Sign Making for Designers 3 Easy Steps

Sign making is very different than designing for other mediums--even different than billboard because you have images to work with. Making a text only sign seems simple, but it's that simplicity that will ruin the effectiveness of a sign faster than you can say Helvetica, if you don't apply a few basic rules. Rules that I will kindly detail for you now:

Distill the Message
It's fairly common that people will ask for what basically amounts to a paragraph on a sign. Paragraphs belong on paper, in books or magazines, NOT on signs. So what do you do? Distill it.
A woman came to the shop needing a sign because her dog ha behavioral issues and she needed something more specific than "beware of dog." She suggested to me that "warning, dangerous dog on premises" go on the sign. The size of the sign she wanted was about the size of a sheet of paper. Putting all that on a sign would make the letters too small to be a warning. I asked her what she was trying to alert people of. She said it was that the dog would bite anyone who it was unfamiliar with. I suggested "Why not just put, 'Warning DOG BITES' on the sign." She was skeptical, until she saw the difference.

By distilling the message, we determined purpose. A sign's purpose will dictate a lot about its design. Which brings us to step 2, Deciding on Emphasis.

Decide on Emphasis
Not every part of a sign can be bold or it will lose it's meaning. The various parts of a sign must be broken up in order to create an information hierarchy. Going back to the dog example. The words "Dog Bites" are the largest things on the sign. Why? Because the word "warning" is almost irrelevant. If you were going to enter this woman's yard to attempt to sell her a vacuum cleaner and saw "DOG BITES" you would go to the next house right away because you wouldn't want to be bitten.

When deciding on how a sign should be laid out, you first have to determine which parts you will emphasize. Once you've done that, you can move onto step 3, arrangement.

Arrange the Message
Lets go back to our design again and change it up a bit. If we were to go with her original idea and try to arrange it, we'd end up with something like this.

Not bad. A different arrangement but not as effective. "Dangerous" is far too long to try to stretch on a sign this size. And being placed inside a box, it now competes with "dog" for supremacy on the sign. Arranging the sign means bringing all the elements together to look cohesive. The purpose of the sign is the message, the message should never get lost on the sign.

Why Web Design Takes Soooooooo Long

Its been a while since my last post for a number of reasons. One being I couldn't think of something pertinent to blog about. While slaving away on a client website I realized something: WEB DESIGN TAKES FOREVER. And that is the subject of today's post.

I'm a graphic designer. Graphic. Not Web. For many companies and individuals looking to hire a freelancer or in-house person, the two jobs become interchangeable. Let me start by saying they are not. Graphic designers tend to be more classically trained in print mediums. Along with our required Adobe courses, we may take illustration classes or painting--and always a font class. Why? Because we start school with the knowledge that most of what we do will end up in a brochure, on a billboard, or some other type of paper. At best we get only one, extremely brief, introduction to web. Web designers have a very different set of problems to face when they sit down to create. They have to worry about accessibility, cross-browser compatibility, usability and any number of other things. Some graphic designers also have training in web design and vice versa, but its rare to find a person who is equally strong in both areas. Armed with all this knowledge, you'd think that I would have re-examined my approach to this project. You'd be wrong. 

Once my client made it clear that I would be the one handling the site re-design, I was excited. Thinking about "how cool" I could make it look over took my entire thought process. I spent hours online daily looking at web design examples from all over the design community. Issue 1: I planned form before function. When designing for print, clients usually know what they want--say a brochure--and may know roughly what they want it to say. Neither the client or the designer has to think about "how will the recipient use this?" because print brochures only have one level of interactivity. You either read it or you don't. Web sites are a different matter. Lesson 1: You have to plan out how your site will work--the navigation, the content, page hierarchy, ect.--before you work on hardcore aesthetics.

After realizing my mistake, I tossed out all the work I'd done so far and started sketching. And sketching. And sketching. Until I came up with a simple, easy to navigate site. Time to start coding. I knew that I didn't want to build too much of the site in Photoshop and that I didn't want heavy Flash either because those take a long time to update and freshness of content is paramount. So what options were there for me? CSS. This markup language would allow me to create an attractive, dynamic easily up-datable site with just one simple page of text. Great! But I didn't know the first thing about typing it up so I Googled it, and got lots and lots of templates and example code. Issue 2: Websites should be treated as individuals. Issue 3: Frankenstein's Monster was a bad idea for a reason. There are a lot of places out there that sell canned websites. Don't get me wrong, I don't have anything against them--and on occasion have encouraged clients to purchase one as  quick means to an end--but they should never be one-size-fits-all. I tried starting with a template so I could adapt it to my needs. I adapted and tweaked and changed until it was nothing like the template I started with. Lesson 2: If you find yourself looking at templates thinking "I'll leave that off" or "I can change that and that one too" then you're better off starting from scratch. Lesson 3: Never copy a bunch of template parts and paste them together. You won't get a cohesive site.

After throwing everything out and starting yet again, I finally felt like I was well on my way to a great site.That was around a week ago. The site it still in its beginning stages and I've been working on it a few hours every day. Each day I make progress and end up deleting most of it and keeping only one change after hours of work. This may sound like it should be the 4th issue, but its really not. Its Lesson 4: Never be afraid to sacrifice your progress for good work. Granted, time may not always allow you to practically start over every day or to move at a snail's pace, but pushing through sub-par work just because you dread the thought of starting over is unacceptable.

So why does web design take so long? Its because good web designers:

• Take the time to plan for functionality
• Craft individual website solutions 
• Start from scratch building a unique site
• Test and test and test everything to make sure the user experience is the best possible
• Start over when they have to

As a bonus, here are some great compilations of exceptional web design. You can bet that none of these were built in a day:

• 40 Beautiful Dark Web Designs
• 30 Out of the Box Portfolio Designs
• 56 Light & Clean Minimalist Web Site Designs

Lessons in the Life of a Business Card

I've been struggling for a long time to create a personal brand. You'd think I'd sit down and take the time to figure out how I would want to represent myself and the image I want to portray. And I have. The only thing is, I've been at this for a few years now, and I'm not the same person I was when I started. I look back at some of those designs now and am so glad I trashed them.

It all started with Japan. I wouldn't describe myself as an Asian Addict, but I've always held that country in high esteem and my early designs reflect that. As I describe my brief journey to the card I'm using now, please remember NOT to do any of these things and take it all in as a lesson of what to avoid.

Sanada Kyuu
Say that name. Its pronounced Sah-Nah-Dah Kee-you. Does that bring anything to mind? No? Exactly my point. That name doesn't mean anything. It doesn't tell you what I'm about, what I do, or who I am. Its not my first name, my last name or my middle name. Its not an animal, vegetable or mineral. Plain and simple it was a bad idea for a brand. Lesson 1: If you're going to brand yourself, pick a name that is relevant and makes sense.(side note: Sanada is the last name of a famous Japanese historical figure. Kyuu is the word for "ten"...it still doesn't make sense does it?)

Fresh
This was at the beginning of my foray into grunge. My business card was all black with white writing on it and a piece of sushi as the logo/icon. What? Exactly. I'm not a sushi chef. I don't own or work at a restaurant. I do eat sushi but that isn't something a potential client cares about. I couldn't tell you why I thought it was a good idea, I'm just glad I realized it in time. Lesson 2: Don't be misleading, intentionally or unintentionally.

Kitsune Creative
I was going through another phase, but this time I was into abstract looking images. At the same time I was doing some research for a series of fictional stories I was working on. The combination of those two things was, well, unfortunate. During my research, I found out that the etymology of the word "Kitsune", which means fox in Japanese, apparently came from an ancient Japanese folklore story. I immediately thought "fox, huh. Clever as a fox....great!" Obviously, I'd forgotten that I live in America and that the average person wouldn't speak Japanese at all let alone know anything about ancient folklore stories. Lesson 3: If you have to explain it, you may need to rethink it.

The Ox

This pretty much brings us up to present day. I've always been incredibly proud of the fact I was born in the Year of the Ox, I mean we have some pretty great attributes. I thought I should brand myself with something that was a part of me, so I began working on an icon/logo for myself. This big orange giant was my first attempt. Its a bit abstract, but I liked it. I used it for a while with a lukewarm reception. I thought "these people just don't get it" and chalked it up to their "lack of cool"--that was until a friend of mine saw it and said bluntly "what is that? It looks like a blob." Wow. Lesson 4: Your image conveys a message. If they don't get the image, they wont get the message.

So I moved on to the next ox in my life. I'd been creating a Kamon (Japanese style crest/icon) for a friend of mine to use on his business card and thought that an ox kamon would be perfect for me. Again I had the bright idea to combine elements of my two signs into one icon. That's how the "Ox under Moon" came about (I'm a Cancer, our governing planet is the moon). Not bad. But still not the modern bold statement I was looking for, plus it didn't test well. Lesson 5: Test. Test. Test. Try it out on a few people before making a big debut.

I hope my follies in business card design helped some of you out there. If you're interested in seeing the current card I'm using now, read my up coming post Design Log 1: 639. And if you have a minute, check out some of my business card designs on Zazzle. I'm always open to feed back. Remember: test, test, test! For additional reading, check out this blog post: The Basics of Business Card Design