The importance of a logo for branding and brand communication is unanimous. People are exposed to way too many concepts and ideas on a daily basis to remember them all. However, only the most attractive of elements stay in our minds and a good logo can be one of these attractive elements. No matter how large or small the display area is, a logo is such an interesting element that it can be displayed on everything. Brochure, ad, leaflet, pamphlet, business card, post card, banner… there are so many different mediums to show the logo off to the world.

My designer friends should remember that the logo of a company is the centerpiece of its brand, and so, if a business hires you or gives you the assignment to make a logo for it, it means that they have given the entire image of their company in your hands. So, being the creator of their graphical identity, you should be very careful and astute while designing a logo.

I have summarized some important FAQs regarding designing a good logo from the perspective of a graphic designer and I hope all my graphic designer friends will benefit from them in some way.

Distinctive logos can help items like flyers sell a specific product or an event.

1. How can a ‘good logo’ be described?

Answer: A good logo is more of a myth when it comes to graphic designing. Designers are creative people and each one of them has his/ her own taste and way of seeing things. For one designer a certain logo may be the best iconic branding, for another, it would be just another piece of graphics. However, following are the few attributes, mutually agreed upon by all the designers, which a “good logo” should have in it.

Describability – it should have a solid rationale behind it, a theme or a proper concept. And the logo should be communicating this concept well.

Memorability – it’s a fact that if human mind grabs the concept of something, it tends to remember it well. So if your logo will be able to communicate its core concept, it will automatically be memorable.

Effectiveness – color is secondary to the shape and form; the mark should itself be effectively communicating even in black only. One look at the logo should be an immediate call-to-action.

Scalability – size flexibility is vital for logo reproduction Your logo should be able to blow up to billboard size and scale down to postage stamp size and be readable across all of these different options.

Relevance – being relevant to the industry or the business it identifies. This helps to differentiate from closely associated competitors.

2. What are the different types of a logo?

Answer: There are three basic types of logos i.e. textual logo, symbolic logo, and combination logo.

Textual Logo – is mainly made up of the text. This text is of the company’s name and tagline. This type of logo can include some graphic elements like lines, boxes or borders, but the main focus of the logo is on the text.

Symbolic Logo – includes only a symbol or a number of symbols, images or shapes. This logo requires a lot of care and consideration while it is being made.

Combination Logo – is a combination of both a symbol and the company name. The symbol and text can be integrated together, side by side, or with one located above the other. This logo is most widely-made in the world.

The type of logo that will work best for a certain business or company hinges upon a number of circumstances. Such considerations include the size of the business, how well-reputed the business is, the uniqueness of the business’s name and a variety of other factors.

3. What does the term ‘elements of a logo’ mean?

Answer: like every other thing of the universe, logos are made up of different elements too. A logo is a combination of three elements that, when harmonized together, give out the actual meaning of the log and communicate to its audience. These three elements are: the icon, the font and the color palette. These three pieces all work together.

Icon – is the picture or the graphical element of the logo. The elements of your logo’s icon will all be symbols that have visual meaning. There are both abstract symbols and representational symbols. The icon you choose for the logo should not only be meaningful but should also be memorable and unique.

Font – the textual part in which your business’s name appears in. Each font has a different personality i.e. serious, educational, flowery etc. it is necessary for the font to be legible in every size.

Colors – complete your logo. Colors have different psychological meanings. The color should be added in the logo depending on the types of message it needs to communicate.

If the different elements in your logo sing together, you’ll have a logo that really drives your point home to your audience instead of being off-key and clashing.

4. Why is it important to keep the logo simple?

Answer: The main objective of your logo is to communicate what your business is all about, and you have only a few seconds to communicate that. If you try to say too much in that little time, it is more likely that your audience will either they’ll get the wrong message or will not get the message at all. This happens when you put up an overcomplicated logo. So for the sake of logo’s better understanding keep the number of shapes, lines and other design elements at a minimum to make the logo as clear and clean as possible. Simplify your logo’s design so that it will be more scalable. If you include too many design details, some design elements will be too small to be distinguished from one another and be unprintable when you’ll scale the logo down. A simple logo communicates with the clients instead of confusing them.

5. Can I design a logo according to my own taste?

Answer: No, not at all! A graphic designer should keep in mind that if he has been given the assignment to produce a logo for a certain client, he is responsible for their utmost brand communication. You cannot add a certain element in your client’s logo just because you like them personally. Logo designing requires an in-depth knowledge of the client company, their attributes and their target audience. You need to make sure that the logo you decide on will work well from the client’s perspective. Weigh your designs against the characteristics you have chosen. Think about every choice you make and how it affects your logo’s design, font choice and color scheme. The design and overall feel of the logo has to please the client and his target audience and not you.

6. Can a logo be designed without the name included in it?

Answer: Designing a logo without the name of the company or business included in it can be a big mistake. A symbol-only logo produces a big vacuum of communication in the viewer’s mind, because there is no text to help explain the business. It is important that your logo has some meaning and a role in explaining your business, and a little symbol cannot do it all by itself. If a client is insistent on a symbol-only logo you have an easy way out by designing a ‘combination logo’ that includes both a symbol and company’s name. Once you have designed the combination logo, you can always use the components separately.

7. How important is the logo’s font?

Answer: There is a general perception among the designer community that logo’s font is a piece of decoration and nothing more than that. On the other hand, a logo’s font is one of the important design elements. The font should be legible and scalable, to make your business’s name look good. Make sure the letters are spaced far enough apart and if you have a long business name, consider using a lighter font so that your business name doesn’t dominate the entire logo.

8. What colors to be used in the logo?

Answer: This is a colorful world and so colors play an important role on catching the eyes of viewers. The color of your business’s log has to be catchy. There are so many colors in the palette and you cannot use just any color for your client’s logo. Do some research about the meanings behind the colors you want to use or brainstorm, as on which color will suit your business the best or do a survey by making different color options of your logo. The colors used in your logo are important in terms of how logos are perceived psychologically (here the concept of Color Psychology can help you).

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We’re sharing hundreds of free social media icons for your website design needs, you can choose to download these all creative icons. we all know that social networks and social bookmarking are really important media for our websites or blogs, these can help to promote our business and news stories in world wide web.

Most of the icon-sets are really creative and professional designed to be universally used on every blog – but what if your blog is different, and in need of some social icons that are not only creative, unique and original also sharing different kind of icon sets. It’s also important that this feature isn’t over looked by web site visitors. So it’s always a good idea to use icons when linking to social media sites. They get peoples attention and the logos are immediately recognizable.  Hope you like all listed beautiful icons, If I have missed any, leave send me the link via the comments.

Note: all listed icons are sharing as freebies, but you all respected visitors and readers may follow their owner terms and conditions of free license. Thanks

Picasso: A Free Social Media Icon Set

Picasso is a social media icon pack that is unique. The icon set was inspired – and dedicated to – the wonderful work of Pablo Picasso. You will find many subtle details inspired by this great artist if you look close enough!

Hand Drawn Social Media Icons

Download this icon set for free for bloggers or anyone else. It includes 15 graphics for Google, Flickr, LinkedIn, MySpace, YouTube, RSS, Technorati, Facebook, Twitter, Delicious, Yahoo, GMail, Feed Burner, RedDit and calendar, you can use them anywhere, anytime and without any other limitation, back link to our website will be really nice but not necessary.

Social Network Icon Set

Today we are releasing yet another high quality icon set. Here is a set of 10 social network icons specially created for hongkiat readers from our friend at Iconshock.

Freebie: Blitter Twitter Icon Set

We love freebies, and we love them more if they are high quality freebie. We occasionally search the Internet high and low to dig out these hidden gems to make designers’ life easier and better. This week, with the help from our friend Iconshock, we are releasing a free high quality Twitter icon set, named Blitter.

Brown Social Icon Pack

In the pack, you will find 12 glossy polished icons in different size variations: 32×32px, 64×64px and 128×128px for maximum flexibility. All files are .PNG format and are mainly brown-colored especially for all you brown fanatic bloggers that like to share posts over the social networks nowadays.

The icons are released royalty-free so that you can use them in any personal or commercial purposes.

Free Icons: Grunge Peeling Stickers Social Media Icons

This Free Icon Pack is for use in your personal and commercial projects, and can be used without attribution. It may not be redistributed. This Icon Pack is chuck full of 20 Grunge Peeling Social Media Stickers, created exclusively for the viewers of Tutorial9 by Dawghouse Design Studio.

Each icon is in .png format sized at 128×128px with transparent backgrounds. The pack comes with a .PSD source file so that you can customize your own icons. Additionally, you can read up how to design these beautiful icons on your own.

Free Furry Cushions Social Icons Set

Today we are glad to release Furry Cushions Social Icons, a set with 6 transparent furry social icons in .png. This set was designed by Andrea Austoni and released especially for Noupe and its readers.

Freebie: Fluzzy Twitter Icon Set

Meet Fluzzy, yet another high quality free Twitter icon set released exclusively for Hongkiat readers from our friend at Iconshock. You might also want to check out Blitter Twitter Icon set we previously released no long ago.

Set of social icons

Sociolego a Free Social Icon Set

I am very excited to release my first set of icons today. It is a very special Social Icon Set I have named “SocioLEGO”. Lego fans rejoice!! This social icon set is a colorful collection of lego bricks featuring some famous social icons. I have been searching high and low for some fun “Designbump” and “Designmoo” icons with vain. So I have included these two exclusive icons in the set. Since both of those sites are new, one brand new and the other newly relaunched, their icons are a little scarce. The SocioLEGO Icon Set has 11 Social Icons, each in 256×256, 128×128, 64×64 and 32×32 sizes. They are all in PNG format. They are free for personal and commercial use with no restrictions on usage. Sale of Icons is prohibited. If you sell them, I won’t be your friend anymore! Share & Enjoy! And please leave a comment if you like these!

Icons Cloud

12  Social Media Icons

Web 2.0rigami – I Am Paddy

After creating my Twitter bird logo  in an origami style a week ago, I wondered what other icons would look good all origamized.  Turns out a few of the web 2.0 apps/sites look great, so I decided to create a little collection for everyone to use as they see fit.  I suppose you could look at these with the view that web 2.0 companies can be extremely beautiful objects, yet are still very fragile and can be crushed instantly.

Social Media Mini Iconpack

This icon set consists of 30 (16×16) finely crafted social media icons. They are free to use non-commercially. Put them on your blog or on your website to help users bookmark or share your site socially. I hear its all-the-rage these days.

Handycons

Handycons  is a free, hand drawn social media icon set that contains 12 icons. Package contains icons for del.icio.us, Digg, Mixx, DesignBump, StumbleUpon, Reddit, Developer Zone, DesignFloat, Technorati, Twitter and RSS feed & Email icon, of course. All icons are available in four sizes: 16×16, 24×24, 32×32 and 48×48 pixels.

Amazing Social Icons

Cheers-Free Social Icons

We love to release freebies. Every release helps to make the Web a nicer place, which is why we support designers and challenge them to release something for free in order to be featured on Smashing Magazine. And the results are quite often pretty impressive.

Extreme Grunge Social Icons

Leaf Social Media Icons

We are always looking for creative and talented artists and designers. Once we find them, we ask them to cooperate with us and release something for free. We provide them with the full freedom to showcase their professionalism and express their creativity. You can find our previous releases in our section Freebies.

Today we are glad to release The Leaf Fall: a social icon set. This set contains 11 social icons, designed in an autumn-style. The set includes icons for Twitter, Technorati, RSS, Reddit, Facebook, Delicious, StumbleUpon and Digg. You can use the set for free — without any restrictions whatsoever.

Nurture Social Icon Set

Dellifeed: A Free Icon Set

Today we are glad to release Dellifeed Icon Set, a set with 8 tasty and appealing social icons in the format .png. This set was designed by Dellustrations.com  especially for Smashing Magazine and its readers. The icons perfectly fit to the coming Christmas atmosphere and there is also always a reason to offer the readers of your blog a delicious RSS-cake icon!

Social Icons Made of Wood

Here’s another social icon set from webtoolkit4.me. This time the theme is wood. The set consists of 11 icons in PNG format (64 x 64). It’s free for both personal and commercial projects.

Web 2.0  Social Media Icons

Heart: A Free Social Icon Set – Smashing Magazine

Another day — another fresh freebie. Today we are glad to release Hearting Social Icon Set, a set of 22 social icons in .png and in resolutions 16×16, 32×32, 64×64. This set was designed by Aravind Ajith, the creator of TheDesignSuperHero.com, especially for Smashing Magazine and its readers.

Web 2 Icons – Fast Icon

Set of social icons no.2

Free Vector Social Bookmark Icons

Grass Textured Social Bookmarking Icon Set

The Grass Textured Social Icon Set has been created by Richie Thimmaiah, from RichWorks exclusively for Speckyboy Design Magazine readers and are free to use for both your personal and commercial projects but may not be modified, sold or redistributed.
The icons are packaged with 3 different sizes to suit your needs: 256px, 128px and 64px.

When creating these icons, he used a grass brush tool from the default brush set in Adobe Photoshop CS3 and created an outer boundary, he then pasted the individual logos of social networking sites and then carefully used the same strokes on each icon to achieve the unique result you can see below.

Top 10 Country Flag Icon Sets

A country flag image could be used for any number of reasons, perhaps the most popular method would be on a web site which allows the user to either select the language of their choice or to access the site-version dedicated to their country. The problem is that there are many, many sites were you can download and use the national flag image of your choice, but the most of these are pretty bland and basic and don’t really offer the graphical expectations of modern web design. We want better.

An excellent substitute for flag images would be to use one of the, sadly so few, professionally designed country flag icon-sets that are freely available. And that is what we have found for you today: A collection of the best country flag icon-sets.

Vintage Postage Stamps Social Media Icon Pack

20 Amazing 3D social icons!

Freestyle and Square, Two Free Social Media Icon Sets

The two beautiful social media icon sets we have on offer today have been designed by the talented Helen Gizi, from pinkmoustache.com, exclusively for the readers of Speckyboy Design Magazine. Both of the icon sets contain 28 icons that cover all of the major social media services and applications, they are all in .PNG format and they come in three sizes: 24×24px, 48×48px and 60×60px. Licence: You are free to use these icons for both your personal and commercial projects but may not be modified, sold or redistributed.

Jeans Social Media Icon Pack

ShareLove Social Media IconSet

IconTexto WebDev Social Bookmark

Social Web Buttons – WebFruits Blog

Social Web Buttons – Set 2 – WebFruits Blog

6 Social Icons – Design Reviver

Fed up with the same standard set of social icons for your blog or site? This set of six social icons (Digg, Twitter, Delicious, RSS, Reddit & Stumbleupon) are free to use on your websites and blogs however you wish! The icons are provided many different formats, see the bottom of this post for the direct download links.

Social Icons hand drawned

Glossy Waxed Wood Social Networking Icons

Bulb Social Media Icons

Denim Jeans Social Media Icons

108 Glowing Neon Social Media

Matte Black Social Media

Blue Jelly Social Media Icons

Silver Button Social Media

Social media icons

Smoothies Social Media Icons

Social Networking icons set

Social Media Comment Bubbles

3D Black Button Social Media

Green Jelly Social Media

Black Paint Splatter Icons

DelliCream Icons

FreeHand_ColorStroked icon pac

Sleek Social Network tab icons

Flurry Icons for Social Media

108 Red Pearl Soc. Media Icons

Retro Grunge Striped Icons

Magic Marker Icons

glowing purple neon icons

Crumpled Paper Icons

Glossy Black Social Media

Extreme Garments Icons Update

Tabbed Social Media Icon Set

Vintage Icon Set for Bloggers

154 Silver Inlay Glowing Glass

Orange Stickers Soc. Media

Gumdrop

74 MachoArts social media icon

Twitter Button Pack

Twestival Twitter Bird Iconset

Miracle’s Icons: Blogs

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In today’s world, the need of advertising is growing directly in proportion with the growing economy. Advertising has become an inevitable element of businesses. Every company is adopting the concept of advertising and is constantly striving to use new mediums of advertisement by which people can be attracted. Internet is one of those newest and the most inexpensive mediums of advertising being used nowadays. The Internet is inundated with different tools of advertisement to cater to the needs of any business. Among these tools, Web Banners are one interesting and quite a useful source of Internet advertisement which is being used by many big and small companies.

Web banner generally imparts a very tremendous effect on the people’s minds. It gives a constant recall to the web user as well as communicates the objective in a smart way. It also makes the viewer realize that the certain group or company is there in the market marking its presence in all ways possible. With an increase in Internet usage, web banner also act as an effective mean of brand identity for both its customers and its competitors.

Essentials for Designing a Striking Web Banner

It is important to remember that a web banner can give its full impact only when it is designed the best. There are many benefits of good web design. Nowadays, larger enterprises are specially hiring the web designing professionals to design their web banners the best way possible. A web banner should be both attractive and interesting, and should communicate well to its audience. Let us see few tips in detail which would help us create an effective and impressive web banner.

Punching Punch – line

The first thing which catches the eye of the viewer in a web banner is the punch-line or the main statement. The punch-line of your banner should be catchy and should develop curiosity in the mind of the viewer. The punch-line needs to be crisp and interesting and should leave the viewer with no other choice than to click on the banner and try to know more about it. A wrong font can cause to destroy the impact of the punch-line to a great extent. So, for the punch-line use a readable font that best suits the type of communication being done from your web banner.

Crispy Copy

Copy related to the rest of the information in the web banner (other than the punch-line). The name of the game is to ‘keep the copy short and simple’. The information in the web banner should not exceed more than 20 words. One has to filter down the information and take out the best from the rest keeping in mind, what will interest the viewers. The text should be streamlined with the punch-line and should

Indulging Images

Most web banners contain a pictorial or graphic element in them. There are many banners using images and pictures, however, the thing to remember is that the image should be indulging and should actually be eye-catchy. Also, ensure that the pictures and other graphical content used in the banner are relevant to product and services you are offering. Although, the picture of an attractive woman may attract a male viewer, but if it is not relevant to the information in the banner, it will quickly lose its impact.

Essential Elements

in a web banner, apart from the image and written information, the most important thing is the logo and the URL of the company. Either the banner is being advertised for corporate or promotional purposes; it is advised to use both the site address and logo in your banner in order to create your corporate identity. However, make sure that including the logo and URL does not dilute the effect of other elements of the banner.

Call-to-action

A call-to-action or “click here” button is very important for your web banner. That is basically the gateway that leads the surfer to your website. It also helps to increase the click-through rate.

Professional Presentation

No matter which graphical advertisement you are designing, a professional look counts a lot! So while making a web banner, make sure that your banner looks decent and professional. Selection of font, resolution of images, colors and the layout, all should have a professional look to it. Also, one should realize that the Internet is full with millions of big and small web banners. And surfers are looking for a reason to surpass the unprofessional web banners as much as possible. Don’t give any chance to the surfer to take your banner for granted and by keeping it professional.

Fitting File size

After all the good things you have done to your web banner, there is one thing that can absolutely destroy the effectiveness of your web banner and that is the wrong file size. It is strictly advised that when making a web banner, keep the file size of a banner to the minimum. Now you may be wondering what can be the reason behind keeping the file size small. The reason is very simple, as the banners are displayed on the web, they must be immediately loaded till the time visitor moves to the next page. However, larger the banner size greater will be the time it will take to load. The surfer spends almost 10 seconds at a web page (and even less than that) so the banner should load within this time, otherwise it will completely lose its impact.

Perfect Placement

Like the file size blunder, a wrong placement of your web banner can also affect the impact of your banner’s communication in quite a negative way. It is very important to consider where your banner ad will be placed. A good placement allows your banners to stand out from the sites they are being displayed in, but does not make it the ‘annoying thing’. Your banner ads should blend well with the web pages, and talented banner designers will always take that into consideration.

Adding Animation

This is quite a universal fact that a moving object attracts more than a still picture. Similarly, an animated banner appeals the viewer more than an in animated banner. Research shows that animated banners generate almost 30 percent higher click-through rates than static banners. However, there is a drawback of such banners that is the animation results in larger file sizes. However, optimizing an animated GIF banner by decreasing both the number of colors used and vertical color change, one can bring the file size below the required value.

Using Colors in Web Banner Designing

As I have mentioned in my earlier posts quite a lot of times that colors are very important in designing anything at any medium. Similar is the case with the web banners in which colors can add impact and clarity to your communication. Colors used in a web banner can emphasize, highlight and lead your end users to the call-to-action button. Color can also be used to trigger emotions and curiosity.

When color is used inaccurately, it tends to destroy the communication of your banner and confuse your target audience. The interpretation of a color depends on culture, physiology of the eye, readability, your target audience’s profession or industry, and personal preference. Also remember that selecting colors for banner ads is not as simple as using colors based on personal preference. Culture, readability, the psychology of color and other factors are all should be taken in consideration while designing web banners.

To Conclude…

Web banner advertisement is one of the best things any company or business can do to get its name out there on the Internet. Even if you have just started up, it is a worthy investment for your company to put in the money and find affiliates to post your ads for you. The more people that know about your business, the more customers you will draw in, the more income you will generate and the more recognition you will get.

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Poster art is one of the most well-defined forms of art that has a rich historical background that involves a number of famous artists throughout the world. Ranging from advertising campaigning to political and social awareness, posters have made their mark well on the walls of history. These interesting pieces of paper are a frequent tool of advertisers, propagandists, protesters and other groups trying to communicate a message.

Another type of poster is the educational poster, which may be about a particular subject for educational purposes. However, whatever their purpose may be, posters have inherited a rich legacy of art and artists. I have tried to sum up the yesteryear of poster art in the following:

Initiation – The Chéret Era

Posters and poster art first came into existence in the late 19th century by a French artist, J. Chéret. These were basically advertising posters that evolved from picture-less playbills and book adverts. The written information was over-powered by decoration and figurative depictions. Chéret played a leading role in the development of the posters by his ‘three stone’ lithographic process.

It was a breakthrough in poster printing which allowed artists to achieve every color in the rainbow with as little as three stones printed in cautious registration. The characteristic to combine text and image in such an attractive, yet economical way made the lithographic posters a powerful innovation.

Posters soon became an important mean of mass communication in the growing cities of Europe and Americas. The streets of Paris, Milan and Berlin transformed into the art galleries of poster art and pioneered the modern era of advertising.

Obsession – The Belle Epoque Era

Belle Epoque is the era of 1890s when poster craze was at its acme. Meanwhile Toulouse-Lautrec created Moulin Rouge, his masterpiece poster that elevated the status of the poster art to fine art. Posters began selling like hot cakes and French poster exhibitions, magazines and dealers multiplied.

Another revolution was brought in 1894 called the Art Nouveau poster design by Alphonse Mucha. This was a flowery, ornate style, developed overnight when Mucha was pressed to produce a poster for Sarah Bernhardt, a famous French actress.

This style dominated the Parisian scene for the next ten years and became the major international decorative art movement till the World War I.

In the 1880s, the poster art took hold in other countries as well, especially during the Belle Epoque. Each country’s specific poster art came up with a taste of its particular culture. In France the café culture, in Italy the opera and fashion, in Spain the bullfight and festivals, in Holland literature and products for the home, in Germany trade fairs and magazines, in Britain and America literary journals and the circus were prominent in poster subjects.

Progression – The New Century

The twentieth century came and Art Nouveau continued. However, it lost much of its dynamism through imitation and repetition. Then came Leonetto Cappiello, a young Italian caricaturist rejected the detailed style of Art Nouveau. Being a caricaturist, he focused on creating one simple image, often humorous or bizarre, which would immediately capture the viewer’s attention on a busy boulevard. His 1906 Maurin Quina absinthe poster-style dominated Parisian poster art for quite a while. To create a brand identity established Cappiello as the father of modern advertising.

In the meantime, artists working in Scotland’s Glasgow School, Austria’s Vienna Secession, and Germany’s Deutscher Werkbund also were transforming Art Nouveau. A key outcome of these modernist efforts was the German Plakatstil, led off in 1905 by Lucien Bernhard in Berlin and Ludwig Hohlwein in Munich.

Bernhard took the novel approach of drawing two large matches and writing the brand name above them in clean, bold letters. The stark simplicity, stress on flat colors and shapes made his work the next step towards creating an abstract, and modern visual language.

Aggression – The World War l

With the outburst of World War I, posters performed a new role, i.e. propaganda. Indeed, the war initiated the biggest advertising campaign to date. Wartime communication ranged from raising money, recruiting soldiers and boosting volunteer efforts, to spurring production and provoking outrage at enemy violence.

Bolsheviks turned to poster art to help win their civil war against the Whites. Lenin and his followers proved to be the pioneers of modern propaganda, and here the poster became a weapon which was used throughout the century.

Industrialization – Modernism and Art Deco

After World War I, Industrial Age boomed and so, Art Nouveau’s organic inspiration in poster art seemed irrelevant. The new realities were better expressed in the modern art movements of Cubism (An artistic movement in France beginning in 1907 that featured surfaces of geometrical planes), Futurism (An artistic movement in Italy around 1910 that tried to express the energy and values of the machine age), Dada (A nihilistic art movement (especially in painting) that flourished in Europe early in the 20th century; based on irrationality and negation of the accepted laws of beauty) and Expressionism , (An art movement early in the 20th century; the artist’s subjective expression of inner experiences was emphasized; an inner feeling was expressed through a distorted rendition of reality) all of which would have a profound influence on graphic design.

Art Deco was a scientific language of design popularized as a new international decorative poster movement. In this machine age style, power and speed became the primary themes. Shapes were simplified and streamlined and curved letterforms were replaced by sleek, angular ones. Art Deco, like Art Nouveau, spread quickly throughout Europe and was adopted by some famous European artists as their poster art.

Innovation – The World War ll

In the World War II, poster again acted as an important communication role, but this time it shared the spotlight with other innovative media as well, mainly radio and print. By WW ll, most posters were printed using the mass production technique of photo offset, which resulted in the common dot pattern seen in newspapers and magazines. The use of photography in posters, begun in the Soviet Union, became illustration.

Poster style changed in this era. Visual elegance was often matched by gentle humor. With the end of lithographic printing in the ’50s, Leupin, Brun and the other artists turned to a humorous style which was less reliant upon the rich color and textures of lithographic printing. After the war, with the invention of Television, the status of poster declined further in most countries.

Internationalization – The Postwar Information Age

Switzerland continued to dominate poster art in the late fifties with the development of a new graphic style. As the new style strongly relied upon typographic elements in black and white, the new style was called the International Typographic Style. This style utilized a mathematical grid, strict graphic rules and black and white photography to provide a clear and logical structure. It became the prevailing graphic design style in the world in the 1970s, and continues even today.

The new Typographic Style was perfectly suited to the increasingly global postwar marketplace. It catered to the corporations which needed international identification, and provided universal solutions for global events such as the Olympics. Meanwhile, a more relaxed approach took hold in several countries, most notably the U.S. and Poland. Philip Meggs uses the umbrella term ‘Conceptual Image’ to describe a new illustration style. A famous example was Milton Glaser’s 1967 Bob Dylan record album insert.

Revolution – Post-Modernism and Computer Age

The International Typographic Style began to lose its energy in the late 1970s and early ’80s, mainly because it was criticized for being cold, formal and dogmatic. A young Swiss teacher, Wolfgang Weingart led the palace revolt which is still seen in today’s graphic style, known as Post-Modern design. Weingart experimented with poster art that appeared complex, chaotic, playful and spontaneous. His experiments brought forth the foundation for several new styles, from Memphis and Retro, to the advancements now being made by computer graphics.

The main purpose and significance of the poster has changed over the past century to meet the changing needs and advancements of world. Although, they play a less central role today than 100 years ago, the poster will evolve further as the computer and the World Wide Web will revolutionize communication in the 21st century.

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In today’s world, the success of a business greatly depends upon the effectiveness of its marketing communication. It is important for the organization to communicate to the potential customers and the best tool for one-to-one communication is the brochure.

Brochures really help the marketers in their pursuit and to achieve their goals well. This source of communication provides greater details about the products in an attracting manner. Basically, the brochure design makes the information more appealing. If you give out the information about your product or service without a properly and professionally designed brochure, it will bring nothing but half-hearted results.

It is important for the businessman to choose a proper brochure design that will be in accordance with the information about his product or service. Brochures, being an effective marketing-support tool play an incredibly important role in affecting the bottom line of your business.

Things to Remember while Designing a Brochure

Logo

As I have mentioned several times in my prior posts, a logo is one of the staple items that you need to have if you are starting out a business. Your company’s logo is the symbol of your business and the reflection of your company. Logo’s simple presence in communication materials such as your brochures, it can immediately serve as a reminder and advertising tool of your company to your target consumers and the clients.

Color

Colors are the most expressive elements of any design. Colors may be expensive, but using colors in your brochure is worth spending money on. Be bold in your brochure by using ample colors with good color schemes.

It said that the average recipient will spend only seven seconds looking at your brochure and it is the color, basically, that may or may not let him keep on going. At your consumer’s desk, you’re competing with all of the other brochures and, among them; your brochure needs to be noticed. Nothing says look at me like a good splash of color.

Photographs

Do not suffocate your brochure with a lot of straight-forward boring text. A generous helping through attention-grabbing photos and other graphical elements will keep your audience interested. After all,  a picture is worth a thousand words!

Discretion

Most people look at images first, headlines to follow and then the details or body copy. Following the rule, try to put your most important information and selling points across mainly with the help of images and headlines.

‘Less is More’ Formula

‘Less Is More’ is the most important rule of design that will get your audience’s attention during those crucial seven seconds mentioned earlier. Lesser the font, greater will be the readers motivation to read it. Also, do not use more than three fonts for your brochure and also make legible choices in fonts.

Consistency

Do not fill the small spaces of your brochure with larger headlines that may look like fillers.  Be consistent in your use of typeface and size for headlines, body text and captions.  This practice will give a much decent appearance to your brochure.

Space

Try to break up the text in bullets and also keep paragraphs short in order to retain the reader’s interest.  Keep suitable line-spacing to make your brochure attractive and legible. Also, do not crowd elements on the page or push the type together.

Proofreading

Your hard work is wasted if your brochure has spelling errors, poor grammar, design mistakes or erroneous information. Ask a professional proofreader to scan the brochure for any mistakes or design flaws. Also, ask for honest feedback from different people and inquire if the content stimulates their interest.

If you’re on a tight budget, double-check that vital piece of information for accuracy (as you don’t be able to afford the reprints). And finally, create a list of the people who will approve the brochure and be sure everyone in that ‘chain of command’ has signed on the final copy before it goes to the printer.

Importance of Pictures for Your Brochure

Images or pictures are very important for an effective brochure design. It keeps the reader’s interest glued to the content and helps him understand more about your business. In order to have an effective communication endeavor, you have to carefully select and add the images that are very fundamental in developing the image and philosophy of your company. This will help you achieve the objectives of your advertising materials faster and better.

Following are some crucial images that you should always remember when designing a brochure.

Products Shots

Product shots are perhaps the most luring picture you can add to your brochure. It is important that you show the very products or services that you are selling in the market. Nevertheless, in doing so, you should keep a striking difference between a avoid making your print brochures look like catalogs. You can at least insert the best pictures of your flagship items into your brochures printing to better attract your target clients.

Team Pictures

Pictures of your group or team of the company should necessarily be incorporated in your brochure. You can also add photos of the newly-joined employees. By introducing the members of your team, you can actually make your company feel more welcoming to other people when they will see real people actually working for your target clients.

This will also help you make your target clients and customers appreciate your business better because they would be able to see the persons behind every product and service you deliver.

Your Office’s  Images

You can also try adding a picture of your workspace. The physical arrangement of your office reflects the attitude of you and your workers. A good and tidy working environment makes your customers feel how organize and professional you are as a company.

Types of Brochure Shape

There are several types of brochures according to the shape and size of the page. Some common of these are as follows:

Bi-fold Brochure

Bi-fold brochure is the best way to promote your business as it is and looks easy to be read. Bi-fold brochures will certainly give an extra edge to your marketing campaign through their better readability and ease of handling.

Tri-fold Brochure

Unfold your success story with tri-fold brochure design. Tri-fold brochure design is one of those commonest forms of brochure designs which will never lose its importance. The most important feature of the tri-fold brochure is that it offers greater space for information. This type of brochure is often used an effective alternative to flyers.

Gate-fold Brochure

Gate-fold brochure is an effective off-line marketing tool, which can generate impressive result if it can be used prudently and properly. Although the cost of printing his kind of brochure is a bit higher than the conventional shaped brochure, however, it looks very stylish and unique to have this design.

Z-fold Brochure

Z-fold brochure is often used as an effective alternative to tri-fold brochure (as they are quite similar in the number of folds). Z-fold brochure consists of six panels of which one is front panel, one is back panel and the rests are internal panels. This type of brochure is used widely for giving product information, company details etc. As the cost of producing Z-fold brochure is comparatively similar to that of tri-fold brochure, it is similarly popular.

So next time when you get a brochure designing job, don’t just sit there with a dull face, not knowing what to do. This post has enough information to help you get a good start!

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Business card also play main role in any business and any industry when we design according to our market and as per our business demand. Its very important to have a good looking business card, well designed business card reflects the seriousness of you involved in your own business.

Sometimes all you need is a little boost of inspiration to get your creative juices flowing. In this 2010 collection of business cards, you will find aspects of creativity and visual design. Similar to a website, a business card has great interactive and creative elements, such as textures, materials and shapes. I have been collecting some creative business design and want to know about your feedback.

Creative Solution

Business Card Design

Nhan Duc School

Hen: Business card design

SB Design

kaareberntsen

WeAreAllConnect

SEEC: Business Card Designs

Structure Business Cards

Bludot Stationery

CloserStill Identity

Barefoot Business Cards

Toxic Puppy business cards

Circlebox Creative Cards

DE KOFFIEMEULEN

Own business metal cards

my new business cards

Colorful Vibrant Business Card

Creative Kids Academy

CRESO – LED IT WORK!

self promotional materials

DJ Hideki

FIM – Financial Solutions

Business card

Tide Creative BC – Round 1

Pink Business Card

Artistic Business Cards

vXeed Business Cards

Fraher Architecture

Brown’s Bottle Shop: Logo and Print Materials

Business Card & Report Design/Illustrations

Cupcakerie

Render Architecture & CGI Studio

Sonologue Business Card

Tweet deisgns: Creative Style

My Business Card Design

Will Design for Food

Seedling

MTN promo materials

Resume/Promotional Materials

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Social Media is not a new name and almost everybody is pretty much acquainted with the uses and effects of social media websites. In this techno-oriented world, social media networking is a prevailing trend that continues to grow with increasing awareness. People from all walks of life are prone to its usage. Likewise, graphic designers are also into using social media websites and many of them are pretty fond of it. However, what I have noticed is that with the growing challenges of graphic designing, social media has become more of a necessity for every graphic designer.

Today, every segment of industry is shifting its focus towards social media for its publicity and promotion. The graphic design industry is no exception with more and more graphic designers making use of it. But like every other technology that has been invented, social media has its particular pros and cons.

Every new development has its own advantages and disadvantages. Innovation can either lead to progression or devastation. It only depends on how you use it. On one side, social media has numerous benefits for graphic designers, however simultaneously; social media can prove to be disastrous. This post is to give you a balanced analysis of social media and its impacts on graphic designers.

Social Media for Graphic Designers – Pros

Shortest Route to Publicity and Promotion

Surpassing all the conventional business promotion techniques, social media marketing is a known fact that the fastest way to promote something to the world. One single tweet on Twitter and graphic designers are able to share their designs with the entire designer community, rather the world.

Your Link to the Design Community

There are millions of graphic designers all over the world and all of us share almost the same feelings and understand each other. Also, it is quite universal that graphic designers benefits from each other. By using social media, graphic designers share their views and their designing work and provide useful feedback to each other.

Lower Cost – Greater Effects

With abundance of Internet connectivity and its low cost availability, social media has become the most inexpensive of all promotional mediums. Also, social mediums provide the designers an opportunity to learn from fellow designers and put that learned thing into their practice.

A Magnet for Opportunities

Social networking and blogging websites have become a popular resource for graphic designers to find potential clients and business opportunities from all around the world. You can attract many business opportunities by posting your work on social media websites and make money from it.

Social Media for Graphic Designers – Cons

Going Off-the-Track

Although social media provides aforementioned benefits for graphic designers, however, excess of everything is bad. Similarly, too much indulgence in the social media websites often leads to waste of the designers’ precious time. Social media is a complex web and one shared link leads a graphic designer to another and then another and it goes on. So, designers often forget their basic work and go off-the-track from their main purpose.

An Open Invitation to Plagiarism

With the prevailing trend of social media website usage, we have witnessed an increase in design plagiarism. Either it is the design or the content, your material is copied on the blogosphere which is a constants menace for the graphic designers. This may prove to be fatal for graphic designers as there is not much they can do to protect their design work on the social webs.

Work Life and Personal Life Imbalance

Too much social media usage creates an imbalance between a graphic designer’s work life and personal life. It is important for you to set priorities. A balanced social media usage requires a graphic designer to dedicate reasonable amount of time to social networking and fulfill personal duties as well.

Spam and Scam

Unlike other media, social media is the biggest victim of spam and scam menace. We are faced with a constant bombardment of spamming from various scam entities everyday which creates confusion in the design field. Graphic designers also are sometimes confused for spammers at social media sites that dent their reputation real bad.

Conclusion

Moderation is the key to utilize any miracle of science for yourself. A balance is required in life and routine, generally from everybody, and specifically from a graphic designer.

Happy social media networking everybody!

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Interior design is a multi-faceted profession in which creative and technical solutions are applied within a structure to achieve a built interior environment.

The interior design process follows a systematic and coordinated methodology, including research, analysis, and integration of knowledge into the creative process, whereby the needs and resources of the client are satisfied to produce an interior space that fulfills the project goals. Here we are sharing 100+ interiors and decoration examples that will inspire you to generate your own interior design ideas for free and at one place.

Get ready! You are going to fall with these cool features: colors, bedrooms, soft furnishings, furniture, makeovers, lighting, interior design and decoration tips and much more.

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You’re looking to start your own website. Where do you begin? You might as well be looking to build your own hotel! Well, that’s what it seems like, but the reality is that professional hosting can make starting your website as easy as building a sandcastle. If, that is, you get the right professional hosting. For a new website creator, that means Wordpress hosting. Choose your web host, register your domain, and you’re ready to go. It’s that easy.

What About Blogs?

Some people will tell you that a blog is not a “real” website. Well, a blog is not Amazon.com, but it’s not necessarily just a collection of travel photos either (although it can be). In fact, a blog can be a great way to get started with your own website. A Wordpress blog is really just a simplified version of a Wordpress website, so if you don’t know a thing about developing websites or website hosting, a blog like the kind you can get through Wordpress hosting is a perfect way to get your feet wet. You can set your design, content and more, just like a “real” website!

What Is This Wordpress Hosting Really All About Anyway?

The Wordpress host is the provider of all the tools that you need to set up your blog. Wordpress has a proprietary control panel and content management system, designed especially for you, so that you can get your blog up and running on the Internet in no time at all. Trying to install your own site using Wordpress is not quite for complete beginners, since it involves creating a MySQL database and editing the config.php file, but fortunately, the Wordpress web host sets up the blog for you instantly. You just click and sit back and watch.

So what are you waiting for? You know you want to start making your mark on the web right away, and it’s really just the lack of web developing knowledge that’s holding you back. Get Wordpress hosting and design your own unique site with your own, great, unique content. You won’t believe how easy it can be. Head over to the Wordpress site and look into Wordpress hosting today. You’ll be enlightening the world with your own brand of website activity in minutes, and you’ll never look back. The world is waiting!

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Among different elements of graphic designing, typography is an important one, which the designers usually take for granted. Typography in terms of graphic designing means to choose the kind of font type that completely blends with the design and speaks for itself as a part of that design.

In technical terms, typography is the art of arranging font type into the layout of the design. This arrangement includes the selection of typefaces, point size, line length, line spacing and the adjustment of spaces between groups of letters and between the letters of a word, all together constituting typography.

What is Typography?

To explain the phenomena of typography, it can be said that it is basically the order of shaping written information. Typography can be applied to anything which has to do with text, including captions/headings, names, web design or any kind of written information. For instance, authors or writers write the text of their books, designers or typographers manage the typography and the end readers read through it.

Going deep into its etymology, the word Typography comes from the Greek origin words typos, which means “mark, figure” and grapho, which means “to write.” So as a compound word, typography means to write in a specific mark or style, and that is pretty much self explanatory for typography’s true meanings.

Significance of Typography in Graphic Designing

Significance of typography is unrivaled when it comes to graphic designing. Typography is a particular design element without which every design seems incomplete. There is no rocket science involved in it, for which we need to follow a set pattern of rules and regulations. However, what you do need is a sense that matches the perfect typo for your design (because every type cannot be used for any design).

It won’t be unjust to confess that typography plays a major role in making any graphic design an instant success. By conveying your message visually with typography you can save yourself a lot of time keeping in the bounds of creativity. With type you can jump right into things without having to extract, adjust levels or curves. However, sometimes the combination of color and typography is overlooked, which affects the overall project.

Typography is something that many designers take for granted and shift their focus on the more pictorial aspects of design like the image or layout etc. Also to be noted that typography can be one of the factors in your work that will be immediately noticed and valued in your portfolio when applying for jobs in the field, especially when it come to advertising industry.

Significance of Typography in Web Designing

Similar to graphic designing, typography has an inevitable importance in the field of web designing as well. Almost 90 percent information on the web is based on writer material and thus involves typography. Basically, web is a medium where typography rules are to create a package of readability, coherence and visual satisfaction that engages the readers in their unconsciousness.

The limited choice of fonts and typos on the web should not be a designer’s major concern. A skilled web designer can use what is available and make the most out of it, keeping in mind that readers do care about how the text is represented. The web readers might not care about the typography itself; however what they do care about is to get and understand the right information quickly and easily.

An Important Example – Effects of Bad Typography

Most people I have seen belonging to the media and communication industry largely undermine the importance of typography. For such people, typefaces are pretty insignificant. However, to the true devotees of typo, they are the most important feature of text, giving subliminal messages that can either tempt or revolt the readers.

An example of how a bad typography can effect the onlookers is when Avatar, the biggest grossing movie of the year 2009 was released, a particular section of the audience was immediately outraged, and those were the graphic designers. Reason being, they didn’t like the font that James Cameron had chosen for the subtitles. There were several angry views about the bad typography used in Avatar such as:

One blogger commented “I hated it on the posters and then threw up a little in my mouth when I realized I would have to read that ugly font throughout the film in the subtitles,” Another said, “After the hundreds of millions of dollars spent on CG effects, did he just run out of money for a decent graphic designer!?!?”

This example is fair enough to make you realize that the fonts and particularly good type fonts are not just for designing geeks. Any medium of communication need a good typography for its success.

In Short…

Typography is immensely important for designing (both graphic and web designing). Great typography is a state of mind which comes with experience and right knowledge.  You can gain a lot of knowledge regarding typography by getting to know of other’s experience.  Observation can play a crucial role in adding to your knowledge of typography.

Typography Art in TV

Typography Art in Poster Designs

Typography Art in Ads

Typography Art in Flyers

Typography Art in Outdoor Signs

Just study typography around you; in print, TV, ads, brochures, flyers, posters, outdoor signs, entertainment packaging, billboards, books, the web and any other medium you get to see. Typography has one plain duty before it and that is to convey information in writing with a style, and that’s what the designers should keep in mind in order to produce successful designs.

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