Design • Print • Photo

Paring down or Paring up?

by admin on Sep 03, 2010 (0) Comments

This week Blue Eye saw it’s first Twitter post.

OK, for most of the world this is not a big deal. (Actually, I can’t think of a scenario where this is news.) But, it caused me to think about the way we communicate, the way Blue Eye Graphics communicates…

Blue Eye has a:

That’s in addition to email and telephone contact of course.

I had avoided Twitter for so long due the fact that there are already too many streams of information to keep track of. I believe that it can dilute the message, and that can only be a bad thing. On the other hand there are people that don’t have a Facebook, but will have a Linkedin account (which connects to Behance), for example.

They are all able of being great tools to display portfolio items and connecting with other people, and all customers are people. The better we can communicate with each other, the more we can understand about each other’s needs, and that means the better the result of the work, and the quality of the work is of great importance.

In other news, more new printed items to be posted soon!

“Expediency”

by admin on Aug 06, 2010 (0) Comments

New image: “Expediency”

It’s not so straight forward to explain the title. But I can say that what was originally going to be something angular turned into a kind of dark scenic. Am I pleased with the result? Yes.

The more I look at it, the more I see in the textures and colours. A note on the colours as well… I didn’t decide on the “city in flames” idea until right at the end. Also because the whole image is quite dark, it allows the colours to be subdued and still be lively. It’s this kind opposite that I like very much when I look at illustrations and design work.Here’s a detail shot to show what I mean.

Of course most of the design work I produce is more targeted and functional – so it’s quite a luxury to let the mind run free on personal illustration work.

  • Completed: 1.05am.
  • Work time: 2 hours approx.
  • Software used: Photoshop only
  • Textures, photos: Self

How to design better Artwork in 10 steps

by admin on Aug 03, 2010 (Comments Off) Comments

Design a layout

This is a little guide to help design as best as you can for a free or very little money. The details work in any software because they are principles rather than software technique. So, let’s get started!

Planning

1: Get a pen (or pencil – I prefer pencil) and some blank, scrap paper.

2: Decide the message before going to the computer. Put everything you can think of onto the paper – then start stripping away everything that distracts from what you really want to say.

3: Get a new sheet of paper and start laying your material out roughly. Use boxes to indicate where the text should go – write the titles boldly where they should go. Put boxes for pictures with a rough indication of content.

4: Refine your layout.

Consistency

5: If your document has more than one page, you should design it as a whole, using elements that are common throughout – this will help your audience to feel at home when they read through.

Keeping it simple with software

6: Now that you have a layout guide on paper, and have kept it consistent, you can start using preparing your document on computer. Always, always start by making the document properties the same size as you intend to output. So for example, if you want to print an A5 booklet, design it in A5. This will eliminate problems and hassles later.

7: Don’t go wild with fonts and colours. A splash of colour here and there makes a more refined, classy document than one with colours everywhere. Stick to 3 or 4 typefaces maximum – including headings. By doing this, you can choose more dramatic fonts while keeping things tidy.

8: Spellcheck. At least twice.

9: Save regularly.

10: If printing at a printers, export as a high quality PDF to help produce predictable, consistent results.

Remember, ask for help if needed. Maybe you don’t know how to make the software do what you want… It might be time to explain your needs to a designer and they can help meet your requirements.

Good luck!

Newsletters – Shout it Out or Lose Your Voice

by admin on Jun 22, 2010 (Comments Off) Comments

April – May / beginning of June means the end of Spring (well with our weather – who knows?) But anyway, with the end of spring, brings the newsletter season. Actually this time round, I had the opportunity on both newsletters and price lists, as some are shown in the pictures….

24 page A5 newsletter. Colour and Black & White, printed on 115gsm gloss.

12 page A4 special Edition Newsletter. (8 page with an additional 4 Special Cover). BOdy printed on 130gsm gloss cover printed on 200gsm gloss.

12 page A4 Newsletter. Colour throughout, printed on 150gsm gloss.

6 Panel A5 price lists. Colour throughout, printed on 150gsm silk.

I like newsletter work. Newsletters are excellent jigsaw puzzles to put together. As a rule, there is a set way of doing things that the content is manipulated to fit into. But there are those other occasions when I get to design (or redesign) the layout.

What’s nice about those times is that it stretches the mind to think about how the content will fit into the pages in the future. The use of page “furniture” like page number styles, frames and borders if any, and use of margins and columns really allows the newsletter to have a voice or tone about it…. Too playful and you can lose an audience, too serious and you can do the same. It’s a balance.

Each publication requires a different setup and mental attitude also – so a degree of flexibility/agility is needed to make it fit together well. Over the last several weeks, I’ve been fortunate to work on some simultaneously, which also means mental juggling. Work – proof – work – proof.

The main thing for me personally, is to make the newsletter pleasant to view but without losing legibility. After all, if the reader cannot understand the text, then there’s no point in having a story at all.

Every business, every person has a story to tell. Part of my job to make it as easy to understand and appropriate as possible. Fancy pictures cannot take the place of content unless the pictures have meaning of their own. This is the point of design, I think, to not just make things pretty – lots of people can do that – but to deliver the real meaning that needs to be put across.

Keep the essential message or lose your voice – good design helps to keep it.

Day out at the Design Museum

by admin on May 21, 2010 (Comments Off) Comments

Saturday, 15 May.

I’ve been looking forward to this day for several weeks… Recently things have got very busy with work and church and volunteer stuff that we (the wife and I) have had to start scheduling days out weeks in advance. She’s clever, and knows that if she can produce a destination that is: a little bit worky, a bit interesting, and somewhere in the centre of London, then she’s got a good hope that it’ll happen.

So we decided upon going to the Design Museum on the Southbank. On a two for one offer. :)

The Southbank was dotted around with decorated plastic elephants to highlight the danger of extinction, the pictures with the patterns show some of the detail. And I have to say I have always found London is a very picturesque, angular, beautiful city to take photos of. The mix of old with new is especially stimulating.

I expected to go there and see some interesting things, which happened, but what I didn’t expect was to come away from there feeling as nourished as I did. And it turns out, she felt the same way. It took us over a hour to go through a single room – not because the room was huge or had too many items to take in – but because each item held enough interest for a person to want to take the time to read the note, view the object, watch the video, contemplate what they were thinking about and finally come to the conclusion that if this was available, “yes I’d buy that for my living room because it’s beautiful.”

But to go only that far would be shortsighted. These objects are not just designed to be beautiful, but also to carry out a function or purpose, which in itself carries another sense of beauty.

We did no research before going to the museum. We did not know what exhibitions were currently being held, but we assumed that it would be good no matter what it would be. A large portion of the museum was focussed squarely on “sustainability.” I think some of the items were more of a loose interpretation of this idea, but some hit the nail right on the head.

In short, sometimes I think we can get so caught up in the work of work, (even though we enjoy it) that we forget how great the privilege and opportunity to both affect people’s lives and for the self-expression afforded by this thing we call design. We can lose sight of why we love it, and then we catch another glimpse of the reason – and we love it all the more.