Tips on Becoming a Better Designer
While most of the phone calls I receive tend to be customers in need of a rush design, a quick logo design or graphic and tend to sound like frantic children needing help at the last minute from their parents for a project they neglected to start on time... I occasionally do get calmer customers that would rather get the perfect flyer design for their event or the perfect logo design for their company. And on other occasions I get phone calls and emails from other designers that want to know how to increase their skills to match the professional quality of some of my flyer designs, mixtape cover designs, logos and graphics. It gets tediously long to keep emailing them tips or talk to them for hours on the phone, though I must admit there are times when I enjoy talking to other designers but unfortunately (or fortunately I should say) I have a business to run and that means my time is extremely important. So to save time I will compile a few design tips, tricks and lesson style posts on this blog on occasion. Feel free to search for other articles and tips on this blog.
Design Tip 1: My First Design Tip is this: RIF... That's right... Reading Is Fundamental! Go to the Library! Check out some books on design basics, Photoshop, Typography, color etc... I go to the Library on a daily Basis (my friends on FourSquare can attest to that LOL) Now in addition to books the Many libraries also cary a huge assortment of Videos, DVDs, and Music.
Design Tip 2: Do Your Research (Expanding on Design Tip 1)
Research often leads to better designs! Whether it's researching pictures for a flyer design, researching and collecting fonts or learning more about a particular subject, place or past designs to help you create something that meets all the needs of a particular design project or whether you just need something to inspire your creativity, research is an essential part of the design process. Don't short change this key phase in the design process. You don't have to do it for every project but it is often a point of inspiration and a huge game changer for many larger design projects or for times when you are between projects and just want some new fresh ideas for future projects. Research often helps you conceptualize and design a wider variety of great concept designs and can lead to an epiphany, an AHA moment that leads to a finalized design.
Design Tip 3: Become Friends with Skilled Individuals
Become friends with other designers and teach each other your unique set of skills. Each of you will grow exponentially as you learn from one another. This goes for any field not just design. If you are a DJ become friends with other DJs, If you are a Martial artist befriend other martial artists a chef etc... You will all increase your skills as you openly exchange knowledge. Bruce Lee openly taught his skills to other masters in an effort to increase his own knowledge as well. He believed teaching openly and learning from other masters would be the only way for martial arts to grow at a faster rate and for a martial artist to truly learn as much as he could.
Design Tip 4: Perfect it One Time Then Repeat That Perfection
Learn how to do something one time tweak it til it's as perfect as you can make it, document the process so you can then repeat it. In Photoshop this means creating a style tweaking all the necessary factors Drop Shadow, Glow, Outline, pattern etc then saving that new STYLE as a New Preset so you can use it again or as a new starting point for future changes. Saving presets like this will save you time in future designs that feature similar font or background styles etc...
One tip I learned that really changed my designs forever you can save any picture as a PATTERN by opening the picture then clicking EDIT then scrolling down to DEFINE PATTERN then when you open the layer style tab you can find your new pattern in the pattern swatches.
The Lettering on Jeremih's Name Both the Top one and the one's under his picture have special styling that was created specifically for this flyer. Once created I saved the styles and named them so I can select them and apply them without having to repeat the 15-25 steps it took to create the style in the first place. This has saved me a ton of time on many other projects and along with many other styles I've also created and saved allows me to quickly change and see what different styles look like on other flyers.
Design Tip 5: Always Start Every Flyer Design Project As A High Quality Print File
Don't be fooled, just because a customer says they need a web banner or web flyer doesn't mean they won't fall in love with it and want you to later create a larger print version or even a large print banner or poster. This also means you have to start every design with higher quality pictures. Save yourself the headache of having to recreate the whole thing all ov er again to create a print version of the web flyer. Start all your flyer designs as print quality CMYK color formatted flyer designs 300dpi full size be it 4x6 6x9 etc... I personally achieve much crisper designs by starting all my 4"x6" or 6"x9" flyer designs at full size 12"x18" Posters that way the customer gets a poster design they can print as posters if they want and I then shrink down a copy for the 6x9 and 4x6 flyers sizes before then shrinking it further and changing the color format to RGB for the web versions. This takes a litte longer to work with the files and takes up more room on your hard drive due to the larger size of the files but in the end the graphics come out much cleaner and crisper because of it. The Larger file size also allows for more pixel precise adjustments of effects and graphics. You'll notice below even though the file is a web version and saved much smaller and in web quality it is still fairly crisp and clean looking even in this small size. This is because the originals were huge and so were the original pictures so when they are shrunk down the crispness remains.
Photoshop Design Tip 6: Learn To Use Layers, Layer Properties and Layer Masks
If you have been using layers but have not yet learned to use layer masks and layer properties you are missing out on a tool that will forever change your ability to blend pictures together and erase backgrounds or draw them back in. Using multiple layers of the same image with different layer properties and opacity settings will help you create special picture effects or blends that you will not be able to produce without this technique.
For instance the Background of the 6 Panel CD Cover Design pictured below was created using 3 Copies of the Multi-Colored Stars as well as 2 or more copies of Kami's pictures each at different settings and some with parts of the picture blended out using layer masks. You will note that the background shows through parts of his suit and shirt in the two pictures on the left, while his face is mostly opaque and clear. This is achieved using multiple layers with the bottom layer set to either OVERLAY or LUMINOSITY both of which allow parts of the background to show through each with unique effects. Blending in the layers above and masking out part that I want to show more of the background we eventually through multiple layers of various settings including the top layer set to NORMAL we achieve the desired result. The top layer is set to normal at 100% opacity and I simply mask off parts of it so the other layers show through I also have a layer of the background set in between two of the layers set at overlay so that it's colors are more vibrant and the brighter parts of it appear to be in front or blending with Kami's Pictures. It is a trial and error process so saving often and saving multiple versions is very important.
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