graphic design | Graphicdesignmontreal.ca

Tips on How to Become a Better Graphic Designer in 2011

Staying on top of the graphic design business means staying social, understanding consumer behavior, sales and personal selling, trends on how the latest technology functions, navigation processes, and the overall marketing objectives and strategies involved in web design and social media marketing. Each industry will be a new challenge as the target market will be drastically different, and will think differently, navigate using a different browser and will navigate completely differently, will have different levels of patience, and varying goals and objectives. In fact, many of these factors will often be outside a graphic designer’s control. However, the important thing is to remember to take control and optimize the factors that you can control using as much information as possible including your own knowledge of design, marketing trends, and other resources.

Whether you are a graphic designer who has a client who would like to design a website, a Facebook fan page, Twitter background, YouTube channel or MySpace background, or even print media including flyers, business cards, pamphlets, brochures and other media, the best graphic design principles are applied and top results are achieved when a graphic designer possesses in-depth knowledge of marketing.
Thus, the intelligent graphic designer should be more inclined and motivated to perform the following tasks:
• Improve your overall knowledge of traditional and online marketing
• Acquire knowledge of the online shopping process and how to optimize user interfaces
• Stay up to date on recent trends in graphic design and online marketing, which currently include Google Remarketing, Google Plus, and Groupon
• Get on top of conversion optimization for websites, Facebook fan pages, and Twitter

(become a better graphic designer continued…)

Web Page Layout – Composition Tips and Principles for Web Page Layouts

Many new and upcoming graphic artists struggle with various visual, web page layout and composition issues. Whether you are laying out a web page, a flyer, an illustration, a book, magazine or business card, below, you will find a very useful guide filled with concise advice on how to effectively produce a quality layout. We have examined a few general visual design, layout, aesthetic graphic design and graphic design composition principles which can be applied to illustration, graphic design and any kind of work that involves visual composition, depth and perception including web design, photography and film or video production. Effectively, we have produced the greatest series of page layout and composition tips discussed using traditional design principles for photographers, animators, graphic designers and web page designers.

Web Page Layout – Main Direction: Composition Basics

You can emphasize a horizontal, vertical or diagonal direction. Vertical Space is harder to control than horizontal space. Most of our environment consists of vertical objects. A tilted horizon or angle, can cause compositional discomfort for viewers, and is often used to achieve dramatic, intense, dynamic, energetic, stress-inducing effects. We strive to maintain stability in a picture. We should be cautious when tilting the horizon in news or documentary productions. Direction was used in effective layouts and compositions throughout history, and for culture-specific purposes in architecture. Of course, the combination of horizontals and verticals reflects our current reality.

(web page layout continued…)

Graphic Depth Factors – Linear Perspective, Relative Size, Overlapping Planes, Height In Plane

Graphic Depth – Linear Perspective

Linear perspective was something that took a long time to conceive of and was neglected in medieval artwork, as was graphic depth altogether. Leonardo DaVinci, among many others elaborated on the principle of vanishing points, which suggest that all lines (graphic vectors) associated with objects converge to a common location which disappears in the distance, which is why we perceive the world as such. This point is on the horizon line at eye (or camera) level. When creating architectural or technical drawings, one uses one, two and even three point grids to determine the various vanishing points of a three dimensional object/location. This notion evolved in to drawing techniques commonly known as 1, 2 and 3 point perspective. When things are farther away, they appear closer together, which is called the crowding effect. Placing background objects closer together can also enhance depth. Texture refers to objects that repeat and more of them are closer together, the farther away from the camera they are. This results in crowding through texture. The faster the points meet, the greater the distance. This artificial tactic is referred to as forced perspective. (graphic depth factors continued…)

Visual Graphic Design Layout – Object Framing

Visual Layout – Facilitating Visual Closure

When working as a graphic designer, it is important to organize and frame content so objects can easily be grouped visually based on their geometric shapes or patterns. Psychological closure allows us to mentally fill in all the gaps for information we are unable to see. We cannot see any object from 360 angles at once, yet are able to identify most objects from any angle. This phenomenon enables us to perform well in our environment, even given our visual constraints/limitations. We tend to break things down into their simplest forms, like shapes (squares and triangles). Strong diagonals often result in perceiving triangular shapes. In ordered to establish your framing, you can always look for certain shapes, images, angles, patterns and other features in order to get graphic closure.

For example, on a particular work of art, the rocks to the left of the screen are simply a few properly positions splotches of paint. However, they create a convincing image due to their clever positioning. (visual graphic design layout continued…)

Graphic Design Cover Letter

We have had numerous requests for help on academic subjects and post-graduate assistance, in order to help Montreal graphic designers find work, and successfully prepare their portfolios for various competitive arts and multimedia programs. Below you will find a letter of intent that allowed one of our own employees to enter a University-level arts program at Concordia University. We have titled this document “Graphic Design Cover Letter” to help the many struggling graphic artists and creative designers locate this document, and successfully enter their first program of choice. It is completely unedited, meaning it has not been at all modified from its original version. Enjoy the read! Comments and feedback are most welcome. Forward this article to your friends and colleagues, and remember to bookmark it. Also feel free to subscribe to our feed for more frequent updates, tips and tricks, and graphic design industry news items. Read the arts program cover letter below for a real life example of what has worked for a once aspiring and now successful multimedia and web designer.

I would like to major in Communications Studies because I see this as an opportunity to enhance my creative abilities. I would like to learn script writing and take courses that will complement my design skills such as film production, (graphic design cover letter continued…)

Best Freelance Graphic Design Portfolio Tips

If you are a freelance graphic designer, graphic artist or illustrator, here are a few simple and easy tips on how you can quickly improve your portfolio.

1) Market Research – Know your target audience

It is important to understand who will be viewing your graphic design portfolio. Whether you are preparing your portfolio for a big show at a gallery, entering a graphic design contest on the web, applying for a position as a graphic artist at a local graphic design studio, or trying to impress your parents so they finance your incredibly overpriced graphic design degree, it is important to know your target audience, and cater to them accordingly.
For instance, you wouldn’t show all your erotic artwork or some sentimental pieces about your childhood troubles to a serious, snooty, posh, academic-looking, top graphic arts program or art history program when applying to their graphic design school would you? It is important to realize that everyone’s creative and artistic juices flow in many different directions and that they are very personal. So, as objective as we would like the world to be and as great and original as we believe our own artwork may be, we have to remind ourselves to prepare our portfolios in such a way that they will be properly received by our audience.
Understanding who your portfolio is for, where it will be presented, how it will be evaluated, and ultimately why you are creating it, should always be the first step in its inception. ( graphic design portfolio tips continued…)

Graphic Design Career Tips

So you have just graduated an illustration, graphic design, or other multimedia program. You studied hard and got fantastic grades but have been taught exclusively aesthetics and know absolutely nothing about marketing or business. Where to start?

1) Get Experience Doing Graphic Design Work & Working with REAL Clients

You aren’t going to like what I am about to share with you, but before taking on any enormous mandates, or even attempting to, you will have to start small. Not because you are a terrible and inexperienced artist, not because you are mentally or physically incapable of managing the condensed and often last minute time constraints, but because you simply lack experience managing REAL projects that aren’t provided to you by a friendly professor who has not invested in your work, and probably also lacks REAL (graphic design career tips continued…)

Hire Graphic Designer – Everyone Needs a Good Graphic Designer

The great divide between those who just surf the web and those who create the web

Do you remember the first time you had a great business idea? Or maybe it wasn’t a business idea, maybe it was just an idea. If you know nothing about graphic design, web design, SEO, ecommerce, or anything of that nature, your thought process probably went something like this…

“I’ve got a really cool idea”

“OK how do I get started? Simple, I just need to create a website to sell my idea to the masses”

At this point you did one of two things, you either tried to find someone who could execute your web strategy or you went through the pain and agony of trying to get a website running by yourself.

Anyone who has tried to create a website on their own understands just how painful and time consuming of an experience it can be! If you took this route, you might have come up with following questions?

Where is the best place to register a domain?

If the .com domain that I wanted is not available, which alternative should I choose and why? Should I go with a .net, .co, or the local web suffix for my country?

Should I invest my time and energy to learn HTML or PHP to create my website?

What if my website doesn’t have the aesthetic appeal that I had initially intended, should I learn tools like Photoshop or flash? ( hire graphic designer continued…)