So, here it is…
and here you are…
I want to let you in on a little secret that one of my college professors told me many years ago..
Just because it’s printed, does not mean its a good design!
Okay, since I got that out of the way, whew buddy, I feel better! So what makes a good designer? Well as stated above, just because it is printed, does not mean its a good design! Literally anyone can design something in word (please don’t, when you do a designer loses their pencils) or if anyone gets their hands on photoshop, they automatically believe they’re a designer!
Have you ever been driving down the road and you see a billboard that is very text heavy and you cannot read it? Yea, that’s an example of a bad design! When designing for billboards or anything that some one is supposed to look at while driving, it should be short and sweet, straight to the point! You only have 7 seconds to get your message across to someone who is driving.
Bad billboard designs make me cry a little… Not really, but still.
Uhmmmm. No, stop right there! that’s not how it works. Good designers have extensive background on how to design a logo or any design, they do a lot of research on your target audience before even starting the logo, we also some times sketch things out to just get all our thoughts out on paper like a mind map. We also have a passion for Psychology, we know what colors people subconsciously like more over other colors, and how colors make an individual feel.
A good Designer will have the following characteristics
- A Great Designer will use designer jargon, such as, leading, kerning, user experience, High Resolution, Low Rez, High-Fidelity, pixels, scalable. If they don’t use any designer jargon that even the most junior designer would know. Just run as far as possible because they probably bought a copy of photoshop and don’t know what they’re doing.
- Speaking of photoshop, a Great Designer will NEVER EVER design your logo in photoshop! EVER! Photoshop is for photos, hence the word PHOTO in photoshop. lol
- A Great Designer will design your logo in illustrator. Illustrator is for illustrations and when designing a logo in illustrator you can scale your image as big as you want and it will never pixelate because you designed a vector image.
- A Great designer has many years under their belt! When you have sticker shock from the price tag, just know that you are paying for their years of knowledge and experience! Even designers value their time. If you’d like to learn more about sticker price check out my blog on logo pricing.
So just to recap, a great designer will know the reasoning behind the colors they used in your logo, they will know your target audience from asking you who you’re targeting, then they will do research on your target audience to get to know them on a personal level such as what they like and look for in a company. When it comes to web design some of us will go as far as doing user interviews to make sure the website is user friendly and easy to navigate and to ask the user how they felt when they saw the colors and images.
If you have anything else to add or a question drop a comment below!