I’m accepting new projects for May; get a quote

I’m all for tradition, but there is definitely a part of me that loves a more outlandish approach to things. These fluorescent pink wedding invitations by The Hungry Workshop (in letterpress, my favourite) definitely fall into that category.

Do you prefer traditional designs or something more outlandish? Leave a comment and let me know.

Something borrowed, something pink

You may recall from some time ago the series of illustrations imaging if Google Maps were real, by Illustrator Alejo Malia. Alejo has recently expanded his vision with the above new series on Google Sky. See more of Alejo’s work here

If Google Sky were real

“The Perfect Pour”. A must have infographic for every graphic designer. Be sure to click the image to see the full size picture

The perfect pour: Infographic

You’ve got the front and rear of your business card designed and printed. Now how about the sides? Edge painting, also referred to as edge colouring or colour edging, is a great addition to really make your business card stand out.

Neve designs.

Atelier Santaclara.

Inspiration Home.

Tina Durocher.

The Ubiquitous Manufacturing Company.

Elizabeth Edwards.

FRWD.

BLOK Architecture.

Maria Bernal Photography.

Julia Ann Ruzich.

Slate Studio.

Emily Ellyn.

Apala Corporation.

Villainy and Associates.

Smart Penguin.

Image Now Films. These cards may also be Triplex (it’s tough to tell 100% by the photo), three different coloured layers of stock, judging by the white and black edges still being visible. A slightly different effect, which can be used instead of, or in conjunction with edge coloring. Either way, they deserved a mention.)

Culinary Culture.

Nikki Nischke Photography.

Brilliant.

Widgets & Stone.

Pacific Luxury Group.

Aphro Chic.

What do you think about edge painting?

Some printers/binders offer a limited range of colour choices, whiles others will do it in the Pantone of your choice (for an additional cost of course). Depending on which way you go you’re looking at a few hundred dollars per thousand cards to add edge colouring to your business cards.

Edge painting business cards

A comical lesson in typography: Keming, the result of improper kerning.

I’m afraid I don’t know who the creator of this is as it was forwarded to me from a friend, so I can’t give credit. If you do know, let me know.

Keming

Charitable, speculative and free design work is regularly sought after in the design industry. While the terms are often interchanged, there are important distinctions between them which define whether designers should accept or refuse the work.

Free work:

There’s no shortage of people who want free graphic design work. The most common excuses are “we’re only a small business” or “we’re a start-up company”. If we’re being honest though, this is rubbish.

No retail store tells their wholesaler they can’t afford to pay for products because they’re small. No office says they can’t pay the rest because they’re only a start-up.

Graphic design is a service like any other. And like everyone else in this work, designers get paid. The expectation of free graphic design work from any business is simply unacceptable.

While it may be tempting for students or designers just starting out to undertake free work in the hope of things to come, your time is better spent elsewhere. Design some promotional work, write guest articles for exposure or contact a real charity (we’ll get to that in a minute) who really can’t afford it. Anything but working for free.

Speculative work:

Requests for free work are often dressed up as speculative, even though people have no intention to pay. For the purposes of this discussion, let’s pretend the client is legitimate in their promises to pay if they’re happy with the work. Even if this is the case, it’s still flawed thinking.

Not wanting to pay for something which isn’t right is understandable, but if you don’t have some amount of confidence in a designer, why are you dealing with them? No one hires a builder and thinks “I’m really getting a bad vibe from this guy. Some of his work looks pretty sloppy. Oh well, I’ll hire him anyway and if my house isn’t right I just wont pay“. No, you contact someone else.

Spec work is most common in the form of design contests. A client promises an amount for the winning entry and depending on the terms & conditions of the provider, is often not required to pick a winner and can withdraw their offer. There is little to no risk for the client.

On the flip side of that coin, there is little to no chance for the designer to be compensated for their time. As a result they simply don’t care. Your design project is just one of many churn and burn jobs that the minimal amount of effort will go into for a chance at payment. Good graphic designers charge because they deliver a good service.

If you like a designers work but have any concerns, speak to them! Good designers care about the work they do and are just as eager for a successful project as you are.

Charity graphic design:

Contributing to a worthwhile charity is obviously a great thing, but “charitable organisations” come in many forms. You also may not support a particular organisation.

For example… I’ve done free design work in the past for local animal shelters, one in particular when I was living in Sydney. This cat shelter was run full time by one couple and a few dozen volunteers giving their time. They took in literally hundreds of cats, paying for everything themselves and with the help of modest donations. They only gave cats away to good homes and never put a single animal down. This is an organisation that deserves help.

On the other hand, I would not work for PETA, as they spend a fortune on advertising and legal battles while killing around 90% of the animals they “rescue”. (Note: No pro/anti PETA comments please, that topic would be better discussed elsewhere.)

You don’t need to wait for the right organisation to approach you either. Go out and find someone. There are plenty of suitable organisations with dud websites or clip-art pamphlets that would appreciate the help.

Where does charity stop?

Just because an organisation is charitable, doesn’t mean they don’t have funding. There are many national and international organisations with marketing budgets who hire agencies to co-ordinate their work.

It’s unfortunate, but some advertising agencies get paid work from charitable organisations then try to get free work from designers for the project. In this situation you’re working for the advertising agency, not the charity and you should be paid accordingly.

So what to do?

If business is good and you can give some time to a charitable organisation you support, that’s obviously great. Ultimately you’ve got to look out for number one, if the bills are piling up and your flat out, you should be focusing on paid work.

How do you manage charity, speculative and free graphic design work requests? Leave a comment and let me know.

Managing charity, speculative and free graphic design requests

The most common screen resolution, screen size and best practices when it comes to size for web design are common topics of discussion among web designers. Opinions are divided on what size is best, but luckily there is plenty of cold, hard data to help you decide.

In days gone by, when screen technology was in its toddler stage, fewer screen sizes were available and larger (considered large at the time anyway…), higher resolution screens came with a hefty price tag attached, typically limiting their use to specialised fields.

640×480, 800×600 and 1024×768 screen resolutions where the only options and catering for smaller sizes made sense as they were widely used. While many still argue it’s best to cater for these smaller sizes, the data just isn’t there to support this decision now-a-days.

What follows is a breakdown of the last 100,000 visitors to www.andrewkeir.com and their screen resolutions. Note: For the less tech-savvy out there, the most common screen resolution is not to be confused with the most common screen size. While 2 screens may be the same inches, the screen ratio, available resolutions and actual resolution in use will differ.

On to the data. First off, we have the top 10 resolutions.

To save you doing the math, 77,636 visitors had screen resolutions over 1024×768, with 9,425 of visitors using 1024×768 screen resolution. 87% of visitors accounted for with no sign of anything lower. On to ranks 10 – 20.

As you can see, 800×600 barely scrapes in with a measly 353 visitors out of 100,000. Nearly 95,000 visitors accounted now. The remaining few percent of visitors were made up of a mix of tablets, mobile phones and other devices. Individually none had more than a hundred visits, if not a lot less, including 640×480.

So what is the minimum resolution you should cater for?

Designing a website no wider than 1024 still had as lot of merit, with nearly 10% of visitors running 1024×768. Having said that, you really can do a lot with a few hundred extra pixels.

If you do go wider, yours wont be the first website people running 1024×768 have seen that was too wide for their screen and the extra space can let you do more for the majority of your visitors.

What screen resolution to you design for? Leave a comment and let me know.

Most common screen resolution(s) and best size for web design: A 100,000 visitor analysis

Read your bookcase. A fantastic modular, typographic bookcase by Saporiti.

Read your bookcase

A little good advice never hurt anyone. If you’re looking for a few tips on how to improve your graphic design business or just a little insight into how others do things, 100 habits of successful graphic designers is worth a read. On to a few quotes from the book…

Every business has competitors and you want clients to think of you first. Though repeat projects from some clients may be few and far between, keeping in touch occasionally will help secure you in their mind for future work.

Small projects are often treated as churn and burn jobs, but every business starts small. The better the job you do on the small job, the better your chances of landing the big job down the road.

It’s understandable that clients are excited and designers are eager to begin a new project, but you can never have too much information. However comprehensive a design brief might be, whether provided in full by a client or extracted via questions from the designer, there is always more information to be gained.

Don’t stop at just a written brief, have a few conversations. The more you understand the client and the more they understand you, the better it will be for everyone.

Although good graphic design is about what works, and not personal tastes and preferences, they sometimes can’t be avoided with some clients. If you’re constantly butting heads with a client over a their inflexible preconceived ideas or personal tastes the design can only suffer. On the other hand, working with clients on a similar creative wavelength is a recipe for success.

Advice applicable to every business, but seemingly more common in graphic design. The dreaded client who hires you for your expertise, and then proceeds to tell you exactly who/what/how/where/when every little detail should be done.

The moral of the story is, make the most effective use of your time. If your job is to drive the business, leave design to the designers, and vice versa.

To close, a few shots from inside the book.

Can you recommend any good graphic design books? Leave a comment and let me know.

100 habits of successful graphic designers

How would you like your graphic design? You may pick two. By Colin Harman for “times when things just need to be explained using a spectacular Venn diagram”

How do you like your graphic design? Leave a comment below and let me know.

How would you like your graphic design? You may pick two

(Click image for full size view)

(Click image for full size view)

A fantastic series of illustrations from an advertising campaign by Mercedes Benz. Not strictly accurate going by modern science, but a great depiction of the concept.

Are you a lefty or a righty? Leave a comment below and let me know.

Right brain vs left brain

You may have seen these these floating around with supposedly promoting The Smithsonian Museum. They are in fact a series of self promotional work from the team at An Erratic Perspective. The Smithsonian Museum reference was initially put to may the posters more authentic, but removed after the posters viral popularity on the internet, to avoid confusion. In any event, the excellent series deserved a mentioned.

What do you think? Leave a comment below and let me know.

Historically Hardcore

“A photographer went to a socialite party in New York.

As he entered the front door, the host said ‘I love your pictures – they’re wonderful; you must have a fantastic camera.’

He said nothing until dinner was finished, then: ‘That was a wonderful dinner; you must have a terrific stove.”

– Sam Haskins

An anecdote quoted from the now late photographer, Sam Haskins. If you’re a photographer, graphic designer or work in another creative field, you’ve probably heard similar comments to that of the host in this quote, I know I have.

Can you relate? What is your craft, and how often do your tools get the credit? Leave a comment below and let me know.

P.S. Surprisingly, after posting this I’ve had to delete quite a few comments calling the photographer various colourful insults not fit to be repeated here. It’s a story people, meant to be taken with a little humour. No need to get upset.

An anecdote for creative types everywhere

If you frequent the Behance Network at all, you might have come across bits and pieces of this amazing calendar by Irina Vinnik. Its completion took nearly 4 years. I recently stumbled across the now complete set, and thought it deserved a recap in full.

A close up shot of the detail of each illustration/calendar page.

What do you think?

No doubt its a little late to buy a 2011 calendar this late in the year. Fingers crossed that a 2012 version becomes available soon. You can check out more of Irina’s amazing work here.

The Saurians Renaissance; Illustrations and calendar