The Beginning Designer

Moved!

sthursby — Fri, 13 Mar 2009 12:47:28 +0000

I’ve moved!

Well, sort of…about to finish a re-working of my website, which includes a blog page.

http://www.sthursby.com/blog/

So I’ll see you all over there!

Building a Personal Brand: Part Three

sthursby — Thu, 29 Jan 2009 17:53:02 +0000

Part Three: The Website

The first part in the series was about creating and refining a logo, whereas the second part covered the creation of a portfolio and resume. The third part in this series is devoted to the creation of a website which builds on the strength of the identity and the layout theme of the portfolio to come up with a web design which complements and strengthens the entire brand ‘package’.

The finalized website can be found at http://www.sthursby.com.

Initial Considerations

The first consideration was that, to create cross-platform and cross-utility unity, the website had to reflect the spacious feel with loads of white space evident throughout the portfolio. Besides this, the colours had to match, which required (approximately) translating the dark blue and the dark grey into RGB/Hex from CMYK.

The points of emphasis had to remain consistent as well, with bolded grey headlines supported with grey text and blue text for emphasis & links. The main deviations from the portfolio’s treatment were in the typefaces used and the lack of all-caps text. While all caps, used correctly, can look good in print, on the web it simply looks unprofessional and ‘loud’ – hence, scrapped.

With these basic considerations complete, it’s time to design!

Basic Layout

To achieve a structured feel akin to the portfolio, I used the ever-popular 960 Grid System by Nathan Smith. Building on a 16-column grid allowed for a great deal of flexibility within a structured platform. It only took a few minutes to figure out how to work it all, and the results were satisfying, albeit with some tweaks here and there.

Within Photoshop, the initial mockup was compact yet devoid of much graphical embellishment. The only major departure from everything so far was using a ‘button-style’ logo to bring a little bit of difference in and keep the site from feeling too plain.

There are only a handful of images in use: The header image, the left-hand page header (“About”, in this example), the thin grey bar, and, of course, all the portfolio pieces. This fulfills my other main purpose: create a website that not only matches the feel of the portfolio & brand so far, but also make it as easily-accessible across browsers and viewing conditions as possible. Even without images turned on, the website can still be navigated fluently (granted, it would also be impossible to view any work, but regardless…).

Let the Coding Begin

Once a PSD mockup was complete, it was time to code the site in Dreamweaver. This was a relatively pain-free process, though it took some tweaking of margins, etc to get everything lined up correctly. Naturally, some things changed from the PSD mockup to the actual site: The button image was made smaller and rotated slightly and placed in a separate column from the header text; the typeface used will vary based on which computer you used. The font stack I used was a modified version of the Helvetica/Arial font stack from Sitepoint’s 8 Definitive Font Stacks article, eliminating everything from Frutiger down to Gill Sans MT and starting with Myriad Pro (a favourite of mine). I figured that this would be a safer stack to go with for the body copy as opposed to using a font replacement tool to force on Century Old Style (the serif used in my portfolio) for usability and ease reasons. I kept the page ‘headers’ on the left-hand side as Century Gothic images to keep some of the brand consistency, but the typeface used in the body wasn’t as crucial to me as the formatting was.

Other than that, it was a pretty straightforward process. The excellent and ever-popular Lightbox JS plugin was used for the portfolio images, saving on page space, and it only took a couple days to get the site fully fleshed out, coded and sent to the web. However, it keeps the same white space-heavy theme of the portfolio and resume and blue/grey colour scheme, as well as some common graphical elements, to create consistency across platforms. The point was to make it an incredibly simplified site to match the brand’s ‘feel’ and continue the consistency.

The next part in the series will be about creating business cards, with a final part wrapping everything up afterwards. As always, if you have any comments, feedback or experiences you want to share, please feel free!

The List of Lists

sthursby — Mon, 26 Jan 2009 14:54:05 +0000

Designers of all kinds love three things – lists, freebies and lists of freebies. This post is intended to be a sampling of the best and the up-to-date, a collection of some of the vast number of design lists out there. It will be continuously updated, so be sure to check in every few days for some more quality additions!

Building a Personal Brand: Part Two

sthursby — Mon, 19 Jan 2009 13:37:03 +0000

Part Two: The Portfolio

The first part of this series about building and developing a personal brand was dedicated to coming up with a logo. As the main focus of this project is to develop a consistent feel across all self-promotional materials, the logical next step to tackle is the portfolio.

Iffy Beginnings

The idea when I began creating my portfolio, like any portfolio, was to show off what I have done and could do, not only work-wise but also in the layout of the portfolio itself. As the logo is simple, the portfolio had to also reflect simplicity in order to keep a consistent ‘feel’. The strength of the logo is that it can be adapted any number of ways, from the simplest to the craziest, but as the default ‘feel’ is simple, the portfolio should reflect that.

My first thought was to employ a design which mimicked the circular nature of my logo. However, I felt that it never really lent itself to what I was trying to do – keeping things simple – so it developed along several different unsatisfactory paths to no real avail.

After some time working and tweaking on these ideas, I decided to take an entirely different stripped-to-the-basics approach altogether.

Self-Learned Lesson No. 1 – Do what’s comfortable.
Obviously, we only learn by pushing ourselves and as designers, we routinely have to leave our comfort zone of experience and taste . However, it’s also important to only present something you’re both comfortable with and completely satisfied with. If you don’t have confidence in a piece, there’s no use in showing it to others – they’ll be able to tell in a heartbeat.

Simply Radical, or Radically Simple?

Despite making numerous different approaches and playing with the circular form, it never seemed to feel quite right – round peg in a rectangular hole, so to speak. By taking this next development further, I felt much more comfortable and confident with the design.

As a result, I went with a very spacious and ‘empty’ layout. The idea was to play to the ‘brand’s’ strength of simplicity by using a very minimalist layout, employing only some understated type and a related image. The broad use of white space adds weight to the pieces themselves, rendering them the focal point as opposed to part of a cluttered whole. As hard as it may be to tell with these images, I hope it somewhat makes sense!

The Power of Intent

Another strength of this layout is the consistency in type location – 2 inches in from the left, 1.5 inches down. This keeps the information consistent throughout the document, and keeps a constant counter-balance to the varying image sizes and locations. The images themselves vary in size and placement based solely on visuals – in a portfolio, it’s all in how it looks.

Self-Learned Lesson No. 2 – Know your limits.
Obviously, again, we only learn by pushing our limits. However, there are times when you need to know what you can accomplish in a given amount of time and what you can’t. Case in point: Working for 5 hours throughout the evening and night on some simultaneous website re-design work, only to quickly come to the realization that it takes alot more than 5 hours to do a website re-design and re-coding. This much is obvious, and it’s one of the most elemental things you can learn through trial-and-error. But, going forward, mistakes can only help you learn.

The key with this piece, as I’m sure it is with any design piece, is to make everything look intentional. Placement, sizing, typography (and all its various details – the strength is in the details), use of colour – it all looks ‘on purpose’ and it all fits. While it’s not the most ground-breaking layout and it isn’t extreme in any sense, that’s exactly the point. As a finished result, having had it printed and bound, I can safely say I’m confident in the layout and content enough to show it off to potential employers.

Don’t Forget the Resume

Of course, a side to the mighty portfolio is the humble resume. As part of a cohesive whole, it’s only natural that the resume had to possess the sasme feel, style and elements of the portfolio. As a result, it was important to keep the typography and margins consistent and the style the same, but most importantly, it had to possess a spacious ‘feel’ while including all my information on one page. Quite the design challenge!

Well, that’s the second part of the series. What experiences have you had putting together a portfolio? Successes? Failures? Let us know, I’d like to hear other designers’ experiences!

Designers In Motion – What To Do On A Daily Commute

sthursby — Tue, 13 Jan 2009 14:04:20 +0000

Credit: Flickr Creative Commons, ohadby

If you’re like me, you’re not quite doing what you want to do and you’re working a 9-5 job. Ah, the blessed status of ‘one day soon’! If you’re like me, you also commute – an hour (or more) each way of wasted time where you can’t really do much because you’re either sleeping on a bus, driving or sleep-driving. Through several months of this, however, I’ve come across some handy ideas of things to do during this “wasted” time.

Morning Commute

Planning for the Day

Make a list of things you want to accomplish today, from paying the bills to finishing up that personal project. I find it helps to create the Rambo ‘get everything done’ mood if I have a short list of things to do that day that I know can be reached.

Doodle/Sketch

If you don’t drive, nothing gets the creative juices flowing quite like free-form idly sketching patterns, characters or anything that happens to come out of your pen or pencil.

Read

If you take public transit, chances are you don’t have to pay attention to any of your surroundings until you get to work. So, use the time to read a book! Nothing too intense, but I’ve been meaning to crack my way through Bringhurst’s Typographic Style for weeks now and can’t seem to find the time at home or at work to get over the final hump – commuting time would be ideal!

Pay Attention

Ads and creative pieces are everywhere. Some of them are pretty bland, but it’s always possible to take inspiration from the visuals around and see what works, what doesn’t, and what could be done better.

Evening Commute

Plan for the Evening

Personally, most of my ‘plans’ for the day revolve around what I want to do that evening, whether a freelance project, personal work or organizational catch-up. On the drive home, I’ll usually revise my goals for the evening and see what I can realistically accomplish. It’s all about balance, right!

Sketch/Read

If it works in one direction, it works in the other.

Zone Out/Distract Yourself

If you’re coming from work and have more work to do tonight, this is a perfect time to give your brain a rest and catch up a bit mentally. If you have an MP3 player, great. If you’re driving, some radio or CD play is perfect. Follow this up with some dinner afterwards and you’ll be completely charged for a couple hours yet.

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Ultimately, if you can figure out a way, travel time does not have to be wasted time. It can either keep your momentum going or give you a breather to start anew afterwards. However, these are mostly just ‘tips’ that have so far worked for me – what works for you?

Building a Personal Brand – Part One

sthursby — Fri, 09 Jan 2009 14:31:35 +0000

Part One: The Logo

Building a Personal Brand – Introduction

Logo Design Process

The first step in building a personal brand was to design a logo. I started doodling and sketching variations of my signature and initials, to see what might work. There was a fair amount of variation of the exact same thing, but my first idea was to take the stylized “S” signature and play around with that, which this result.

Initially, I liked it. It had some flair and artistic flavour to it, but I soon realized that it broke some of the basic rules of logo design: namely that it wasn’t scalable (it was a vector, but would not reproduce well at a small size) and that it wasn’t too describable. It also didn’t retain itself in the memory for very long.

So, back to the metaphorical drawing board. Despite browsing numerous logo sites and various articles scattered around the web, I was having trouble coming up with some inspiration when the ‘eureka’ moment struck.

Progress!

A stylized “st” ligature inside a solid colour circle – perfect! My initials spell out “ST”, so the glyph works; it was scalable; it was memorable; it could work in black and white (or indeed any colour scheme at all); it was describable and it was somewhat unique, at least among logos that I had seen.

The first thing I did at this point was to load up InDesign. My mission was to find out every typeface that had an “st” ligature, place them all next to each other and rapid-fire eliminate until I was left with a few favourites.

Quick tip: In a continuing-ed design course I took last fall, I was told that it’s good practice to design a logo in black and white first and add the colours later, among other tips. Hence, all the glyphs are simply black and white at this stage.

As I narrowed down the options, some favourites emerged, with Palatino Linotype & Arno Pro chief among them. Eventually, I settled on Arno Pro. I chose this typeface because it was the most aesthetically pleasing to my tastes, which is the same reason why I chose the dark blue as a ‘base’ colour. While I use the blue as a ‘default’, in reality the logo can be adapted to any colour scheme to fit any context without detracting from the logo form itself.

At this point, I had arrived at my basic logo design – it appealed to me, it satisfied the basic ‘rules’ of memorable logo design, it could be adapted to suit any means and it had the potential to be modified, added on to and ‘played with’ down the road by adding different visual elements.

Some (Extremely) Helpful Resources

As this was one of my first attempts at logo design, I had a bit of catching up to do. So, throughout the working process, there were numerous sources I went to for some guidance and inspiration. Here are some of those resources, as well as some more useful ones I have since come across. As always, please feel free to leave a comment or drop me a line about your own personal logo designs, suggestions – anything!

imjustcreative.com – The entire branding process & story of Graham Smith’s imjustcreative brand.

imjustcreative.com – Part 1 of a feature series of freelancer’s logos from imjustcreative.com

justcreativedesign.com – One of a number of posts by Jacob Cass which proved invaluable in the basic what-to-dos in logo design

justcreativedesign.com – Jacob’s 5 Steps to Designing a Logo

design-daily.com – Designer-Daily.com’s 10 Logo Design Tips

underconstuction.com – Underconsideration.com’s Brand Identity Opinon Blog

logooftheday.com/, logopond.com, www.logodesignlove.com – Logo Inspiration

Building a Personal Brand – Introduction

sthursby — Thu, 08 Jan 2009 02:29:41 +0000

Introduction

Hi there!

In a series of posts, I’m going to be blogging about what I do as I create a personal ‘brand’ for myself. The reason I’m doing this is simple – in today’s economic mayhem, no job is safe, and no one can be too prepared for a potential job or freelance opportunity. So, over the course of the next little while (with some work completed up to this point) I’m going to be creating and working on:

Creating a portfolio
Re-designing my website
Refining and visually updating my resume
Creating business cards
As a final touch of brand consistency, customizing my wordpress and twitter themes

The idea is to build a consistent, powerful and unique personal brand across multiple platforms and for multiple purposes. I already have a personal logo prepared, which takes care of at least one of the hurdles.

Who cares?

So why am I posting this on a blog, and why are you reading this? I’m fully aware that as a designer just starting out, there may not be too much for more experienced bloggers and designers to gain from these posts. But, there are still two main reasons why I’m blogging this

Primarily, I hope that at least one person can learn something from this – either what to do, or as the case most likely will be, what not to do! Secondly, I also aim to capitalize on and soak in as much from the wide variety of high quality resources out there to create and build a better personal ‘brand’ than would otherwise be possible.

A side bonus of this is that six months from now, I hope to be able to look back at these posts and see what had a positive effect, what had a negative effect and what had no effect. There is a wealth of resources out there on the web – obviously – and I’m hoping to show that anyone, at any level, trying to do anything with design, will always have some options out there to further their knowledge and skills.

As always, throughout this series please comment, twitter or e-mail me your thoughts, feedback, your experiences, other resources, alternate ideas – anything you can think of! Looking forward to hearing from you!

How to Start in the World of Design

sthursby — Sun, 04 Jan 2009 15:32:34 +0000

As a beginning designer, it’s an uncertain work world out there. Global recessions, downsizing marketing departments & budgets, calls for the imminent downfall of the print, magazine and newspaper industries – not to mention an absolute wealth of supremely talented individuals and collectives out there competing for the same jobs you are. In my short time (so far) within the design world, however, a couple things have become clear to me that I think can help any novice or tentative designer.

1. Pay attention

2. Participate

3. Enjoy yourself

By keeping these three ideas in mind, I’ve managed to keep my head afloat while remaining optimistic about the future and wholly realistic about the present. In practice, there are a couple facets of each step which may make things easier.

Pay Attention

The internet is a wonderful thing in that it allows for much broader connectivity than anything previous while remaining tied down to the core objects which mark our niche – computers and gadgets. While that is nothing new to hear, the key is to pay attention to what’s going on out there. Learn from tutorials; keep track of trends and what other designers are doing through any number of quality aggregator sites; follow and learn from designers through usage of RSS or Twitter; and much much more. The possibilities are quite literally endless when it comes to how much knowledge is just sitting out there waiting for you to pick up on.

Participate

For some, just following and absorbing is enough. However, to truly maximize your web presence and the benefits that the power of social networking can have for you as a designer, you need to participate as well. Sign up for a twitter account, follow the designers you admire, and whenever a question is asked or a survey taken – answer! Don’t hesitate to ask your own as well, you never know who can help with a question you have. Create a blog – this is a great way (as I’m quickly finding out) to force you to regularly come up with ideas and have something to say, putting into words the things you think or do. Comment on blogs, tutorials, sample packs, whatever – and when doing so, include a link to your website, blog, twitter account, whatever. The power of participation, community and the transfer of knowledge is too much to let slip by.

Enjoy Yourself

Finally, enjoy yourself. We all design partially because it pays the bills (to one degree or another), but ideally because we love it. You can easily use the resources available to enhance your skills as well as your enjoyment of design work. Experiment! Download some free fonts (tons of quality ones out there), vectors, textures, brushes, etc and create some compositions. Draw on inspiration from a certain designer or piece and see if you can come up with your own off-shoot of it. Knowledge is gained through imitation and inspiration, and the sheer volume and variety of quality design out there can keep anyone interested, inspired and fresh.

What Else? You Tell Me!

Now, I’m relatively new to this entire ‘social networking’ thing myself. My Twitter account is barely 2 weeks old, this is my blog’s second post, my website is in sore need of a re-design and a whole host of other side points. However, these are the key points I’ve somewhat come across as I’ve consciously tried to expand my online presence, and they seem to work for me so far. However, that’s not nearly all of it – every designer works differently. So, I want you to tell me what works for you. How have you taken the reins of the wide variety of content out there and maximized your personal benefit from it? Feel free to either comment, drop me a line on Twitter or Facebook or even by age-old conventional e-mail!

Cheers!

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Some Quality Links

http://abduzeedo.com/ – World-class tutorials & inspiration

http://www.blog.spoongraphics.co.uk/ – Quality blog showcasing a wide variety of tutorials and design works

http://www.booooooom.com/ – Fantastic showcase site for inspiration

http://www.changethethought.com/ – Another fantastic showcase site

http://designbump.com/ – Great ‘aggregator’ site canvassing the design web

http://designyoutrust.com/ – More great design inspiration

http://ilovetypography.com/ – For any and all typography nuts

http://justcreativedesign.com/ – The website and blog of the super-talented Jacob Cass

http://logooftheday.com/ – Daily upload of a quality logo – Perfect for inspiration!

http://nettuts.com/ – Web design and development tutorials; part of the same network as several other tutorial sites including Photoshop, AfterEffects, Illustrator and more

http://www.photoshoplady.com/ – Gathers together some of the best Photoshop tutorials

http://www.smashingmagazine.com/ – Pretty much the ultimate design site out there, covering all aspects of everything creative.

http://www.thedieline.com/blog/ – Quite simply the world’s “leading package design website”

http://typophile.com/ – Typographic community – contribute, follow and learn!

http://www.webdesignerwall.com/ – Relatively infrequent but super-quality web design posts

New Beginnings & New Year’s Resolutions

sthursby — Wed, 31 Dec 2008 15:21:05 +0000

First post on a new blog.

And I’ll start it with some ‘professional’ new years resolutions, as it were.

My name is Stuart Thursby, and I’m a graphic designer from Toronto, Canada. I’ve recently started to embrace the power of the internet to connect people, particularly designers, from all walks of life all over the globe, and this is my platform to connect with other bloggers from everywhere. So, to start off with a bang – new year’s resolutions! Only these particular resolutions relate to design and the ‘social web’, as it were. Here goes…

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The Super-Duper New Year’s Resolutions of Doom

—–

Get Connected

Unleash the potential of the web by not only creating accounts on LinkedIn, Twitter, deviantArt, etc, but capitalize on them to reach other designers I admire and respect.

Create reasonably-often updated, relevant and applicable posts on this blog to help establish my own presence on the web.

Use these platforms to share information, advice and content

Get Educated

One tutorial a day. No more, no less. Vary up the content, whether it’s Photoshop, Illustrator (needs the most work), CSS, or whatnot.

Learn from highly-regarded books, magazines and websites about any of the elements of design, in place of a formal education in design.

Get Ready

In case the job market crashes and I lose my current job (as a graphic designer at a wholesale book company), use the previous two resolutions to prepare myself for whatever may come, whether a new job, freelance, or a continuation at my current place of employment.

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So that’s it – my plan, as it were. Never really made New Year’s Resolutions before, so now’s the time to begin!

The Beginning Designer

Moved!

Building a Personal Brand: Part Three

Part Three: The Website

Initial Considerations

Basic Layout

Let the Coding Begin

The List of Lists

Community/Social Networking

Freebies, Brushes & Vectors

Fonts & Typography

Inspiration & Motivation

Logo Design

Misc. Resources

Tutorials

Web Design

WordPress/Blogging

Building a Personal Brand: Part Two

Part Two: The Portfolio

Iffy Beginnings

Simply Radical, or Radically Simple?

The Power of Intent

Don’t Forget the Resume

Designers In Motion – What To Do On A Daily Commute

Morning Commute

Read

Evening Commute

Sketch/Read

Building a Personal Brand – Part One

Part One: The Logo

Building a Personal Brand – Introduction

Logo Design Process

Progress!

Some (Extremely) Helpful Resources

Building a Personal Brand – Introduction

Introduction

Who cares?

How to Start in the World of Design

1. Pay attention

2. Participate

3. Enjoy yourself

Pay Attention

Participate

Enjoy Yourself

What Else? You Tell Me!

Some Quality Links

New Beginnings & New Year’s Resolutions

First post on a new blog.

The Super-Duper New Year’s Resolutions of Doom

Get Connected

Get Educated

Get Ready