I. What IS Graphic Design? by Jessica Helfand, American Institute of Graphic Arts, Honolulu Chapter
"Graphic design is the most ubiquitous of all the arts. It responds to needs at once personal and public, embraces concerns both economic and ergonomic, and is informed by many disciplines including art and architecture, philososhy and ethics, literature and language, science and politics and performance.
Graphic design is everywhere, touching everything we do, everything we see, everything we buy: we see it on billboards and in Bibles, on taxi receipts and on web sites, on birth certificates and on gift certificats, on the folded circulars inside jars of aspirin and on the thick pages of Children's chubby board books.
Graphic design is the boldly directional arrows on street signs and the blurred frenetic typography on the title sequence to E.R. It is the bright green logo for the New York Jets and the monochromatic front page of the Wall Street Journal. It is the hang-tags in clothing stores, postage stamps and food packaging, fascist propaganda posters and brainless junk mail.
Graphic design is complex combinations of words and pictures, numbers and charts, photographs and illustrations that, in order to succeed, demand the clear thinking of a particularly thoughtful individual who can orchestrate these elements so they all add up to something distinctive, or useful, or playful, or surprising, or subversive, or somehow memorable.
Graphic design is a popular and and a practical art, an applied art and an ancient art. Simply put, it is the art of visualizing ideas."
II. The Good, the Bad & the Ugly
Good design...
We all know it when we see it: the good idea executed with vision and style. When working with a graphic designer, it's important for the designer to take time to understand your business, your product and your communication goals, and then to partner with you in packaging and delivering your message with clarity and impact.
We have all seen the amateur desktop publisher's work as well. Most of us have computers these days and access to fonts, clipart and page layout software. What doesn't come with the hardware or software is an awareness of the principles that designers and typographers have developed over the millenia to create professional printed pages.
Basic principles of layout and typography are outlined in "Print Promotions That Work, a 22-Point Checklist for Packaging Your Message" as featured in The Garden Island business section on August 4, 2003. For a free copy, please e-mail your request to linda@kauaidesign.com. An electronic version in .pdf format can be e-mailed to you, or, if you provide your mailing address, a printed version can be sent by US Mail.
III. Your Graphic Identity
Your logo is your company’s signature. It’s the visual ground for communicating your brand to the world.
Consistent, strategic use of your logo, color(s) and typestyle(s) generates name recognition in the marketplace. It also gives your company a sense of stability, credibility and professionalism, and inspires trust and loyalty from your customers. Working with a professional designer, you can create a statement that says all the right things about you.
Below are sample logo designs created by Kaua'i Design Graphics. Background on the development process for some of these designs is available at www.kauaidesign.com
IV. Why Choose Print?
V. Do You Want to Receive The Graphics Grapevine?
Future editions of The Graphics Grapevine will be sent to you by e-mail each quarter only if you want to receive it. If, for any reason, you’d like to remove your name from the e-mail list or add your name to the list, please e-mail: linda@kauaidesign.com
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Owner of Kaua'i-based Kaua'i Design Graphics, Linda Pizzitola specializes in logos, business identity packages and print promotions. Kaua'i Design collaborates with business owners and event promoters to bring their graphic identities to life. See samples of our work, a client list and more at http://www.kauaidesign.com. Linda can be reached by phone at (808) 822-0055.
A special thanks to Debra Jason for inspiring this online publication. Owner of Kauai-based The Write Direction, Debra offers her services as a copywriter and web marketing consultant. She writes dynamic marketing materials and helps optimize web pages to boost their positioning in the search engines. Visit her online at www.writedirection.com
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