The term “professional designer” can apply to anything from a service provider to a strategic partner, depending on a person’s individual experience, their approach to problem solving, and their relationship with a client. At one end of the scale, a design vendor simply responds to a specific request made by a client and provides them with a commodity. They perform tasks that can be easily replicated by others. Competition at this level is based primarily on cost. In the middle of this scale are design professionals who offer direction and some degree of specialization. They bring not only expertise to the table, but also a degree of professionalism. At the far end of the scale stands the design consultant. They are able to serve in an advisory role, guiding the client through the design problem solving process. As design problems become more complex and require broader collaborative thinking, advisors provide not just solutions, but actually lend insight and depth, and help synthesize information amassed or created by collaborators.
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When designing for multilingual content there are a number of factors that will affect your composition and typographic choices. Knowing these ahead of time allows for a smooth transition of content from one language to another. Whether it is print or web, it is best to know exactly which languages you will be working with, and how the viewer will encounter these language options before you begin with the layout. We will go into web-specific issues later, but first, here are a few key universal points to keep in mind when determining the layout and typography for your composition. (more…)

By Eric Benson

Part III: Sustainable printing and the graphic designer

“The single most important problem is our misguided focus on identifying the single most important problem.” – Jared Diamond, Professor of Geography at UCLA. (From the book “Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed.” Penguin Books. 2005.)

It is fairly simple to call a few printers in your local area and find one that gives you the best price on paper and printing and also meets your busy schedule. It’s a job well done as soon as you drop off your CD packed full of files at your chosen printer and take a breather before starting your next big design job. But what if price and deadlines weren’t the only variables that led a designer to choose a printer? What if we paid more attention to the printer’s business practices? Could this improve our overall quality of life? In general, when we design something the idea is to make things better. Whether we are improving the economy (through advertising and sales) or making things easier and simpler to accomplish (via products or better designed instructions/communications), the design intention is to create a catalyst in our society for positive economic growth or social change. (more…)