FIRST DESIGN: My original Design that got rejected.
	SECOND DESIGN: Redesigned according to my clients wants.

Since my client didn’t trust me with this business card design he asked me if he could sit beside me and help me understand his idea.  After 20 minutes of work the second design example is what we came up with. According to my client’s worldview, for him it was important to make every element strikingly visible.  So the whole design became a striking mass, but luckily for me he loved his final output.  He gave me and himself a pet on the back, and until today he is happy about his design. 

If your clients is a little controlling and takes his opinion over yours, then simply follow his orders and you will not go wrong.  There is no point of arguing because that may brake your relationship ship with the client.  Just do what he wants even when the design is starting to look crippled.  Not all your design work is going to be your best example of your work because you will run into this sort of situation where you client will control the output of your work. 

Click here for our detailed hands-on preview of the Nikon D700
(comparison, specs, design, operation, displays and menus)

Nikon broadens FX-format DSLR camera range with
the new D700

Amsterdam, the Netherlands, 1 July 2008 - Nikon Europe is pleased to announce the introduction of an all-new FX-format digital SLR: the 12.1 megapixel Nikon D700, designed to enable many more photographers to enjoy the acclaimed image quality of the Nikon D3, but in a smaller form factor.

”The Nikon D3 has taken the action photography industry by storm, motivating many pros to change brands and we expect the D700 to contin5ue that trend,” said Robert Cristina, Manager Professional Products and NPS at Nikon Europe. He added: “The D700 excels in the extreme low-light and high-contrast conditions under which today’s cameras are judged and affirms Nikon’s ongoing commitment to meeting tomorrows imaging needs too.”

D3 DNA

The D700 inherits the ‘must have’ image quality of the D3. Using the same core technologies such as the highly-sensitive 12.1 effective megapixel CMOS image sensor with large pixel pitch and gapless micro lens array that affords bright, clean files across a broad ISO range. The D700 also features the same innovative EXPEED high-speed image-processing system, 14-bit A/D conversion and 16-bit processing pipeline to provide the detail and smooth gradation necessary for outstanding print enlargement and reproduction.

FX on the move

The D700 is ideal for those seeking a perfectly-balanced DSLR on the move, without compromising durability or environmental resistance to moisture and dust. The D700 incorporates an image sensor cleaning system that uses high frequency vibrations to reduce the accumulation of dust on the image sensor surface. A responsive 5fps is possible with the compact 1500mAh EN-EL3e lithium-ion battery, with up to 8 fps possible by attaching the optional MB-D10 battery pack to use the powerful 2500mAh EN-EL4a battery if desired. This offers complete power supply integration for those already using the D3 and D300. Another first is the practical i-TTL built-in pop up flash with 24mm lens coverage, ideal for discrete flash lighting when a full size Speedlight might be too cumbersome.

Getting the shot right

Despite its attractive price tag, the D700 makes no compromises in its comprehensive feature array with a highly responsive shutter release time lag of just 40ms, the acclaimed accuracy of the 51-point MultiCAM3500 AF system, DX Crop Mode and Live View with contrast-detect AF displayed on the same high-definition 3-inch TFT monitor used on the D3 and D300. One of the most important advantages of FX format cameras is the viewfinder experience and the D700 features an outstanding solid glass pentaprism, 95% coverage and adjustable AF point LED illumination for a bright, uninterrupted view. A clever new feature is the ability to display the Virtual Horizon level indicator during Live View mode to determine camera orientation at arms length.

What NIKKORS have been waiting for

The D700 is designed for the future without ignoring the past. As Nikon celebrates the 75th anniversary of the very first NIKKOR lens, and with well over 40 million sold, intelligent image processing technologies to control peripheral illumination (Vignette) and chromatic aberration enable photographers to rediscover the creative possibilities of their existing NIKKOR F mount lenses. For newcomers, the ever-expanding Nikon Total Imaging System provides lenses, Speedlights, Software and accessories for every photographic challenge both now and in the future.

The D700 is supplied with battery EN-EL3e, charger, and Nikon Software Suite and will go on sale from 25 July 2008 with a MSRP guide price of €2599.

Additional images

You might ask yourself, “How do I come up with great looking designs almost every time?” I don’t necessarily know what works for you, but I will share with you some methods that help me.

I call them -
THREE CARDINAL METHODS

1. Don’t settle with your first, second, third…………tenth idea. Why? because the first few design ideas that are spinning in your head come not from your creativity but rather from your relativity or association with other ideas. That is why it is necessary to dispose them from your head as you start designing. Don’t expect to be creative on a first or second set of logos you created, because all they are, are reflections of works you’ve probably saw from somewhere else. Once you exhaust all your relative ideas, your brain becomes free from clutter, and you will began designing ORIGINAL (OEM) stuff that is coming from your own well.
2. Try designing from 12am to 3am. I’m absolutely serious about that. This is the time frame, when your logic shuts down, or becomes sort of sleepy, but your creative side of the brain continues to process. This is an important stage because all your attention is focused on the creative side of the brain. When your creative mind takes over the steering wheel, (which by the way is always steered by logic) then instead of always progressing in a straight pattern(as logic does) it begins to wonder in every direction it possibly desires. What you will notice is the wealth of ideas that began pouring out as from a well. The only problem is keeping up with all of them. This method helps especially if you cannot afford exhausting your head from relative ideas.
3. But there is a problem, how do you keep yourself awake? Which brings us to the next stage.
   Drink lots of coffee, or energy drinks, or what ever you know works. Hey thats the ultimate method of programmers. What you need is the boost of energy, once you feel alert, coffee will not be necessary, you will find yourself fully awake with refreshing energy that can keep you through the night.

These cardinal methods, I am almost certain, will help you achieve better design results.

There are three areas in which convincing takes place.

1.  
   1. Approach
   2. Knowledge
   3. Portfolio

I usually follow these steps in the same order.  When I’m referring to APPROACH I’m not referring to “Las Vegas Casino style” Sales Approaches.  I’m talking about a direct sales approach without any gimmicks.  Some designers, and you will find a few of those on the internet, use “Las Vegas Style” sales to convince a client to go with them, they hype up terms such as EXPERT,  10 YEARS OF SOLID EXPERIENCE,  THE BEST…and so forth,  the only clients they pick up with these kind of schemes are one timers.  So when you are selling yourself put yourself above that crowd and be specific as to what you can and able to do.   The usual written sales approaches start like this..” Hi, im such and such, and I have 10 years of experience, I worked here and there, did this and that, and I am very excited about taking on your project.”  It’s the same old resume garbage which tells only 10% of the whole story.   I suggest you focust on the solution that you can provide for the client. That, in a way, shows your expertise in the subject matter rather than an empty hype up.  A client comes to you with a problem, and usually it is his personal problem, at least learn to view it that way.  You have to sit down with him and provide a solution to his problem, and that is where the next step comes in.  

Knowledge - It is when a designer instructs a client about what should and must be done.  For example, there are so many clients out there looking to design FLASH websites.  Instead of saying, “yes I can do this for you sir”.  Explain to the client why he/she shouldn’t go with it.  Say “There are better solutions and that is how we can do this project the better way”.  If the client is smart, he/she will listen to your expertise on this subject matter.  Sometimes my approach consists of only knowledge step. 

I had a client who wanted to apply a new template on his existing site.  After looking at the site, I applied for the job and explained to the client that it is not the template that his site needs, it needs to be moved to a portal platform, something dynamic, something that could save more money and editing headaches in the future…and I got the job.  Many potential clients, which you will meet in your life, don’t know what they’re talking about, so don’t be afraid to show them a more progressive, a more elevated solution than they thought of previously.

I remember a second client I had who wanted me to do a $100 project, but to apply for it he asked applicants to give him reasons why they deserve it, and to provide him a cover letter, along with design samples.  I sent him the link to the portfolio, and thats all.  He replied back, “Didn’t you read my directions?”   - “Yes” but why should I spend so much time putting together a list of your requests for a $100 project?  Maybe a college student might need to have cover letters ready, but not me.  It is only $100 and it should be treated as such. I believe my portfolio will speak 100 times louder than a nicely typed up cover letter.”  Then he went on “But I need a cover letter to consider you for future projects.”  for which I said “If the first $100 project goes well, why should that not be a cardinal point for future projects?”

The last convincing step is your portfolio.  Many of us today have online portfolios, which is fine.  Your portfolio will speak more about you than your resume and your cover letter combined.  That means, don’t apply for unrealistic jobs if your portfolio does not reflect what your tongue is ratting about.  Your portfolio can either put your “10 year experience” to shame or fame.  If you don’t have much content for the portfolio, make some up, because it is your ability to design is what your clients are after.  Make up some logos, brochures, examples of this and that, and present ‘em.  You will meet some clients whose primary goal is to see your portfolio first. So they may say “I need to look at your portfolio, then we will talk.”  In such cases I send a link and wait for the reply.

You will find many designers today who have not developed the style because:

• All their designs consist from tutorial work.
• Built on someone elses ideas
• Design approach is too diversiftied
• Designs consist of no plan, or random photoshop work.

Style is who you are.  Why do you wear the clothes that you wear?  Why do some shop at Banana Republic, and some at Aberchrombie?  Because thats the style that appeals to their inner self. Usually the one’s that don’t dress stylish don’t have any particular style, they dress up according to what fits them not what defines them.  Today they may shop at Goodwill and tomorrow at  Macy’s.   The ones who are particularly nifty about what they wear, are picky about where they shop.  Designers, so to speak, fall into the same class. Most of the  designers with no particular style, work for some printing shop.  I’ve spotted them in Kinkos or Office Max.  Their job is to grab customer’s information, stick couple of clip art pictures and get done with it. 

Building a style it self should not be the focus.  Your concern should be your ability to design.  If you work hard in trying to gain design experience, your skill and experience will slowly began to expose what your particularl style ingridients are.  You may have borrowed a few tricks from one or another source that helped to shape your style, but that is not of any concern, since what you may have borrowed happened to appeal to you.  I, in particular don’t like dirty design styles, such as where the inc is being splattered on page, or something that is sloppied to the wall …etc. Such designs don’t appeal to my character or taste, although I know it has become highly popular these days.  My style is more organized in nature, and I like to follow it and perfect in it.

Here is an example of a sloppy design and organized design

Although style may not be necessary to become a well established designer, but what you have to understand is that only through style you can ever become  an innovative designer.  What helps to develop design skill with a particular style is your focus in sticking and progressing in one or two directions.  You may diversify yourself to every kind of design style, but that may not be the best track to head on. It’s like diversifying into every field and thinking that you may one day become an expert in all of them, but that is only a wishful thinking; you may become average or good, but not great.  So stick focused and progress and you will become an expert in your style.

Vector magic is online tool developed at Stanford University. This is a powerful tool, very easy to use and provides unbelievable results. Just upload your image, and it will be converted online and have it available for you to download in vector format. Finished vector image can be downloaded in EPS or SVG format.

I found this tool to work 100 times better than the built-in tool in Adobe Illustrator, because the program recognizes if the conversion didn’t occur well and suggests what action to take further. The only draw back to it is the fact that processing takes longer than in Illustrator.

If you are the type of designer who spends a lot of time designing in photoshop you might have better skill and ability to design great looking shapes in photoshop. Since you can’t convert those shapes to illustrator successfully, you have to design them in extremely high resolution to try to make them crisp to be print ready.  With vector magic you can convert any sophisticated shape with almost perfect precision and have them printed crisply as vectors.  Vector Magic is a huge break-through and allows you to convert your photoshop work to vectro with flawlisness. 

CLICK http://vectormagic.stanford.edu/

In this example I show you one of my design projects which I failed to color correct and it printed as shown on the right

WYSIWYG stands for What-you-see-is-what-you-get. It maybe safe to design with WYSIWYG mentality for the web, but definately a deadly sin when designing for a print publication. That is why every designer must carry with him a color code book, and a color combination book.. Since your computer monitor displays its own color temperatures and depths of each monitor differes than what your prints produce, you will never be able to see properly on screen what you see on paper. You may invest $2,000 or more on a real computer monitor which has a special hardware that you can use to adjust your monitors color depth and temperature, but even then, that only may guarantee 98% accuracy. Another words, stop second guessing and start using color code books to get on paper what you are intending to get.

In the past, I’ve made many mistakes by not using a color code book. Color code books are a pain to use because they slow you down in your design process and they might deceive your vision, but they will save you money on reprinting costs especially when you are using a cheap printing firm which gives you NO PROOFS. So it is absolutely necessary to go by color book when printing without proofs. Sometimes plugging in certain color combination may look dual or skewed on screen, don’t pay any attention to that because your monitor’s colors are improperly adjusted, be calm as long as you plugged in the correct CMYK numbers for each solid color.

To plugin CMYK color numbers in Photoshop, from your Tools Pallete, click on the color box to open “Color Picker” window as shown in the pic. From the window you can plug in the CMYK numbers or click on “Color Libraries”. If you will be specifying a special color process such as Pentone then use “Color Libraries”. To use Pentone colors, you would need to purchase Pentone Color Guide.

Color code books will not help you in adjusting your pictures, those you would have to learn to adjust on your own. That’s why I recommend to deal only with High Quality purchased images. Color Code book will help you adjust solid colors and color gradients only. The photo color adjustment is a separate task to master. Maybe later I could write a little bit more about that.

To use the Color Book is simple, read the steps
and look at the values, as presented in the pic.
Each Book may be slightly different, but they all
practically follow the same format.

The Color Code books can be found in your local Barnes and Noble book store or Border’s book place. You might want to consider carrying several Color Books. At least carry one book which shows color index on glossy pages and another on matte pages, since paper stock will effect the color saturation, that way you would know which color book to use for which project. If you want to purchase online goto http://www.tintbooks.com/

You may consider purchasing a color combination book for projects where you know you would be using at least 3 solid colors. The color combination book will help you determine which colors work in harmony, this will help you better incorporate color combination theory into all your designs.

This postcard contains a purchased quality image of a woman, and my own photo of the metal model.  The purchased photo of the woman is indeed taken by professional photographer and adds to the experience.  In my last article I discussed about the basics of photography, and in this situation I had to know how to take a professional pic of the metal model. This particular postcard examplifies the importance of knowing how to take pictures of subjects, and obtaining quality photo subjects.

 If you open up any magazine, most of the ads are composed of one big photo or an illustration of some subject and simple text layout. The design looks as if it was put together by a pro, but it may not have. It looks great only because the designer obtain the quality photo, photoshoped it, and then properly presented it on the page.  Many great designs contain quality subjects.

I guarantee you, you will notice a great difference in your design work when you apply professional pics on your page.  Googling for pics works only for those who call themselves designers, but are not such in practice.  If you are going to upgrade your design skills, start upgrading your images in your projects.  Start purchasing the stock, and do not commit a sin by typing google.com for every answer. 

Nice cheap photography banks you should know about when obtaining images and illustrations.

Dreamstime.com
iStockphoto.com
Fotolia.com

There are some free photobanks as well, but I found them too overwhelming to use, aside from the fact that they lack in quality.  Improve your designs by improving your understanding concerning photography.

I would like to discuss with you how you can make residual income off of your business card reprint orders. Why not make extra cash since you design business cards already?

Where do you began?

There are literately 100’s of companies that print business cards for as cheap as $7, and they do a quality job too. You probably want to avoid your local printing company for this, as they are going to be pricey, unless, of course it is some special business card project which requires 6th color processing and/or impression where perfection is an absolute necessity. For this to work, price factor is important because you want to make at least 200% profit off the reprint orders. To determine how much you should be charging your customers, call your local printing companies and find out how much they charge say for 250 printed business cards. In my area companies charge around $45-60 for 250pcs.

Open an account with a printing firm which offers cheap business card printing. You can find many such firms by simply googling for them. Personally, I use gotprint.com. Sign up with a company which will allow you to:

• Open up a reseller account. (reseller account receive promotions and wholesale printing rates)
• Save your business card orders.
• Save your billing information
• Run a minimum of 100 piece orders (there are companies which do a minimum of 1000 cards, avoid those)
• Drop ship orders to your client’s door

Reordering your prints online is easy; you can do that from your reseller account with one click of a button. No time wasted resubmitting those orders to the printing shop, because your orders and billing information is safely stored at your reseller account.
Try not to overcharge your clients for the design and offer them a good price on printing, this will ensure that they will come back to you later. Never hand them the actual design unless they demand it, make them come back to you for reprint orders. Your goal is to make as much residual orders from your client as possible. Print small orders because that will enable your clients to come back to you more often.

I have one client to whom I suggested to use his business cards as appointment cards also. On the back of the business card I designed for him an appointment form which the he uses to write appointment dates for his clients. He loves the cards since they serve more than one purpose, and I love it because I get frequent reorders.

You will learn later that the residual income will help your company stay afloat, especially during the slow periods. It smooths out the down size sales curve. Even if you are a big design firm, the residual part of business shouldn’t be disregarded just because you have contracts with huge companies; contacts don’t last forever.

 You may say to me,

I purchase all my photography from the popular photo banks, and those photographs are mighty solid, certainly much better than what I can do.

  I do the same when a certain photo fits the design, but not every design can include a general photograph of some nice piece work, that is where your personal photography comes in. Design projects such as depicting your clients building or product, requires your ability to photograph.   There are some clients who will carry photographs of their works which they would like you to use in their design, a lot of them I found to be garbage, and thats when I recommend to retake the photographs myself.  If you, as a designer, have an eye for cheap vs. quality photography you could be in better relations with your clients.  Designing for products, architecture, interior, special moments, etc… requires your ability to properly capture the subject. 

 Well then….In your arsenal you should carry a nice professional camera.  Get ready to spend at least $2000 for a camera and necessary accessories.  Necessary accessories include, at least two types of lenses; close-up lense and a wide angle lense.  Also a flash unit, and a tripod.  This investment will greatly help you appreciate the design business to the fullest.  Point-and-shoot cameras will not do when your subjects require special settings.  99% of the time you would be shooting in Manual mode; you would be required to adjust the settings of the camera to capture the subject.  So take a week off and go into the wild to learn your new piece of equipment. 

There are lots of good professional cameras, the two I would recommend as a starting point is Nikon D200  or Canon 30D.  Canon is appreciated if you would be shooting in low light or shooting fast paced action.  Where as Nikon is better suited for still photography and gets better performance in the field as well as better ergonomically built.  Both Manufacturers will give you outstanding results as long as you know what you are doing.  Since there are many Canon and Nikon worshippers out there, please take my opinion with a grain of salt

A lot of designers may fall into a trap after using their new shiny camera; all of a sudden after 10 hours of shooting they think they have become pro photographers (the pics turn out truly amazing).  Some may even start advertising themselves as professional photographers.  Please just stick to what you bought your camera for and let photographers whose job is to take pictures of kids and weddings, do their job.  You certainly don’t want to over-broaden your business and then find out one morning that people no longer know which business are you running. 

 I will discuss strictly the tactics of photographing objects or architecture in the next article so come back soon because there are certains basics you should know to clear off the clouds.  In this blog I share strictly my own experieces and challenges I was able to overcome by making this or that decision.