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Morning Recap

So here's the first piece that we looked at. This is the Apple brochure. So we've got the before on the left and the after on the right in here again, we've added proximity. So that's spacing, that putting more space in between things that are not related, less space between things that are related. So the subhead is related to the paragraph underneath it. That's why there closer together, we've implemented our rule of alignment, and we've given it a nice lift edge for the readers I to follow. We talked about that, Their readers. I always enters a piece at top. Lift moves right and then down. So this alignment works out really fall for that. You can never go wrong with the left alignment. You just cannot ever go wrong. We left Lineman. If this were all centered, it would look vastly different. We've also applied the rule of repetition, and here we have stolen the color from the blocks of the bottom of the peace and use that for our headline. And our subheds makes the top half of the pi...

ece feel related to the bottom half the peace. Otherwise, they would appear a little separate If you look at the version on the left, they almost feel like two different things. But when you add repetition into their, the whole thing becomes cohesive. And we've got contrasts built into this piece as well. A little bit at the top of the piece, in the size of the headline compared to the size of the body copy. That's underneath it. So we pair big with little. We've also paired in the same area, thick with fins. We've got a thick big headline next to small, thin text. We've also got contrast going on at the bottom of the piece in the color blocks next to the photos. OK, and we've also got contrast in the form of the rancher, the rather large graphical area at the bottom, in comparison with the rest of the white space that's on the document has it quite a bit of white space. So that's how we have implemented the four design rules on this particular piece. Now let's take a look at our business card boy. Howdy. Did this one get a lot better? Thank goodness. So we've got the original on the left with the logo in the center of the piece totally messes up. I flow. You're I wants to go the top left. But there's that Dad gum big logo in the middle. So you're forced to look in in the middle. Already starts to make you uncomfortable. Feels like who is this? Mac was person. We obviously cannot trust her. You know, this card is horrible. So if we apply proximity, spacing, information output, that logo on the left size could have been a little bit bigger. I kept it the same size as it appears on the lift in the original card, but we've put it where the eyes gonna enter the peace first. So we've started out with them with our logo there. Now we move to the right and because we've got a small block of text we can get away with right alignment gives your eye another nice hard edge to follow as it slides down that page to take in all of the information, we've also implemented repetition with the duplication of the star that serves as the I dot on the I on who is so we've placed that really, really big. And since we already had one in the piece that's really small. We've kind of built in contrast, just with the repetition of the star element. We've also repeated color. Okay, so we have made the right side of the card feel like it's related to the left side. And again, I used to color here to highlight and emphasize draw attention to pieces of information that I really want to make sure that you see. Here's another business card example when we're gonna be talking for hours and hours about business cards tomorrow. But just a little teaser. Teoh, help you understand how important these four rules are? Look at this card on the lift. Now this is my husband's card. He's had a very nice logo that he had designed for him since the top of the car. That's great. And he's got these little clever little punch holes on the left side of the card that leads you to thinking about the actual publication that can be put in a three ring binder so that you can keep all of the issues and this goto one place to flip through them. So So we put that on the car to you, and that's that's all well and fun, but where he kind of messed up on the Zionist messed up, didn't apply these rules was in the centering of his name. Okay, so it just messes with I flew a little bit. So you're I enters the top lift moves, right? It wants to go down. But then it has the pot back to the middle to catch his name. Right? Also, this particular logo, in my humble personal opinion, didn't really convey what it is that he does. What what is designed? Told the monthly. So the card and the left doesn't really give you any indication of what the headcheese selling or the service that he provides, does it? Not at all. So the first thing that I did so when I went to redesign this card is I wanted to put a picture of the actual product on the card. So if the logo isn't as illustrative on what you do, then you can add other things. I also added the tagline We talked about that a little bit earlier to how that can really help explain or adul it a little bit more illumination on what it is that this product is. So I added the tagline Executive summary of graphic design news. That's very clear, you know, communicates well at a picture of the newsletter. You know, what the heck is this product? So we added that once I got the two graphics in there, so the logo and then the image on the left because I know that for I flow, I need to keep the the copy of the card toward the right hand side of the bottom. So then I just grabbed all the information that he had on there and right aligned all of it. I mean, this is not rocket science people. It's really not. And you memorize these rules, you're going to be able to apply them so easily, and then they're just gonna become natural. Or you're gonna start seeing them and use everywhere. So right aligned all of his information and then use the rule of proximity to space out the important stuff, which is his name and his title. What the heck do you do with this organization? Gave that a little bit more space until you drop down and you see the contact information. And last but not least, his email address at the very bottom of the card is bold. Okay, and this looks like black ticks. It's really not. It's very dark gray. Okay, So again, if you're paying for a color print job, then use color. Try to use anything but black. OK, it's just a fallback. We just were habitual creatures, and we just set text in black. You do not have to use a different color. Challenge yourself the next time I print these cards, and I'm gonna have some amazing print. Resource is for you as well, Really good quality, reputable, affordable printing resource is for you. That's part of what's on the special three page resource is pdf that you get if you purchase the course, it's one of today's download files. You'll have some of those Resource is on there, but in hindsight, I could have made his email address. I could have snatched her, read from the logo and used that instead of the bold ID gray on his email address. And that would have just called attention to that. And you would have been subconsciously led to feel like he would prefer you to email him rather than call So What else did I do to this card? Well, at the time, J had a quite popular podcast. And the reason he doesn't have that podcast anymore is Do you know how you make money on podcasts? Anybody? Anybody? You don't, you don't. That's why he doesn't do the podcasting. Where because he has something called a life as well as a wife now. Didn't used to. So he doesn't have as much time on his hands is used to. So he doesn't do all this free podcasting where they were great podcasts, and they still are on available on the ITunes Music store. So designed tools monthly. And he partnered with his another one of his riders that writes for the magazine Jeff Gamut, which is one of our best friends. So I thought, Well, heck, we've got no indication that that podcast is going on. If you give somebody your business card, do you want to have to hand them to business cards? Here's one for me years, one for my podcast. Lame. So what we can do is take advantage of the big old hawk and white spaces on the back of the business card. All business cards. Have a back to them. Use it Not on Lee. Does it give you, Ah, whole another carb space to add extra information? But if you use a big block of color on the back like I have here, even though it's charcoal gray, if that business card is in a pile of business cards, it lands on somebody's desk after they come back from that conference or that dinner where they met you. That big block of color, if that car turns over, is going to catch their attention, and so it's just gonna make them pick it up and look at it again, OK, so that's another way to do that. Also, J speaks and visits at numerous conferences all over the planet, so his face is important in his business. A lot of people have seen him and know who he is, so it's good to put faces on your card. So there wasn't really room for it on the front, and I was more concerned with getting the message across. What design tools ISS with the newsletter Art. So I used the bag of the car to put not only his picture but to advertise the podcast since the photo that I used was square. And where did I get the square shaped? Well, the business card itself is square. Okay, so I knew I wanted to use a, you know, rectangular, sharp edged image on the back. So I put the photo there, and then I started thinking about the text I wanted to add. And if I put the text on their right, which is really good. If you memorize one thing about this class image on the left text on the right period, you're done by Bye bye. Bye bye. Now. It was on the last text on the right, for I flew. So I knew my text was gonna go on the right. The alignment. I didn't have to think about it because that hard is the picture gave me my alignment. Choice is really only one right alignment would have looked like, you know, what if I used it on the Texas on the back of that card Because that hard rule of the photo is natural. And you just that Texas looks really good right next to it. So use the rule of proximity to space out the text Listen, learn laugh again. Three things people only remember 3 to 4 things. That's where there's three. Yours there. Listen, learn laughed. What is it? Free weekly podcast. You gotta gotta Very bottom drop down. Last piece of information that folks you're going to see on the back of this car does the URL, which is exactly what I want them to see. Okay, so you can see there's a big difference between the card on the left, which is pre marriage, and the card on the right, which is post marriage. And if he can hook up with the designer, it's not as good as marrying a jeweler, which that would be really great. But a designer is really nice. They on the tip, she learned these classes. You never know what you're in. Good here. We've got our little pet clinic ad. And, boy, did we come a long way on this one. So, again and frighteningly enough, the one at the top left was based on an ad that I actually saw in the wild in Westport, Connecticut, which makes it even scarier. Is that supposed to be an incredibly affluent area, not talk full of designers? apparently So, anyway, we've got no alignment going on in that ad at the top lift. We've got no repetition going on. I mean, what are you even supposed to look at? Hard to read all that kind of good stuff. Looks very unprofessional. So these were the two concepts that I came up with after looking at it. So we needed to draw attention for this one because this kind of ad you would get in an unsolicited manner. OK, so you're gonna be flipping through a newspaper or a local magazine and what have you, And it needs to catch your eye. So I need right away that I was gonna use a really big picture. What's the picture going to be? Ah. Well, what the heck are we trying to promote here? You know, we're trying to speak to cat owners. Nothing is going to catch a cat, owners attention better, faster and keep it than a big image of a cat. And if it's funny, I always try to use funny images. You know, I like being entertained. So I figured other other folks do too. Use a funny image in extreme close up extremely big sizes and then two further retained the attention. Once I've gotten it with the photo, I tried to be humorous again by using an unexpected headline. Yeah, you don't expect that cat to be addressing you directly, but it is so you can't help but read the meal and then read the rest of body copy. So we've got contrast going on here again, since I used that big image to the lift image on the left copy on the right. Then we've got that natural alignment of the photo, and we don't even have to think about the alignment of our text and include the little logo and then on the right side. The other version of this ad is a little bit more extreme, in its contrast, uses a whole lot of white space with pop prints that lead the viewer's eye from the top lift down to the bottom right of that page. Additional contrast is built in with e big in thickness, largeness and thickness of the headline in comparison to the small and thinness of the body copy. But we've got that nice left alignment, and for that particular design, the logo worked out really well to be placed at the very bottom. Okay, so what's the logo anyway? And everybody have to have a logo. Some of the best logos in the world are typographic in their nature. They're timeless. Images can go in and out of style. Styles of images can date your promotional material. This cat image is fairly cheese ball in nature. It's a little cheesy, so that can date you, but a typographic logos timeless and really, the reason that people do logo's anyway is for brand recognition. Well, unless you're operating on a Coca Cola 90 year apple level, do you probably don't need a logo. But what you do need is something that's visually interesting that you can, you know, that describes your name of your company or your name if you're have a photography studio. So logo's they don't have to be the end all be all okay, doesn't you don't have to have a graphical logo to produce beautiful promotional materials, So this ad came a long, long, long, long way. This added to look at the version that we started out with on the lift. You get a formal feel of it because it's all centered might not want to go, cause I might immediately think Oh, my God, I've got a dress up. I'm not gonna do that. I'm not gonna do that. Do you love dressed? So look at the ad on the right. In comparison to that, the art is larger. So it's more attention grabbing the contrast of the thing just grabs you. You can't help but notice it. So imagine that this was in a newspaper or a magazine. We've got a nice, strong alignment. We've got repetition going on the feathers or calling attention to important pieces of information. So those aren't placed randomly, their place very specifically, where I want you to look and you can't help but look in those places. Then we've also got repetition in color case. What makes the left side of the peace feel related to the right side of the peace and the top part of the peaceful related to the bottom of the peace? So these rules are quite easy and fun to implement a talent, Olive, you real fun exercises. Take any kind of promotional materials you created, other for yourself or for clients. This Look back. Your designer, it's um, projects And keep these four rules in mind and ask yourself what you would do differently. You know, Nice follow line your favorite frosty beverage on a Friday or Saturday night. Pull out those old projects and play with them. It could be very enlightening exercise to do and good for your brain. So here are the full four rules. Now, I promise you earlier they'll give you an easy way to memorize them. Well, if you don't use these four rules, your designs are gonna look like crap, all right. To be brutally, brutally honest with you. So I rearranged them so that they spell this word so that you can remember it. Contrast. Repetition, alignment, proximity. It really doesn't matter what order you implement them. I do think that contrast is easier, at least for me to apply. Last because contrast this doesn't come to me right off the bat like some of these other principles. Dio I think they resonate with me more more used to implement in them. I'm not sure, but contrast gets me a little bit out of my comfort zone because you got to be brave to really make a statement with contrast and catch the eye. So I tend to say that for last. But you'll have to. You don't have to adult. You're gonna learn a lot of little tips throughout the course of this week here. That will contrast May to start coming to you automatically. When you remember some of these principles, such as in a direct mail or unsolicited situation, nothing will grab attention more than a really big, really striking, colorful image. Well, there is your contrast right there.