While, as a freelancer, you absolutely must focus on your business and develop killer business skills, you also need to guard and…
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The 4 Seasons of Creativity
If you're a designer or artist trying to wrap your head around what balance is all about, you're not alone. Balance is…
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The Basics of Visual Balance
An Eye Level reader wrote: What would be the forward steps to draw realistically, in correct proportions, from imagination? Especially imaginary (though…
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How To Design A Drawing
I want to preface this by saying that as you learn and apply design principles, and gain experience with organizing elements within…
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How Paying Attention Helps You Draw Better
Light logic is a system of using value pattern to create the illusion of real space and form. It is simply the idea…
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Introduction to Light Logic
Whenever we create design and art we are composing. Composition is the make up, arrangement or structure of a work, whether it's…
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Creating Compositions That Communicate
How to create space… specifically, how to create the illusion of volume in 2-dimensional art and design. In this tutorial I…
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How To Show 3D Volume in 2D Space Using Spatial Devices
[themeone_drop_cap letter="T" color="accent-color2" /]here are, of course, more than 5 ways to create a focal point in an image or design. The…
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5 Ways To Create A Focal Point
There is a phrase: ex nihilo nihil fit. It roughly translates from the Latin as from nothing, nothing comes. Generally, this is a…
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Making the Invisible Visible
Color schemes work best when the amounts of the colors used in the design are not equal. A variety of proportions creates…
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Create Better Color Schemes By Using Proportions
There are two ways in which we mix color: Additively, using direct light from an original source, and Subtractively, using light reflected from…
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2 Ways To Mix Color
To answer the question, “How much will it cost?”, the question, “What do you want to accomplish?” needs to be asked first. Clients are often…
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How To Budget For A Design Project
branding influence reputation
typographic illustration in reds for Design and Conquer blog post
Of Influence, Time and Trust Branding is a popular discussion in my circles, and in the course of those conversations I gain…
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A Philosophy of Branding, Part 1
Are you more concerned about aesthetics or your bottom line when contracting design services? Designers - good ones - always care about how…
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Should You Care About Aesthetics?
A significant percentage of my clients are non-profit enterprises. I have had many opportunities to design campaign materials, annual reports, and graphic…
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Designing For Non-Profits
Working with clients can be likened to a downhill race: The designer moves along in her process and picks up momentum as she heads toward the finish…
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Creative Freedom Through Setting Boundaries
Like me, you've probably received email with a "Think of the forests before you print this." appeal in the footer. We're encouraged…
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The Sustainability of Paper
Identity is the facts - the indisputable reality - of who or what something is. Without getting into an existential discussion, let's…
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Identity: Why You Need More Than a Logo
Start-up businesses and organizations tend to hold themselves back in terms of establishing reputation and solidity by under-budgeting and under-investing in the…
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They’ll Notice
Whether you’re a business owner, executive or staff member, business cards continue to play a leading role at events, in business and…
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Optimizing Your Business Card
I am a full-time graphic designer/illustrator and part-time design educator, so design thinking is a familiar and routine part of my life.…
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The Value of Design is the Thought Behind It
Like any design, websites are experienced. Your goal should be to provide the best experience to the largest percentage of people who…
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Your Website’s Magnificent 7
Listening is related to empathy. Empathy is valuing another's experience, and keeps the designer from creating something that is self-expressive.
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Listening Is A Design Skill
Before working with a designer, a client should prepare for that relationship. Often, businesses will request a web site or a logo…
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Briefly Stated: The Advantages of Getting It In Writing
There 's a book in my library titled, 101 Things to Learn in Art School by Kit White. It's full of truths…
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Skills You’re Not Taught In Design School
As I prepare to teach my next course in Design History at UCLA Extension, I gave some thought to why designers should study…
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10 Good Reasons To Study Design History
Since color is a fundamental design element, designers should have a well-rounded knowledge of color theory that addresses color perception, psychology and symbolism in order to make intelligent design decisions.
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Seeing Red
The element of beauty is assumed in any design.
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A Value-Added Proposition
Some ideas look really good in your head but when you get them down on paper and begin to develop a strategy, the flaws become apparent.
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The Great Idea Viability Test
How many people set goals and never achieve them? How many creatives start a business and then watch it fizzle out Are…
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The Importance of Knowing Why
Does it matter if a design is good or not? Before we can deal with that question let's ask a more basic…
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Does Good Design Matter?
Let's make the distinction between beauty and pretty.
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Beauty Is Not Pretty
Being effective involves doing the right thing at the right time in the right place.
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When It’s Time To Let Go
Design your time. Time is wasted when we do the wrong thing at the wrong time. It's easier to keep your time boundaries and your well-being intact if you plan ahead.
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Green Scheduling: 6 Tips for Sustaining Your Creative Time
If we approach a design solution as an opportunity for self-expression, we'll miss the point and risk not solving the problem.
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Why Design Is Not Self-Expression
Setting and maintaining boundaries will help you avoid relationships and circumstances that are potentially harmful.
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12 Rules for Freelance Success
Practically every business, organization and government has a banner. These are raised in the form of logos, motifs, icons and flags. We wear them and put them on our car bumpers and on signs and travel mugs. Every banner represents something—an identity, a set of values, a reputation, a history.
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How We’re Remembered: Memorial Day 2011
To be promoted in our design-driven culture, a product must be packaged in such a way that it becomes meaningful to the person using it, so that they become an evangelist for it. This requires thoughtful planning and execution of a design strategy
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Loving It: Seduction, Satisfaction and Graphic Culture
Empty space in a design is useful. Think of it in this way: If there was a room in your home where…
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Breathing Room: The Role of the Space In Between
It is the responsibility of design professionals, teachers and school administrators to value the next generation of designers so that the profession is respected, appreciated and thrives. Unpaid internships won't accomplish that.
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The Internship Epidemic
Where an artist can begin with a blank canvas and pursue a serendipitous route to an end result, a designer begins with a set of criterion and remains within set boundaries from concept through completion.
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Drawing The Line Between Art and Design
From the client's point of view, there are two crucial criteria in deciding what designer is awarded the project: 1. Does the…
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From the Client’s Point of View
Graphic design represents ideas and values. A design is not in itself the idea, but the expression of it. Design points to…
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Design As Your Ambassador
Being a designer is perceived by many as a fun job. Designers get to work with colors, shapes and amazing computer programs…
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Design and Degree of Difficulty
Clients have a choice when selecting creative services: They can go the cheap route and buy a logo through a crowdsource or contest…
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Freelancing: In Getting Work, Relationship Counts More Than Ever
On the evening before during the meeting of a creative team I'm leading, one team member made the statement that orange is…
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Color Trends: 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…
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How Do You Define Design?
Those who track and analyze cultural trends generally agree that our culture has become design-driven. It's no longer based on business or…
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True Lies