I was asked by a client to re-design a print ad laid out by someone else.

The original layout (above, left) was cluttered and confused. The ad, for an author’s book signing events in upscale communities in Los Angeles County, was going to appear in a local cultural magazine. What was needed was a visual solution that supported the specific message (from Nazi Holocaust victim to survivor to thriving psychologist and author), was informative, and that appealed to the intended audience.

The original raised a lot of concerns: it lacked structure, hierarchy, a relevant color scheme, a headline, appropriate type and typographic design, proportion contrasts and visual “heroes”. Additionally, it included a poorly contrived re-creation of the Barnes & Noble brand identity, which is really not appropriate. The actual identity should have been used.

I designed my make-over from the ground up. I began with a formal structure to unify the various elements and imposed a symmetrical balance. Through hieratic scaling and isolation I made the author and her book the heroes of the design. They are now the focal point of and the visual entrance into the design.

I created a real headline from a block of text in the original and reduced the number of fonts to two, scaling the various text to appropriate sizes. I incorporated a color scheme that was neutral, warm and stabilizing, and which didn’t compete with the text. I revised the entire layout to establish a natural flow of information and create an orderly presentation. The result is a simpler layout that is easy to understand. The ad is now unified, appealing and relevant to the author, the book and the intended audience. The perceived value is increased.

Dr. Erica Miller web site.

I teach a course at UCLA Extension called Elements of Design. It deals with the stuff design is made of. Things like balance, gestalt theory, proportion, value, color, structure and composition all go into the mix of what design is all about. Students who complete the course come away with the understanding that design is not one thing or another but a conglomeration of elements. Remove one or several and it’s just not design.

We can say the same about designers. Let me begin with this analogy: It’s conceivable that a person can purchase a stethoscope and a white coat, have his name embroidered on it and call himself a doctor. But the proof of his being a doctor is not in his accessories or attire, but in his knowledge.

The person who takes a few software classes, prints up some business cards, sets up a website and calls himself a designer is not necessarily a real designer. He might look like a real designer but without certain abilities that are essential to the craft he’s created a veneer with no substance to support it.

Real designers, whether formally educated or not, are set apart by virtue of what they know and how they apply it. (How and where they learn these things is not my point here.) Beyond technical ability using Creative Suite software, there are critical thinking skills and background knowledge involved in creating successful design solutions.

This is my list of essential knowledge and abilities that are foundational to being a real designer. Lacking any of these ingredients compromises one’s ability to design well, if at all, in my experience. Please note that none of these have anything to do with Photoshop:

Design principles and elements, including gestalt theory;
Color theory, including web and print color, psychology, symbology and basic scientific properties of light and pigment;
Typography, including typefaces and font families, and the ability to select a face based on how it needs to communicate;
Knowledge of design history;
Knowledge of popular culture, current trends and future projections;
Drawing skills, because drawing is a basic form of visual communication;
Verbal and written communication skills to be able to present a solid rationale for design decisions, keep clients informed and educate when necessary.

Then on top of these foundational ingredients we can add technical skill and the ability to engage in the design process to reach a successful outcome. Why? Because a real designer can design with a pencil or a computer. The tool is secondary; the thinking ability is primary.

A few places where you can get learn design without applying to a degree program:
Art Center at Night
Otis Continuing Education
UCLA Extension
School of Visual Arts Continuing Education
Rhode Island School of Design Continuing Education
Pratt Institute Continuing & Professional Studies
Parsons The New School for Design Continuing Education
Rocky Mountain College of Art & Design Continuing Education

Graphic design represents ideas and values. A design is not in itself the idea, but the expression of it. Design points to something greater than itself. In most cases design serves as an ambassador, not as the self-expression of the designer, but as the expression of a business or organization to its audience. The value of a design is in how and what it communicates.

If your business or organization is a worthy enterprise, shouldn’t it be represented by something that is equally worthy?

If you were to choose an ambassador to represent your interests to the world, wouldn’t it behoove you to choose someone who will represent you accurately and deliver your message clearly; someone who cares how you’re presented and how people respond to you? You’re not going to simply drive by and pick someone off the street corner to do that. You’re going to carefully select from qualified candidates.

If your design assets represent your interests, why wouldn’t you want them to be as carefully chosen?

If a business is worth establishing and customers are worth pursuing, why not make the appropriate investment? You should be concerned that your graphic assets are serving your interests and representing your enterprise in the best way possible. A worthy enterprise deserves the investment in and the cost of a worthy ambassador.

Setting up for a critique session in one of my classes at UCLA Extension.

Being a designer is perceived by many as a fun job. Designers get to work with colors, shapes and amazing computer programs and be creative for a living. The design field is a natural choice for creative people.

Students often enter a design program and are surprised by the reality that design is a discipline. Design involves theory and practice. It includes psychology and geometry. There is critical thinking and hand skills that need to be developed. There are tools and materials, drawing and technology. There are objectives, expectations and deadlines.

Design takes aesthetic principles and marries them to function. A designer must be visually literate, able to speak the visual language. This involves being able to think both concretely and creatively. In school, theory taught and projects assigned are meant to develop these skills and ingrain them into the emerging designer so that they become innate. Achieving these things is not easy. It takes hard work, long hours, trial and error, evaluation and lots of coffee. Students complain when a project takes all their time or is too hard for them.

What should determine the degree of difficulty for a given project or course of study: a student’s inexperience and assumption that design is supposed to be fun and easy?

We automatically default to our lowest level of effort. This default position results in mediocrity rather than excellence. Most of us become designers to create meaning, to create change or to achieve significance. In none of these cases will mediocrity meet the call. We must be excellent. Excellence requires effort and training.

The design practice isn’t for everyone. Design is not easy. Design is not decoration. It is a discipline. It is naturally difficult. Those who are gifted with visual acumen must still develop the character required to make those creative gifts useful and the skills needed to provide a platform. Those with less talent are not necessarily out of the game, but they must understand that what makes design valuable is not that it’s fun or pretty but that it is the result of a compendium of thought, evaluation, ideas, skill, theory and practice. Competition for design jobs is crowded with talented people exercising various levels of discipline and character development.

When students realize the challenges ahead of them they generally respond in one of two ways: either they say it’s too hard and give up or, or they take up the challenge, press in, work through and allow themselves to be molded into visually literate people with the ability to create the right solution to a stated problem.

The degree of difficulty is determined by the level of competition and the expectations of excellence imposed by the sophisticated, visually-aware marketplace.

Businesses have a choice when seeking creative services: They can go the cheap route and buy a logo through a crowdsource/contest site where they’ll select the lowest bidder, or they can commission a designer for a custom, targeted design. This creates a dilemma for legitimate freelancers. Competition for freelance design work is not only increasing, it’s being degraded as design thinking becomes under-valued and relegated to the level of banal doodles seeking a home. If businesses get used to paying pennies for a bad design offered by the lowest bidder or for an off-the-rack piece of badly drawn clip art, the profession itself will be compromised.

Many freelancers are turning to these crowdsourcing sites, thinking that getting something – anything – is better than nothing. And if they can win bids enough times they may be able to eek out a living. However, that approach leaves everything to chance and speculation – not a great way to make a living. It’s a gamble.

Leaving your income up to chance is neither wise nor proactive. Giving others control over your livelihood while spending time creating work that may or may not be purchased is neither useful to you nor helpful for achieving your long term goals.

The best way to get new work is through relationship. As people begin to know you they trust you. Trust is one of the best compensations anyone can earn. Relationships and trust however, take time to build.

You build relationship by becoming involved with people. Joining chambers of commerce or service clubs like Rotary, Kiwanis and the Lions, or serving as a volunteer with cause-based organizations will help spread your reputation and create opportunities for conversation and trust.

Target people and businesses you want to work with. There’s the temptation to take just any project that comes along, but it’s better to be judicious in selecting work and clients that are a good fit. Not every project is the right one. Not every client is worth working with. So be selective. Being selective requires, of course, a foreknowledge of the kind of client you want to work with. Foreknowledge requires planning and evaluation.

Use your LinkedIn and Facebook connections. Don’t just link up with other designers but also with business owners, marketing pros and corporate executive who might be strategic for your professional growth—people who will refer you or would give you a project directly.

Ask for referrals from current and past clients. Don’t have a client yet? Ask for referrals from friends and family. Don’t be afraid to let people know you’re looking for work. Always follow up on the referral and be sure to thank the referrer, even if their referral doesn’t pan out. Expressing gratitude is golden.

Whatever you do, do it with the long-term in mind. It’s tempting to focus on short-term revenue or getting the next project. Yet whatever you do, first determine where you want to go as a design practitioner. Where do you want to end up at the end of your time in the profession? What contributions do you want to make? Then break ground and build that foundation now. Be willing to give up some short-term fixes for the sake of your long-term goals. What strategic relationships do you want to establish now that will benefit you down the road?

If you have a well-designed strategy for building the right relationships, you will have a better chance for sustained success than if you focus on just getting the next project.

I have been working with writer/director, Tim Kanter, to promote his play, One Life, a multi-media theatrical performance. Its synopsis is that there’s a global pandemic that is killing everyone, no one is immune, and it is going to wipe out everyone. They find one cure – in the blood of one man. Here’s the trailer featuring my logo at the end.

The print promotion includes posters and program shells.

The play will be presented at Lighthouse Church in Newbury Park, CA on April 3 & 4.

Coldplay’s web site created this year, bears a remarkable resemblance to a book cover design by Paul Rand a few decades ago. The comparison cannot be missed.

Compare the Coldplay web page screen capture:

Home page at www.coldplay.com

Cover Design by Paul Rand

Comparing is to focus on what is similar. Contrasting is to focus on what is not. There are obvious similarities but enough differences to understand in these two designs to see that the web design is perhaps more than inspired but not a derivative or copy of the book cover. It is “in the style of”. Maybe it’s even a tip of the hat.

The web page lacks the contrast of precise, explicit edges against accidental edges, and is more “dirty” in sensibility. The book cover is an example of modernism looking forward, the web page is an example of postmodernism looking backward.

On the evening before during the meeting of a creative team I’m leading, one team member made the statement that orange is a hideous color and no one likes it, so therefore it would not be appropriate used in the particular identity program we were discussing. Having observed varieties of orange in common used, I disagreed, and we had a lighthearted argument.

On the day after, I was recounting the discussion to my students when I happened to look around the classroom and noticed the amount of orange in the room. Almost all of the various branded shopping bags and totes the students used to transport their projects had orange in their design. So I pulled out my iPhone and happily photographed the bags as proof that orange is indeed liked by many and is widely used in design solutions.

Color trends come and go. Orange, which is an energizing and somewhat forceful color, has been enjoying a widespread popularity not seen since the 1970s. It’s used brighter and bolder than the burnt oranges back then, and is often paired with neutral grays or earth tones. As one student commented, “Orange is the new pink”.

Toward the end of my design fundamentals course I generally ask my students how they, having gone through the process of learning design principles and applying them to a variety of projects, would define design. Here are the responses from several who recently completed the course:

Design is the process of externalizing many possible solutions to a problem and making choices regarding which solutions are likely to be most appropriate to the future contexts of the problem -Matthew T.

[Design is] the creation, invention or materialization of an idea or thought into a visual and/or tactile and/or audial presence to be shared with others, either for an end-goal like persuading into action or thought-provocation or for pure enjoyment (which sometimes still leads to the aforementioned end-goals). –Erika R.

If I was giving a talk about design I would probably define it as a way of communication. The planning and execution of a project that says what I am trying to say and has a start to finish. –Amy M.

Design is a visual or graphic means to communicate an idea or message, toward a particular goal or outcome. While there is a very critical aesthetic element to design, the function has to be considered first and foremost. I have to first ask (and really take into consideration) very practical and fundamental questions, like who is the target audience and what is the purpose. Otherwise, if I always designed based on my own personal taste or preference, all my designs would probably come out with a very similar style and they wouldn’t as effectively convey the idea or message or achieve the desired goal. -Naomi B.

Design is the creative and artistic solution to an overall problem or goal through the means of texts and graphics. –Kathryn V.

How do you define design?

House Republicans' chart depicting Democrats' plan for government-run health care.

Setting aside that fact that many think the Dems’ proposed national healthcare plan is a total nightmare, the GOP chart is no sweet dream from a design standpoint.

Where do we begin? If information hierarchy is necessary to provide a “front door” into the design, the first thing we note is that there is no front door – no “first read”. As we look at this thing, where do we start? We could begin anywhere, and spend hours hopping from point to point in the design trying to decide where to go next. There’s no single element that stands up and cries out, “Here! Come this way. Follow me.” In fact, we are forced to hunt even for the chart’s title.

Every element in the layout and the amount of space in between are approximately the same size. This amount of similarity creates monotony across the visual surface. The chart is relegated to mere pattern rather than operating as a purveyor of information. It has no focal point.

The colors used are base level, highly saturated and create legibility problems for the textual content inside each box, oval or circle.

There is no exit point. Once we’ve made some sort of entry into the layout we’re stuck. We can’t get out. We’re either going to keep going around and around or become incredibly tired or crazy from our frantic maneuverings through all that clutter. When we finally extricate ourselves out of sheer exhaustion and make a swift getaway we have gained no greater understanding of what’s being communicated than when we first entered the design space.

The single redeeming element is the gray background, which sits quietly behind all the noisy chatter of the brighter elements.

The Democrats responded to the Republicans with a simpler, “questionable” chart which is less cluttered (meaning, it has a bit more white space) and takes a stab at establishing hierarchy, but communicates little:

Democrats' health chart opus

Compare these charts to another, created by the folks at The New Republic which more elegantly describes the current state of health care in the United States. It, by the way, has a front door (note the red burst at top left with the small word, you.) That’s where you enter and you know exactly where to go next. You’re given clear and distinct visual choices. This is good design: it is both aesthetically pleasing and communicates well:

The New Republic's opus applies aesthetic principles to make sense of the current US healthcare system.

From a design standpoint, if good design is our plumb line, the Republicans’ chart appears to fail. Except that it doesn’t. It actually accomplishes its purpose quite successfully in its ugly confusion. The chart is meant to be confusing, monotonous, difficult, illegible and unfriendly. Its purpose is to communicate the confusion, monotony, difficulty and inhospitality of the proposed healthcare plan its describing, and it achieves its purpose very well. It is a worthy example of what not to do if you want to create good design, and also of how some ideas are best communicated by breaking the rules of good design.