Know When to Finish

One of the most important rules that you need to follow as a graphic designer is knowing when to end the creative process in a project. As a beginner, most people have this issue and that's okay. We all start off making mistakes and learn from them. In order to find the right balance in your work, that just takes time, research, and of course practice. It took three years for me to really find my balance and it wasn't easy by no means.

How to Know When to Finish

• Stop what you are doing: Get up from the computer, look at it from a distance and ask yourself, do I need all these different elements in the project to explain the concept?
• Outside opinion: Ask a few people that you know or don't know if the design is too much or not enough. People know good artwork from bad artwork. If possible ask another designer that you can trust for their opinion. Use social media links and post images if you need to really reach out to people.
• Double check: If anything is cluttered or doesn't make sense and doesn't flow with the concept take it out. If you have any old ideas about how a project should look, definitely check those again and just try to figure out what key points and images you need to use to complete the project and deliver the concept
• Compare: Compare the project to someone else's with similar concepts. See how they designed their project and the arrangement of the images, text, and symbols.

The rookie mistake: Design roulette

Basically your projects' fate is dependent upon the flip of a coin. This is the, "If all else fails," method. Now this method not something that I would never advise at all! Businesses do take risks. However when it comes to flipping a coin just don't fall into this habit of uncertainty and you will be alright. You're clients will not be pleased if they find out your work is based on luck. That's unprofessional and will get you into trouble.

The Finish

Once you begin to understand and learn when to stop designing, then your life gets so much easier. You confidence will go way up and your creativity will shine a lot more. Less will always be better than cluttered and junky.

Design Tips: Save, Save, Save!

You are working on a logo for a client and they said that they need it done first thing in the morning. It is night time and you have been racking your brain for hours trying to come up with ideas on what it should look like. You finally get a brainstorm breakthrough, try to keep a mental note of it, and start working on the logo. It's 1:00 am, you finish the logo, and then all of a sudden, the program crashes!

It is then and only then that you forgot one key option..to save! Just to make things worse, now you have forgotten all of your mental notes. You feel like an epic failure right now and it has you at a point to where you are yelling at the computer and saying, "Come Back!!!"

Now you feel like throwing your computer out the window. The only problem is that you live on the third floor and then when you look out the window, decide it's a bad idea anyways. You already know that your client would be "thrilled" to hear your story and then leave because they think you have unresolved anger issues now. I know that there are people in this world who would make up a story to cover the truth when talking to the clients to save their tail but that's just wrong. I would simply just say to them, "I am having technical difficulties at the moment" and then hope and pray that I can get on one of my friends' computer at this time(remember it's 1:00 in the morning haha!).

So now you have to start all over again because you forgot one simple little step, to save. Many of us don't even think about saving unless it is at the beginning or very end of a project.

My most epic fail moment in saving

For me, it happened when I was a Junior in college. I was taking Independent Studies and my project was to build a website from start to finish. I remember that I had been using Dreamweaver to build my site, which I was using for 3 straight hours and then all of a sudden, the program crashed and I didn't save anything. I just fell into the trap that our teachers warned us about not saving and for a project like a website...yeah it stung a lot. All I can remember is that I got up, walked away from the computer, drove home and came back two days later and started all over again.

Things to help remind you to save your work

Here are a few tips that helped me get out of the no-save trap

• The keyboard shortcut is Ctrl +S(PC) or Command+S(Mac). Just keep doing it until it becomes second nature
• Set an alarm for every 5 mins and then save
• Place a sticky note on your computer saying, "Save me!"
• Keep a "Just in Case" folder and physically write down all the steps you took in the project and put them in the folder.

Autosave

It would be awesome if every program had this feature but sadly, they do not. Now if the design software that you have includes it, turn it on as soon as you find it! This would really ease a lot of stress and anxiety for people who do forget to save their work from time to time. It's also good to have a recovery file too. That's basically a file that has your work recovered from when the program either suddenly closed or crashed on you.

So just remember to save your work at all times and you will be fine. Now for those of you who did forget to save, tell me what was your most epic failure moment when forgetting to save?

Design Tips: Learn the Programs

Whatever you do, please learn the design programs that are out there now. Now for those of you that use Adobe Software, this is strictly for you! The book on the left, Adobe Creative Suite 4 Design Premium Digital Classroom has so much information in it, it's ridiculous. This book was extremely helpful in my desktop publishing class. It went over each program we used in class and that included Adobe Illustrator, Photoshop, InDesign, Dreamweaver, Flash, and I believe Fireworks(many people don't use this one but, to me, it's actually a combination of Photoshop and Illustrator, as well. ) I learned as much as I could from this book. What it did was cover the basic tools from each program and give you an example to follow, step-by-step, so that you could retain and demonstrate the knowledge you attained. Though the challenges to read, study, and practice design, is hard for some people you have to look at the overall picture. In order to expand our creativity, we have to be willing to expand our minds as well. If books aren't your thing, try something else.

You have got to understand the design programs. If one crashes or something one day, you will be out of luck if you have no knowledge or skill of the other programs. If you get an opportunity to work at a design firm because they like the work you created with Illustrator, but they only work in Photoshop and you have no experience in Photoshop, then 9 times out of 10, you won't be lasting long in that firm. 

One thing to do

The one tip that I wanted to give you guys today was simply, to learn. Learn as much as you can, whenever you get a chance to. A lot of young designers think that they only need to learn as much as a professor or client wants in order to be successful. When you do that not only do you lower your own standards as a design, but you are depriving yourself from useful knowledge and resources that will be a tremendous asset to you in the long run. Once you understand the fundamentals of those programs that I mentioned earlier, then life will be so much easier. Right below, I came up with a list of resources that designers use to acquire more knowledge. Hope this helps out some and good luck!

Graphic Design Resources

• Tutorials
• Videos
• Classes
• Books
• Magazines