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12 Tips for Designers

I've just got a very useful article from neighbour's site. Everybody has their own ways to develop their business, but in graphic design you have to be -always- creative. This list formulated very well but you may have your own. Keep creative, keep on your own style ....

1. Always Get Paid
Be sure to get a deposit before starting a project and never send the final files until the remaining balance has been paid.

2. Don’t Work For Chicken Scratch
Don’t low ball yourself. At first its tempting to take jobs for low prices, but sooner than later you will need to make sure you are charging enough to cover all your expenses.

3. Make Everything Clear
Establish a time line and any other project specifications and deadlines upfront.

4. Get it all in Writing
Save all your emails and get anything you can in writing; such as clients signing off on projects and project agreements.

5. Save Everything
Save all your receipts and print out anything you buy online for tax purposes.

6. Organization is Essential
Be as organized as possible. Keep a folder for every project and client and clean your office and computer at least once a week.

7. Backup, Backup, Backup!
Back up all of your files and then back them up again.

8. Behave in Professional Manner
Be honest, helpful and never leave a client unhappy. Referrals are a big part of business and happy clients will recommend you left and right.

9. Don’t Overwork Yourself
Stick to your normal office hours. If you work from home its easy to get caught up working and making phone calls late at night and clients will get used to this.

10. Never Stop Networking
Network with other designers, programmers and other skilled people. This will enable you to outsource work and get help when you need it.

11. Never Stop Marketing
No matter how busy you are at the current time you never know when a dry spell might come along. Always keep promoting your business site and never stop looking for new clients.

12. Knowledge is Power
Never stop Learning. You should always be building up your list of bookmarks, blogs, websites and other resources so you can be on the top of your game.

youthedesigner.com

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Type of Type

I just want to define a simple classification of letter/font type. To me its important to recognize what kind of letters we need to use in graphic design. That's why typography appeared as a discipline. There are 5 kinds of letter/font according to their shape/ form.

1. Serif


Its a kind of letter with extended part in their foot-side. this part is called serif.
Example: Times New Roman, Garamond

2. Sans Serif


Sans means "no". Sans serif is a kind of letter without serif
Example: Helvetica, Arial

3. Script


Its a kind of letter similar to hand writing
Example: Lucida Handwriting, and another fonts with "script" word added behind their original name.

4. Decorative


Its a group of clip art defined as font. Quite help when we need instan art work on our design.
Example: Wingding, Webding

5. Monospace


Letters that have same width & space on each characters
Example: Monospace

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Visual Perseption ( According Gestalt Theory )

Main duty of a graphic designer is creating a visual entity easily comprehended by viewers. Understanding of visual perception principle is the key to comprehend tendency of our eye in seeing a visual pattern.

The following illustration is an example of our eye's natural tendency in seeing a visual pattern

1. SIMILARITY



The same object will be seen concurrently as a group. This matter can be determined by the form, colour, direction and size.

Tendency : our eye will group the oblique box instead of seeing the add / crossed sign

2. CONTINUITATION



Visual Settlement which can drive the eye's movements following to a certain direction

Tendency : Our eye's movements will follow to the right

3. PROXIMITY



A union or group formed caused by its correlation among nearby elements.

Tendency : Our sight will firstly aim at objects in group rather then the spread ones.

4. CLOSURE



Closed form or joint is seen more stable

Tendency : Unconsciously our eye will try to joint the part of the "broken" circle.

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Historical Background

Color theory was originally formulated in terms of three "primary" or "primitive" colors -- red, yellow and blue (RYB) -- because these colors were believed capable of mixing all other colors. This color mixing behavior had long been known to printers, dyers and painters, but these trades preferred pure pigments to primary color mixtures, because the mixtures were too dull (unsaturated).

The RYB primary colors became the foundation of 18th century theories of color vision, as the fundamental sensory qualities that are blended in the perception of all physical colors and equally in the physical mixture of pigments or dyes. These theories were enhanced by 18th-century investigations of a variety of purely psychological color effects, in particular the contrast between "complementary" or opposing hues that are produced by color afterimages and in the contrasting shadows in colored light. These ideas and many personal color observations were summarized in two founding documents in color theory: the Theory of Colors (1810) by the German poet and government minister Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, and The Law of Simultaneous Color Contrast (1839) by the French industrial chemist Michel-Eugène Chevreul.

Subsequently, German and English scientists established in the late 19th century that color perception is best described in terms of a different set of primary colors -- red, green and blue violet (RGB) -- modeled through the additive mixture of three monochromatic lights. Subsequent research anchored these primary colors in the differing responses to light by three types of color receptors or cones in the retina. On this basis the quantitative description of color mixture or colorimetry developed in the early 20th century, along with a series of increasingly sophisticated models of color space and color perception.

Across the same period, industrial chemistry radically expanded the color range of lightfast synthetic pigments, allowing for substantially improved saturation in color mixtures of dyes, paints and inks. It also created the dyes and chemical processes necessary for color photography. As a result three-color printing became aesthetically and economically feasible in mass printed media, and the artists' color theory was adapted to primary colors most effective in inks or photographic dyes: cyan, magenta, and yellow (CMY). (In printing, dark colors are supplemented by a black ink, known as the CMYK system; in both printing and photography, white is provided by the color of the paper.) These CMY primary colors were reconciled with the RGB primaries, and subtractive color mixing with additive color mixing, by defining the CMY primaries as substances that absorbed only one of the retinal primary colors: cyan absorbs only red (-R+G+B), magenta only green (+R-G+B), and yellow only blue violet (+R+G-B).

For much of the 19th century artistic color theory either lagged behind scientific understanding or was augmented by science books written for the lay public, in particular Modern Chromatics (1879) by the American physicist Ogden Rood, and early color atlases developed by Albert Munsell (Munsell Book of Color, 1915, see Munsell color system) and Wilhelm Ostwald (Color Atlas, 1919). Major advances were made in the early 20th century by artists teaching or associated with the German Bauhaus, in particular Wassily Kandinsky, Johannes Itten, Faber Birren and Josef Albers, whose writings mix speculation with an empirical or demonstration-based study of color design principles.

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Color Abstraction

The foundations of pre-20th-century color theory were built around “pure” or ideal colors, characterized by sensory experiences rather than attributes of the physical world. This has led to a number of inaccuracies in traditional color theory principles that are not always remedied in modern formulations.

The most important problem has been a confusion between the behavior of light mixtures, called additive color mixing, and the behavior of paint or ink (or dye or pigment) mixtures, called subtractive color mixing. This problem arises because the absorption of light by material substances follows different rules from the perception of light by the eye.

A second problem has been the failure to describe the very important effects of strong luminance (lightness) contrasts in the appearance of surface colors (such as paints or inks) as opposed to light colors; "colors" such as grays, browns or ochres cannot appear in light mixtures. Thus, a strong lightness contrast between a mid valued yellow paint and a surrounding bright white makes the yellow appear to be green or brown, while a strong brightness contrast between a rainbow and the surrounding sky makes the yellow in a rainbow appear to be a fainter yellow or white.

A third problem has been the tendency to describe color effects holistically or categorically, for example as a contrast between "yellow" and "blue" conceived as generic colors, when most color effects are due to contrasts on three relative attributes that define all colors: lightness (light vs. dark, or white vs. black), saturation (intense vs. dull) and hue (e.g., red, yellow, green, blue or purple). Thus, the visual impact of "yellow" vs. "blue" hues in visual design depends on the relative lightness and intensity of the hues.

These confusions are partly historical, and arose in scientific uncertainty about color perception that was not resolved until the late 19th century, when the artistic notions were already entrenched. However they also arise from the attempt to describe the highly contextual and flexible behavior of color perception in terms of abstract color sensations that can be generated equivalently by any visual media.

Many historical “color theorists” have assumed that three “pure” primary colors can mix all possible colors, and that any failure of specific paints or inks to match this ideal performance is due to the impurity or imperfection of the colorants. In reality, only imaginary “primary colors” used in colorimetry can "mix" or quantify all visible (perceptually possible) colors; but to do this the colors are defined as lying outside the range of visible colors: they cannot be seen. Any three real “primary” colors of light, paint or ink can mix only a limited range of colors, called a gamut, which is always smaller (contains fewer colors) than the full range of colors humans can perceive. (source:wikipedia.com)

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