Few of us are lucky enough to be proficient at everything we turn our hand to. In fact most of us are good at something but find other tasks a little beyond our capabilities. Some of us find we are naturally gifted at building things with our hands but leave a lot desired when it come to working out a household budget. Others may be better at academic subjects than they are at racing car driving. We are all different, therefore one of the major lessons in life is to discover what you are naturally good at and work to perfect that particular skill. If you accept this advice it stands to reason that you should leave it to specifically skilled people to undertake tasks for which you have little or no knowledge, especially if these tasks are important to the success or otherwise of your business. This brings us to the subject of graphic design. Good graphic design will give your advertising an attraction that will draw people to your message, but it will need a high level of creativity before it will do the job you expect of it. It is this high level of creativity you are looking for when you decide it is beyond your...
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Comments Off on 7 Ways To Avoid Mishaps When Using Stock Photos
Stock images remain a fairly controversial issue in the world of design. There are some who believe that it is lazy to use someone else’s work, even if it is bought fairly. Maybe that is true; certainly, it is the easy way to generate images for a core design. But there are many reasons that we choose to go with stock photos rather than creating our own. The obvious one is the time and effort that are saved, which can then be put toward the design process itself. This can help to improve your finished product more than if you took the step of taking your own photos, which can be an exhaustive and time-consuming process. If you do choose to use stock, you should always go with the highest quality images you can find. Anything else looks cheap and badly created, and you won’t want to present that as the result of your hard work. Especially since a low quality stock image can take what was a brilliant design and ruin the effect. Here are seven tips on how to avoid using stock images the wrong way, and so corrupting the integrity of your design: 1. Know When Using Stock Is Appropriate Guess what? Using stock images are...
Learn MoreJust the other day I received a question on Twitter from Adam at Design4Love: “Hi.. how are you? Do you have any tips for me how to get into the UK design industry (Other than sending applications to agencies). Thanks!” Which got me thinking about how difficult it was for me and some of the fellow graphic design students I studied with to get a job in the design industry back in 1999 (yes that long ago!) straight out of design college. I snapped up a job with a Central London design agency in Soho within 2 weeks of leaving college but looking back it wasn’t really the right job for me then. Though just 13 months later I changed positions and worked for a great design agency based in London Bridge and learned a huge amount as well as working on lots of different types of projects as a designer. Anyway competition was fierce then BUT the amount of graphic design and other design courses available in art colleges and universities up and down the college has grown hugely since then. So here are a few tips on (like Adam asked) “how to get into the UK Design industry” The Portfolio: Having a great design portfolio is a...
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