What makes a good Designer?

Fletcher Ward Design has been producing high quality, fast, Design & Artwork for over 40 years now, and those years of experience, contemplative meditation and gallons of coffee all help for sure, but we soon came to realise that good design comes packaged with some universal truths.

So here we expose some core beliefs that all great designers share.


1. It’s not just about pretty pictures.

Design concepts must start with a close understanding of the client, their products and the people they are trying to reach. The marketing puzzle that needs to be solved must first be understood.

The information, details and insights discovered in this process of understanding then add fuel and creative direction to the project.






2. Start with thoughts and words and end with graphic impact.

Strong ideas come before execution. Avoid the temptation to put together a design solution straight away.

Thinking about attributes, associations, strategies and creative metaphors can reveal the truth about a product's direction - ask questions, “does this feel more like Steamboat Willie or Toy Story”

Strategy comes before layout.





3. Swimming against the tide.

Every designer is into fads and fashions, ‘flat’ design is everywhere at the moment, but try and remember that a design solution must be driven by the client's project.  Don’t be afraid to rock the boat when there is a marketing reason to do so.

Embrace the trends, and reject the trends as needed. Trends should be approached as a tool not the tool box.





4. Honest hard work will drive ideas, honestly.

Dozens of ideas will be thrown out, reasonable solutions will be ditched, but until the right one is discovered there is no substitute for hard work.  Occasionally you hit the target early, but be prepared to down the caffeine.

An honest work ethic drives great ideas.








5. Perfection is your obsession

OK, so most people aren’t this OCD. But this is what makes us Designers. A designer knows how much details make or break a design project.

The client often doesn’t realise or even notice but proper attention to the finesse of layout, typographic perfection and graphic rules will make your work stand out.







6. Telling and selling.

You never bought anything without being sold the idea first - even if you didn’t realise it.

The truth is that ultimately you need to sell your client's product.

Your skill is in the art of making the client's consumer see your ideas as the driving force for their desires. As a designer this is part of your daily routine.





7.  Design smart

A good designer knows his or her creative tool box.  Software, Typography, graphic rules, layout, inspiration, ideas and personality will help drive a project to success.

An honest message that is spoken through a smart and clean design is what the market will respond to best.

A major faux pas of the average designer is the over use of graphic content, whether it is font, imagery or colour and effects. A smart designer does not cram their design with confusing content that oversells a message, leaving no room for the product to breath.  A great design usually involves as little ‘design’ as possible. Remember, white space is one of the most important design elements!


Above all, a good designer knows DESIGN MATTERS.

Design & Artwork - design matters, art works

Big Bus Night Tour project

One of our clients, Big Bus Tours London, needed a brochure to launch their exciting new London Night Tour.  The project involved extensive Photoshop montage illustration work to create an atmospheric, visually appealing cover and the design and production of a 'map' brochure which would help to promote the tour on-board the current Day Tour buses and at point-of-sale. The launch was a great success and the Night Tour is now an important part of the Big Bus portfolio of tours and destinations throughout the world. 

Click this link if you'd like to find out more:  http://eng.bigbustours.com/london/night-tour.html 

What am I looking for?

OK, I'm after a designer.  What am I looking for?

Passion, drive and a focused vision - someone who thinks objectively and can cleanly solve problems, without fuss or over emphasis.  Someone who creates solutions that are meaningful and deliberate and who is aware of the larger picture.

They know that your brand is not so much about you as your target audience so they will progress your brand image with the aim of communicating to your target market.

Good design is about a state of mind, honesty and an approach to problem solving - it's realising the function and purpose of the aim. And it’s how you will beat your competition.

Design can be executed in many ways, but the final goal is always the same - to solve a visual or physical problem. 

So how can I spot the right designer for me?

Good design is not easy to define because the best designs seem not to be designed at all but to exist and work silently solving the marketing problem. It’s easier if we break things down. If you know what to look for, it’s simple to spot good design when you see it; or perhaps more importantly, when you can’t see it at all!

Design principles to look out for are:

• innovative 

• makes a product useful

• aesthetic

• makes a product understandable

• unobtrusive

• honest

• long-lasting

• thorough

• as little design as possible

Take a look at your current product – is design contributing in an innovative way? Does it make the product useful to the target market - is it understandable, aesthetic? Is it long-lasting, or will it look outdated in the future?

A good designer will manipulate all the constraints to produce a product that people will fall in love with. Love is a really strong emotion - it's a proven method - and as we said previously, it’s how you’ll beat the competition.

What one do you prefer? Vote now!

We've just finished a rather interesting project for Science|Business on behalf of BP. It involved coming up with a set of report cover options for a recent seminar on the future of European energy development. The brief was to explore the concepts of taking the correct route, complex considerations and an end energy policy target. We came up with 3 ideas that went down really well. We won't tell you which one they went for, but let us know what gets your vote…

Option A

Europe energy maze

Option B

Decision ‘maze’ with sky and

‘Europe cloud’ background.

Moving towards a cleaner

Europe.

Option C

Futuristic image depicting

choices to be made in

negotiating the European

‘energy maze’

Vote!

Fletcher Ward Design supports the David Rundle Trust

The David Rundle Trust - a charity set up by Deri Rundle in memory of her husband to help the people of Rwanda following the horrific genocide in 1994.  They are active in 3 main areas: supplying potable water to remote areas, family planning and the education of children.  Because there are no expenses - all monies received by the Trust actually go to help the Rwandans - the leaflet we’ve just re-designed had to look basic to reflect the simplicity of the Trust’s organisation.  Go to davidrundletrust.co.uk and you’ll see what we mean.  This is a small but extremely effective charity so do help if you can.  

'Faux' HDR Photoshop manipulation

High Dynamic Range Photography.


Recently we've used a 'faux' HDR Photoshop technique and we thought it might be of interest. For those of you not aware, HDR (High Dynamic Range Photography) is basically the process of taking multiple exposures and merging them into a single 32 bit image.

A camera is capable of capturing a limited amount of tones in a single shot (the dynamic Range). Typically, elements are sacrificed when the photographer sets the camera's exposure.

An answer is to take more than one photograph and bracket the shot. Shoot at normal exposure, then under-expose to capture the highlights and over-expose to capture shadow detail. Finally, merge the shots to produce a single image with a larger range of tones that shows all the details contained in the shadows and highlights.

In Photoshop there is a technique to mimic this effect that uses combinations of layers and filters.

The examples below show the difference!