ARENACREATIVE.COM BLOG » Graphic Design

Daily Creative Inspiration

arenacreative — Mon, 05 Jul 2010 14:42:37 +0000

Here’s some really awesome commercials, clips, and inspiring examples of creativity I’ve seen recently that I really enjoyed.

Empty LA by Matt Logue. Los Angeles without any cars or people… Crazy.

PDF article by AfterCapture magazine:
http://www.rangefindermag.com/storage/articles/AC0610_Logue_Smith.pdf

And for all of you that are videographers, or love to produce stock footage and video for microstock… enjoy
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SItFvB0Upb8

Don’t judge the B ROLL!

My Own Worst Enemy

arenacreative — Fri, 18 Jun 2010 02:01:35 +0000

Do you ever feel like your work is never good enough? Do you get praise from others about your creations, but deep down inside you don’t feel the same way? Maybe you feel like you just served up a pile of trash. To be honest, I feel this way about my own work a lot. I recently did a few photoshoots and nothing I shot really wow-ed me. This type of thing happens other creatives I have spoken to, as well.

I Am My Own Worst Critic
I’m definitely my own worst enemy when it comes to criticism. I see the flaws in my work. Even if they are minor, almost untraceable to others, I still manage to find them. Am I just being over critical? Am I bored with what I’m doing? Is it just because I’m being overly anal? What’s wrong with me? I want to be happy with what I’m doing. I am definitely enjoying it, but I don’t think I’ll ever be 100% proud of where I’m at creatively. I think we all want to have our own “style” but this is easier said than done. I’m still trying to figure out what it is, and probably will continue to do so for a very long time.

Transform
Last year Atlanta Georgia based editorial photographer Zack Arias made a video like no other. It described a personal struggle that a creative has and lives through. I don’t care if you’re a graphic designer, a hairdresser, a chef, a contractor, a sculptor, or even a basket weaver… if you create on a daily basis, watch this video. It’s a must see, and I am pretty sure you will be able to highly relate to it. Any creative professional should see this.

Getting In and Out of Creative Rutts
We all get in the same creative patterns sometimes, and many times we might not even notice it. As a designer I would find myself using a lot of the same typefaces, or laying thing out with the same compositions all the time. In photography, I might find myself framing a lot of headshots in the same way. Or, I might continue shooting the same themes and subjects with different models. What do you do when you realize you’re in a rutt? You do whatever you can to get the heck out of it. Don’t wait around for someone else to tell you what to do. Mess around and get crazy the next time you get to work. Change things up surprisingly. Look elsewhere for inspiration, if you need some. Try something new (maybe a different subject, theme, or style) that you might have passed up before. I personally find that when I get out of my comfort zone and try something new, I get a lot more satisfaction out of my successes. You will also realize whether or not your new experiments are for you or not, and just might step back into your comfort zone. Even still, you’re going to be a lot more well rounded of a creative than before.

It’s Okay…
Being your own worst creative enemy is not necessarily a bad thing… be worried when the opposite is true. Then, you might have a problem. Heck, maybe it’s healthy. It’s nice to have a constant semi-dissatisfaction with your work, in a way, so that you can use that to drive you onward to the next level. I talked to my mom about this topic recently (she’s a hairdresser that’s been in the business for over 30 years). We agreed that sometimes you just have to keep doing what you know you have to to please your clients and pay the bills. Feeling completely satisfied with where you are as an artist or craftsman might be a lifelong quest… just try not to beat yourself up so much along the way.

Insider Tips for Better Stock Photography Search Results

arenacreative — Tue, 01 Jun 2010 14:27:49 +0000

When it comes to searching for the right stock photos, I know from personal experience as a past image buyer that it can be a huge hassle. You can many times get lost or even sidetracked very easily when browsing through the ocean of stock photos and graphics. The sooner you find what you need, the sooner you will get your work done, nailing those time sensitive deadlines. Searching for stock photos can be pretty annoying if you’re not going about it the right way. Here are some tips and advice I can offer that might just make your next “hunt” a little more successful, or at least maybe a little less time consuming.

Be Specific
Let’s face it, there is a sea of images out there for royalty free licensing. You can sometimes search for “cat” and get “dog”. Unfortunately, image keywords are prone to mistakes, spamming, and more. You don’t want to have to dig through a sea of crap before finding the types of images you’re looking for. How can you avoid this? By being specific. If you’re looking for a photo of a cat, go as far as describing what breed, color, and even what pose. You just might be pleasantly surprised in your results. Don’t be so specific that your search string is more than 5 words long, as you might miss a lot of pretty good results. But, at the same time you don’t want to use simple one word searches and have to sift through hundreds of pages of images. An exception to this, of course, would be if you were searching something very rare or a rarely covered subject.

Narrow Results With Additional Secret Words
These words aren’t anything super top-secret, but many image buyers might not be aware of them. They are widely used by stock photographers. Try them in your upcoming searches and be blown away by how this trims down your results to a more reasonable size.

isolated: A cut-out image or person object with a solid color background. These types of images make it easy to pop into solid colored backgrounds or layouts, even easily add or remove negative space. Be sure to include whichever color you would want it isolated over; ie: black, white, red, etc. Other variation: cutout, cut out

clipping path: sick of making selections to isolate images? Search for this phrase and find images that have a preset clipping path already embedded in the jpeg.

copy space: Use this when you want images with negative space, or a little bit of room to breath. Every good deigner knows what negative space is, but not many remember to search with the term copy space. Other variations: copyspace or copy-space

seamless: If you’re looking for a texture that tiles seamlessly as a pattern in any direction, include this one. Also don’t forget about: seamlessly, tiling, tiles

studio: If you’re looking specifically for photos captured in a studio environment, try this word.

vector: If you want just vectors, use the word. The word illustration also works, but unless you want a lot of jpeg graphic results included, use vector.

Employ the Special Modifiers
There usually are different modifiers you can check off on each website. These usually are site specific, but are incredibly helpful. For instance, let’s say you don’t want to see anything but vector illustrations. Usually you will have the option to choose only vectors, and this will allow you to avoid having to use the word vector in your keyword search string. Maybe they opposite is true, and all you want to see are photos – not illustrations. Then you would do the opposite and tick off the “photos only” box. Some agencies go even further. If you searched for the word girl on istockphoto.com, for instance, you could then check off whether you meant: Women (Female), Teenage Girls (Female), Little Girls (Female), or Baby Girls (Female). Many of my personal friends say they don’t even bother with doing that, and they simple keep on scrolling through pages upon pages of stuff before they find what they need. Why would you want to make it harder on yourself? Make sure you employ these additional features created to help you out.

Restrict Certain Words
Certain stock agencies (the better search engines) will also allow you to restrict certain words from coming up in the image results. That has helped me tremendously in the past. For example, you might want a photo of two brothers playing outdoors. For this search you could start with the keywords boys and brothers. If that yields too many results, you could also try adding the word two. You probably might find a bunch of images that have boys or brothers in them, but also have other children or girls in them. You will probably also get a bunch of family portraits. This is when you would restrict words like mother, father, girl, etc to narrow down what you need.

Search For Specific Artists
On most stock photography websites you will also see the artist’s name beside every image with a hyperlink. Yeah, that’s right – you can click it and see all of that artists specific images. If you like what you see, or are maybe looking for more images from a similar shoot, many times you can search within that person’s portfolio. Maybe you like one specific shoot theme that artist has done, but only found a few results from the main site’s search engine. A lot of times you can find similar shots with different angles or with other different variations by searching through that photographer or artist’s personal portfolio. You can also search from scratch for a certain artist. For example, if you search username “arenacreative” you might just find my stuff (shameless self promotion, sorry…)

Change the Search Type
By default, most websites employ results by the newest or most downloaded. Don’t forget, however, that you are able to easily change that search method. You can usually sort the results by most views, download, popularity (usually that is a mix of views and download), newest, oldest, or random (if you feel like living dangerously).

Spend Less by Shopping Around
Shop around – don’t just stick to one agency just because it’s the same one you’ve been using for 5 years. It takes only a minute to register an account on a different agency. Some websites require a minimum credit package purchase, while others are a better deal by getting a monthly subscription (especially if you need a bulk number of images). If you’re spending company dollars, you boss will probably appreciate how much you’ve saved for the company by purchase (many times the same) images somewhere else for up to 25-50% less. Prices and selection vary from agency to agency. Guess what – most microstock contributors sell their work under the same user name. If you find an image at Pricier Site A try looking that photographer up at Cheaper Site B and you might just be pleasantly surprised to find it there at a much lower cost. You might even be able to score an XXL high resolution version for the same price as the medium size price at Pricier Site A.

If at First You Don’t Succeed…
…keep on trying different keyword combinations. You will find what you’re looking for! Be persistent and enjoy your “hunt” There’s nothing like the feeling of finding an incredible image that fulfills the exact idea you had in your head.

How to Sell Soap – Viral Marketing Explained

arenacreative — Tue, 11 May 2010 02:28:15 +0000

Ever heard the term “viral marketing” but wasn’t 100% sure on the entire process, or what it means? Well, if you are still curious, this video will clear it up nicely for you.

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Design Crowdsourcing – Good or Bad?

arenacreative — Tue, 04 May 2010 14:46:38 +0000

If you’re a graphic designer, have you ever thought about competing in a design contest somewhere? For those of you who don’t know what crowd-sourcing is; here is a quick explanation. There usually is an original poster (a company or small business owner) on a design forum or contest site that sets the prize amount and the specifications. Then, a bunch of contestants post up concept proofs and samples for critique. Many times today design firms even have to contribute hours of man hours in order to “compete” for a job. Many times they end up getting the shaft, because they are up against many other firms in the process. So, I guess there is crowd sourcing going on to an extent, even at the professional level.

Are There Any Benefits to Crowdsourcing for a Designer?
These contests are great for students or those trying to develop their portfolios, but in actuality participating in these low budget contests is undermining the industry. Don’t give away your work for free, no matter if you’re new at something, or highly experienced. Design time is money, so unless you’re doing charity work you just might be barking up the wrong tree. I’ll admit – I was a sucker once. I’ve participated in crowd sourcing when I was young and stupid; but hey, you live and you learn. Back when I was just out of college I had a little bit of free time in between graduation and landing my first day job, so I competed in a handful of logo contest. I found one flier design job that I nailed and then it led to some additional freelance work from that business owner. Don’t expect this to happen every time, though. In the end, after I tallied up all of the hours wasted on these design contests, that little bit of assignment work I got was not even worth all of my time and efforts spent in crowdsourcing. In the end, the only parties that, I think, benefit from crowdsourcing are the contest holders and the crowdsourcing websites. The businesses are getting a huge variety of entries, but the majority of times they’re receiving crap-tacular designs from inexperienced ones that just got their first copy of Photoshop or Illustrator. You’ve seen the contests… if you want to see the caliber of design aesthetics just go to any of the major design contest websites.

So in the end, are the original contest posters really benefiting from having so many different proofs to choose from? Evidently not. You get what you pay for. Some of the entries might be very good, actually deserving of traditional commissions of upwards of $1000-2000 for such a design. This is, in fact, that company’s corporate identity. I know you can’t really put a price on that, but do you think that $100-250 is really enough? And remember, that’s ONLY if you win. If you’ve up against 50 other designers, that’s only a two percent chance that you’re actually going to win.

Other Concerns
I really don’t care where you live or how little you need to earn in order to pay your bills. Don’t undersell yourself! Sometimes the original poster will even choose an uglier design over a more professional one… because, well; beauty is is the eye of the beholder. If you’re a designer and haven’t had to dumb down one of your best designs just to please the client, then you must be new at this. Also – there is a lot of theft going on nowadays – lots of “right click -> save as” or screenshotting and auto-tracing fun, as well. I’ve even had some of my stock images retraced and resold on the same website I was selling mine on. For what it’s worth, if you’re going to be posting up hours of your design time, even in low web-resolution screenshots, make sure you watermark them at the very least.

Just please – take what I’ve said here with a grain of salt. Be wise. Think before you crowd source.

Photoshop Tutorial – Basic Clone Stamp & Patch Tools

arenacreative — Fri, 30 Apr 2010 03:10:48 +0000

Here is a recent photo edit I did on a photo of my dog, using the clone stamp and patch tools in Adobe Photoshop. This video illustrates a pretty simple yet effective way of removing some unwanted elements from the image – all in under 4 minutes. These are the types of edits I do on a daily basis to each and every one of my photos, when it comes to removing logos, flaws, zits, etc. Once you master these tools there’s very little you can’t fix. Be sure to click full screen and watch the video in HD.

Graphic Design On 20/20

arenacreative — Sun, 13 Dec 2009 04:00:20 +0000

Wow, John Stossel actually covered the topic of graphic design very briefly on the abc tv show 20/20. I must have missed this one – maybe you did too? He talks about the uber-hated comic sans font and even Paul Rand.

Graphic Design Clients – Proofing Can Stink

arenacreative — Fri, 11 Dec 2009 09:52:28 +0000

Sometimes this is what being a graphic designer really feels like…proofing changes with clients can be funny, but not when you’re the designer jumping through all the ridiculous hoops This is a funny parody on how ridiculous it can sometimes get when dealing with moron clients and making a million and one revisions. Charging an hourly rate for revisions past a certain point will definitely help to avoid this type of dragged out ridiculousness. Sometimes clients make changes just to feel important, or just because “they can”; even after being super specific about what they wanted in the first place

The Miz Photoshop Tutorial Series – Abstract Photo Layout Using Squares

arenacreative — Tue, 08 Dec 2009 12:45:10 +0000

Here Bob show how to create a unique layout with simple square shapes in Photoshop. Clipping group is something I had never even heard of until I watched this tutorial. I really like how non-destructive the editing is with these methods. Everything Bob does, he does it in ways where he can easily modify it without having to go backwards in the history tab. Overall this is a really cool effect that you can easily tweak the template to your own style or personal preference.

Adobe Photoshop video tutorial by Robert Mizerek

Why I’m No Longer a Traditional Graphic Designer…My Personal Story

arenacreative — Sat, 22 Aug 2009 02:09:00 +0000

Well folks, I thought I’d just like to share my own personal story about what happened to me in this business.

First off, I love design. I can sit in photoshop, illustrator, inDesign for hours and create and layout stuff for just about anything. When I was a little kid I loved to draw, then it turned into a love for photoshop. So, I went to college to get an education that would ensure a more secure financial future. I got my BA in Graphic Design in 04,and have a really cool internship designing direct mail postcards for my college internship (paid well too). Then a few months later I landed a job working for a publisher of custom magazines. There I designed everything from soup to nuts that a small business needs, besides the advertisements and magazine covers/layouts. I learned so much on thisjob! I learned how to deal with clients in proofing, how to work along with the sales department. I was pretty bogged down with work, all 40hrs of every week. No breaks, no days where you can just play around onthe internet. Those are nice sometimes, other times they’re misery. But nonstop work isn’t good either, especially when you’re working for someone else. It just burns you out!

Next I decided to move along to something better (well, I thought). I got a job with a large national chain store as their head graphic designer in charge of the marketing for all 75 mall stores. There I designed signage, window posters, huge wall banners, billboard size stuff. Also a lot of postcards, handouts and doo dads. That job was the most stressful. They are insane in retail. Everything has to be done before they even ask you to do it. Maybe it was just the company I was in. I thought the first company was stressful, this place made that one look like heaven.

So then the economy gets real bad. The company is now in Chapter 11 and they went from 75 stores to 21. Now I’m out of a job, and what do I do?Well, thankfully I had a side business of selling stock graphics and vectors that I did on nights and weekends. I’m now doing that full time for a living, since May of last year. I work from my home office and enjoy every minute of it, spending time with my my wife when she’s not working, and my two dogs. I have no health insurance yet, and no benefits, but hey – we’re getting by. It’s a scary thing for losing your job, but if you guys can learn one thing from my story it’s this: have a backup plan. Don’t rely just on the unemployment checks you’llget for 6 months or so if you lose your job. Have another skill or trade, or even a freelancing strategy. It’s scary when you have a family that you have to support, rent or mortgage to pay, and no hope in sight.

Anyways, that’s why I’m no longer a “traditional” designer. I still design stuff all the time, but with stock it’s a heck of a lot more generic. I have to keep things simple, too, otherwise if it’s too specific it just won’t sell. Do I miss working with picky clients, working with a boss over my shoulder? Definitely not. I really don’t have any desire to ever work in a corporate setting again, either. It’s just too hectic, and too stressful compared to working on your own. I think I’d rather have less stress, even if it means making less money. Others might disagree. I turn away people approaching me all the time, because every business has a need for some type of design work. I just enjoy designing the generic way, through stock images. It gives me a relative amount of creative freedom (obviously you need to shoot or design concepts that people are going to be able to actually want) and the only time I have to deal with another human being is when I am doing a photoshoot or some kind of payment or account issue arises on one of my agencies. It’s really great! You can’t beat a microstock career.

Anyone else have a story similar to mine? I’m reaching out to see if I’m the only weird one…

Microstock Link of the Day – Photographers and Designers

arenacreative — Mon, 17 Aug 2009 13:17:00 +0000

http://blogs.photopreneur.com/photographers-and-designers

A great read on the photopreneur blog about photographers, designers, and the spill over. I have always found that photography spills into design. I can’t think of one of my graphic design friends that hasn’t tinked around with photography in some way, shape, or form. It also touches on how those that think they’re going to get everything right in the camera without any post processing knowledge are going to have a rough road in this business.

Learn the Trade – Getting Started Selling Microstock Photography

arenacreative — Wed, 08 Jul 2009 18:55:55 +0000

So, you wonder if you can make any money selling your images online. I wondered the same thing, back when I was a full time graphic designer. I was purchasing hundreds of stock photos for use in my designs. Then I thought, “Hey – why can’t I sell my own photos?”. Professional stock photo collections can cost anywhere from $200-$500 per disc, with single shots costing anywhere from $80-$200 themselves. It’s thrilling to find places online where you can purchase high-res, professional quality images at a fraction of that price. In the past 5 or 6 years there has been a boom in the microstock photography and royalty free stock footage business.

Which stock photo agencies are worthwhile?
Trying to see which site sells more images than the next is tricky. There are a lot of elements involved, and it seems like sales figures fluctuate from month to month amongst the micro sites. Factors like portfolio size, photo types, site search engines, and even categorization all play a part. All I can do is give you my best sites – the ones that I personally think are worth my time to upload to. Below are the links to my top-selling sites – sign up, and try them out. Then you can make your own conclusions.

Shutterstock

iStockPhoto

BigStockPhoto

Dreamstime

StockXpert

Fotolia

123 Royalty Free

CanStockPhoto

Featurepics

Crestock

PantherMedia

MostPhotos

Veer Marketplace

Alamy

YAYmicro

ScanStockPhoto

Cutcaster

GraphicLeftovers.com

Everyone creates different types of art, and some of it is very marketable. Some has high commercial value, while a lot does not. It might look great, and you might want to make a print of it for your grandmother, but that doesn’t mean you’re going to be able to make enough money to make a living. How do you know how well you’ll do? You have to try it for yourself. Then make your own conclusions. This is definitely not a get rich quick scheme. You will “get back” out of stock photography, what you “put into it”.

Don’t forget to subscribe to the blog at the upper right of this page. If you are interested in one-on-one consulting regarding your microstock efforts, contact me for further info.

Design and Proofing Woes for the Small Business – Why Microstock Photography is a Godsend

arenacreative — Thu, 04 Sep 2008 03:49:55 +0000

A rant by Todd

As designers, we all know how difficult working with the public can sometimes be. Many of us learned this first-hand as teenagers in our first job at the local grocery store, fast food joint, or gas station. But, hey guess what? This is just a fact of life, and that same ‘can’t please everyone’ sort of situation carries on from our first jobs into our careers–especially as creative professionals. Sure, there are times when the first proof you send over to your client gets a, “wow, that’s so cool! I love it!” type of reaction. But unfortunately, that doesn’t always happen.

More often than ever, you get to work with small business owners that don’t know what they want. It could be something as simple as a small, quarter page ad to run in a newspaper or magazine, or a larger identity project like a brochure or letterhead. You email over the first PDF proof only to find that they give you a one sentence response. “Okay…let’s try again.”

You send over a few more variations, trying to figure out what part of it was ‘okay’ and what part was ‘try again’,..but your client just isn’t able to articulate their specific desires. It seems like they don’t know what they want until they see something that they don’t want!

When I was new at this whole game, I figure d that the more versions I showed the client, the easier it would be to find out exactly what they were looking for. Man, was I wrong. I personally found out that the more variations you send along, the more confused they get and the more they want from you. It’s like a “do-everything” administrative assistant in a company that does more and more and more, only to find that the expectations of their superiors have now been elevated. Sometimes the more you do, the more people expect of you. The customer figures that if you supplied them with 3-5 versions the first time around, it won’t be a problem to get even more nit-picky (and request another 3-5 revisions) in the next round.

“What the heck does this person looking far?” you wonder. You’ve gone through the images that your company has in its collections, or from the RF images you’ve personally collected. These are the times when microstock sites are a godsend. If you said to your boss, “Hey – I need to buy a physical therapy image for $80 for this client (who only paid $500 for their quarter page ad, including the design)”, your boss would go ape on you. He’d similarly flip if you asked him to buy a collection of medical images that costs hundreds of dollars.

Thankfully, microstock sites allow us designers an easy way to grab low-res comp images in order to proof out ads with our customers. Once they’re happy, then we log on and spend a couple of bucks for the high-res image. The customer usually has no idea where you purchased the image, or how much you paid for it. And most of the time they aren’t large enough as a company to even care about anyone else using the same image. You haven’t broken the bank, the customer is happy, and you’ve got an image you can use again in the future on another project. Life is good!