Your iPod begs to differ.

From cell-phones to cars, disposable razors to televisions, cameras to coffee-grinders, good design is making its mark. It’s not that your music sounds better coming from an iPod instead of an iRiver or SanDisk, but that an aesthetic and tactile experience ends up making the usage of the device all that more pleasurable. People like that, and if Apple’s stock is any indication, people are willing to pay for that.

Graphic design works the same way. When you have an idea or design that brings it all together, creating something both clever and memorable, the attitude towards the design is transferred to the client. You make that jump from “Hey, that Volkswagen ad was great” to “Volkswagen’s pretty cool for making such a clever ad”. Sure, Volkswagen’s still got to make the sale with the car, but they got you in the door. That’s half (and a necessary half) of the battle right there.

The choice is yours to make. Put the time and money into crafting an image that will attract the best of people, people that actually want to be with you, or toss a worm on your line and see what bites.

What do you think? - j

 ”What is a pixel?”

In simplest terms, it’s the most basic unit of color or value in an image. When you blow an image up on screen, pixels are usually defined as squares. Though you can’t see it from viewing distance, your display, whether an LCD or old-fashioned tube, only has three colors–red, green, and blue. They’re arranged together in groupings of three, one of each color. With LCDs, which have a specific pixel-count, each pixel is defined by one of these blocks of three. The most common type of color image is called 24 bit, meaning that each of the three colors has an 8 bit span of color value (8×3=24). 8 bits = 256 steps, from completely dark to fully bright. With each color having 256 steps, a single pixel, made of 3 colors, has 256 x 256 x 256 color variations (16.8 MILLION!).

When I said “fully bright”, I didn’t mean all the way to white. I mean that the sub-pixel element goes from off (black) to a bright red, bright green, or bright blue. The white you see on the screen is all three of these colors in their brightest state. Grab a magnifying glass or loupe and take a look!

This is RGB color, the way that light-projecting devices show color. Even if you’re working in CMYK (cyan, magenta, yellow and black) for print, it’s being displayed via RGB on your display. Conversely, if you print out an RGB photo in color, it will be converted to CMYK on the paper.

An image that occupies the CMYK color space has pixels that are defined by FOUR colors, each having 256 values, so you’d think you’d get a wider range of colors this way, but it’s just not so. I’ll leave those worries to the designers. The rest of you note that every snowy shot you take this winter with your digital camera is blasting the red, green and blue sub-pixels. Just stay away from the snow that’s only made up of the red and green subs (that’s YELLOW!).   - j

GIF stands for Graphics Interchange Format and rhymes with “Jiff” (like the peanut butter), though most people pronounce it with the hard “G”. The format is limited to 256 colors at a time, so it tends to work better with graphic images (non-photographic). 256 colors may sound like a lot, but full-range color has millions of different hues and values, and a full-color photo saved as a GIF will show banding in gradients and have a pointillist quality to it. For graphic images, you’ll have a very sharp reproduction with nice, crisp edges. Once the file is saved, you can open it and save it over and over and it will always look the same. This is called a “non-lossy” compression. GIFs also have the benefit of being able to show multiple frames for animation.

JPEG is named after the Joint Photographic Experts Group. With a full-range of color, this is the format of choice for photographic images and the one your digital camera is most likely to use. The downside of JPEG is that it’s a “lossy” compression, meaning that saving a file to JPEG format throws away information that you can never get back. You might not notice this in a high-quality JPEG, but a low-quality JPEG will show you that the image is broken down into groups of 8×8 pixels and then approximated. A higher setting gets this approximation close, but a lower one may reduce the 8×8 block to a single color! Even if you save in high-quality, if you open it up and save it again, it will further approximate these blocks, degrading the picture quality each time (so keep this practice to a minimum). Most cameras have high-enough resolution that you can compress them pretty well once or twice without noticing “compression artifacts” on a print-out, but when doing web-work, one has to strike the right balance between file size and aesthetics.

So there’s your education in image degradation. See you next month! – j

Printers are always suspect and that designer you talk to might have been thrown off by the yellow tint in his Buddy Holly glasses, but I have a better guess. Look at your monitor! No, I’m not coyly pointing out your reflection. I’m talking about your screen. Many people don’t know that monitors need to be calibrated to give a decent approximation of what the person on the other end of the job is showing you. You need to set your black point, your white point and your gamma. Then there’s the whole color thing!

Macs come with pretty good monitor calibration software (assuming it’s used), but you may need to step outside of the basic Windows suite in order to straighten out your PC. At the very least, your monitor should be adjusted so that a gradient of black to white, running across your screen, does not clip at either end. If your dark end is pure black for a bit or your light end is pure white, then that means you’re getting clipped and your contrast is probably set too high. Take a look around online. There may be some freeware that can get you in shape.

“Gamma” is the term for where the middle grey falls. One would intuitively think that duh, it falls in the middle. 50% right? Well, here’s a nice little quirk for you. This point is adjustable, making your screen have a lighter or darker feel without clipping your endpoints. On top of that, there’s one gamma that’s used for the web (PCs are set for this point) and another for print media (where Macs are), giving PC screens a darker feel than their Mac counterparts. And hello Mac users, your latest OS (Snow Leopard) now sets it’s gamma to be the same as PCs. Print may not be dead, but the web and video are demanding more and more attention!

Once you do get your monitor calibrated, take notice the next time you send something to your printer. Does it match what’s on screen? If it does, consider yourself lucky! You really need to calibrate and match your entire workflow, from the monitor to cameras, printers, scanners, etc. It’s enough to make you see red! (Or is that orange?)  - j

One element that tends to be taken for granted because it’s supposed to be an unchanging cornerstone is the company logo. You’d think that after all that goes into expressing the character of a company through a graphic mark, the logo would be safe, but it seldom is. Alstin is no exception.

Sometimes companies will make radical changes that scream “I’ve been updated!” – think back to 2003 when UPS updated their logo.

Others might simply alter the font so subtly that only typographers will notice. But some tread even more gently than that. Perhaps the color is going to change from a dark green to a dark blue. Maybe you’ve added a trademark symbol or updated your tag line or even decided to include a tag line where there wasn’t one before!

One problem with updating the logo is making sure that everybody knows about it and is on the same page regarding usage. We’ve learned that it’s not enough to simply label a file “NEW CompanyX logo”. We put dates on them, and label them to reflect their proper usage. Then we put all the older logos in a folder called “Old CompanyX logos-DO NOT USE!” – but we don’t trash them as it will be inevitable that as soon as they are trashed the old logo will be requested by someone! (When UPS – an Alstin client for a series of projects – originally updated their logo, we started using it right away. However we were ultimately asked to go back to the old one for a few weeks until the new one became more recognizable.)

So as we move into our new location, I’ll be busy making sure I update everything that needs updating in the most consistent, company approved manner possible. Then I’ll move the older, improper logos that I should never use again into a new folder. And trash it.         - j

Those four colors can cover a good range, but there are weak points that either lie between the four or completely out of the gamut. You want a vibrant green or a juicy orange? Forget about it! You may as well be asking for a neon yellow, reflective gold or “shiny.”

What if you have a corporate color–one that designers and focus groups have whittled down to just the right shade–and it has to be exactly right for the newest batch of 50,000 company business cards?

The solution lies in spot colors. Spot colors are a pure, one-color ink, that does not vary (though you can get it in percentage tints). They don’t necessarily play nice with others, but can work well enough alongside. If you’ve ever heard of “Pantone Colors”, that’s what this is all about. You can get a great range of lush colors that encompass even neons and metallics, as well as spots of high-gloss (or no gloss) varnish. They give print-jobs a crispness that processed colors often cannot.

Most print jobs are 4-color these days and print jobs are identified by the number of inks they use on the front and back of the paper. A one sided flyer would be 4/0 (four inks on the front–zero on the back). An additional spot color would make that 5/0, which does add to the cost of the piece, but will hopefully bring some more zing for your dollars. On the saving money side, sometimes a job can be run as 2/0, with your favorite spot and black making up the front. This is common with business cards and stationary.

So the next time you’ve got a print job and you want to give it that little extra something, ask your account exec or designer if they have any catchy ways to incorporate a spot color or varnish into the piece. Not only will you end up with a little something extra, but your colors will be Spot On.   - j

“Vector” means that the artwork is described by mathematical formulas describing the lines, curves, colors, gradients, etc. Because it is not defined in terms of a defined grid of colored blocks (pixels), this artwork can be blown up as large as you want and still look sharp. For most graphical work, like corporate logos, this is the best format to use, especially since the file size of these pieces is usually smaller than high-resolution bit-map (made of pixels) artwork. Vector artwork can then be scaled to use online, in print ads, and even on billboards. A little file goes a long way!

Where vectors run into trouble is when they’re trying to define more illustrative or photographic treatments that have subtle blendings of shapes and colors, soft drop shadows and out of focus elements. In those cases, it just makes sense to go with the raster art (another name for bit-map). There are some talented artists out there that can reproduce almost anything as a vector drawing, but the level of detail ends up making the file size no smaller than the bit-map’s, and it still doesn’t have the same noisy texture that makes so many photos and photo-illustrations come alive.

So you know we want vector logos, but how will you know them when you see them? A reliable sign is the suffix on the file name. If your file’s name ends with “.eps” or “.ai”, then it’s very likely to be vector in the form of an “encapsulated postscript” file or an “Adobe Illustrator” file, both of which work equally well. Please note that an .eps file created by dropping a low-resolution web logo in an Illustrator document and then saving it as an .eps doesn’t work and it defeats the purpose. If all else fails, get in touch with your graphics department. They usually know what they’re doing.    - j

Critiques can range the gamut, but we do hear things like design #1 didn’t work because it had a lot of blue in it and the lead on the client side hates blue, or that #2 was rejected because the guy in the photo we selected just wasn’t right for some reason or another, or perhaps that #3 failed because the client isn’t a fan of sans serif fonts.

It’s our job to keep the client focused on the fact that not much is set in stone in terms of the look. We’re not called the “Creative Department” for nothing. Variations in color needed? Want to change the emotional feel, or even the head on the guy in the back of the shot? Just ask! You’d be surprised at what can be done.

I have found that the best types of suggestions are open ones that allow the designers and copywriters to come up with a cohesive feel for the piece. We’re trained professionals here (stand back!) so I encourage clients to resist the urge to micromanage the piece.

One aspect of an idea that should never be chopped up and changed is the concept. If you don’t like it, let it go! Trying to change too much will result in a direction that doesn’t make any sense. For example, we could present (but we wouldn’t) a picture of a dog chewing a bone and the headline might reference the “dog days of summer”. Those designs could get passed around an office and by the time they get back to us, we’re told to 1) keep the headline, but change the dog to a roller coaster, or 2) keep the dog, but change the headline to “make waves!”. These examples may seem silly to you, but keep them in mind. They’re not far off! – j

I once worked for a man who LOVED retro imagery and would clip shots out of old magazines for us to scan in and place in designs. His thought was that if the client liked the concept, THEN we’d hunt down the rights to the work. Thankfully our clients never went in these directions, because as difficult (or impossible) as it would have been to find the source, it would have been ethically and legally our responsibility to do so.

There was a time when we scanned in a road-map as a background image. It was tilted back in perspective and the image was adjusted a bit further by adding pins and flags through an image editing program. Any map would have done the job and there was nothing special about the one we used – to us. But after the piece was printed, the map people noticed it and requested a fee, which we were obliged to pay. The point is that even a simple, non-critical background image that has been changed is still someone else’s image, and you need permission to use it.

Some images are called “rights restricted”, which means you pay to use them a certain way and may need to pay again to use them another way. For example, the perfect image you purchased for your postcard might not be able to be used on your website without additional fees.

Vice versa is true too. You may have had another company design your corporate web-site, but that doesn’t mean that you have the right to use those images whenever and however you’d like. It’s important that you know for certain how the images can be used.

Last time, we learned about getting images in the proper resolution. Now that we know that the image we’re using is both of good quality and OURS to use, what do we do if it’s not quite right? That’s for next time! – j

The usual state of business is typically “I need it the way I want it and I need it yesterday”. We’re all in a hurry and that doesn’t leave a lot of time for mistakes that need correcting. On the graphics end of business, many of the problems I run into are preventable on the front end, provided our clients understand what we need and why we need it.

Though you might be tempted to grab your company logo or great photo on your home page from the web to be set into a design for a printed piece, the truth is that very few (close to none) of the files that you can pull off a web page (72 pixels per inch) are going to have enough pixels for print work (250-300 pixels per inch). On top of that, part of putting images on the web means making the file size as small as possible. This means graphical compression in the form of jpeg or gif files which result in lower resolution and loss of detail when printed.

In other words, I’m begging you not to pull files from the web (or Word docs for that matter, though that’s another story)! If you find yourself hunting and hunting for that image you need to provide us with and the only one you can find is online, the end result will look like somebody made a mistake or didn’t know what they were doing. That’s not a reputation anybody wants!

The best thing you can do is spend some time before the rush is on, hunting down nice high-resolution files – usually someone on the marketing team will have them, or know where to get them. That will help your job run more smoothly and look a lot better.  Just make sure that whatever image you provide is one that you have the legal right to use. That sounds like a good Topic #2!