds

    • By positioning key elements along the guidelines, you'll end up with better compositions 

      • Better to put it into a corner than into a space if that makes sense?

emphasis

• Hierarchy and scale are part of emphasis

• Helps users navigate your design

• Signals importance of elements

• Use scale, line, color, etc.

• Why? It tells the viewers which elements to look at and in what order and what is most important to focus on 

• Creating it

  • Start with a focal point (optical center)

  • The optical center is a little above the mathematical center

  • Keep your design simple by eliminating distractions

  • Limit visuals elements or accent points between 2-5

  • Group related elements together 

  • Grouping

contrast

• When two or more elements look dramatically different

• Helps create emphasis

  • Develops strong visual differences in size, shape, tone, texture, and direction of elements on a page

grid

• Helps align elements

• One grid can be used in many different ways

  • An aligned page seems cleaner, better organized and more refined

typography

• Pick a distinct font palette that fits your design

• Use type wisely and carefully

• Illustrating with type to give meaning to words 

  • Use two fonts for a cool design, three fonts if you have to, but two is the perfect number

flow/movement

• Visual and verbal ‘paths’ of movement in which the reader’s eye tracks through a design

• Direct the eye in Z, L, and Y shapes

• Movement brings  life to design

• Creating it:

  • Verbal: how the text is arranged on the page and the order in which the audience readers the material

Visual: the order in which the reader looks at the images on the page

rules

• Learn design rules but don’t feel 100% limited to them

• Break the rules the right way

• Start with a focal point (optical center)

  • Create your focal point with strong contrast 

• Determine your ballance

  • Symmetrical or asymmetrical

• Group your information

  • Decide on the relationship of each group and display those relationships with closeness or lack of closeness 

• Strengthen your design by aligning texts or objects in a gride

• Create repetition and flow

  • Find items that can have a repetitive connection

    • How does the viewer flow through the design?

color

• Vital element in every design

• Spur emotion, adds meaning and value

• Draw attention or make you look away

  • Branding tool

red

exciting, passionate, dangerousp

pink

sweet, young energetic

orange

friendly, tangy, pleasing

yellow

energetic, warm, cheerful, cautious

gold

elegant

green

alive, friendly, organic

dark blue

peaceful, stable, logical, trustworthy

light blue

 healthy, cool, young

purple

elegant, mysterious, regalh

hue

the name of the color we see (red, green, purple, etc.)

saturation

describes the intensity of a color

value

refers to the lightness or darkness of a color

the color wheel

• Primary - red, yellow, and blue in equilateral triangle

• Secondary - halfway between the primary colors

• Tertiary colors - between the secondary colors 

  • Complement both primary and secondary colors

complimentary colors

• Complementary colors sist opposite of a primary color

  • Red is the opposite of green

  • Blue and orange

  • Purple and yellow

  • Create contrast

CMYK

• Four color model used for all full color print jobs

• Cyan, magenta, yellow, black (key)

  • Subtractive color model

RGB/Hex

• Three color model used for all screen output in web design

  • Red green and blue

  • RGB is also known as Hex color

    • Additive color model

PMS

• Pantone Matching System (PMS) consists of pre-mixed inks and are not mixed in the way CMYK values are

  • Used for printing accurate color

color scheem

An arrangement or combination of colors used in art and design projects

why use color (four reasons)

• Contrast and emphasis

  • Color is what the eye wants to see first

  • Allow one element to dominate, and color it wisely

• Purposeful

  • Place color intentionally, with an eye toward your subject and the reader

• Continuity

  • A single color can be used for continuity

  • Be consistent, and choose a color that’s readily identifiable but not too loud

• Mood

  • Color preferences are well-documented and predictably objective

    • Children prefer reds, oranges, and yellows

    • Adults prefer blues, indigoes, and violets

stratagies for choosing art

• Boost visual interest

• Create a visual identity

• Create a focal point

  • Add information

vector graphics

• Based on vectors, which create images using control points or nodes

• Adobe illustrator is a vector-based “Drawing” program used to create vector images 

• Can be scaled infinitely and never lose quality - EPS, SVG, AI

  • Raster is based on pixels and can only be scaled up to its maximum pixel size before you start losing quality

photographs

• In design can be more impactful than graphics or illustration as it communicates the message with a sense of realism

• Image resolution

  • Measured in dots per inch (DPI) for print, pixels per inch for web (PPI)

  • Higher resolution = sharper image

    • Use 300 dpi for printing, 72 dpi for web

illustrations

• Use illustration to convey abstract concepts and stories

• May not have a photograph available and must rely on graphics

  • Can also control the style and the mood

infographics

• Used in design to visually represent words, complex stats, and numerical or scientific data

• Icons can be a great way to convey information quickly

• Icon styles can very greatly, so make sure your icons feel cohesive to the design 

• You cannot take creative liberty with statistical data in visual representation

  • Be factual and accurate

    • Provide two ways to interpret data, a graphic and a sentence or paragraph

web file formats

• All files should be in RGB format for web

  • JPG or JPEG 

  • PNG (portable network graphics), transparent background

  • GIF (graphics interchange format

    • SVG (scalable vector files, vector

print file formats

• Should be in CMYK

• JPG, JPEG, TIFF, PSD, EPS, PDF 

• JPEGs have some lost of quality - when the image decrease, the quality decreases too

• TIFF doesn’t degrade

  • PSD transparent background. EPS vectors

logo power occurs when

• Logo power occurs when

  • The logo is designed and implemented so that it

    • Establishes immediate, credible, recognition for the client

    • Expresses the client’s character or attitude

    • Conveys that the client is an expert or leader in its field

    • Symbolizes the line of business

  • Instills in the publcia sense of familiarity and trust

  • So memorable it becomes  aunique identifier that is synonymous with the client’s business

    • Didn’t get the rest of this

trademark

Name or symbol used by a business or corporation to identify a brand or product

logomark

Mix of type and graphics and represent a business, group, or individual identity

logotype

• Name of company in a design like FedEx or Walgreens

  • acronyms/monogram (elf, BBC, MAC)

international considerations with logos

• Logo can be understood across language barriers

• A symbol might work best

  • Make sure that the symbol and colors you choose - didn’t get the rest of this

logo longevity

• Avoid creating a logo that is based too heavily on current trends

• Current thinking is that a logo should last 5-10 years

  • Remember, it takes a long time to build consumer recognition

logo usage mistakes

• Never squish or stretch

  • Use guidelines when working with brands

client discovery

• What words would you use to describe your client? Voice and tone? Adjectives?

• Client’s competitors, what techniques work for industry, overuse and underuse, colors or images used in that industry 

  • Still look outside industry so that it is not the same as others

application discovery

• How will it be used

• Do you need various designs

  • Will it work on ads, social media, brochure projects

create and refine

• Based on your sketches, choose your favorite concepts and begin creating them in your design software

• Test fonts

• Many draft logos before you get to your rough draft

the printing process

• Think about the end product when you print

• Each printer is different

• Shop around for printers

• Prepare a dummy of your printed piece to show the printer at your initial meeting

• Ask to see sample of previously printed pieces before selecting your printer

  • Prepare a Spec Sheet with all the information needed for the job

spec sheet

• Thoroughly describe the job

• Size, type, color, special, paper

  • Type - how is it folded?

furnished materials

• Will you provide the printer with print-ready material?

  • File format

    • Software and font compatibility

quantity

• Round number for the expected pieces

• Ask price for additional thousands

  • Anticipate a major change in quantity, ask the printer if there is a break point where prices change drastically

page count

• Total number of pages you expect (does this include a cover?)

• Multi page documents tend to be printed in multiples of four

• Example of page count specs

  • 12 pages = 8 pages plus a cover

booklet cover

• Self cover

  • Printed on the same paper stock as the body of the piece

  • Less expensive (especially for color)

• Separate cover

  • Printed on higher quality of paper than the body of the piece

binding

• Saddle stitched (pages are bound on the spine with staples or thread)

• Perfect bound (pages glued)

  • Spiral bound (plastic or wire)

proofing

• ng

  • Attempts to catch any errors before the job goes to print

  • Some printers will provide a PDF or digital proof, others will provide hard copy proofs

  • If your piece has folds you may also receive a folded proof

Always proof your print job and have someone other than yourself review the proof

delivery and shipment

• If you want the printer to mail pieces - request price for attaching mailing labels & print addresses

  • If you want finished product shipped somewhere, specify packing isntructons, especially if you need ot drop shipments to multiple locationsq

quoting a print job

• How many printing should you solicit

  • Above 200,000 copies, solicit three or more quote jobs

    • Under 2,000, look at two quotes

special effects

• Varnish

• Die-cuts (special shapes)

• Foil-stamping 

• Embossing and debossing