Graphic Design

A one-stop shop with information for anyone involved in the design field, from amateurs to veterans. You'll find links and advice here on print design, web design, legal issues surrounding design, graphic design software, portfolio advice, and anything else I run across related to design and designers.

What Is Graphic Design?

Design is the practise of solving problems using a combination of logic and creativity. Graphic Design is solving problems in a visual way. While it may encompass using computers to make images or lay out text, it is not limited to it.

Graphic design is NOT using PhotoShop, running filters, or randomly manipulating images. Just like using a wrench is not the same as knowing how to turn a pile of metal into a new model of car, knowing how to use the tools of design does not make you a designer. A real designer can create great work despite their tools, not because of them.

Featured Design Links

The best links from my collection.

The Creative Hotlist: A good site for design jobs. Much better than the jobs you'll find on Craig's List or Monster.
WhatTheFont: Tool for identifying an unknown font.
PSPrint: A great online print shop, low prices, high quality, excellent selection.
iStock Photo: The stock photography killer. Basically open source stock photos, anyone can sign up to submit photos, the good ones are accepted to the site. You pay $6 for a quality royalty free image, the photographer gets $3 (roughly, depends on how much they sell). Not as good as high-end stock, but for the price, worth every penny.
BoDo: Business of Design On-Line: One of the best design sites for the business of design. There is a constant stream of new articles from many professionals on all aspects of the design industry and how to prosper in it.
The Death of Print - Dan Okrent: Possibly one of the most important things for you to read. A look into the future of the print industry, and its possible demise.
Logo Pond: A great site for logos, post yours and get feedback from other professionals.

Random Design Wisdom

Collect solutions. Your mind is like a tool belt with unlimited pockets. You never know when one of those solutions will be exactly what you need.
All designers will work on the web sooner or later. If you don't know Flash, CSS, and XML, your future is going to be limited.
It never gets easier. It just gets more complicated and you get paid more for it.
Never, ever do work on spec. Ever.
You buy success with failure. If you learn from your mistakes, whoever makes the most mistakes knows the most.
Anyone can be good at doing what everyone else does. Find something that only you are good at, and focus on that.
Find a creative outlet. Most of your work won't be that much fun, keep your energy up by doing an hour of something creative each day.
Don't try to beat cheap design by being cheap. Beat it by being worth more in a way the client understands.
Understand Business. You will work for and with businesspeople. Understand them, what they do, and how to run your own business. Being creative doesn't mean you can be ignorant.

Design News, Forums and Blogs

This is where you go to find out more about our industry

Adrants: Well-written, timely and insightful commentary on the advertising world.
Clickz.com: Information and opinion on the on-line marketing industry.
Design Observer: Longer essays on design, similar in tone to Print magazine.
Graphpaper: Excellent, in-depth analysis of the design industry.
Speak Up: Hard core discussions by industry pros.
Trendwatching: A bit too trendy and self-referencial for thier own good, but still a very good source for the changes coming in the design (and every other) marketplace.
Design View: Andy Rutledge's blog on design. Very professional and insightful.
Graphic Define: Daniel Schutzsmith's blog on the business of design.
Yay Hooray: Focused on younger and more rambunctious designers, very good if you're one of those, and still good if you're not. Much of the humor is raw and uncensored, and frequently Not Work Safe.
HOW magazine forum: A good selection of standard industry questions and answers. It's also a good place for hard, honest critiques of your work.
Ideas on Ideas: Eric Karjaluoto from smashLAB's blog.
Escape From Cubicle Nation: Not technically a design blog, but very useful for any designer that freelances, runs a small business, or is sick of working in greywall cubeland.

Commentary on the New Design

We do not create graphics, we design experiences. Don't lock yourself in the graphics ghetto, design can be applied to all areas of business.
Programming is no different than design. Both are logical systems with their own languages. If you can learn one, you can learn the other.
Always remember: the most open standard almost always wins.
Design is becoming decentralized. Small, ad hoc teams can now do what huge agencies once did, and do it better and cheaper (while making more money for the designers involved).
Cheap, easy, and good enough always beats expensive, hard, and great.
Expensive, easy and great on the other hand, is a very profitable niche market.
Generic work can be sent overseas. Work that is deeply relevant to your own culture (your client's customers) cannot.

Web 2.0, Flash, and Interactivity for Designers

O'Reilly's Definition of Web 2.0: The origins of the term and what it means.
Macromedia News Aggregator: Check this daily. Technical, but informative.
Fullasagoog: More Flash and technology news than you can shake an innappropriate metaphor at.
Actionscript.org: A good source for tutorials.
Flash Kit: A great community and tons of downloadable sample files.

On-Line Portfolio Advice

Pro Hosting: You can get your own URL for less than $35/year, and professional hosting for $60/year or less. There is no excuse for not having your own dedicated site.
Design and Code It: Your on-line portfolio is an example of your work, design and code it yourself. If you're learning to code CSS/HTML or Flash, it's a great first project. If you don't want to learn CSS/HTML or Flash, you will be unemployed.
Purpose: The purpose of your on-line portfolio is to show your work. Anything that distracts from this or slows it down is a bad idea.
Don't: use weird navigation, add music, stick in abstract buttons, create long artsy transitions, use pop-ups, or otherwise make your site annoying to use.
Show Me The Details: Stop worrying about people stealing your work, and show large images. Prospective clients can't judge your work from a 100 x 100 pixel image.
Do Flash Graphics Right: If you're putting bitmaps in Flash, make them 24-bit PNGs, and export them at 150% to 200% of the size you expect them to be in Flash. They'll still compress to a small size, and when your Flash scales they'll retain more quality.
Stay Focused: This is your design portfolio. use it for design work. Don't add your paintings, your poems, your photography or your knitting. Clients and employers want to see your design work, they aren't hiring you for that other stuff, seeing it will be a distraction.
Let Them Call You: Many people still prefer the phone to e-mail. List your phone number along with your e-mail. Make it as easy as possible for people to contact you if you want to be successful.

Web Design, Tutorials, Help, and Sources of Information

Places you can go to find out how to do something web related.

CSS Zen Garden: Tons of example CSS pages with source code.
A List Apart: Included because everyone on Earth includes them. I don't always agree with the advice given, but it's important to be familiar with it all the same.
Pixel2life.com: Great tutorials for just about everything design or coding related.
Web Pages That Suck: A great site full of what NOT to do.
Cool Homepages: Many examples of great home pages. Fantastic inspiration for designers.
linkdup: Another collection of good websites to be inspired from.
Current style in web design: A quick review of current web trends, with examples.
CSSRemix: CSS-based website gallery. Lots of good design, all of it CSS.
Design MeltDown: Current web design trends and styles examined and explained.

Printed Portfolio Advice

Only the Best: Show 6 to 10 of your best pieces. If you have any doubt, do not show it.
Always Customize: Tune the selection to the client or employer. Show them the kind of work they will ask you to do.
Be Prepared: Bring along 10-15 other samples of good work, and keep them in your bag or folder. That way you can show them if they ask you for examples of something else.
Print Interactive Work: They should have already seen your on-line portfolio, but you should still include screen prints of your best interactive work.
Binders Are OK: A nice binder with plastic sleeves is acceptible. If pieces are small, mount them on a sheet of paper with repositionable spray mount, so you can take them out and show them if necessary.
Books Are Better: It's better to create a custom book, with your own hand made binding and cover, and leave it with the client. You can do this for under $20, and it becomes a constant reminder of your work. If you do this, include descriptions of each project and possibly sketches as well.

On-Line Printing Resources

PsPrint: Referenced in the first module above, the best on-line printer I've found yet.
48hourprint.com: This would be the second best.
MyPublisher: They'll print full-bleed books with any images. Intended for photos (which I've done, they come out great), but an excellent way to make portfolios too. You can make a 12" x 9" leatherbound 20-page book for $40, or a 8" x 6" softbound book for $10.
Lulu.com: Book printing on demand. Upload your book, they handle taking payments, shipping, and everything else.
CafePress: Stick your designs on shirt, mugs, and other stuff and make a few bucks on the side.

They recently started offering black t-shirts. These use a white layer that is laid down before the color is added, so you can't use transluscency or fades to black, but otherwise they work well.
Printfection: Similar to CafePress but with no monthly fee on your stores. Some claim the quality is better, but I haven't seen enough examples to say for certain.

Design Images

A few things I've thrown together

More Random Design Wisdom

Design is a brutal industry. If you can't take the heat, get a job in a kitchen.
Designers have no retirement plan. Get a IRA now, and put money in it every month. Unless you have credit card debt. In that case you should pay it down first, and never use a credit card again.
There is no Mac vs. PC debate. Designers use both, both work. End of discussion.
Draw a square on your computer. Hold a piece of paper to the screen, and mark the horizontal edges of the square. Now see if they match the vertical ones. You'll be amazed how many monitors are calibrated wrong. Fix yours before you design everything incorrectly.
A bookmark is a million times more valuable than a Google ranking. Concentrate on designing websites people will want to show their friends, instead of warping the site to please Google.
Save every receipt. Magazines, DVDs, music, and anything else remotely connected to design can be tax deductable. Get a good accountant, it can save you thousands of dollars.

My Design Blog

Mildly interesting things I write elsewhere.

U.S. TradeMark, Trade Dress, and Copyright Information

"Intellectual Property" law is a confusing business. Much of it seems arbitrary or non-intuitive. For instance, Apple sometimes seems lawsuit crazy because the law requires it to sue anyone that makes a product similar to theirs, no matter how small or innocuous the infringing company is. The links below will give you a foot up when dealing with IP law, which is something all designers must do every day.

BTW, the below applies to the United States only, when it comes to IP law in other countries, I must bow before more knowledgable sources.

Basic Facts About Trademarks: A very useful FAQ on trademarks, patents, and copyright.
U. S. Patent and Trademark Office Home Page: Start here to search for similar trademarks and find out basic information.
BitLaw: A Resource on Technology Law: An excellent site with many articles on the specifics of IP law, especially as it applies to technology.
Schmeiser, Olsen, & Watts LLP Resources Page: Several FAQs on copyright, patent, and trademark law compiled by the intellectual property law firm of Schmeiser, Olsen & Watts.
Bound By Law: Copyright issues explained in the form of a comic book. If the other links are too dry, try this instead! Witty and insightful!
Graphic Artists Guild Legalities and News: A collection of legal information for graphic designers, newsletters and other advice. The information on copyright is very useful.
Lorelle VanFossen: Lorelle has a great post here on what to do when you discover someone has stolen your work on the internet.

Color Theory

Understanding color and its use in design.

handprint : color vision: An exhaustive examination of color, going in depth into how the eye detects light, and how the brain perceives it.
Color Worqx: Comprehensive, and less heavy on the scientific jargon.
Color schemes generator 2: A handy color scheme generator.
HTML color code tool: Another color scheme generator with lots of options.
Color Blender: This color scheme generator allows uploading PhotoShop color tables (.ACT) and Illustrator .eps files to extract their colors.
Kuler by Adobe: Probably the most incredible web-based color picker in the universe.
Colors on the Web: Intended for web designers, but great color theory info for anyone.

Socially Active Design

Groups that design for a purpose

Sometimes designers do more than just design for money. Sometimes they design for an ideal, for politics, for making the world a better place (in their opinion, anyway). Here's a list of groups designing for something other than a paycheck.

Bad Design Kills: Help stop bad design, go out and pry the mice from the Cheetos-covered fingers of 14-year-olds making $50 logos with pirated copies of PhotoShop! You might not save the world, but after you've printed out a few of their free posters and stickers, you might feel better about living in it.
No-Spec!: Some businesses prey on naive designers by asking them to do "try out" work for free. This is wrong, and deadly to our industry. Join the No-Spec! movement and put a stop to designer abuse.

Places to Find a Design Job

That's what the internet is really for, right?

Craig's List: This is the best, especially in larger cities. It costs nothing, it's easy to use (but a bit ugly), and there are a lot of jobs on it. Good for freelance and salary work.
Monster: Still the top of the paid sites.
AuthenticJobs.com: A great niche job site expressly for designers and developers created by Cameron Moll (who also has a blog, http://www.cameronmoll.com/).
Creative HotList: Search by location, category, experience or type of company. You can also host a portfolio with them for a reasonable fee, which can be a useful addition to your web marketing efforts (if you absolutely can't make your own website this might work as a substitute too).
Coroflot: You can create a free profile, network with other designers and look for jobs. The jobs tend to be concentrated in big cities, but the free profile is nice.
News Today: More of a news site, but they also have jobs posted.

Sketching!

Or how to present ideas to a client without them obsessing over pixels

Don't make the Demo look Done: Kathy Sierra at Creating Passionate Users explains how a rougher, less finished concept image is more useful than a highly polished, nearly finished one.
denim: Create sketchy prototypes of web pages or applications, with interactivity.
Matching design sketches to the desired level of design feedback: flow|state on why it is important to show rough concepts to clients first.
SketchFighter 4000 Alpha: Not useful for doing design at all, but great fun anyway (just seeing if anyone's paying attention).
Buxton on Sketching and Experience Design: Jared Spool talking about Bill Buxton talking about sketching. A good read.

Squidoo

Graphic Design

Contents at a Glance

Contents at a Glance

What Is Graphic Design?

Featured Design Links

The best links from my collection.

Random Design Wisdom

Design News, Forums and Blogs

This is where you go to find out more about our industry

Commentary on the New Design

Web 2.0, Flash, and Interactivity for Designers

On-Line Portfolio Advice

Web Design, Tutorials, Help, and Sources of Information

Places you can go to find out how to do something web related.

Printed Portfolio Advice

On-Line Printing Resources

Design Images

A few things I've thrown together

More Random Design Wisdom

Essential Design Books

My Design Blog

Mildly interesting things I write elsewhere.

U.S. TradeMark, Trade Dress, and Copyright Information

Tools and Software

These are the things that help you make great design.

More Design Books

Random stuff Amazon dredges up. Don't blame me for the selection, blame the English language for overusing the word "design."

Further Reading

Other great Squidoo lenses about design.

Color Theory

Socially Active Design

Groups that design for a purpose

Places to Find a Design Job

That's what the internet is really for, right?

More Design Books

I recommend any or all of these, and I own most of them.

Still More Design Books

Can you ever have too many?

Sketching!

Or how to present ideas to a client without them obsessing over pixels

Leave Your Mark

Add your comments here!

by JJeffryes

Explore related pages

Related Tags

Want our Newsletter?