How many times have you seen a folder, website, brochure with poor text? How many times you read a headline and thought what is this all about? How many times did you stop reading a text because it was tedious to read? I’m sure many times. These texts are not written by copywriter but by the client himself. As a graphic designer you don’t care much about the text, it’s not your business – as an art director you must care about it. Here are some tips on how you understand if a text it’s good enough and how you convince your client that is worthwhile having a copywriter do the job. …click here to continue…
It’s easier to understand what makes a brand interesting if we think of it as a person. Many brands are clearly male, others clearly female – but there is more to it. There are many elaborate ways to identify the brand personality and brand identity, but for most projects our simple 20 questions will help you get a quite good picture that will help you a lot. Find out how to apply it and how to use the results. …click here to continue…
You maybe know the saying: “If you don’t know where you are going, the road takes you there.” So you end up somewhere without knowing if its the right place. In the graphic design and advertising business this is the last thing you want to happen. You don’t want to present to your client a product, which doesn’t get the point your client wanted to communicate. Did you misunderstand the briefing? Did your creativity lead you out of the boundaries your client want to accept. To know what happened, and even better to avoid such a thing to happen you need a creative brief. I know what you are thinking, so lets start and destroy some myths about the creative brief. …click here to continue…
In the last lesson I pointed to the positive effects that studies can have in improving your projects. In this lesson I will show you where to find studies, how to make project and art director relevant conclusions and how to use them in your creative process. I have also included a nice example-tutorial to make it less “dry”.
Our main goal as an art director or graphic designer is to get the message in the heads of the target group. We do this by using graphics, video, music, perfumes… basically through the senses. Our education tells us to use images, certain font sizes, etc. To make the product have a high appeal and understandability we have to stick to these rules. This is nothing new – but if you switch the perspective you get to another level. Art directors and graphic designers use psychology and try to manipulate human behavior every day. How can you improve these skills? …click here to continue…
If you are not in the situation where you get a good creative brief (how a good one looks like will be a topic of a future lesson) you have to rely on the information you get from the contactor or the client himself. If you have direct contact to the client you will have to make the right questions. Questions related obviously to the project, to the client himself (if it’s the first project you do for him) and on the goals.
The first rule is the following – the client won’t give you all information you need. Why is that? …click here to continue…
In the last lessons I talked about the mindset of an art director. It’s different from a graphic designer in many aspects. It is often difficult to explain what is different, so I will try to make an example – a situation that every graphic designer who is working not just for himself has faced. The “too small font issue“. …click here to continue…
Every graphic/online/media designer nowadays calls himself an art director (or worse Information Architect). Even the Wikipedia, the new holy grail of knowledge states, in a little confusing manner. Find out what is the difference between a graphic designer and an art director and what it takes to become one. …click here to continue…
What is the job of an art director anyway. How is it like? And how to learn to do the things the right way in real life. I will present you here some insights and some tutorials about becomming an art director, not just a graphic designer. Tips & Tricks you won't learn in any school and normally you will have to figure them out yourself. So go ahead and start your lessons.
Subscribe
Don't miss a lesson, subscribe to the RSS feed or enter you can subscribe to receive email with the newest content.
