I was just reading the terriffic blog of Ashworth Graphic Design Instructor, Mike Nelson. The blog is called, The Ideation Phase, and it’s is a great resource for all of our graphic design, web design, interior design, and photography students.
Mike recently profiled a couple graphic designers that should definitely inspire our students. Check their sites out and be sure to drop in and say “hello” to Mike when you get a chance. Thanks Mike!
Greg Lamarche uses a collage to create his work and does a great job.
Hornall Anderson is a Seattle based graphic design firm that is simply phenomenal.
I’d like to take this opportunity to summarize some points of extreme importance for you as a beginning designer. I have followed these principles throughout my career and have used them to guide me in the development of your graphic design program. I call this methodology the Michael R. Nelson “12-Point Program for Successful Designers.”
1. Be humble and ready to learn. Even after you complete your program, there is still a vast world of design out there for you to learn, experience, and absorb.
2. Always enter into a design project with clear objectives and criteria.
3. Establish a clear design process with a methodical intent of reducing possible solutions until a clear solution rises to the top.
4. Don’t be afraid to revisit parts of the design process as many times as needed to get it right.
5. Have a clear hierarchy of information in the graphics you design.
6. Respect typography.
7. Make your imagery meaningful. Don’t be overly simplistic with your imagery. Make sure it’s appropriate and communicates your core message.
8. Always push your designs for a higher level of excellence.
9. A successful designer must be willing to self-educate. Never stop learning about design and exposing yourself to creative outlets.
10. Make your own opportunities. Designers do not have the luxury of sitting back and waiting for prospective clients and employers to come to them.
11. Be discriminating in defining what good and bad design is. Whether you are critiquing yourself or work you randomly run across, or you are participating in a formal group critique, hold the work to a high standard and have the confidence to declare it successful or unsuccessful. Allow proven, high-quality work like we cover on this blog define your standards of good work.
12. Don’t let computer programs “own” your designs.
If you can excel at these 12 points, you will be well on your way to becoming a good designer. Let me know how you are progressing through your program and please reach out to me through this blog if you need any direct assistance. All you have to do is leave me a comment and I’ll follow up with you right away. I’m here to do whatever I can to make this learning experience a successful one for you!
Thanks to thinbegin for permission to use this Photo.
David Carson spent a decade building his reputation as an underground graphic designer before gaining mainstream popularity in the early 1990’s. Some have labeled his signature style as “dirty” in the sense that it may appear unpolished, heavy, and visually dense to the common viewer. Carson was one of the first graphic designers to mash seemingly unrelated typographical and photographic elements into one composition, a practice that is so commonplace today as to almost appear cliché, but at the time,Carson’s ability to convey what were perceived to be complex (subconscious) messages through his work was considered groundbreaking. In the following video, Carson discusses how his design instincts have always guided his career from day one—and how important it is for young designers to develop their own intuitive style in order to consistently create substantive work. Click on the image above to watch this video. I think you’ll find some inspiration in the life and work of David Carson.
Joshua Davis is acknowledged as one of the most innovative multimedia-digital designers the world has ever seen. Creator of such seminal web sites as Praystation, whose’ radical use of open source flash applications was almost unheard of at the time; Davis has redefined the very concept of “interactivity” for a generation of web designers. His relentlessly creative work defies classification and incorporates elements of physics, mathematics, code, architecture, etc. Are you getting the picture? This guy is a monster. I decided to post this video chronicling his work on what is now considered a legendary campaign for BMW’s Z4 automobile. It doesn’t matter if you’re a web designer, graphic designer, or just someone who appreciates brilliance in any form; you should take a few minutes to learn from Joshua Davis. Let me know your thoughts. Who are some of your favorite designers? If you’re not sure, simply share some of your favorite web sites with the Ashworth student community. Talk to you later.
I sure am glad that I enrolled in Ashworth University’s Web Site Design program. First of all, I wanted to put my home based scrapbooking business on the Web. I got involved doing the site with sitecreatorplus and created a Web site for my business. It was awesome, but I wanted more…so I signed up for Web site design here and I love it. I have been put a little behind because of my business, but I am catching up now. If you want to view my website, you can check it out at
Thanks to Heidi Kuisma for permission to use this Photo.
“Get The Glass” is an interactive flash website oriented around animation, gaming, and oddly enough: milk. In fact, it’s actually a microsite developed for the Got Milk? marketing campaign, a campaign that never seems to run out of money by the way. It must be working. The interactive gaming component has certainly crossed over into mainstream marketing strategies, so all of our student web design students should take note of what makes this site a success. You’ll notice the flash applications are not groundbreaking by any means, and they’re not intended to be; the focus is on the execution of the site’s message. Because the designers understood how to use interactivity as a tool to communicate rather than an end in itself, “Get The Glass” was recognized as one of 2007’s top microsites. Personally, I don’t want to drink more milk, which probably means that I’m already the victim of some other campaign, probably for grape soda.
Thanks to Alex Whittaker for permission to use this Photo.
The Brooklyn Digital Foundry does some great web and digital media work. I think what makes their designs excel is their control of information and how their interfaces gradually reveal only the necessary information.
They also appear to do an excellent job of attracting cool clients, which is a difficult and important design skill to master and taught no where.
Michael R. Nelson Graphic Design Instructor
Ashworth University
Sony Ericsson has recently launched a colorful global mini-site to promote its new W910i and W580 models. Everything is conceived around a rather psychedelic experience that mixes music and colors and allows users to create unique and personalized kaleidoscopes.
It’s a nice site, and apparently a lot of people have already created their own kaleidoscope.
Thanks to Lyndal for permission to use this Photo.
As a web designer/developer, one role often required is to secure adequate web hosting for the website(s) you’ve been assigned to build. The kind of hosting you should pick should certainly be matched to the website — any colossal site rolled out for a new corporate product would not be hosted on a super budget hosting plan. But you shouldn’t go overboard and use hosting that is too advanced for the project either, especially if your client has a limited budget. In this post I’ll discuss the various types of web hosting available to better inform you. I’d love to hear your views too.
Shared Hosting
Shared hosting, also often called virtual hosting, is where your website is stored in it’s own directory on a web server which, generally speaking, hosts between a hundred and a thousand websites in total. Having this many different websites on one server means the costs of being hosted are kept to a minimum, but there are physical limitations imposed on you.
Pros:
Very affordable, can be as low as $50 per year
Easy and fast to set up — can be up and running in minutes
Cons:
Limitations on bandwidth and web space
Limitations on what software is available
Websites can run slow, especially dynamic ones requiring processing on the server
Subscribe to Feed
