I work with photos every day in my graphic design projects. Sometimes they are provided by clients – amateur photos – and sometimes I commission a professional to take them. When it comes to photos of people, i.e. portraits, I’m fussy! I like to insist on well-lit faces, natural expressions and a little je-ne-sais-quoi …
A group of Guelph graphic designers is launching a new website today to show off the creativity of local designers, illustrators and photographers: www.designersofguelph.ca.
In many ways, it was a lousy photo: grainy, poorly lit, and the most unflattering portrait angle, shot from below. But none of that mattered. Finally, we had an image for the phenomenon everyone’s been talking about for a year: Rob Ford with crack pipe in hand. The Globe plastered it on their front page, …
I’m very excited about the new publishing opportunities that exist for producing one-off books. Using the latest, short-run colour printing techniques, there are many choices for printing your own, hardcover (or paperback) book, at a price that might surprise you. Mostly, these are photo books, with a print run in the handfuls. Apple may have …
I just took a long vacation, in the Languedoc region of southern France. As always, I keep my eyes alert to graphic design when I travel. And I have to say, I was largely dissappointed this time around! The stylish French really failed me. Publicity for the places we visited was mostly uninspired (see poster …
Two stories. Some discussion. A little advice. And a bonus track! 1. In 1982 I was an undergrad student living in an old, wooden country house with four friends. It was called “Total Loss Farm” – bad omen, eh? Our house caught fire at 4 am one morning and was no more than smoldering embers …
How do we protect digital ‘memories’ from loss or obsolesence? Read More »
The big ticket new iOS features are well-publicized (Notification Centre, iMessage, Reminders, iCloud). But I find it’s the little, undocumented (almost secret!) things that make writing and taking photos easier with my iPhone. Here are my fave tips, which should work on any iPhone model from 3Gs forward – so long as you’ve made the …
“Fuck you Mad Men. Fuck your white male chauvinist and racist story lines.” I’ve been listening to George Lois for almost an hour, pouring out one remarkable anecdote after another from the 1960s trenches of Madison Avenue. His work was provocative and urgent – like when he posed Lieutenant William Calley (about to be convicted …
Once upon a time, I was a writer. Or to put it more accurately, I got my start in the communications business as a news writer. And the cardinal rule there was: write a great opening paragraph, answer the 5Ws, then elaborate in an “inverted pyramid” format. Short words, short sentences, short paragraphs. The main …
I once designed a logo for a scientist who is colour blind. Did I pull a fast one and slip him a black-and-white design? Of course not! Colour is emotional. We feel it in a design before we even start looking. It’s so visible, but it’s mostly invisible to our consciousness. We take it for …
Time is money – that’s how! But seriously, there’s more to it than that … Although every design project is different, I have a number of ways of “measuring” yours before I begin. I ask for your word count, which I can use to accurately predict the number of pages (for longer projects) or the …
How do I price and bill your project at WriteDesign? Read More »