Choosing a graphics designer is important to bringing your branding and product to the Marketing stage.
What is Graphics Design?
Graphics design is the art of conveying concepts through imagery. It is visual communication by a skillful combination of text and pictures in advertisements, magazines, books, etc. If you stop and look around, you will likely see the work of a graphics designer. Think about this if you were to walk into a grocery store every product on the shelf that has a label or packaging was at one time created and manipulated on a computer by a graphics designer.
The Art of Conveying Concepts through imagery
Weather a product or a cause you have to find a graphics designer that can convey your message through imagery. I spent four years working for a non-profit faith based addictions program where the founder wrote many books and created many teachings on addiction. These teachings were very original and very conceptual. Finding graphics to convey these messages proved to be difficult task. It required some very creative thinking. A good example would be one book title “Discovery of Recovery”. There are the usual Recovery concepts of doors, plants representing growth, windows, and the classic hands in the air. I chose to base this design off the subtitle which better represents the subject of the book “Rekindling God’s Claim to your Flame.” Below is what I came up with.
You have a concept, a message, a product and you need a design that translates that visually to the consumer. The flame on the front of this book says two things.
1. Fire represents a rekindling of the spirit inside a person to be able to overcome their problems.
2. The flame on the dark backdrop also has the idea of the word Discovery. Like your getting ready to explore the dark regions of your soul.
The absolute best design will represent both the title and the ideas inside.
The Equipment
The equipment of a designer has changed greatly over the years. I knew a designer once who was from the era where they would cut out graphics with scissors and paste them together and use a copying machine to print the final composition. Designers today are mostly computer aided. There are various computer aided design programs out there. A professional designer will most likely use Adobe Creative Suite. This is suite of various programs for all kinds of creative endeavors. The three main programs for a graphics designer are Photoshop, Illustrator, and Indesign. Photoshop is more for comping photos together. Illustrator is for creating illustrations and very useful for creating logos. Indesign is for laying out the final project of pictures and text. Others might use Quark Express for layout.
We will continue this discussion at my next post.
Benjamin Smith has been a graphics designer with IFB Design for four years and has worked with many other organizations. Ben is a graphic designer who loves a challenge. He is a highly creative and multi-talented Graphic Designer with extensive experience in multimedia, marketing and print design. accustomed to performing in deadline-driven environments with an emphasis on working within budget requirements. Creative experience in the following: Brochures & Newsletters, Logos & Business Cards, Posters & Post Cards, Stationery, Banners, Book Cover Design and Layout, Magazine Design and Layout, Catalog Design and Layout. In addition Ben is an talented web designer, videographer, and editor, DVD Authoring, CD/DVD Wrap and Label Design