I color-code the projects in my task list depending on their status and the green projects are those that need my attention. Tasks are piling up today and turning green. The project that is on my mind the most is the DDA Poster Designs I wrote about earlier this week. This is the perfect example of a graphic designer acting as problem solver.

The problem: Design 7 posters that are timeless, informative, all encompassing, and (dare I say) sexy. They need to visually scream that we are (pardon the overuse of these phrases) “A one-stop shop,” with “everything-under-one-roof,” or a “full-service” advertising agency. We are talented beyond belief, customer-service oriented (no voice mail here, thank you), motivated, intelligent, and professional. Our services range from 3d animation to 2d illustration, corporate and medical training tools to photographs of garden tools, and much more! There are a handful of talented copywriters just upstairs and an entire video studio equipped with a sound booth and video/audio editing services. Need a custom logo design?… no problem. Want your logo animated?… again, no problem. The posters need to share a common design theme, work together, and be able to stand alone.

The solution: stay tuned!

My 3-year old is in the throws of the “why?” stage. He’s also going through some other stages as well, but I’ll save those for another time. “Why do we have tears?” Why do I have a mommy?” “Why is he a giant?”(said to a rather tall McDonald’s customer). We should all be so curious and observant. 

Graphic Designers need to be especially observant and ask many “Why’s” before, during, and after a project. In fact, it’s a great habit to ask Who, What, and Where as well. For example: Who is my target audience? What type of paper is this brochure being printed on? What resolution and color mode should I set up for this trade show graphic? Where is your literature being distributed? Where will people be viewing your website? Why am I using this font, these colors, and why will this layout be most effective for the client?

While it can be draining to answer rapid fire “Why’s” throughout the day, I know that my 3-year old’s curiosity is something that we should all, as artists, graphic designers, videographers, programmers, animators, illustrators, and writers adopt on a daily basis.

Visitors to our Portfolio don’t often see what has gone on behind the scenes for each finished designed piece. What is shown in our portfolio is the chosen design, most often by the client, that has been printed, uploaded or burned to a CD or DVD. What they have not had the opportunity to view are all the concepts that were provided to the client to choose from. I like to give my 3-year old two choices. You can either have this or that, do this now or do it later, say you’re sorry or sit on the step. And, usually, it works. There may be tears, but it works. Everyone likes to have choices and most often DDA provides our clients with at least 2-4 choices to review before making a decision. We encourage client involvement and will provide our professional opinions and suggestions on designs - whether it be for a printed piece such as a brochure, logo design or trade show graphic, or a design for online or CD/DVD use such as a website, intranet, or video for CD/DVD. The designs that were not selected are saved in the client’s file and archived with all the other important files for that project. Since we do not use templates for our designs and each design is custom for our clients these other choices are usually not to be seen again. Until now… We will soon be offering, starting with our Logo Design portfolio, the option to take a peek at our DDA Sketchbook which will showcase the designs that were not chosen. It’s time for the unchosen to have their turn in the spotlight!

Before we moved into our new space, Dynamic Digital Advertising (DDA) purchased 7 wooden easel stands to place in different locals around our office to enhance a client’s visit and provide some visual eye candy for our 20+ employees. The graphic design department was asked to create a set of 7 posters, one for each department - DDA Corp, DDA Video, DDA CMT (Corporate and Medical Training), DDA Medical, Graphic Design, Website Development, and Programming. It’s an exciting project and one that I hope to begin today; roughing out some preliminary concepts and conceptualizing on how they will all work together as a unit and then taking them “one step further.” This “one step further” idea is and has been a key philosophy at DDA. 

You ask for a poster design and we may deliver a poster design along with a corporate video for use on your website. You ask for a logo design and we’ll prepare 10 logos that can make choosing one quite difficult. You ask for a website and we may deliver an interactive, search engine optimized, expertly written and designed website experience.  So, as we begin the designs for this set of 7 posters I do know that they won’t be just posters. They will become a website, a video, an animation, and an entire new DDA Experience.Â

Today, I will complain. My first complaint is that 15 minutes into my drive to work I realized I forgot something very important and had to turn back to pick it up, and by doing so I woke up my 3-year old. Second, in my efforts to stop using plastic water bottles, the reusable water container I filled up and placed in my car fell and spilled all over the back seat. Third, as I was stopped at a traffic light, the gentlemen in the car next to me rolled down his window to tell me that something was hanging off of my front suspension. Great. So, I pulled over and deemed it non-life threatening and off to work I went.

Now, finally at work with my morning coffee, I decide to read a brief article about the use of type for HTML websites. This should have cheered me up since I’m such a font fanatic. It turns out that the article was one long complaint regarding designing accessible websites and the font choices designers are forced to use. How appropriate for today. I quite enjoyed reading this article as I have often struggled with wanting each DDA-designed website to look stunning, sexy, and load quickly with lots of searchable HTML text, but knowing that we are restricted to a handful of fonts that will show correctly on different browsers and multiple platforms. The writer of the article pointed out that great advances in technology for web typography have not surfaced for 12 years. Well, that is definitely a valid complaint. These restrictions can definitely pose a problem, but fortunately DDA’s degreed and experienced graphic designers work hard to find a balance between beautiful, user-friendly designs that can also be search engine optimized to perform well on search engines like Google.

So, Arial, Courier, Georgia, Times, Verdana, Tahoma and Trebuchet, the spotlight will still shine on you as for the time being (and hopefully not for another 12 years) you will be the font of choice for HTML-based websites.

Today, my day started at 4am. My 6-month-old son woke up with a hungry belly and thankfully he settled back down after a warm bottle. Then, I had the choice of crawling back in bed to listen to my husband snore, and hopefully catch another hour of sleep, or scurry on down to my computer to put the finishing touches on a trade show graphic design, which needs to be completed today. I might also add that this particular project was requested just yesterday and, not wanting to disappoint a good client, we accepted and got right to work.

I decided to take advantage of a quiet house. I made some coffee and headed towards my computer to ease the stress of this looming deadline. At this hour of the morning, the birds around my house were singing as loud as they could. Either they were as hungry as my 6-month-old was this morning or just happy to start a new day knowing the sun is scheduled to shine all day.  So, while I listened to the birds chirping away, I finished up the trade show graphic design and sent it off for client review just in time for my 3-year-old to wake up complaining about a boogie in his nose.Â

Like smells, colors may mean different things to different people and stir up memories that would otherwise be forgotten. For example, every time I smell Garnier Fructis shampoo it reminds me of when I had morning sickness. This is a smell I don’t ever wish to smell again. Color and certain color combinations also carry around different meanings and create a mood, welcomed or not.

In the corporate world, companies adopt their corporate colors - brown for UPS, yellow for DHL and purple/orange for Fedex - and use these colors as the main focus of their branding. UPS has certainly taken their corporate color and created an entire marketing theme: “What can brown do for you?” Color choice, along with all the other ingredients to a successful design (typography, composition, photography, imagery, illustration), needs careful consideration before beginning a project.

Just now I got a phone call from a client requesting that their video animation be placed on a dark blue background to create a slick, classy look. While I am sure we can create a slick, classy video animation on any color background, for this particular client dark blue was chosen. Luckily there are some general rules when choosing the proper color and as with all rules there are exceptions. Except the rule about running with scissors. That should never ever be broken. 

Here are a few: Stay away from reds when designing for the healthcare industry. Yellows, reds, and oranges are great color choices for restaurants and the food industry as they have been proven to increase one’s appetite while blues have been proven to suppress ones appetite as people commonly associate them with mold or rot. However, blue is a great choice for very corporate companies that want to emote dedication, trust, and loyalty.  Â

Quite often DDA graphic designers are called upon to meet with clients during a project’s kick-off meeting. The project might be a brochure design, logo design, or new website design or as was the case this past Thursday, a new package design. DDA (Dynamic Digital Advertising) was called upon to create graphics for a package design very similar to a sample package provided by the client.

While the package design served its purpose and the product sold, we felt it important to improve on the design of the package as well as the graphics. At one point, we suggested to abandon the package altogether and allow the product to stand alone. We are always looking for the best possible solution to any client project request. If that solution benefits DDA, great.

Our client’s are important to us and it is our job to deliver the best possible design whether it comes in the form of an animation, video, logo, package or website. Their satisfaction to a solution that is beneficial and produces results is our ultimate goal.  I believe our client left our meeting knowing that DDA is on their side and confident in the fact that a successful package design will be delivered!

My commute to DDA is approximately 2 hours (1 hour and 50 minutes if traffic is on my side). I believe I can probably drive this commute in my sleep and often times during my drive, I have to stop and think at what stage of my commute I am at. This morning’s commute was an interesting one. While driving, I began to see signs for Dorney Park, which is not normal, and low and behold a roller coaster appeared in the distance. Yep, I drove right by my exit to get onto 476 south from 78 east and went right on through towards New Jersey and Dorney Park. Woohoo! I was tempted to call in sick and spend the day eating snow cones and funnel cake, but decided to turn around and get back on track.

How did this happen? Well, I like to think of it in terms of right brain vs. left brain capabilities. In a previous life, I taught basic drawing and illustration classes to a group of students pursuing their associates degree in graphic design. My book of choice to lead us through this class was “Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain” by Betty Edwards. This book has proven to me and my students that drawing is indeed a teachable, learnable skill. And for all you skeptics out there I would love to prove you wrong. The basic premise of the book is that by quieting the verbal and analytical side of your brain, the left side, and allowing your non-verbal and intuitive side of your brain, the right side, to essentially take over, you can begin “seeing” things we see everyday in a new non-verbal way that is easily converted from sight to paper.

So, while I was listening to music, focusing on the beautiful day, and basically “zoning” out, as we all have done while driving, I missed my exit. My right side of my brain thought (non-verbally, of course), “It’s such a beautiful day, keep driving and observe the scenery.” My left brain obviously was taking a nap.

I am guilty of wanting many things. Right now my main “want” is a new SLR Digital Camera so I can take more professional looking photographs of my kids. My husband and I also want to put two new windows in our living room to make it brighter. We want to get more topsoil so we can finish planting grass where there are bare spots on our land. I want to lose the last 10 lbs of baby weight and I want a new couch for the living room. I can keep this up all day…  But, there are really only a few things I really need.  

Right now I need to finish 3 website design concepts for a cabinet website we are working on. I do want to work on it but I also really need to finish the designs today. I also need to pick up my kids at noon today and I NEED them to take a nap this afternoon so I can get back to work and cross off other tasks such as revisions to a logo design project and begin work on more website design concepts for another client who was so pleased with our trade show graphic design has asked us to work on their website.  So, as I get back to my design work I will also be thinking of reasons to turn my want for a new Digital SLR Camera into a “need”.Â