What your graphic designer wants you to know about images and resolution

As a professional designer, it is my job to know everything about graphic design in order to produce a beautiful, high quality product for my clients. However, for a good portion of projects, my clients provide me with the content, including the image files. This is where issues can occur because most non-designers do not know about ideal file types and preferred resolution. When my clients send me files that aren’t usable, it is my duty to explain to them why I cannot use their images and what file types they need to seek out for me. I am more than happy to provide these explanations, but I thought it would be beneficial to explain everything in detail and in a way that non-designers will hopefully understand.

IMAGE RESOLUTION
The first thing that a non-designer should understand about images is resolution. Image resolution refers to the crispness or sharpness of an image. It is measured in dpi or ppi. Image files that will be used in print should be 300 dpi. Image files used on the web are usually only 72 dpi.

The difference in high and low resolution can be seen in the example below. The images are displayed at the same size. The logo on the left is at 300 dpi and the logo on the right is at 72 dpi. The logo on the right would be described as "pixilated”, a term you have probably heard previously. This pixilation causes images to look blurred and sometimes distorted.

Today, most digital cameras take photos at a resolution and size that is high enough for print. If you shoot photographs that will be used in your marketing materials, simply download the photos from your camera and send those files to your designer. All professional photographers should be able to provide you with original high resolution image files as well.

The main issue I run into when receiving image files from clients is when photos have been pulled off the web for use in print projects. First of all, there is always the issue of copyright infringement when a random photo is pulled from the web. Secondly, the image is most likely at 72 dpi and will print “pixilated” like the above right example. When spending money to have your company’s materials printed, you want to make sure that you include high resolution images. This ensures that you are attaining the best print quality for your images and that you are representing yourself at the highest level possible. Having pixilated images on your materials can look unprofessional and low budget.

LOGOS AND VECTORS
A company logo is included in just about every project that I design. Having your company logo available in the correct file type is crucial. After all, your logo is the key visual element that represents your company. You need to keep it consistent, prominent, and crisp in all of your marketing materials.

When I create a logo for a client, I use the design software Adobe Illustrator. Illustrator allows me to “draw” a logo and save it as a vector file. A common vector file that you may have heard of is .eps (encapsulated postscript). Vector art is always at the highest resolution and is comprised of points and paths, not pixels like photographic images.

The most important reason to have your logo in vector format is that it can be scaled in size and it will not lose any resolution. The example below shows a vector image and an enlarged portion of that image. Notice there is no pixilation occurring. The image is crisp and sharp even when enlarged significantly. This is beneficial when you want to have your logo printed in large scale, such as on a billboard, sign, or banner. Also, certain printing techniques, like silk screening, require graphics in vector format.

If you do not have access to your logo in vector format, I highly advise obtaining the vector files from whoever designed your logo. If you are not able to acquire the vector files or your logo was created with non-vector graphics, I highly recommend having your logo recreated in vector format. You may not currently need it, but it is likely you will in the future.

I am now part of the Listings Up team

I have recently joined the team at Listings Up as their graphic designer. Listings Up is a Colorado-based company that provides virtual assistance to real estate agents. Thanks to the internet, I am able to be part of their team from Harrisburg, PA.

With over 7 years of experience providing graphic design services to real estate professionals, I am excited to bring my expertise to Listings Up and provide beautiful and effective marketing materials to their clients.

If you are an agent, please check out their website to see if you can benefit from any of their services: http://www.listingsup.com/

Noodlor's Infographic on Typography

This is an awesome infographic on typography that I recently came across on a colleague's blog. I learned about most of this in art school, but this was a nice refresher. This illustration can be extremely useful for the non-designer. I know that it can be extremely difficult to explain what type of font you want used in a design, so hopefully this can help. Being able to say that you are looking for a "condensed, sans-serif" font upfront can save everyone a lot of time and hassle.

I have to laugh at the last What's It Saying? - the Comic Sans Faux Pas - "Oh God please don't". Basically, this is saying that this font is WAY overused!!! I can guarantee that you have this font on your computer and you most likely have used it. There are many fonts that designers feel this way about. I can send you a list of them if you like :)

I must also concur with ProTip #1. Limiting a design to no more than 3 fonts is key. In most cases, I like to keep it to two!

The creator of this infographic calls him or herself "Noodlor", but I can't find any other information to give him or her credit for this wonderful visual. If I designed this, I would have my name all over it! Cheers to Noodlor!

Why the New Look?

After more than two years of being in business with my original logo and branding, I decided it was time for change. There were a few things that were bothering me and I wanted to improve upon.

For one, I thought the black background that I used in most of my marketing didn’t really feel like me. It was too harsh. I am earthier and I believe that brown was a much better way to go. However, I definitely wanted to stick with the turquoise and lime green. If you know me well, you know that these two colors are my favorites and I couldn’t go wrong in using them.

I was also not pleased with the thickness of the pinwheel in my logo. When scaled down to a small size the arms of the pinwheel were very thin and sometimes disappeared. I did want to stick with the pinwheel design to represent “spinning the creative wheels.” I adjusted the shape of the arms and made them thicker.

And, then, there was my biggest mistake of all – “EF Designs”. I thought that using my initials was smart and that it would work better for a more compact logo. No. I really should have started out using my full name right from the start. I am not “EF”- I am “Emily Fogelman”. Using my full name on EVERYTHING makes ME more memorable and that is the most important thing.

I also significantly changed the fonts. I tried to invoke a more personal feel in my new logo with the use of a script/handwritten font for my name. The font used for “DESIGN” was meant to compliment the pinwheel and to set itself apart from my name.  

Overall, I am very pleased with my new branding and my new website.  Everyone needs a makeover every once in awhile!

You Know You're a Graphic Designer When...

This can be found many times on the internet, but I wanted to share!

You have bags under your eyes so big you’d have to check them in at Heathrow Airport.

You watch the superbowl just for the commercials.

You can spot bad typography from 100 yds away.

You are pro-facebook because 95% of the myspace accounts burn your retinas.

You can name more than 200 fonts in under five minutes.

You are completely immune to subliminal advertising.

You look upon a well-designed project with either: sympathy OR extreme jealousy.

Your hand is permanently stuck in the shape of a mouse.

You tell stories of exacto-knife inflicted wounds with grizzled sort of pride.

You practically take caffeine intravenously .

You have an appreciation for everything unique.

You’ve been spending three days non-stop on a project and it still looks like shit. You find yourself overcome by Deathlust.

You find your pulse increase at the sight of a lovely ligature, glasses steam up when an unusually elegant arm, leg, or tail comes in view, and a well-kerned paragraph is apt to make you break into a sweat with excitement.

You buy a CD or DVD for the artwork, even if you have no idea what the actual music or film is like. (even worse, you don’t actually watch or listen to it, just stare at it for hours and hug it in adoration)

You look at the clock and see it’s about midnight and think ‘I’ll go to bed now’… and you actually go to bed about 2-3am.

You need someone else to point out that you’re sitting in a room in front of the computer with all the lights off, and haven’t noticed.

You know what “kerning” is and you really, really like it.

You wear two [ke] [rn] pins on your bag, and only you know what the mean. To others its probably a band of sorts.

You forget the boy-wonder and the man of steel; your heroes have names like ‘Tibor Kalman’, ‘Stefan Sagmeister’, ‘Paul Rand’, and ‘Paula Scher’.

You don’t wear black to look cool, you wear it to hide the gauche.

You have a thing for chairs. You don’t know why.

You giggle whenever you use the colors F0CCED, EFF0FF and 44DDDD.

You’re in the sun and you look around for a Drop Shadow to sit under.

You give your relatives a lecture about color spaces and profiles when you email them your vacation photos.

You see someone using Lens Flare or Comic Sans and it adversely affects your blood pressure.

You maintain a grid system for your refrigerator magnets.

You organize your CD collection according to the Pantone chart.

You sit at work for eight hours straight just looking at your monitor, waiting for a spark of inspiration that doesn’t come.

You’re up ’til 5am because you came up with the best idea ever while brushing your teeth.

The hottest dream you ever had was “Trace contour… Find Edges… Pinch… Extrude… Smudge Stick… Motion Blur…. Sprayed Strokes…”

You know Lorem Ipsum by heart.

Your kid knows Lorem Ipsum by heart.

The preschool teacher complains your child won’t color inside or outside the lines – only indicate colors on a separate sheet.

You activate your entire font collection and your computer crashes.

You prefer a Layer Style of 50% Opacity (or less) on your wife’s Satin.

You spend $200 on a font for your personal website because “it’s the only one where the lower-case g is just right…”

Looking at a menu makes you go “hmmm, ITC Baskerville italic” rather than “mmmm, lunch!”

And when you finally order, you go for Layer Based Slices with Grain Texture…

You use words about fonts you dislike that other normal people reserve for fascist dictators and serial killers.

Apple+Z is the first thing that goes through your mind if you drop and break something.

You refer to colleagues as Strict, Transitional, Loose and the Future Unemployed.

You refer to your privates as “the Magic Wand”.

You know that rivers are more than just water.

Your best friends are all employees at the local print shop.

The only people who seem to know what you do for a living are other Graphic Designers (ex: Graphic Design? What’s that? You’ll never be able to make a living being an artist!)

Kerning and leading on your shopping list actually matters to you, and you don’t see a problem with that.

Several South American economies suffer noticeably any time you try to give up coffee, or even cut your consumption of it by half.

You know that “bleeding” doesn’t hurt.

When your significant other/ friends have threatened to never speak to you again if you point out one more font to them.
When you know the difference between fuchsia, magenta, and maroon.

If you could go back in time you wouldn’t go back to see the rise and fall of civilizations, you’d go back in time to destroy comic sans and papyrus.

You can understand everything on this list.

The Design PROCESS

I recently came across this article: The Design PROCESS. I got a little anxious before reading it, thinking “Uh oh, do I know about this process? I hope there isn’t anything that I am failing to do for my clients.” Luckily, I innately do most of these steps throughout the course of each of my projects. I learned this process in design school, but obviously tucked it away somewhere in the back of my head and have been using it for years without really thinking about it. Reading this article was a good refresher and makes me confident that I am offering my clients the best solution for their design “problem”.

These are the steps listed in the article and my self assessment for each step:

1. DEFINE PROBLEM: In most cases, the design problem is presented by the client when they contact me about their project. Further discussion may be needed to clarify.

2. GET PARAMETERS/SPECIFICATIONS: Once the problem is defined, I gather information about use, size, audience, color, paper stock, items to be included (text, images, logos), etc. for the project.

3. RESEARCH (client history, demographics, competition, market, technologies): VIEW THE CLIENT WEBSITE. For some clients, all of my research can be accomplished by viewing their website. If they do not have a website or it is lacking, I contact the client to gather any necessary information.

4. BRAINSTORM, WORD LIST:  Word lists? Not so much. Maybe I will give that a try in the future, but haven’t really utilized this tool up until now. Brainstorm? Definitely. Sometimes I look to the web for inspiration, including the client's own website. Client’s previous marketing materials are also a huge help. Looking for stock images that could be used sometimes lead me in a certain direction.

5. THUMBNAIL SKETCHES:  This is one step that I remember from design school because I despised it. I am not that great of a drawer/sketcher so it always upset me when my sketches looked like a 2nd grader did them and my peers’ looked like million dollar art. Although it may be frowned upon, I do this part on the computer. Nobody’s perfect!

6. COLLABORATE: Sometimes. This one is completely situational. Some projects are so straightforward that I know exactly what needs to be done and how I am going to achieve it. Other projects are a little more unclear and I may need to go back to the client, present my research and ideas, and discuss how to proceed.

7. DIGITAL FULL SCALE MOCKUPS (visual exploration):  Of course! This is my favorite part. Sending the client the proof(s) that I have developed.

8. CRITIQUE:  I also enjoy this part (sometimes). Hearing back from my clients is always exciting to me. Whether they love it and have no revisions or they have a million changes and ideas on how to improve it. I like my work to be the best that it can be and sometimes I alone cannot make that happen. Like I said, nobody’s perfect, but hopefully when I come together with my client we can create a design that is as close to perfection as possible.

9. FINALIZE ART:  Another one of my favorite parts. Once we have the design approved, I finalize the art for production and send it off!

10. PROBLEM SOLVED:  Everyone is happy! Hope that we can do it again sometime :)

Print to Make a Comeback in 2011

What I read in this article 7 Reasons Why Print Will Make a Comeback in 2011 really made sense to me and not just because the bulk of what I design is print marketing. I have noticed recently that I really enjoy getting away from my computer and holding a physical magazine or book. Sadly enough, the printed page sometimes seems way too foreign.

Getting my mail out of the mail box each day is also something that I look forward to - even if most of it is junk mail. Even some of the junk mail is interesting to look at!

To agree with the article and to make my point: "Online content marketing is definitely here to stay. Yes to social media, apps, and the rest of it. But, don't forget that print can still play an important role in your overall content marketing mix."