Graphic Design Lesson 1
Monday, May 23rd 2011 @ 1:15 PM (not yet rated)
Introduction
Everyone interacts with graphic design on a daily basis. When you open the newspaper, turn on the television, read a magazine or click on a website, you're looking at graphic design. In this course we're going to look at graphic design and discover ways that you can do graphic design at home for typical home and small business applications.
What this course will cover
This course will cover good, basic graphic design principles that you can use on a regular basis for any medium from creating business cards to creating websites. We won't always mention ways to apply some of the principles to every single medium... after all, entire college and university degrees are dedicated to graphic design. So you'll need to take what you've learned and distill it into the various mediums that you'll be working in. Generally, all the principles apply in some way to all the mediums you'd use for graphic design, including:
· Business cards
· Brochures
· Book covers
· Websites
· Magazine advertisement
· Magazine layout
· Newspaper layout
· Newspaper advertisements
· Newsletter layout
Learn More Now Click Here
Admittedly, the things in this list have a marketing flavor to them. After all, in each case, you're trying to sell something... perhaps you're trying to sell someone to call you (with your business card) or to buy the book (with the book cover) or to read the magazine (with the magazine layout). Graphic design even deals with other things that do not have a marketing flavor to them, like postcards, recipes, birthday cards, etc. The principles you learn here will apply to them to but since most people take graphic design courses to improve their marketing and advertising, you'll find that we'll often refer to the medium we're talking about as advertising (even when it's not necessarily and advertisement).
Moreover, we'll refer to the audience sometimes as the customer and we'll refer to the thing you want them to do as the sale.
Why?
Because everyone sells something. Perhaps you are taking this course because you belong to a church and are creating a visually pleasing welcome kit for visitors. Although you are not selling a product or service, you are still selling someone on why your church is a good church to attend.
What this book will not cover
This book is intended to turn you into a skilled amateur. Do not expect to put this book down and compete immediately with some of the big players in the marketplace. That comes with experience and a portfolio of clips of successful graphic designs and at that level, you will need some high quality and expensive software and equipment.
The information you'll read about in this course will mostly be done with software and equipment you have at home.
We won't help you get something printed (so we won't talk about the weight or glossiness of paper), we won't help you get something online (so we won't talk about html or web hosting). That's a topic for someone else. Instead, we're just going to talk about making something look nice.
But looking nice has a purpose. You don't just make something look nice simply for the sake of making it look nice. What you want to do is use graphic design to help support your message. (We'll talk more about this in another chapter).
What is Graphic Design?
Graphic design, for the purposes of this book, is to create visually pleasing marketing copy that sells a prospect (or customer) on an action they need to take. It can take many forms and there are sometimes sub-specialties (web-design or printing are two specialties) of this industry.
Ultimately, graphic design is about heightening your message with visual cues and stimulus and using those visual cues and stimulus to help guide your audience.
Who does it?
Unconsciously, we all do some kind of design and layout. If you have ever written a letter and put the date and time and your address on the right hand side, and double spaces between the body of the letter and the "Sincerely," then you have been involved in very rudimentary layout.
Graphic design involves a larger element than just where to put text and how many spaces between, but those principles are very similar in the graphic design industry.
Where do you use it?
The assumptions we make in this book is that you will be using graphic design at your day-job, in a small business or home business setting, for non-profit/volunteer use, or for personal use to create nice looking things for fun.
For example, if you volunteer as a local coach and are always complaining that the parents never read your newsletters, consider using some graphic design elements to catch their eye and force them though the newsletter.
If you want to put together a little book for friends who are getting married, you can use graphic design to help you make the book attractive so that they'll read it and enjoy it for years to come.
If you are putting together a report at work - and know that everyone else is putting together a report as well (and you want yours to stand out) - you might use graphic design to help separate yours from the pack.
If you own a small business and want to look like a big business, you can use graphic design to create letterhead, promotional pieces, brochures and advertisements. Learn More Now
Why do you use it?
Anytime you want to get your message across to others.
What do you need for this course?
A passion to learn is always one of the critical pieces to finishing any course. As far as equipment goes, you'll just need your computer and a word processing program (we use Word, but you could using something else, if you like). We can show you where to find free or inexpensive graphic design software to help you. You won't need it for this course, but if you are interested in continuing the work you learned here, you might find it helpful.
As you go through this course, we recommend that you get a binder and begin putting some of the projects into the binder. Use it as a reference resource that you can refer to time and time again. Over time, you'll build up a high quality reference resource that you won't be able to part with!
