Design

Posts about designing everything from logos to themes and templates. The style of things to come and how we got there. What to look for and what to avoid.

Effective Marketing Images: Your Checklist of the Basics

By |2017-07-15T13:16:22-04:00January 1st, 2015|Best Practices and Tools, Design|

A Checklist for Sourcing, Creating, Preparing, Purchasing, Formatting and Protecting Your Images Most of your marketing efforts will involve imagery of some sort. Since there are many possibilities for sourcing, creating, formatting and using these images, it makes sense to follow specific steps to streamline your project implementation to create effective marketing images. What kind [...]

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10 Steps to Effective Call-to-Action Design

By |2021-08-30T13:23:49-04:00December 4th, 2014|Best Practices and Tools, Design|

The mighty Call-to-Action: Working hard to motivate people since the dawn of marketing I learned about creating an effective call to action many years ago as a direct mail designer. Traditional direct mail promotion involved a multi-step process: advertising with calls-to-action that included company phone number and address and a response device to gather lead contact information, [...]

Vision Changes: Typography for Aging Audiences

By |2017-07-15T13:16:23-04:00November 6th, 2014|Best Practices and Tools, Design|

Choosing a typeface for older eyes A reader recently responded to my blog post Typeface Choice: Ask yourself Three Questions, by raising an important series of questions on changing vision, information accessibility and type readability for an aging population. The reader works for a nonprofit community support agency that is developing outreach materials for rural [...]

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Anatomy of Effective Infographic Design

By |2017-07-15T13:16:24-04:00September 15th, 2014|Design, Infographics|

The infographic revolution has assumed control. Infographics are everywhere—websites, newspapers, magazine articles, television commercials, blog posts—and when done right, rightfully so. We have crawled from the dark forest of soul-numbing pie charts and eyelid-relaxing bar graphs into the colorful, joyous fields where facts, data, stories and statistics that affect us socially, emotionally and financially are given the [...]

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Typeface Choice: Ask Yourself Three Questions

By |2017-07-15T13:16:28-04:00July 17th, 2014|Design|

Why you care about typeface choice You understand typeface choice is an integral part of good design and clear communication. Whether it's online advertising or print, packaging or logo design, you know a typeface says a lot about your brand, and must be thoughtfully and carefully considered.  Typeface choice is an essential part of logo design because [...]

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Rebranding a Nation: Creating Canada’s Visual Identity

By |2017-07-15T13:16:28-04:00June 19th, 2014|Design|

The other day my wife and I are visiting my mother-in-law in Québec, and there is a show on TV about the origins of the Canadian flag. The more it goes on, the more I am engrossed in this rebranding drama. As a designer, I have a kinship with this story that differs from a [...]

Current Trend: Make it Flat Design

By |2017-07-15T13:16:30-04:00March 27th, 2014|Design|

What is Flat Design? Flat design is a simple graphic style now popular in all applications of design—user interface (UI), software, web, electronic, broadcast, and print. It is sometimes defined as the opposite of, or contrasting to three-dimensional or realistic images. It features simplified colors, shapes, images and typography. The design goal is to reduce distraction, [...]

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