Don’t be lazy—pick up the phone

I know it’s tempting, but don’t do it.

Electronic communication makes it so easy to do business without ever talking to your client, but don’t get swept up in the virtuality of it all. There are times when you must have a real-time, live exchange with another person. And one of those times is before you quote a price. (more…)

The redesign of a website is a prime opportunity to make important changes to content, navigation, and functionality. It’s also a good time to step back and analyze the business objectives of the site and overall internet efforts, as well as to develop a long-term plan for getting the most from this communication channel.

One thing is evident: Excellent sites have great design and navigation. An organization that puts effort into developing a site that makes it is easy to find information also understands the importance of providing solid content and functionality. (more…)

Redbook cover of Faith Hill; image via Jezebel

In case you’ve ever wondered what’s in a day’s work for professional photo retouchers, the folks at fashion blog Jezebel.com have something they’d like you to see. In an effort to debunk fashion editorial mags’ unrealistic standards of feminine beauty, they offered a $10,000.00 reward for the person who could submit the most egregious example of Photoshop-generated perfection used on a magazine cover. The winner was an astonishing, but totally typical, Redbook magazine cover featuring country singing star Faith Hill. The 39 year-old mother of three is genetically blessed to begin with, but in order to be considered cover-ready, a photo retouching whiz had quite a project of it. (more…)

If you don’t subscribe to this principle stop reading now, as this post probably isn’t for you.

So let’s say that a client approaches you and needs 10 pieces, which are all variations of the same campaign in different formats. Try as you might to understand the objectives and differences between all of these pieces, you just can’t figure it out. In fact, some of them don’t even make sense to your client. He or she is just producing them because they were asked to, or because that is what they have “done in the past.” If the objectives don’t make sense to you, they aren’t going to make sense to the audience. Chances are they know even less about the client/brand/product than you do. (more…)

1. “You don’t have to put copyright notices on your work anymore.” This myth arose because of the amendments to the Copyright law after the US became a member of the Berne Convention, the international copyright treaty. In Berne countries, copyright notices are not required. When a country becomes a member of the Berne Convention, it may not require notices as a condition of copyright ownership, and as of 1992, the US does not either. HOWEVER, this does not mean that you should leave copyright notices off your work. (more…)

Years ago, digital designers turned to the Macintosh platform because the essential applications performed better there than on Windows. In fact, the earliest versions of Photoshop and Illustrator were Mac-only.

Today, these applications run just fine on Windows, but Mac remains the industry standard for design. So why not make the most out of the platform you use every day? (more…)

Surprisingly this principle is often overlooked in design curriculums. Graphic design is ultimately your interpretation of information, and in order to design something you must understand it. In most cases the target audience knows as much or even less about the brand than you do. How can you communicate to this audience if you don’t know what you are communicating? (more…)

Josh Chen

We met San Francisco-based Graphic Designer Josh Chen at the HOW design conference, where he made a presentation about using handwork in graphic design. Josh is the founder of Chen Design Associates, and has over twenty years of experience in design, broadcasting, journalism and music. Named one of the “50 People to Watch” by GraphicDesignUSA, Josh is also the author of three design books and numerous articles for HOW magazine. He recently released a book entitled Fingerprint: The Art of Using Handmade Elements in Graphic Design.

Fingerprint:The Art of Using Handmade Elements in Graphic Design

The book showcases projects from an impressive roster of designers, using handwork techniques that range from lettering, illustration, mixed media and surface embellishments, to printing methods such as letterpress and silk screening. It is an inspiration and a call-to-arms for all designers to step back from the computer and reconnect with our repertoire of non-digital tools, especially the brain. Josh and his team of designers shared with us their collective thoughts and philosophies about handmade design. Afterwards, Josh mentioned he was struck by the synchronicities in his team members’ approaches. “Personally,” he said, “this reminds me again what a special group of talented, intelligent designers I get to work with day in and day out, and how thankful I am to have them be part of the CDA team. I wouldn’t be able to do half the things we’ve done as a design studio without these guys.”

CDA team members who participated in this interview include:

Josh Chen, Principal & Creative Director, Chen Design Associates

Max Spector, Senior Designer

Jennifer Tolo Pierce, Senior Designer

Kathrin Blatter, Designer

Shadi Kashefizadeh, Junior Designer

Q. Your presentation at the HOW design conference was called “Perfect Imperfection: The Art of the Handmade in Design.” Do you think adding handmade elements to design connects the process more with art, rather than feeling like a strictly commercial endeavor?

Josh Chen: I guess it’s not so much just a connection to art that’s the most important thing to me, as it is how it adds to the human connection that we all are craving for. After all, the basic motivation behind all the work we do as designers is to communicate an idea, a thought, or a message from sender to receiver. That might be accomplished completely with computer-generated art, or it might be completely handmade, or somewhere in between. I cringe when designers come up to me and ask whether handmade is the new “trend.” When they ask that, my assumption is they are just concerned about aesthetics once again. Isn’t the challenge we already face as designers, in order to be taken seriously by clients, to show that design is about more than just aesthetics? (more…)

…or is it?

I want! I want! I want! I want a new iPhone, and I want to take pictures with it, and download music onto it, and watch movies on it, and I want a million dollars to help me buy it and pay the monthly bill: one reason of several that only 146,000 iPhones were actually connected to service with AT&T in the first two days of its launch. (more…)

In this time of market saturation, what do you look for in the things that you buy? If you are like me, the latest and greatest stuff just isn’t enough. I want to buy from brands that I like and people I enjoy working with—companies and people who are accountable for their actions. These accountable companies ultimately make my life easier. I can turn projects over to them and trust that my needs are going to be met, and that when we run into problems they will fix them. So when it comes to my own company, I strive to offer clients the same things I’d expect if I was in their shoes. (more…)