Best of 2008 Print and Web Design

As is the norm in just about every industry, we marketers also have our own awards. Since design is such a large and important part of marketing, it’s important to highlight the best nuggets of info and inspiration that came about this year.

Best Ways to Enhance Photos
Using the Blur effect in Photoshop can do wonders to make a distracting background complement your focus in a photo.

In the photo on the left, viewers could be left wondering where this photo was taken instead of focusing on the woman’s uniform and pose, which convey strength. TutorialPulse.com has a great tutorial on how to achieve the Blur effect.

Photoshop tricks were all the rage this year, with people getting more creative as the months flew by. A list of the 30+ Nicest Photoshop Photo Tutorials, Part II includes tuts on how to make an eerily calm storm (shown here) using layers, fun lighting effects and how to make a vector portrait from a photo.

 

Best RSS Feed Icons
It’s amazing what designers will redesign next. Of course we’ve all seen the common orange square RSS feed icon, but have you seen any that look like this?

 

Pro Blog Design showcased 110+ Free RSS Icons that could fit into any Web site’s theme. This site definitely makes any site’s standard RSS icon look boring.

Best Typography
Typography is everywhere – print, Web, TV – you can’t escape it. Oftentimes, logos are created by typography alone. Type gives businesses personality. The list from Noupe shows off the best creations this year, including my fave from the list:

 

I love the two-toned colors and the hummingbirds floating about. The “holes” make it look more modern, and almost industrial, save for the colors.

Best Business Card Designs
There are a lot of “best of” lists out there for business cards, but I especially love this one:

It’s amazing how many different designs and techniques are being used for business cards these days. This card comes from a list at DzineBlog. The list includes business cards in the shapes of tear drops and circles, which make for an interesting design, but begs the question of functionality. Those are the cards that are most likely to get lost in the paper shuffle because they don’t fit neatly into wallets or Rolodexes, but is the unique shape enough to keep them on top of a CEO’s paper pile?

Best Inspirational Web Sites
SpyreMag’s list of 25 inspirational Web site designs is enough to get any designer’s creative juices flowing. I love this design snippet from Design Disease.

It’s very relaxing to the eye with the ocean blues and the waves throughout the page, not just at the top. It manages to be laid-back and professional at the same time.

Where To Go To Get Inspired To Design

Everyone has those days when you just can’t get creative. It’s like every creative bone in your body has been replaced with a boring bone. Well, I’ve got some sites here that will help stimulate your creative side.

Web Sites
101+ Places to Get Design Inspiration – The Aussie that runs this blog is only 20 or 21 and still in college, but he’s already a great designer. He’s been working since he was 16 for professional clients, designing logos, flyers and everything else a business needs.

Abduzeedo – Very interesting ideas, very unique. Not for the traditionalist.

Freelance Switch’s 60 More Places to Get Design Inspiration – Online and Off – Freelance Switch has a blog with advice for all kinds of freelancers, including this article with Web sites and books recommended to help you get your design on.

Books (all at Amazon.com)
New Masters of Poster Design: Poster Design for the Next Century – This book shows top poster designers’ artwork of now, which has proven that the poster can still serve as a worthy communications tool. According to Amazon: “In doing so, they’ve brought the poster back to prominence. In this book, the author has compiled the world’s finest new work at the height of this rebirth. There is currently no book on the market that can claim it features a ‘definitive’ poster collection.”

Making and Breaking the Grid: A Graphic Design Layout Workshop – A “comprehensive layout design workshop that assumes that in order to effectively break the rules of grid-based design, one must first understand those rules and see them applies to real-world projects.”

You get to find out about how top designers’ processes work and their rationale while designing. “Projects with similar characteristics are linked through a simple notational system that encourages exploration and comparison of structure ideas. Also included are historical overviews that summarize the development of layout concepts, both grid-based and non-grid based, in modern design practice.”

Typography Workbook: A Real-World Guide to Using Type in Graphic Design – “[This book] is part of Rockport’s popular Workbook series of practical and inspirational workbooks that cover all the fundamental areas of the graphic design business.” It contains loads of info on type without a lot of extra fun facts you don’t need to know about so that designers can get the information they need quickly and easily.

Other books on typography are more technical or showcase oriented, but this book actually gives you ideas and inspiration through real-life examples that show successful uses of typography.

It also offers “a variety of other content, including choosing fonts, sizes, and colors; incorporating text and illustrations; avoiding common mistakes in text usage; and teaching rules by which to live (and work) by.”

Layout Workbook: A Real-World Guide to Building Pages in Graphic Design – This book doesn’t only have great examples for inspiration; it also helps you understand design. “The book illuminates the broad category of layout, communicating specifically what it takes to design with excellence. It also addresses the heart of design-the how and why of the creative process.”

Logo Design Basics and Tips

A logo is one of the first things you should design when you start a new business. Your logo is what customers look to when they remember you or identify your business. Your logo also gives customers more faith and trust in you as a business. A business that doesn’t even have a logo is not yet a business in many people’s eyes. That’s why you gotta get a logo first!

A logo contributes to your credibility, memorability and visibility. You might want to put off designing your logo until you get more money, but the longer you wait, the longer you’ll have to wait to create marketing materials, including your Web site. That’s because your logo needs to go on every piece of marketing material and your product packaging too. That’s how important it is.

Your logo should be unique and heaven forbid, please do not use ClipArt! ClipArt screams amateur and unprofessional. Besides, if you use ClipArt, your logo could end up looking just like your competitor down the street.

The first step: design or text?
The first thing you want to decide on is whether you’ll have a design represent your company, your company’s name as your logo or a combination of both. There’s no right way to design a logo: all of these choices are equally good. It all depends on what’s needed for your company.

Design
If you decide on design, try to think of a way to incorporate your industry or your product into the design. I saw one clever logo for an airline called Peace Air, and its logo looked like a peace sign – the plane’s body was the vertical line that makes up the middle of the peace sign and the plane’s wings made up the two smaller lines that go out to the side of the peace sign. That’s pretty clever if you ask me.

Of course, you can’t always incorporate something from your industry into your logo. But it’s always nice if you can!

Text
On to text. If you decide to use purely text as your logo, here are some font tips:

1. Choose a font that fits your business’s personality. Serif fonts, the ones with “feet” give off a mature and established feeling whereas a sans-serif font (without feet) looks more modern and young.

2. Use a font that no one else uses. You can buy fonts online and download them, and some you can even download for free. I’d advise against the free ones, because those are the ones everyone else will be using. Buy a good, wide-ranging set of fonts so that you have less of a chance of looking like some other business. You can also create your own font by hiring a designer or buying software that lets you create fonts, like CorelDRAW. There are plenty of other software options out there, so just Google “create fonts software.”

3. Modify the font if possible. If you choose a font that looks similar to others, or if you just want to add a little bit of flair, modify your font just a bit. You could add longer serif “feet” or stretch the font to make it look wider. You could even just modify one letter of your logo to make it look different. A slight modification can make your logo look unique and add visual interest.

7 Design Tips for Better Print Marketing

1. The headline: Use words that catch readers’ attention in the headline and that will pull them into the rest of the copy. Words like “free,” “save” and “secret” work well to intrigue people into finding out more about what your print marketing has to say.

On average, the headline is read five times more than the body copy. That means people have read the headline and it wasn’t good enough to motivate people to read on. Don’t become part of that statistic! Include a clear benefit to the reader in the headline and you’ll draw them in. If you can pair a benefit with an eye-catching word like “free,” your headline will have real stopping power.

2.  Use white space. Any space in your design that isn’t filled with text or graphics, or is in other words blank, is considered “white space.” Don’t feel like you have to fill every square inch of your print marketing materials. Whether it’s a flyer, postcard or brochure, a simple, uncluttered design will look much better and will draw people into your marketing piece than a cluttered design.

3. Limit yourself to two fonts. Any more than two fonts will make your design look cluttered. Unless you have a huge poster or a big marketing piece that can handle the extra fonts, stick with two. You should use a sans-serif font for your headlines and subheads (sans-serif means “without feet” in French; examples are Arial and Century Gothic) because sans-serif fonts are harder to read when they font size is small. Use a serif font for all of your body copy, or your smaller size copy. Serif fonts have “feet,” which make them easier to read. Examples of serif fonts are Times New Roman and Garamond.

4. Address your audience. Make sure you talk directly to your audience – say “Attention CEOs” or blatantly ask “Are you a stay at home Mom?” By talking directly to your audience there will be no mistake who your message is for.

5. Use before and after ads when possible. People have an above average understanding of before and after ads, and I think many women like them because they are like makeovers. When you can give proof in a photo format that your product works, there is no contesting it.

6. Use photos instead of line drawings when possible. Photos are more believable than line drawings. Photos are better at drawing people’s eyes in because the colors are generally more saturated than in a graphic.  

7. Test your ads again and again. Readership increases with repetition. Keep testing new ads against old ones to see which ones are more effective. There comes a time when repetition gets boring, so be sure to switch up your design to keep consumers interested.