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How To Drive A Graphic Designer Crazy

COMEDY WARNING - Just a note before we start, this is supposed to be sarcastic and funny. So please don't follow too closely. Sources: myself, fellow designers and design haters.

Designers are admittedly a rare breed, but who do graphic designers think they are? I mean, it’s the client that came up with the idea to get something designed, it’s the client that is picking out the colors, it’s the client that’s doing all the work. Right? All the designer is doing is putting some colors on a screen.

Here is what I’ve found out you can do to really drive your graphic designer crazy. Not sure why, but designers are a little touchy and precious about their creations.

Microsoft Office

If you’ve got a great idea, put it into Word and send it to the designer. Got images? Toss them into Word too. Flowcharts are definitely best in Excel. All your assets should come in some Microsoft document because everyone loves Microsoft Office.

Fonts

Helvetica, ask for Arial. Arial ask for Comic Sans, this the best font ever. Hands down.

More is better

What’s all that white space? Lets add some images up in that margin. Also, we can shorten up the page if we get rid of all that white space in-between paragraphs. Margins and padding are for dummies. That’s valuable real estate. Ohh maybe we could put some clip art up there. If you have a child who is currently working on his art project, get him to sketch out what you want with his crayons. Designers love that.

The Logo

Always send your logos to the graphic designer in a Word document. Didn’t you already learn this? It should be small and low quality. Ask them just to take it off your website. Don’t worry, they’ll be able to perform magic and make it look awesome; at no extra cost of course. Once they get it in the design, always ask for it to be bigger. Bigger is better. Make everything bigger.

Get Specific Generic

Here are good things to say to your designer: I want a design that really speaks to me. Something that is now. Can we add a little pizazz and jazz it up just a bit? Make it pop. Our goal here is to make it aspirational. We want it to be different but just like theirs. We are looking to target children, families, couples, students and we also attract a lot of OAP's. You have the freedom to be really creative here.

Then when the designer adds pizazz and all that jazz, tell them that you didn’t want your design to look like that. What the hell were they thinking? You told them what you wanted, something very simple (attach new word document with scanned pencil scribble)

Copy (the text)

Remember to send through a full A4 page of text to go on your A5 advert. This is important the more information you get on your advert the more the consumer has to read. Remember also to keep repeating yourself to get that message across. How about pulling things out and adding it again in big colourful stars?

Colours

Pick strong colours like red and blue. And when the design comes back to you, tell them you didn’t want red red. Have them bump it down a notch. And that blue is too blue. How about we change that to more of a sky blue. And where is the green?

Deadlines

Take your time approving the design. This is an important decision so take days, weeks or even longer. But once you give the feedback, demand that the designer turn it around in less than 24 hours. I mean, how hard can his job be? You did all the work here.

And we’re done!

This is great, it’s perfect. We’re all done, except can we make the lady a little more happy and that blue is more of a morning sky blue, can we change it to evening sky blue? Also that night time skyline is too dark can we make it sunny?

Ohh and I have another project for you. Since you know my style, can we do it in 1/2 the time and cost this time? It’s pretty much the same thing, only different colors and layout.

Finish us!

After you have beaten them within an inch and they have abondoned all hope of winning an argument. You want it yellow and purple?, yellow and purple it is. Six differnet fonts? Sure. Once these crucial final amends have been made, tell them you are disappointed by their lack of initiative. Tell them, they are the designers and you were looking for their expertise and talent. That you expected more creative input.

You should now have a broken designer. Now all you have to do, is wait to complain about the print you sourced yourself ;).

New Cadbury's ad

Cadbury's has recently released the latest spot in its Glass and a Half Full Productions film series for Dairy Milk. The new ad sees various items of clothing in a charity shop burst into a choreographed piece of dance once the shop has closed. Set to Jermaine Stewart's 'You Don't Have To Take Your Clothes Off' which helps get the advert stuck in your head.

The last time a Cadbury ad caused such a stir, the talk was about who was inside the gorilla costume – with Phil Collins rumoured to be the man. This advert also caused me and my mates to hire a gorilla costume for a charity Stars In Their Eyes performance, but lets not go in to that. This time everyone wants to know how these 'empty' outfits dance with no CGI used or strings attached.

Well we can now reveal the secret. Lots of viewers have been debating online how the scenes were shot. Now we can confirm that dancing adults were concealed inside larger-than-life outfits – with no CGI required.

The lo-tech advert is set in a charity shop and trained dancers made the costumes move, nineteen dancers spent two weeks training in a gym in the Czech capital Prague before the cameras rolled. All props, costumes and furniture were custom-made at twice their normal size.

A Cadbury spokesman said: ‘They were effectively blind within the suits. They had to rehearse heavily to ensure they could perform without crashing into things.’

Sam Hibbard, from Fallon the advertising agency responsible, said: ‘People now are so used to CGI so we wanted to create the ad in a traditional very lo-fi way. It’s almost a performance rather than an ad.’

Whilst I love the ideas that can be created using CGi. It is fantastic to see ideas and concepts been produced using relatively low tech whilst still achieving great work. Not sure what Dairy Milk chocolate has got to do with it though...

Here is another great example it reminded me of, the fantastic one take music video by Ok Go - 'Here It Goes Again' absolute genius and an all time favourite of mine that I would love to try and repeat in the gym.

 

Our newbie says hello!..

I’m pleased to announce that I’m Raw Creative’s ‘new girl’, taking over from Lisa Sayers as Head of PR.  It’s my first week at Raw and I’m excited about all the developments we’ve planned already including this blog, our new Twitter account (follow @RawCreativeLtd or visit our twitter feed on the right), in addition to lots of glossy events for our clients and of our own!  Watch this space!

The team section on our website is currently being developed by design genius / wizard / uber-talented bloke, Craig Marshall which will share with you our skills here at Raw but also our alter egos.  Look out for an insight into our professionals like no other!

For a little blurb about me so you know my credentials and background, I have always juggled journalism and PR side by side finding that it pays to have experience on ‘both sides of the coin’.  My first role was a Beauty Editor for 69 Magazine in Leicester (my home town), I then moved into PR as Press Officer at Boots Ltd after finding a love for sales and PR via raising the profile and revenue of 69 Magazine.  I lead brands such as No7 Cosmetics and French Connection.  The large corporate world wasn’t quite for me in that I had so many original ideas that would never get realised so I branched out and freelanced (in both journalism and PR), working for brands and agencies such as Niko PR and Pure Beauty.

Due to a demand, I set up my own Consumer PR and Events Agency, Huge and two years later moved it to London.  I introduced over 30 fashion brands to the UK including Tummy Tuck Jeans which received coverage in nationals such as The Times and broadcast media including the shows of Gok Wan and Mary Portas.  I worked on both independent and corporate businesses and it ran for 5.5 years before I chose to move to Leeds and opt for a more flexible career that allowed me to write my first book, The Modern Girl’s Guide to Fabulousness.  This was published late last year.

The freelance PR I did recently included working with MK Things Happen Ltd in designing a new strategy for Meadowhall Shopping Centre, giving them a more national profile in the media, foreseeing them as fashion forward and attracting a more affluent, fashion savvy target market.  I did this in a number of ways including creating October Fashion Month – an entire month dedicated to fashion happenings which attracted national acclaim and a charity pop-up store opened my Wayne Hemingway – the largest event of this kind in the region.

The journalist side of my skills sees me take on the role as Contributing Editor for Meadowhall Style magazine and write for online magazines such as www.stylebible.com and www.iFASHIONMAGAZINE.com

With over ten years experience in PR and marketing, I have the aptitude for identifying the target market(s) and tone of voice of a client or brand and then devising the content strategy, publicity strategy and build ideas in the first instance.

Oh, and I love the smell of bacon, I’m a complete coffee snob and I find Tim Lovejoy incredibly annoying.  In fact I often yell at him on TV. I don’t think he can hear me though.  Although shopping is my religion and I insist on regular manicures, I don’t cry if I break a nail and have a totally contradictory side to my girly-girliness – one that is a bit of an adrenalin junkie.  Yep, I’ve sky dived, completed assault courses, danced burlesque and air-sphered.  If you want to know what all that is, google it!

That’s me so until next time, see ya later!