13 signs that you are a bad graphic designer

Give yourself a point for each that you still currently do. If you score above 3, sorry you lose.

1. Helvetica

Do you use Helvetica in everything?

Ok, yes I know, it is the most popular font of all time - but that is the downfall of Helvetica. Just because it is there, it doesn’t mean you have to use it. Try something else next time and try break out of your habit. Just for some suggestions, maybe Trade Gothic, Formata, Futura, Antique Olive, Eurostile? And yes I know this website uses Helvetica Also check out our post 30 fonts to last you a lifetime.

2. Straight Quotes & Wrong Quotes

Do you use straight quotes still?

Straight quotes were for typewriters, times have changed! Look at the difference between the quotes above.

1. The quotations are not hanging over the edge.
2. Straight quotes have been used instead of true quotation marks.
3. Quotation marks have been used instead of prime marks after the 7 and 3.
4. An apostrophe has been left out in between it’s.

Learn the keystrokes to ‘real’ quotes in every application you use. Learn the MAC & PC keyboard shortcuts here.

Don’t type curly quotes when you need inch and foot marks (prime marks).

3. Quotations Not Hung

Do you NOT hang your quotation marks?

See in the picture in number 2, how the quote marks are hanging off the side of the quote, compared to the other one. Hang your quotation marks. Read your software manual (check their help files) to read how to do this or you can do it manually.

4. Double Returns.

Do you hit the ‘return’ or the ‘enter’ key twice between paragraphs or after headlines?

Using two spaces makes it possible to end up with a blank line at the top of a column plus it leaves way to much space between each paragraph - it looks disconnected.

5. Two Spaces After Punctuation

Do you add two spaces after each sentence?

This is a very bad practice and is not correct - Using only one space is the correct way.

6. Using Boxes Behind Text

Do you use plain boxes of colour behind your text?

Just because you can, doesn’t mean you have to. Try something else, use a dramatic headline, use your white space, use a different font, reverse your type, use pull quotes, etc. Can you see in the above picture how the surrounding white space makes the text stand out on its own? You can use these in the correct places however be careful not to over use it.

7. Centred Layouts

Do you use a centred layout in your graphic design pieces?

Using centred layouts is usually bad practice as it creates a deadly dull look. See how much more effective the two green verses are, they are more dynamic (one is centred & one is left aligned). Using flush left or right gives strength to your entire page and usually is a better option unless of course there are reasons to use centred text. eg. creating a formal wedding invitation.

8. Borders

Do you use borders around everything?

This often indicates a beginner who feels unsafe with type that is uncontained. Use your white space. You can let it be there. Seriously.

9. Indents

Do you use half inch indents?

This is bad practice and is the old way (back in typewriter days). The standard is one em space which is a space as wide as the point size of the type. (what?) This is approximately two spaces, not five.

10. Hyphens For Bullets

Do you use bullets for hyphens?

This is a typewriter habit and is unprofessional. Try using dots or dingbats.

11. Embossing & Drop Shadowed Type

Do you use the nifty little drop shadow or emboss tools that comes with your software?

PLEASE STOP. This is the biggest dead give away of an amateur. This goes a long with forbidden; rainbow gradients, reflections, comic sans. Just don’t use them, plain simple.

12. 12 Point Type

Do use the default 12 point type with auto leading?

For most typefaces, 12 point is a tiny bit too large for body copy. Compare a 10, 11 and 12 point passage of text and tell me which one looks more professional. Try adding an extra 1 or 1.5 line spacing or leading as well. Notice the difference in the two examples above. The red is the default 12 auto leading and the green is size 11 with 2 points of leading.

13. Underline

Do you underline?

Never use the underline feature, it is a law. Only for hyper links on the web is this allowed. Underlining was a way for typewriters back in the day to Italicize text because they couldn’t set italics. Underlining and italicizing text at the same time is the most redundant thing you can do in life but rules can be broken

14. ALL CAPS

DO YOU USE ALL CAPS?

All caps is more difficult to read and this is because we recognise a word not by its letters, but by the shape of the whole word. When text is in all caps, every word has the same shape so we have to read every letter by itself. All caps is fine sometimes but when you are conscious of using it and why. Try using bold, using a different typeface or using reverse text.

15. Bad Gramma & Speling

Not spell checking your work and not using the right grammar. One of the hardest aspects designers seem to face.

MUTO a wall-painted animation by BLU

amazing stop motion animation!

Kaws Creates Original Fake For i-D

We’ve really enjoyed seeing more and more magazines explore special covers and print techniques over the past year or so - providing unique experiences that the web can’t replicate. Next month’s issue of i-D will feature a collaboration with achingly hip artist and toy designer Kaws…

i-D is running two covers for the issue. The regular one features the word original:

But you don’t want that one. What you want is the super-rare, fake, Kaws-designed one with a fifth colour (fluoro pink on the A of Kaws) and a spot varnish, shown at the top of the page. For the print fetishists among you, the spot varnish appears in these areas

Originalfake is, of course, the name of Kaws’ shops. A limited number will be released for the newsstand as well as turning up in the letterboxes of some, fortunate subscribers.

The collaboration goes further than the front cover - around a fifth of the editorial pages inside feature Kaws’ work:

i-D managing editor Karen Leong emailed us to explain how the collaboration worked: “Lo-res images and unfinished layouts were emailed to Kaws, who then supplied RGB Illustrator files with ‘Smart Object Vector’ layer to our production director, Matthew Hawker, who then imported them into Photoshop, colour-corrected and combined with the hi-res. All done by Matthew.”

Crime: designed by FUEL

FUEL is about to publish a new book on the seedier side of life. Crime, by author and documentary maker Alix Lambert, is billed as a series of “extraordinary interviews exposing the world of crime – real and imagined”. Lambert talked to a range of authors, detectives, even murderers, in her investigation into the true nature of criminal acts – the book’s design references the ways that crime has infiltrated our visual culture…

“We’ve always been interested in the crime novels of Chandler, Hammett and Cain and wanted to design a FUEL incarnation of those works,” says FUEL’s Damon Murray. “The elements for the cover [above] were taken from half-remem­bered 50s and 60s crime novels and films and then constructed into a ‘scene’. We bought a replica gun and then photo­graphed several scenarios before settling on ‘the lady in the gutter’.

“We made the cover illustration using a scraperboard to give it a hand-drawn feel and immediacy,” he continues. “Inside, we chose a stock close to the ‘pulp’ of the early crime novels. For typefaces we looked at newspapers from the 1940s and 50s, like the LA Times. [Quotes are set in Geometric; body copy in Baskerville]. Overall, we wanted to make an object that was seductive in a hard-boiled way.”

Jason Tozer - Ice, smoke and solder

Jason Tozer - Ice, smoke and solder

"The following images show the results of experiments with three different materials: ice, smoke and solder. The images of cracked ice are from a personal investigation while the photographs of smoke and solder came out of commercial projects, though these shots were unused by the respective clients."

Studio 230: featurette

this is the main featurette from the DVD project Studio 230: speak from experiences.
this is just a quick edit to give the general idea of what we trying to achieve visually, still need to resolve some practical and technical issues such as camera work and re shoot. the general reception of this video was very positive, people are interested and humoured which was what we aiming to achieve. still got lots of work to do to actually get this project finished as a show piece.

Studio 230: interviews

part of the extra features from the DVD project Studio 230: speak from experiences. voices of the BA Graphic Design Yr 1 students, Leeds college of Art and Design
this is the final edit of the interviews. still need to edit bloopers and production diary.

lies will unfold

this short stop motion video was made as part of the one week brief where me and Rhianne worked together collaboratively. the concept revolves around the idea of lies unfolds, we adapted the concept to a 3D object, a paper box.
due to the short time span of this brief (one week) some of the visuals was not executed as well as I hoped, the part where myself gets flattened then folds inside the box did not appear as convincing enough to my set standard. Originally I wanted to use some simple green screen techniques however it turns out our attempt towards this brief was too ambitious which was restricted by the time given.

My Latest Novel - The Reputation of Ross Francis

Platform : The stop motion of a white box

DHL Box

The Box Man

Stop Motion Box Anime

Food Fight

a very interesting animation on the history of war in our times.

100 scanned faces

For my book of 100 project I'm planning on producing a collection of 100 faces scanned with a A4 scanner. I have sat up a facebook group gathering people to scan their faces for me as well as a flickr account to gather people not just from my usual social group. so far the number of people has increased rapidly on a daily basis. here are some examples of interesting images from the collection. Now the content of the 'book' has been decided I will need to consider the appropriate format and media for this 'book'.

Doll Face

A machine with a doll face mimics images on television screen in search of a satisfactory visage. Doll Face presents a visual account of desires misplaced and identities fractured by our technological extension into the future.

Street Fighter

this trailer has got me all worked up about the game, as a SF veteran, this game possess many high expectations. as a piece of motion graphics it's just beautiful!

Similar Diversity

a project by Philipp Steinweber and Andreas Koller

Similar Diversity is an information graphic which opens up a new perspective at the topics religion and faith by visualizing the Holy Books of five world religions. Communalities and differences of Christianity, Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism and Judaism are shown up in this datavisualization.
The visual's basis is an objective text analysis of the Holy Scriptures, and works without any interpretations from the creators' side. Despite - or even because of this abstraction, the artworks are not only working on an informal but also on an emotional level. The viewers should be inspired to think about own prejudices and current religious conflicts.

Realised with Processing and VVVV.

Similar Diversity was exhibited at the Hangar-7, Salzburg: Is it possible to touch someone's heart with design? by Multimediaart and Stefan Sagmeister.

Stefan Sagmeister and Birgit Gurtner.

The process of analysis and visualization

All visuals are based on the real results of a text analysis which is realized with different tools.
The evaluation is done in the node-based programming tool VVVV, which can be downloaded free for non- commercial use. The so gained data is visualized with the open-source programming environment Processing. Processing is based on Java, what also enables the implimentation of an online application. It's developed by Ben Fry and Casey Reas for students, artists, designers and developers to create images, animations and interactions. The software can be found at processing.org

The analysed wordcount is in total 2.903.611 (15.625.764 characters).
English translations of the Holy Books, downloaded as digital versions from the internet, were used for textual analysis. The creators cannot grant absolute correctness of analysis for several reasons.
As in Christianity, Islam and Judaism only one book is building the religion's base, Hinduism and Buddhism are referring to several scriptures. In addition to that some of the books, like the Buddhist Pali Canon, are not completely translated yet. We were not able to consider all scriptures, the most spreaded ones were chosen.

Leading characters and their communalities

The large arc visual shows the 41 most frequent characters from different Holy Scriptures and their communalities.
The characters are aligned alphabetically on the x-axis. Their names' and the arcs' size is calculated from their total wordcount in all scriptures. According to that, characters which play a big role in several scriptures are displayed larger.
The colored segments of the arcs are showing the frequency of the word resp. the character in the particular Holy Books.

Below the names can be found bar charts which are breaking down the activities of the characters in detail. The verbs are gained by filtering them out of the texts, technically each verb straight after a character's name is taken. In case of the word order "God loves" the verb "loves" is referred to the charcter's name "God". The hight of the rows and the font size show the frequency of particular activities.

The numerous arcs connecting the names in the upper part of the visual symbolize similarities of the activities assigned to a character pair. An algorithm calculates the according activities of every couple. Based on these results, the different stroke sizes and shades of grey are calculated.

Like all the other visualizations this artwork is based on a text analysis, without a personal interpretation of the creators.

“You” in the Holy Books

Those five graphics are showing the positions and the frequency of the word “you” in the different Holy Scriptures. "You" acts in most cases as a request to abide codes of behaviour or moralities, and so aims most directly at the reader.
Each picture is read from upper left to down right, whereas the most upper left pixel represents the first word of each book, and the most down right pixel the last one. Every colored position (word) means the word “you”.

Typographical artwork of the main characters

The typographical elaboration shows the main characters, which were ascertained due to their entire appearance. Different sizes correspond to the total amounts of appearance in all scriptures, colored letters to the religions according to the leading part of the character.The graphical arrangement has been crafted in this case. The characters' order contains in that case no information but was merely chosen by design principles.