Digital Design 102: The Yin and the Yang

Previously, we discussed the concept and dualities of the digital design industry. We also took a peek into what one would expect from a designer, regardless of whether he worked in either corporate or freelance graphic design.

This time, we will be discussing digital and print media designers in depth, as well as shedding light to the world of corporate design and the joys of freelance.

Print Design

No matter what form it comes in, any sort of published material relies heavily on graphic designers one way or the other. To put it in perspective—if the writers are the meat of the sandwich, the graphic designers would have to be the bread.

Yep, that’s us. We’re that good.

The reason behind this is that the human mind tends to analyze images better than words. After all, it’s a lot easier for the brain to just look at a painting and deduce its meaning rather than to decode a string of text.

Letterheads, advertisement flyers, canvas banners—all these elements of branding and advertising are the fruits of a digital designer’s labor. Each element of the graphical installation—so to speak—is painstakingly assembled by the artist.

There’s a large margin of error when it comes to graphics design, and that’s not something that the advertising sector can live with, so artists have to go through revision after revision of a given picture. Sounds mind-numbing? You bet.

The Internet

With the advent of digital media and the world-wide Internet market, digital artists found for themselves another niche to tackle. Here in Dubai, web design isn’t a particularly difficult profession; you can find designers wherever you looked.

But the large population of skilled artisans doesn’t even skim the surface of how difficult web design can be.

The biggest problem when it comes to this implementation of digital design is that you have to know your HTML. And sometimes, various other programming languages, too.

It isn’t enough to have the pictures you want up on your website. Arranging the elements on a page is an important factor of web design today, and most digital web designers are usually tasked to create templates, flash videos and additional graphics for client websites.

Tools of the Trade

Adobe produces nearly half of all the most popular tools in digital design

Some of the tools used in freelance graphic design to create graphics include, but are not limited to, the following:

Digital Design 101: Introduction

Everybody knows that computers are the gateways to a vast world of information. But have you ever wondered why the websites you visit look just the way they are? As a Dubai graphic designer, I believe it is the right of every person here to know just what goes on behind every web page because after all, that’s where the future is.

Open up your computer, and load your favorite webpage. Look at what you see. Go through blogs and corporate websites, or even check the front-page news of your online newspaper of choice.

Why do the websites look like that?

The process of creating digital elements that show up on various media both in print and electronic is called digital design. Graphic artists and creative designers who work exclusively on these two formats are called digital designers.

If writers are the meat, these guys are the backbone of digital media. They are responsible for creating eye-catching graphics that will draw the viewer’s attention to the printed page, or to the website. Without digital designers, we may very well have been stuck with computers that used the command line alone.

In this section, I’ll give you guys a primer of what digital design is, its breadth and scope, and how you can tell if a so-called designer is worth his price or not.

What Differentiates Digital Designers from Creative Designers?

If creative designers were the professionals responsible for ensuring that the visuals and color schemes for the logo branding and overall image management of a brand were in line with the creative director’s plan of attack, digital designers are the people who do pretty much the same thing—but do so through computers and digital imaging programs.

Like it or not, digital design makes the world go ‘round.

CREATIVE DESIGN 102: The Creative Process in a Nutshell

Previously, I discussed creative design as an endeavor. This time, we’ll be discussing the basics of creative design as a procedure, and how most graphic artists start working on their layout drafts. Although I am a Dubai graphic designer, this applies to most of the creative designers throughout the industry.

Be reminded, however, that the process generally varies with each graphic artist, as every person has his or her own process. But generally, this is how things are in the industry.

The Creative Process

Ahh, the creative process. The end-all, be-all holy grail of every creative type; whenever you see somebody with a MacBook sitting in one corner of a coffee shop, obsessing over the HTML code for a website he’s designing, you know you’d best steer clear lest get yourself bitten.

Yes, stay away from them, folks.

That’s just a stereotype, of course. Not every graphic artist gets so involved in the creative process that he can’t afford to take a break from work and talk to people for a bit.

But the fact remains that the process of creating art in any form is taxing. For a writer, he usually has to go through a rigorous phase of research in order to know what to write about. A graphic artist has to visualize what he has to create in order to put form to imagination. Upon completion, the layout editor has to put the visuals and the text together seamlessly.

In other words, if you strip away the romantic stereotyping the creative process is known for, you end up with a frustratingly difficult flow of work.

But the creative process can still be one of the most fulfilling jobs there is. It all boils down on your personal outlook.

Elements of Style

There are a variety of disciplines and skills that are important in creative design. A newcomer into the field of brand management, creative graphic design and advertising will probably have had experience it at least one of the following fields:

CREATIVE DESIGN 101: The History of Creative Design

The Art of Selling through Images and Words

Go for a walk in your local mall. Look around, and you’ll see a plethora of advertising, mixing colors and text into one dynamic mix that, to the untrained eye, is just part and parcel of advertising. For a Dubai graphic designer, this cannot be more obvious, but even in the more discreet corners of the world, I wouldn’t be surprised if the long arm of consumerism isn’t present in one way or another.

That, however, is part of a bigger whole. In the creative process, these graphics that you see all around you—anywhere from the overall motif of a billboard to the template of a letterhead—is part of a big process called creative design.

In a nutshell, creative design is the process—and the results of this process—in which images and text are put together in such a way that the completed result becomes a creative draw for the general public.

The Coca-Cola logo is a masterpiece of graphic design

There’s a reason why so much money goes into advertising every year. Businesses usually lack the creative manpower to come up with compelling designs that will help them target and attract the market niche they’re aiming for. To supplement this need for a creative arm, ad agencies employ artists and writers who work on the text and graphical layout of the material to be used by marketing.

If there are multiple disciplines that cover the whole gamut of the visual, literary and musical arts, creative design is the art of competent dissemination of information, or the art of selling through images and words.

Brand Management 102: Big Market Economy and the Importance of the Approach

The Problem of Big Markets

It was a direct tactic that worked well. But back then, when you had very little competition to deal with, it wasn’t that difficult to establish your corporate brand identity. That was why traders who sold specialty materials had no trouble getting their wares sold—their reputations sold themselves!

Do What Apple Did

That’s where establishing brand identity comes in. In order to get your reputation to do your job for you, you have to haul ass for your reputation. And sometimes, that involves not just making sure people know what you’re selling, but creating a story about your product as well.

Who doesn’t recognize this brand?

After a series of failed attempts at reinventing themselves, the introduction of the iMac’s design and sleek interface brought interest back to Apple’s Macintosh series. Seeing as how the hip and trendy and artistic niche caught on to the iMac’s appeal, Apple started a brand identity that simply said that Apple was the definition of hip. Even the logo branding (see picture above) evolved from the old Apple logo, as seen below:

See what I’m getting at here?

Brand Management 101: Branding and your Brand Name

Branding is everything in the world of mass consumerism. Here in Dubai, graphic designers and brand managers get off on the market’s massive need for what’s new and what’s hot. And depending on how you present whatever it is you’re selling, an effective brand management arm will be a big boon in presenting your products to the public.

I mean, think about it—who would trust a grocer who’s disturbing the peace? Well, sort of. They know about you, great. But they’d remember you as that guy who went around town, waking everybody up with your bullhorn and your noisy vehicle.

The Basics of Branding