FIrst Post

I get a lot of calls from friends who have graphic designer friends. And these designer friends have questions about issues they are working through. Sometimes they just need to talk it out. Other times, they want help dealing with some issue.

I talk to a lot of designers who have had to learn on the job how printing works. It's not an easy thing, to understand printing: plates, separations, forms, match colors, halftone screens, spots, overprints, knockouts. Then there's the issue of web design and a completely different color model, resolution, compatibility, stickiness, download speeds. It's a lot of stuff, and there's never enough education to meet our needs for all this. Not at the speed that we have to work for our clients, at least.

I've had questions about how to do this stuff since I worked for my first freelance client 15 years ago, an illustration project for a tee shirt. Yes, this means I was a teen at the time of that project, but it set me on a path to learn more about how commercial art worked. One thing I began to realize, as I worked for more clients through college, is that graphic design is a job lots of people have opinions on, but few have an understanding of how to execute.

Design is more than just making a message pretty and adding pictures to copy. But we know this already. Clients, however, sometimes need some help understanding that a design project is often more than the perceived visual challenge that brought them to you.

Often, I've found, clients need the interaction with a designer to organize thoughts and manage information. I discovered early in my career that I was most useful as an information architect for whatever message a client was trying to deliver. My job started by examining all the pieces of information presented to me and getting them in some order of importance and timing in relation to eachother. This step would effectively start a project going down the right path, or not.

So, here's what I propose. Let's work it out here, online. Let's discuss it and find answers, to make learning and understanding our jobs as designers easier. I'll try to keep updating and talking through issues, and I'm hoping others will share opinions and solutions here too. This can be our reference, so let's see where it goes!