the graphic design school blog

Provid­ing a quote for graphic design ser­vices is one of the most dif­fi­cult areas of the field to nav­ig­ate. It can kind of be like going on a first date. Through work­ing with a vari­ety of cli­ents, my best advice for con­tract­ing your ser­vices is do not jump in the water before you know how deep it is! By this I mean it is abso­lutely imper­at­ive before even agree­ing to work on a piece that you know the entirety of the pro­ject. I have learned the hard way to never respond in the affirm­at­ive until you ask the right questions.

Hey there. In the last art­icle we dis­cussed the role of receiv­ing and under­stand­ing the cre­at­ive brief — a vital part of the designer’s job. Once the doc­u­ment has been diges­ted and the nettle grasped, one of the most fun parts of the cre­at­ive pro­cess may begin — research and mind map­ping. This is the stage where, empowered by a belief that any­thing is pos­sible, the designer can delve fully into his sub­ject, unleash his ima­gin­a­tion and give full rein to his cre­ativ­ity without fear of being pulled up short by the cli­ent (—that might occur later!).

The brief. That gen­esis of the cre­at­ive pro­cess. All design jobs begin with a brief­ing from the cli­ent, usu­ally in writ­ten form (the pre­ferred option) though they can also be given verbally. It’s dif­fi­cult to over­state how import­ant the humble brief is to the design pro­cess. In short, no brief, no pro­ject! Break­ing the topic down into key aspects over sev­eral art­icles, I’ll be tak­ing you through the ins and outs of everything you need to know about the brief. Let’s start with…

Some­thing big has happened in the pub­lish­ing world. Some­thing inter­est­ing. While main­stream pub­lish­ers con­tinue to stare grimly at plum­met­ing sales fig­ures, fall­ing advert­ising incomes and budget cuts, a per­sist­ent tor­rent of web-savvie, well designed and highly var­ied inde­pend­ent titles is thriv­ing, with new titles crop­ping up every month. These inde­pend­ents cover every con­ceiv­able sub­ject, from the pre­dict­able (fash­ion, archi­tec­ture, cook­ery) to the more eso­teric (sneaker cul­ture any­one?) and are invari­ably beau­ti­fully designed. There’s no vic­tory of style over sub­stance here though — each small pub­lisher seems to care deeply about his chosen field and has the expert­ise to back it up. Here are seven titles to appear in Brit­ish design book­shops in recent years, though the magazines them­selves are inter­na­tional. Any one would make a fine addi­tion to any designer’s book­shelf. Enjoy…

Next to sculp­ture, paint­ing, archi­tec­ture, cinema, cuisine and cou­ture, France’s graphic design seems nowhere. Even in France itself, graphic design’s pro­file burns less brightly than the other arts, though its influ­ence on its country’s wider visual cul­ture is by no means insig­ni­fic­ant; a high cre­at­ive out­put gen­er­ated by both estab­lished and emer­ging design­ers and ateliers. France seems to hold firm against the seduct­ive Esper­anto of glob­al­ised design more suc­cess­fully than other nations, retain­ing it’s own par­tic­u­lar elán—a good reason for us to glance over its national resumé…

Fol­low­ing on from Con­tem­por­ary Type Foundries Part 1, presen­ted below are the final six type foundries I’ve chosen to dis­play. So, without fur­ther ado…

The 20 Things pro­ject was a chal­lenge to break ground with new tech­no­lo­gies and deliver a rich, edu­ca­tional exper­i­ence that these tech­no­lo­gies make pos­sible. The Fi team rose to the chal­lenge and pro­duced a web app that is as fun to play with and explore as it is inter­est­ing to read.

Work­ing with typefaces is about as basic as it gets for graphic design­ers. A solid know­ledge of type, a keen eye for which fonts are appro­pri­ate for each pro­ject and an aware­ness of what’s avail­able to us are rudi­ment­ary com­pon­ents of the job. Many fledging cre­at­ives use only what they have in their sys­tem fonts lib­rary and a hand­ful of pass­able faces saved off a cracked disc of thou­sands of dubi­ous free fonts. Work­ing this way, a designer can pro­duce per­fectly good res­ults (some say this can be achieved through Hel­vetica alone) but it’s the wise designer who main­tains an aware­ness of modern-day type foundries. Between them, foundries release beau­ti­fully craf­ted, extens­ive and note­worthy font fam­il­ies year on year. Whilst many cost money (staff at foundries have to earn a liv­ing too) some are reas­on­ably priced and oth­ers offered for free. And besides the fonts, through their web­sites type foundries offer all sorts of help­ful advice and a glimpse into their fas­cin­at­ing pro­fes­sion, which is what I aim to show here, in the first of two art­icles on the topic.

James Vic­tore is a man of action. He believes that know­ing about jazz and wine and auto-racing can make you a bet­ter designer. That graphic design is about exper­i­ences and stor­ies and using your hands. That the best designs punch you in the gut – or, at the very least, stop you in your tracks.

Re-posted from Jocelyn K. Glei The 99%

It should come as no sur­prise that some of the best designed and look­ing web­sites are those of design stu­dios them­selves. Untrammeled by meddle­some cli­ents mak­ing design-threatening requests and free to divert the neces­sary time and budgets into things, stu­dios are able to focus their design­ers’ col­lab­or­at­ive ener­gies into pro­du­cing —often— ground­break­ing sites. We’ve gen­er­ated video clips of each design stu­dio web­site I thought really dis­tinct­ive, both from the masses and each other. Happy perusing!

Brasil, the sun­ni­est of the amusingly-acronymned BRIC nations (Brasil, Rus­sia, India, China), is cur­rently enjoy­ing unpre­ced­en­ted amounts of good­will on the inter­na­tional world stage, not hindered by its increas­ing con­fid­ence in areas like dip­lomacy and man­u­fac­ture, nor Rio’s mayor Eduardo Paes win­ning the Olympic bid for his city. But enough of the geo-political pre­amble, “This is a design blog!” we hear you cry. Rest assured read­ers, we haven’t for­got­ten my duties to you, just provid­ing the wider con­text to intro­duce some impress­ive con­tem­por­ary work in the visual fields, from both stu­dios and freel­an­cers, to have recently emerged from this Latin giant.

Intro­duc­tion image © Kiy­oshi Taka­hase Segundo.

A short and sweet art­icle of the main Do’s and Don’ts in Web Design by Angela Lisl tracked back from the Cre­at­ive Sup­port website.

Men­tion the word ‘recruiter’ to a cre­at­ive and you’ll always get a ‘mar­mite’ type reac­tion. You either love’em or you hate’em. Why such a strong reac­tion? Do you really need a recruiter to find a job, or is it bet­ter to just go it alone?