Paper Versus Tablet

I love to illustrate in my spare time and incorporate it into graphic design whenever possible. I’m just more accustomed to paper and pencil than computer tablets and their pens. Positive note: they are less messy! So many programs are out there that let’s you flesh out drawings into full color without the mess and is often portable. Positive note for the home team: it’s hard to get that painted texture if you don’t actually paint it and sometimes it’s fun to get messy. Here’s an example of one of my digital illustrations made below.

Image made in Adobe Photoshop CS5 Find on Flickr!

Consider the Concept

I made this logo almost two years ago and I still feel that the concept was pretty strong. It’s a redesign of the Emergen-C logo. The colors were chosen to represent how fruity the product was. The fruit that the C was meant to represent isn’t specific because the brand has several favors. Other decisions were made before I created the final design. Here is a link leading to this work and a few more of my designs.

This logo was for a course at my college. So it was for educational use only. Check out on Flickr!

Simply Complicated

In my opinion, design is both simple and complicated. It seemed so simple before I enrolled at a design school. An image there, some pretty type here, and oh, orange because I like it, and ta-da! I had the most awesome flyer known to mankind. Well, I learned it doesn’t work like that. For a good design, it’s as if the final concept was easy to achieve, when in reality the process can be lengthy. Sometimes there are “ah-ha!” moments while many times, which seems to be quite often, hours seem to fly by as I stare off to Wherever Land until I forget what I was trying to think of. I even had moments of a this-is-the-best-concept-ever just to turn and forget it before I could get to my sketch book or because I forgot to bring it with me. Then it’s back down the long road to Wherever Land. It’s still great to do though. I appreciate it more. The final design is more satisfying after I know what I went through to get it. Or I want to throw the designs out the window and never see them again. By the way, I haven’t done that yet. Because, well, those are some of my best designs.

I didn’t have experience with many Adobe products before attending design school, so others and I thought I was a Microsoft Publisher guru. Not that Microsoft Publisher is the evil spawn of bad design, but I like Adobe InDesign better. It’s a tad more breathable. I’ve improved my software skills, but I realized I’m better at some, hello Adobe Illustrator, than others which I shall not mention! Programs and design gadgets, like computers and tablets, are constantly evolving to the point of buying one program to find out that version “Your-program-is-old-haha.5” is available. Outrage! I barely had the past version for a year! I didn’t even learn all the tools yet!

Something else I had to adapt to was working with clients. I would be set on one design which was the best, and more often than not, clients picked my least favored out of the choices. I should toss those designs before showing them to clients. I’m just joking. Actually, some of the weakest links were strengthened into a powerful chain, ha-ha I’m so cheesy, by the time I’ve finish revising them. Some issues I’ve had were clients asking for random things to add to a design. I’m not trying to make them sound bad, but what they some ask for have nothing to do with the project. Like having Christmas themed images for the entire program’s section title pages―in the middle of the summer. Why? “Well, I really like them. The students worked so hard.” Hooray, but that’s still irrelevant! I’m not trying to be mean. I just know that I need to communicate with the client about what is best for them and their design so that they stand out from the rest of their competition. That’s why communication whether it be e-mail, telephone or cell phone, meeting in person, or whatever outlet is available is crucial.