What does it take to become a great designer?

What is design? Design is that which lays the foundation for making an object or an artwork. Design in something which sends out a similar message to a wide range of audience because it was intended to serve just the purpose for which it was created. Design is sometimes defined as both the process and the final product of an endeavour to fulfil a personal or professional brief. Design is also about demonstrating how beautiful something can be and sometimes, it is about changing life and influencing the future.

In various other domains, Design can take different meanings but the underlying principle remains the same. Whether you are creating a piece of graphic work, a website, a design for a new product, or even drafting the final plan for a 100 storey building, what matters is that the creative process is everything.

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“Daddy, What’s a Brand?” and 9 More Awkward Questions for Uncertain Times

Naked, without its logo

1. “Daddy, what’s a brand?” Chiquita, Victoria’s Secret, The GOP, Amnesty International. They all use marketing and invite trust in a distinct belief system. They’re all, to one degree or another, brands. For a brand, nirvana is when your good name is so widely endorsed that it enters the language. “Pass the Kleenex.” “Google it.” But that’s the top of a long and slippery slope–look at Toyota and Tiger Woods. A healthy brand drives up your stock, and vice versa. These are the things we thought we knew. It’s 2010–are they still true?

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60+ sites to promote your design articles

We’re finishing our series on connecting to the design community this week with a focus on article submission sites. If you’ve thrown your hat into the design blogging ring you’ve probably discovered that writing great articles is not enough to succeed. You’ve got to be able to promote what you write in order to get some attention and all that follows.

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An interview with Chad W Beckerman

If cover designers are superhero alter-egos, then Chad W. Beckerman (art director and cover designer for Abrams Books for Young Readers and Amulet Books, as well as Mishaps and Adventures blogger) would have to be Clark Kent. Friendly and hard working by day, yet designing covers that have been known to burst onto shelves, leaping tall buildings (or at least generating lots of interest) in a single bound. Here are but a few:

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Colour correction basics in Photoshop

Have you wanted to learn more about color correction? The focus of this tutorial is to help you delve deeper into color correcting to up the production value of your images. Learn a few simple techniques while creating.

I will be using Photoshop CS4 for this tutorial, but all of the features I will use are available in previous versions of Photoshop. Or in any decent photo-editing software

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Why you are losing clients | How to stop

We spend a lot of time on Freelance Folder talking about marketing. That is because good marketing is very important to a freelancer’s success. It is important to get those clients in the door and signed up for your products or services if you are going to earn enough to really support yourself as a freelancer.

For some freelancers, though, that “in” door is actually a revolving door. If this is you, it may seem that no sooner do you get a client signed up for your products or services than they leave. You have no idea why you are losing clients, but you know that it has to stop.

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This post should take some of the mystery out of why freelancers lose clients. It will also provide some tips for how to hang on to the clients that you do have.

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Overcoming creative block

I do not know what to write. I am sitting here staring at the screen, running sentences in my head, and turning my music on and off. Earlier I went foraging for food (in hopes of sparking some magical words), but ended up getting distracted by Arrested Development for 20 minutes. This happens just about every time I sit down to do anything. I’ll probably go play the guitar between this paragraph and the next.

Of course this is a familiar situation. Often referred to as “writer’s block”, the concept of an inspiration rut is unfortunately very familiar to every creative in any field. Sometimes ideas just don’t show up to work. Given this, we all develop strategies to combat such a scenario. Not all are foolproof, but it’s safe to say that most creative people have some battle plan for dealing with the dreaded “blank page”.

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How to drastically improve your designs

Design is everywhere. We see it in on billboards as we drive down the street. When we go to a restaurant and look at the menus, we see it. When we sit down on our couch and watch television, it’s visible on the commercials, advertisements, and even the movies and TV shows.

It is all around us and it stimulates and motivates much of our decisions subconsciously every day. The encyclopedia refers to graphic design as,

“the process of communicating visually using text and images to present information. Graphic design practice embraces a range of cognitive skills, aesthetics and crafts, including typography, visual arts and page layout. Like other forms of design, graphic design often refers to both the process (designing) by which the communication is created and the products (designs) which are generated.”

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Your creative drive

As graphic designers we are asked day in and day out to be creative, be original, and be knowledgeable. Our ideas can go anywhere from impressing a few fellow classmates to greatly increasing the revenue of a local/national establishment. Yet, how do we develop into a successful designer in the first place? Additionally, how do we stay on top of our game and continue to be inventive and reputable?

“The foundation of a successful designer is measured by his/her creative drive.”

It is that drive that provides us with the inspiration and motivation to work towards something influential. However, discovering what drives us is likely as unique as our own design preference. Luckily, we live in a time today where designs from around the world are available within a few clicks of your mouse. So how can we increase and build our creative drive?

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Three deadly sins of print design

We’ve all had the painful experience of being handed a brochure that was “designed” with WordArt (or the slightly less painful Pages). The “designer” (we’ll call him Larry) beams, happy to see that his arched, distorted, glowing type is burning holes in your hands. You wouldn’t make those mistakes, would you? Of course not! You are an experienced designer, right?

Right. That’s what Larry says.

Some of the best designers have been tripped up by simple mistakes when designing for print. Obviously, we aren’t just talking about WordArt. We’re talking about a design that looks great on the screen, but it sits next to Larry’s best when you try to transfer it to paper. These are some common mistakes that many designers unknowingly make when coming to the print world.

1. Designing in RGB

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