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Creative Portfolio: Brochures and Creative Mailers

Brochures, mailers, postcards, and fliers offer the second cornerstone to a client’s corporate image package after stationery. Corporate branding (logo, taglines, etc.) should carry over onto any collateral materials, so the projects contained in the beginning of this tutorial go that route. There are some layout and folding considerations to learn, after all. But, to offset this often puzzling routine, Linda provides some creative solutions to the ordinary brochure. Read on…

The Portfolio Project: Brochures, Flyers, and Mailers

PORTFOLIO PROJECT: You can develop two different projects in this tutorial for your portfolio. One would consist of a traditional brochure, and the second – which would be for the same company – would provide a more creative and offbeat solution.

TOOLS: Any software that allows you to create a print layout, including software that allows you to work with images either as vectors or bitmaps.

WHAT YOU’LL ACCOMPLISH: This project will help you to understand folds and layouts for various mailing materials for a corporate client or small business. Preferably, these projects would match the stationery that you create from the stationery article, so that you can show your ability to continue a corporate package. This is the second in three steps which leads to the total corporate package that also includes an annual report (following article).

Creative Portfolio: Corporate Materials

A client’s stationery might seem like an easy project, but stationery defines a client’s image. You could consider stationery as a “cornerstone” on which other corporate and collateral materials are developed, because that stationery would hold a client’s logo, its corporate colours, and information about how to contact the client. In this tutorial, Linda shows how you might tackle a project that would include an envelope, letterhead, and a business card. Additionally, she uses examples from a designer’s portfolio that will help you to define your online and CD portfolio as well.

The Portfolio Project: Corporate Stationery

PORTFOLIO PROJECT: You will develop corporate letterhead, envelope, and business card. This is a two-pronged project, because you will also examine a designer’s Web site that holds a perfect example for an online or CD portfolio.

TOOLS: Any software that allows you to create a print layout, including software that allows you to work with images either as vectors or bitmaps.

WHAT YOU’LL ACCOMPLISH: You will learn the process by which you begin to create corporate packages. This bedrock, or initial corporate project, will prepare you for upcoming tasks – the corporate brochure and the annual report. In addition, the steps you’ll take here will help you to begin to look at all projects as coherent packages.

Creative Portfolio: Collateral Materials

“Collateral materials” might sound stuffy and boring, but Linda offers a project that might turn your objections into excitement. You will create a T-shirt design, a postcard mailer, and a poster for a musician or for a band through this tutorial. And, you’ll also determine how you would box this merchandise to send to radio and/or television stations as a promotional package. This article will make you stretch your brain as well as your talents, and you’ll take away some ideas for other projects in the process!

The Portfolio Project: Promotional Package for Musician

PORTFOLIO PROJECT: For this project you will create a coherent collateral marketing package for a musician or for a band. This package will include a T-Shirt or sweatshirt iron-on design, promotional postcard or mailer, and a poster that will promote an already existing CD. In addition, you’ll need to develop a package for mailing these promotional materials to radio stations.

TOOLS: A software program that allows you to create print layouts.

WHAT YOU’LL ACCOMPLISH: This project will help you to pull together many of your previous lessons into one coherent package. The variety of materials involved offers many formats to test one design.

Creative Portfolio: Evaluating Your Design Goals

Many of you have read the articles posted to date in this portfolio series. Some projects might take more time than others, so this article is a “breather,” or an evaluation point in the portfolio process. Here, you’ll learn exactly what you need in your Art or Creative Director’s portfolios. You’ll learn how to define your projects by eight different categories so that you can begin to create a flowchart for your online and CD portfolios.

The Portfolio Project: Evaluation

PORTFOLIO PROJECT: Most college courses that focus on visual communications degrees contain a class or a time frame – usually in the senior year – when the student must evaluate his or her strengths and weaknesses and likes and dislikes within his or her design experience. The result is a goal. This goal is focused on a “senior project” which mainly consists of portfolio presentations online, on a CD, and in print. While the projects published to date in this series all include items that would fit into your portfolios, this article will help you to define where you want to go from here.

TOOLS: Imagination, ability to grasp reality, energy to finish the projects that you’ve begun to date and to tackle further projects that are more detailed and complicated.

WHAT YOU’LL ACCOMPLISH: This task will help you decide your goals. Upcoming projects might not appeal to you, but if you want to grasp a well-rounded design experience, you will at least read the material and decide after you read the articles whether you want to tackle the project or create more projects contained in previous articles.

Creative Portfolio: Packaging

When you were young, did you enjoy going to the toy store so that you could look at all those toys in boxes? At the time, you probably didn’t realize that the package was part of what held your fascination. Packaging is both inviting and prohibitive – it invites the consumer to desire its contents, yet it prohibits the consumer from touching the actual product. In this article, Linda defines packaging, and teaches you – the aspiring Creative or Art Director – what packaging entails.

The Portfolio Project: Product Label

PORTFOLIO PROJECT: Packaging for Wine Label Project. Now that you’ve created a wine label and have that product ready for your portfolio, the next step is to create a promotional box, or package, for that wine product. But, you aren’t limited here – the ideas and methods that I’ll cover in this tutorial apply to all packaging projects that you might encounter.

TOOLS: Graphical software – if you own a copy of a 3D graphic program, all the better to render boxes and containers in three dimensions. If you don’t own this type of software, don’t despair. Perhaps the best way to learn about packaging is the down-and-dirty hands-on method, where you actually build the package and photograph the result for your portfolio.

WHAT YOU’LL ACCOMPLISH: This task will invite you to think about how products are packaged for the consumer. Hopefully it will make you more aware of the possibilities, trends, and limitations provided by shelf presence, consumer ability to comprehend provided information, and the importance of colour, shape, and other elements and principles of design that are entailed in packaging projects.

Creative Portfolio: Wine Label

Why a wine label? Because wine labels are both creative and limited. When you design a wine label, you must consider the shape of the bottle, the colour of the glass and of the wine, and even the texture of the bottle or the label. In addition, you deal with all the elements and principles of design as you meet both marketing problems and government standards. The wine label project will force you to consider type, image, and packaging as you develop both the label and a prototype for your portfolio.

The Portfolio Project: Product Label

PORTFOLIO PROJECT: Wine label. Although this project may seem limited, you might learn that it will allow you to create more product designs for your portfolio as you learn to determine what you need to include and, conversely, what you want to include in your design. Two main issues here focus on legibility and shelf recognition.

TOOLS: Any software that allows you to create and manipulate typefaces through a “character” and “paragraph” option along with image incorporation. Some examples include Photoshop, QuarkXPress, etc.

WHAT YOU’LL ACCOMPLISH: This task will force you to think about typefaces as applied to an object that is both difficult to read from a distance and that must be incorporated within a limited space. Additionally, you will begin to look at all packaging in a different light as you begin to notice how designers used type, images, and materials to represent a product.

There’s so much information to relay to you about packaging in general and about wine labels in particular. So, first I’ll give you information about packaging shelf presence across the board; then, I’ll focus on the wine as I offer information about government regulations and marketing particulars and how to make this wine label fit into your portfolio both visually and conceptually.

Once those topics are covered, I’ll dissect a few wine labels to show you why type and image are so important for this project.

Creative Portfolio: Video Production

If you have your sights set on a career as an Art or Creative Director, you need to know about video production even if you don’t conduct the actual shoot. The dilemma that you might face is that you need to know enough to discern whether your team is goofing off or goofing up, but you don’t need to memorize every digital and video magazine and book on the market. Unless you plan to become a fulltime camera person, you just need to know the basics. Linda will take you through those primary routines in this article.

The Portfolio Project: Digital Video

PORTFOLIO PROJECT: Video. This project is a little looser than the previous projects, as the video will not be included in your portfolio (although you might plan to develop a promo or something similar for an online portfolio).

TOOLS: Video production would require Director, Premiere, After Affects, Sound Forge, or some other film editing/audio program that comes with a digital video camera. If you don’t have this software, just follow along and plan up to the point where you eventually will produce the video. You’ll need to use a notebook and sketchpad for notes and thumbnail sketches, as well as video storyboard sheets for production logs (sample included in this article).

WHAT YOU’LL ACCOMPLISH: As with previous projects included in this series, it’s your job to tackle this project with the study of other videos, television shows, and movies to learn more about how the pros accomplish their tasks. You don’t need to reinvent the wheel. You just need to prove that you can create a smooth ride.

Creative Portfolio: Consumer Campaign

Often a Website client might branch out into other media to promote his products or services. Magazine advertisements, billboards, and television commercials all offer venues for marketing campaigns. If you know how to create and present a multi-format presentation like this, you could snag that Web client’s total advertising program. In this tutorial, Linda shows you how to create a campaign that is consistent with a client’s Website so that you can include this project in your portfolio.

The Portfolio Project: Print Advertisement Campaign

PORTFOLIO PROJECT: Ad Campaign. This project includes 3 full-page colour magazine ads, a billboard, and a storyboard for a 30-second television commercial. These projects can supplement a client’s Website, so pick a product or service that you’ve already worked with for this project, if possible. You will learn how to present these projects professionally to a client in a professional manner.

TOOLS: Begin with a sketchbook to make notes and to plan your ad campaign through thumbnail sketches. Even if you don’t have access to a layout program like QuarkXPress, you can use Photoshop or other software programs to complete this project. A basic understanding of print production, including billboards, is desirable.

WHAT YOU’LL ACCOMPLISH: You will act as Art or Creative Director as you complete the three diverse media projects. Although you might not have a staff to fulfil your directives, you can think as a director as you tackle new skills that will expand your knowledge about advertising campaigns. Once you complete these projects, you’ll know how to direct a team that can create the final projects.

Web 2.0 best practices

If you visit this Web site regularly, you’ll realize that recently, we’ve looked at the topic of Web 2.0 in some detail. This approach to Web applications aims, among other things, to create a more responsive experience for users. Both Ajax-style and Flash/Flex rich internet applications are common approaches in the Web 20 world.

The Web 2.0 approach is relatively new to the Web world and in this article, I want to look at some of the emerging best practices for building Web 2.0 applications. Even though some of the component parts of approaches like Ajax have been around for a while, developers are still coming to terms with Web 2.0. As we get more and more experience building this type of application, more and more best practices emerge.

I’ve attempted to put together a list of best practices for building Web 2.0 applications. See if you agree with what I’ve written or if you’ve got any more to add. I’m going to cover the following:

• Minimizing server traffic
• Using appropriate interface elements
• Providing user messages appropriately
• Indicating changed or refreshed data
• Picking the right approach for applications
• Enabling SWF files
• Using frameworks, toolkits and script libraries
• Working with object-oriented design patterns
• Separating script into separate files

There aren’t any resources to download with this article. Rather, it discusses each of these best practices and provides a rationale behind why each is appropriate.

Creative Portfolio: Web Design Presentation

The designer who shows a talent for diverse design problems will want to show that he or she can create a Web project. But, just how much do you need to know about Web design? Is the ability to code important? How important is it to have a wide range of software capabilities? In this article, Linda discusses the impact that Web design can add to your presentation and how to present your skills and talents in this area through your portfolio and in your CV or resume.

The Portfolio Project: Web Design

PORTFOLIO PROJECT: Web Design. As a multi-talented designer with an eye on an Art Director’s position, you want to include Web design projects in your portfolio. You then must decide what type of Web design to include on ONE or TWO PAGES within that portfolio. If you go beyond this, you no longer become a multi-talented designer. You become a Web designer, and you limit your ability to climb the multi-talented career ladder. This project will help you to decide which TWO to THREE screenshots to use in your presentation, and where you can tell the employer or client about the skills that you entertain in this field.

TOOLS: Preferably Dreamweaver for Web design projects. In addition, you’ll need to utilize a sketchbook to show the potential employer or client that you know how to think out a project before you sit down to create the site. Your skills with a sophisticated graphics program, such as Photoshop or CorelDraw will show that you know how to apply projects from these software programs to your Website designs. The ability to work in Flash is very, very helpful.

WHAT YOU’LL ACCOMPLISH: This tutorial will help you to define your skills as a Web designer so that you can make the decision about whether to stick to Web design or to expand your portfolio to include other talents.

Creative Portfolio: Billboards – A Connection to Website Design

Perhaps you never realized that there’s a connection between billboard and Website design. The layouts are similar in some instances, and the execution of the elements and principles of design contained within these two mediums is identical. In addition, viewers scan rather than read billboards and Websites, so these two mediums present a similar design problem: How to get the reader absorb your material in a limited time. This article presents the fourth project in this portfolio series where Linda leads you through these design issues in the creation of a billboard sample for your diversified portfolio.

The Portfolio Project: Billboard Design

PORTFOLIO PROJECT: Billboard Design. Billboards can be blights on a landscape, but continue to present a valid marketing medium for many industries in what is known as “outdoor advertising.” This design project is a perfect study for Website designers, as it forces the designer to consider how a reader scans a message while whizzing down a highway, similar to how a reader scans a Webpage while surfing the Internet (Al Gore would love this analogy).

TOOLS: Any computer graphics program that allows you to produce image files; sketchbook and notebook for concepts; list of elements and principles of design (a list of principles of design is included at the end of this article); a basic knowledge of colour schemes and typeface design.

WHAT YOU’LL ACCOMPLISH: This tutorial will encourage you to think creatively and analytically about merging type and images in an oversized format, a design problem that increases your ability to think and work minimally in a medium where viewers have a limited time frame in which to view your message.

Web 2.0 Design Patterns

If you’ve been following through this series of articles, you will have learned a lot about Web 2.0 and in particular, about Flash and the Ajax approach to building Web applications. Now it’s time to look at a bit of background information, in particular, one design pattern that often underlies Web 2.0 approaches.

Design patterns are useful because they give us a way to structure applications to make sure that they are efficient. They provide solutions to common development problems. Instead of focusing on the code itself, design patterns focus on the overall architecture of the application using Object-Oriented approaches.

Design patterns are a hot topic and you’ll find much written on the Web about them. You might notice that there is not always agreement among the authors! Some common design patterns include:

• Observer
• Singleton
• Decorator
• MVC (Model-View-Controller)

Within Web development, the MVC pattern is a very popular for building applications as it represents a way to separate different components of the application. In particular, it separates out the presentation layer from the data powering an application; something that most developers would agree is a good idea. In this article, I want to look at how the MVC pattern might apply in Web 2.0 approaches to building Web applications.