Table of Contents
Key Takeaways: Design Principles for Non-Designers (with Dave from Doodle Juice)
- Balance (4:06):
Keep designs visually comfortable by evenly distributing elements—centre-align short text (up to three lines) and left-align longer paragraphs. - Contrast (9:50):
Draw attention using differences in colour, size, or shape. Tools like WebAIM can check if your colours have good contrast (11:59). - Hierarchy (14:50):
Guide viewers’ eyes by prioritising content clearly—size and placement can highlight the most important information. - Repetition (17:21):
If resources or assets are limited, repeating elements creatively can make your designs look intentional and dynamic. - White Space (21:01):
Empty space is intentional, not wasteful. It provides breathing room and directs attention effectively. - Alignment (27:31):
Use grids and margins consistently to organise content, creating clean, structured visuals. - Rule of Thirds (29:54):
Place key elements where imaginary gridlines intersect (thirds) to create dynamic, engaging visuals. - Responsive Logos (1:13:34):
Logos should be vector-based and adaptable to various formats and sizes—vertical, horizontal, and simplified marks. - Communicate Clearly (35:32, 39:04):
Good graphic design effectively communicates your message or goal—don’t be afraid to challenge traditional brand guidelines if it better serves your purpose.
Dave’s practical tips show that great visuals aren’t just for designers; with simple guidelines, anyone can create impactful content.
Transcript
hello is it me it’s you it me I suppose I should take over shouldn’t I hello you
0:06beautiful bunch of uh Miss screens um thank you for taking some time to spend
0:12with me today which I hopefully will not bore you to Absolute tears with I my goal
0:18today is to take you through some of the design principles that um sad little
0:27Geeks like me go through very all early on in our uh childhoods when we’re learning about this stuff cuz you’ll
0:33have all been hoisted into a career that now requires some design skills from you
0:39and you’ll a either not be interested in that whatsoever B you will but you’ll have no idea where to put things if
0:46someone will have just thrown a load of fonts and colors and images at you and all of a sudden you’re expected to know where to place them and how they’re
0:53going to look good and how people are going to engage with them and all of that kind of stuff so I’m going to show
0:58you a load of little tricks and techniques today that will allow you to
1:04understand where how to do these things and get promoted and take over the world and do whatever it is that you’re
1:10planning on doing so I suppose I should show you some slides right rather than my uh daed face because that would be
1:17useful so let me just share up my
1:23screen it’s going to be very exciting this by the way I’ve seen the first slide it looks great of course course
1:30it’s not on the screen because that would be that would be ridiculous to be that prepared wouldn’t it okay so uh my
1:37name is Dave as Joe has said um I am a freelance graphic designer and illustrator and I have called my
1:43business doodle juice for some reason that I can’t quite remember it was about 15 years ago um but I’ve grown quite attached to it so before we get into all
1:51of the nitty-gritty about designed principles and we get into the real exciting stuff um I want to make sure
1:56you’re all properly caffeinated and energized because I’m about to throw a ton of useful information your way so
2:03get your pupils open get your notes ready um let’s go through some stuff so
2:09before I get into it you should probably have some idea that I’m actually relatively credible in this area and
2:15that I have a vague idea of what I’m talking about so I’m going to show you some work right this will take like five
2:21seconds um I’m going to show you some of the things I do because they’re related to logo design and book covers and
2:28character illustration and website design and posters and packaging and all
2:34this kind of stuff these are the kind of things I spend my days doing but these are the interesting things like these are the
2:40sexy things to show you you know these are the things that you put on your portfolio but the vast majority of what
2:46I do and what you will probably do is the stuff that’s actually quite kind of dull like the you know can you make this
2:53magazine layout look a little nicer or can you make this flyer look less vomit inducing it’s the kind of the dollar
3:00stuff that you don’t really show off but it’s the stuff that’s still quite important the stuff that majority of people will see and the stuff we want to
3:06get them properly engaged with and show them how things can look quite interesting so in order to do that we
3:12need to learn design principles of design uh I
3:18know it’s exciting please try and contain yourselves um and for the love of God keep your clothes on because I
3:24know how you know tantalizing this stuff could get but I’m going to take you through about 10
3:30different design principles that can help you when you’re faced with a load of images and text to understand I’ve
3:37got this blank canvas in front of me I’ve got these elements how am I going to put them all together to make something interesting visually appealing
3:43and ultimately engaging so let’s go through some of those right I’ve got um a little canva tab open I thought this
3:50would make sense this will probably be the tool the vast majority of you will use for your designs so I’m going to
3:58bring you into a little environment you’re hopefully familiar with and take you through some of these principles so the first one is
4:06balance no when you have a design say let’s say
4:11let’s take something really really basic and you’ve got two lines of text right and we have a blank canvas where we
4:18going to put the text now the the default setting for most people is to plunk something sort of in the center
4:24when you have an image when you have text you’ll plunk it in the middle you might plunk it in the middle along the
4:29horizont horizontal axis you might even if you’re feeling extra spicy also plunk get hor uh in the center on the vertical
4:37axis then we’ve got something bang in the middle right lovely that’s your instinct because it makes sense it’s
4:43comfortable it’s centered it’s nice the reason that it is nice is because it’s
4:48balanced say it with me balanced so balance in other words re refers to
4:58the weight distribution in a in a design so this title is equally balanced across
5:04the left and the right hand side it’s equally balanced across the top and the bottom so everything feels nice and lovely and and and you know relatable
5:11now one thing that can trip people up is whether when you’re placing everything in the center whether we Center our text
5:18at the minute this is left aligned but you’ll have seen people Center text right this is a little bone of
5:25contention for a lot of people sometimes centered text can look lovely sometimes it can look a little jarring and it can
5:32be a bit confusing as to why one of those things happens against the other and there’s a pretty simple rule for
5:39this right if you’ve got two or three sentences Center aligning text is absolutely fine when you get over three
5:47or if you go over and see a second paragraph for example you’ll start to notice that it doesn’t quite look as
5:54neat now there’s a reason why novels aren’t Center
6:00aligned we are obviously because Us in Western societies are built to read from
6:06top to bottom from left to write we know when we’re reading things when we get to the end of one sentence our eyes
6:12automatically know where to Dart to to read the next word on the next line it’s really really simple and when you’re
6:18creating design you want to create as less friction as possible between the reader and the thing you’ve created so
6:25when you Center a line text and there’s multiple lines you have to do that little bit of extra work when you’re
6:31going from the end of one sentence to the beginning of the other one to find where it starts and yes it’s minimal but
6:37it’s a tiny little bit of friction that you’re putting in between you and the reader so it can just make the whole
6:42thing a little bit disjointed and make the reading experience a little bit more jarring for the person on the other end
6:48so the general rule of thumb a nice simple one to remember is if you’re going over three lines or on a separate
6:55paragraph just left align it like this if you’ve got two or three lines you can
7:00Center it and it’s generally nice and neat nice and easy creating Z balance um
7:06another example if you had a page like this and imagine this is an image or a photograph at the top and then you’ve
7:11got this text at the bottom this is fine but again when you
7:17are asking something to read something which is generally what we’re doing again if you think of a novel a person
7:25has picked up a novel to read in their leisure time they d time they are
7:30choosing to read that they are well aware that this thing has thousands and thousands of words it’s a story they’re
7:36really interested in they are committed to reading that you can pile a ton of words onto people when they’re properly
7:43engaged in the story and it’s something they want to get involved with if it’s something to do with what we’re generally
7:49creating we’re asking them to read something if it’s a corporate document for example right no one wants to read
7:56that so you need to break it up into a way that looks less imposing as a block
8:01of text also looks visually engaging and the person isn’t going to be instantly intimidated when they look at text so
8:08again the general rule of fun with these kind of things especially the kind of stuff that you or I would be creating is
8:14if you’re block of text is taking over 50% of the real estate on this picture
8:20on this image on this canvas sorry then you want to start breaking up so it doesn’t start to look too imposing so
8:27for this one for example I would I would want to change this because over
8:3250% of my canvas here is text and I think that looks like a bit too much so
8:37I’m going to want to change it and a simple way of doing that again looking at the balance rule is just to split it up into two separate columns you’ll see
8:43this a lot in magazines and uh and corporate documents and the like and it’s just to make that
8:50block there’s the same amount of text there it just looks a little less imposing because it’s been split into two and split across the two different
8:57sections of the page so this is where balance comes comes in it’s got equal equal WID Distribution on either sides
9:03of the canvas just makes it look a little bit more pleasing a little less imposing you can do this with another
9:09slight variation which is called asymmetrical balance so there’s still the same weight on either end but we’ve
9:15just kind of rejigged the order of what’s on the left and what’s on the right hand side and this just makes it
9:20look a little bit more Dynamic a little bit more interesting but it’s still the same principle at play and a few
9:25different examples of ads that create very simple balance with images is this
9:30McDonald’s ad you got a flip-flop on either side excuse me nicely balanced and then this piece of art which is
9:38balanced nicely again against the horizontal and the vertical axes so that’s a nice easy one if you want to
9:44think of how to make something look decent the the WID think of just the WID distribution could be just an easy way
9:50of uh of tackling that next one is contrast contrast can be achieved in a
9:56few different ways the first one is color so if we look at this image for example I want to draw attention to this Square so I’m going to make sure that it
10:03has a highly contrasting color to the background now this is also an area that
10:09people aren’t too familiar with because knowing exactly when something is contrasting can be a little bit tricky
10:15especially because everybody’s got different levels of you know visual um
10:21uh visual aptitude so if we look at Netflix’s brand guidelines for example
10:27they show this kind of this gradient of when it’s acceptable to use a Certain Shade of black all the way through to
10:35White against the red of their logo and you’ll see when something’s 100% black here that’s absolutely fine because
10:41there is a huge contrast between the different colors so it’s fine as you get a little bit grayer this is also kind of
10:47fine and then when we get into this area it’s a little bit questionable CU it’s there’s not quite enough contrast you’ll
10:52see this contrast ratio thing that they’ve mentioned here which I’ll show you how to calculate in a second um
11:00where it starts to get a little bit jarring and then we get into these cleaner whites and it’s really really clear again there’s that real visual
11:06separation and this can be a tricky thing when you’ve got colors in your brand guidelines but not all of them
11:12work together if we look at du lingo uh brand colors for example obviously
11:17theirs is massively colorful there’s a huge spectrum of colors on their color range but if we go into the colors they
11:23use down here more for their characters for example if I was to use their beak highlight color here and they’re tongue
11:30pink if I used the pink on the yellow as text it just wouldn’t work there
11:36wouldn’t be enough contrast um so what you should all be aware of in your own
11:41brand guidelines or anything else that you work with is yes these are all the colors available to me but not all of
11:47them should be used together there’s a few different ways you can figure that out if just by eyeballing it isn’t
11:53enough for you and there’s this website called uh hint.com
11:59this can be a really quick way of sort of seeing what works and what doesn’t if you put all of your hex codes for your
12:05colors on these top little um color circles cint will generate a ton of
12:11images for you and it will mock them up in various different scenarios so you can kind of see a quick glance what
12:16colors work together what they don’t you can view it on if I go to the right here you can view it on magazine layouts you
12:23can view it on website layouts illustrations tons of different things um and it’s just a quick visual guide as
12:29to where my colors can work and where they can’t um if that’s not helpful this
12:34is a really useful tool and this is also just for General accessibility for people with visual impairments and
12:39things um this website is called Web aim.org now if you’ve got two colors
12:46you’ve got a background color you’ve got a different color you’re going to use your text on go to this site put the
12:53background color in there the foreground color in there and it will give you this contrast ratio the ratio that the
12:59Netflix um brand guidelines were referring to a second ago that will show you the contrast that you need and the
13:07only real thing you need to be concerned about are these pass um these little pass codes here so if you have enough
13:14contrast you’ll get a pass if you don’t you’ll get a fail and it shows you if it passes enough for lightweight normal
13:20text if it passes on large text and if it passes for graphical objects if you can get a pass on all of these you’re
13:27laughing go and create whatever you want want to um if you got a pass on just graphical objects and just large text
13:33then just use those two separate colors on the larger elements in your design and maybe you with when you’re using the
13:39smaller copy just use like a plain white or a black depending on what you’re working on so that’s just a little Tool
13:46uh that is useful to know um contrast wise it’s not just color you can use
13:53contrast with size you can use contrast in shape I want to draw attention to this uh shape in the middle so I change
13:59the shape of it I want to draw attention to this Square I make it much bigger than the second Square so it’s just another I’m going to show you examples
14:05of how to use all these later on so don’t worry too much if if this isn’t making quite s quite sense like my
14:11sentences they don’t make quite sense all the time um so here’s an image showing contrast and action all of these
14:17images of books leaning to one side one of them is leaning the other way and it’s a different color so our attention
14:23is immediately drawn to where the contrast is in the image uh and this
14:28post for Maze Runner the contrast is right in the middle showing the character and this huge landscape
14:34they’re walking out into so your attention is immediately drawn to that so wherever you want someone’s attention
14:40to go think about how you can contrast it in a way so it differentiat
14:45differentiates itself from the rest of the image um another technique is
14:50hierarchy you’ll have no doubt seen this uh image or a similar one um online by
14:57some creton who’s just sharing something they’ve seen a million times but it says you will read this first you will then
15:05probably read this immediately afterwards and you’ll most likely lead this for last now this works similarly
15:12to what I was talking about earlier on when you’ve got few bits of copy so when
15:18you’ve got two or three you can use size to direct people’s attention more than
15:23the actual placement of it I’ll show you a good example of this so this is a a poster for a TV show now your natural
15:32instinct would be to put what you want people to read first at the top and what you want them to read second at the
15:38bottom but when you’ve only got two or three things that are fighting for attention you can place the main title
15:45at the bottom of an image but draw attention to it from its size rather
15:50than its placement so you’re using contrast to get to gain the emphasis on it you don’t have to particularly worry
15:56about the placement that does not um work the more information that you
16:02have so if we look at this graphic if I was to take the te the header of this
16:07make it large and place it at the bottom it suddenly becomes confusing because there’s too much going on the more
16:13elements you have fighting for attention the more um the more old school you need
16:19to be with how you apply the rules so the more things we have we need to go to
16:25the linear top to bottom left to right sort of format so we’ve got a Title Here an opening paragraph a pie chart a load
16:32of stats this needs to make sense because there’s so many things fighting for attention that it needs to be quite
16:37clear what’s going on whereas here we’ve only got two or three things we can play with the placement of it so when you see
16:44this line when you see this image online the reason this works is there’s only
16:49three lines of text here we don’t have any indiv we don’t have any separate Graphics there’s no pie charts there’s no bar graphs there’s none of that
16:55nonsense I just have three lines of text so I can play with the placement a little bit and use size as the thing
17:02that directs your attention there’s the size the WID that will ultimately lead
17:08me to read this one first that one second this one third you will find there’s always somebody in the comments going well I didn’t read it in that
17:13order there’s always anomalies for these things but generally 99% of the population will read it in in that order
17:21um the next one is repetition now if you’re working for a smaller company and you don’t have many assets to play with
17:28repetition becomes your friend so if you’re looking at your brand guidelines and you just see one shape and one word
17:35and you’re like what the hell am I supposed to do with this this is when you can repeat things so if I said to you I want you to create a poster but
17:41I’m only going to give you the letter A to work with you’d walk out the room
17:48that’s not enough de I need but with repetition suddenly I can create a full poster I’ve just got loads of A’s and I
17:54can just flip them around and suddenly there’s an A in the negative space and it’s all it’s all very interesting but I’ve just used one letter A to create
18:00something quite interesting I only have one lemon no no no sorry I’ve got 30
18:06lemons now it’s an interesting image I’ve got the word Focus I can use it a ton of times I can then use contrast to
18:12draw attention to one of them and gain my focus so that’s an interesting technique to use now the four techniques
18:19that I’ve just shown you I’m going to show you how we can do something with this so let’s imagine in your business
18:26you’re creating a little separate service that’s called Circle and your boss comes over to you and says
18:31listen I need a social media graphic for Circle it’s going to be great I want you to create an image we need to get people
18:36excited about this and you say sweet what have you got for me I’ve got a circle and I’ve got the word Circle so
18:45on you go and away they go and you think brilliant What Am we going to do with this right so we can look at the couple
18:51of little techniques we’ve used so far this is all we have to work with and we’re going to create a graphic out of it now we can start thinking of balance
18:59right the whole let’s just place things in the center that’s all right I suppose if we’re going for something quite
19:05minimal um I can Center it above the circle put them in the center again it’s
19:11kind of all right but there’s not much exciting going on there um we can look at contrast so I can maybe take our
19:18little circle I’ll give a little pop of purple there okay now we’re kind of getting somewhere still a bit crap
19:25though um let’s look at size contrast so let’s take take our Circle and make it
19:30fcking huge and I’m going to throw it there and I’m going to throw the title
19:37just underneath it there now you creating something a little bit interesting I could also do that at the
19:42side I could pop my little circle down there pop my little title there pop it off to the side now we’re getting
19:49something that looks a little bit interesting now we can try a bit of repetition possibly I’ve only got this
19:54one Circle let’s just let’s just create a load of them it’s just just throw this
20:01out this won’t take me long chat amongst yourselves no I’m going to do that I’m
20:07going to throw another uh another row underneath that let just give me four of these that’s lovely okay and I could do
20:15that for infinum I could cover the whole thing in repeated circles maybe I want to draw attention to one of them and I change the size of it not like that dve
20:22geez um I changed the size of it just like that maybe I change the color of it
20:27we got a little maybe with the real maybe if I want to give people with OCD
20:33a bit of a aneurysm I just put it there so I’m just giving it a little bit of
20:38contrast a bit of repetition we’re still balanced I’m still throwing that in the center and it’s little techniques like
20:44that you can literally take a shape and a word and do various different things
20:50with and that’s what I want you to take from today really every little sort of technique that I’m showing you can all
20:55be applied individually or you can wrap them up um with each other to create little
21:01interesting ideas now the next thing is a bone of contention for a lot of people it’s white space and it doesn’t
21:08literally mean white space it means empty space and you will have no doubt received feedback at some point for
21:15something you do saying it looks empty or can we not make the thing bigger or that kind of thing I want to show
21:23you uh well I want to show you how to combat that for starters so if we look at this poster for a design Museum you
21:29will see it’s got the um information of when this exhibition is happening and it’s got a little graphic at the side
21:35it’s got tons of empty space here right but I I don’t feel bad about it it’s
21:41nice it’s classy it’s intentional it lets it breathe and the best sort of
21:47artists the best sort of designers know when to make something breathe the perfect analogy for this is if you’re
21:53ever dealing with someone who’s giving you sort of um feedback and they’re they have a problem with space if you know
21:59they’re a movie fan if you know they’re a comedy fan a music fan whatever it is the best directors know when to let a
22:06scene breathe when when the dialogue can be silent the best musicians know when
22:11to use space between notes the best comedians know how to use timing and pauses and the best artists and
22:17designers know that space is needed and it’s fine and we should all camm on so
22:24this one for example is absolutely Grand it makes it look a little bit more refined because we’re not you don’t have to fill the space it’s like if you’re
22:31creating a song and you just want the entire thing to be a wall of Noise with no Dynamics it loses all of its interest
22:37and it’s the same thing with design you show this to someone their immediate reaction generally is well can
22:44we not make the dude like three times the size or can we not make that text massive so people will see it people
22:50will still see it it’s just more intentional more refined slightly nicer if we just let the two elements that
22:56we’ve got breathe and people will know exactly where to direct their attention and they’ll be able to read it I’m going
23:02to show you some great examples of this in action this hungry copy writer wanted
23:07this ad is just phenomenal just a little chewed big pen lid and hungry copywriter
23:14wanted these have this ad has impact because it has so much space around it
23:20and the copy is quite small it’s still perfectly legible but there’s something about it being small that gives it
23:26confidence if you were to blow that up to about four or five times the size it’s almost like you’re saying hey I
23:32thought of a clever line you need can you read it can you read it how about not how about n you know so but keeping
23:38it small keeps it refined it gives it purpose and it’s absolutely the way to
23:44go now this one for example the first sign of lung cancer and a picture of a cigarette now this one the text is
23:51bigger but it’s bigger to give the image contrast you the the cigarette being
23:57this small thing that causes so Much Death is where the impact comes in on
24:03here so to almost make it look small and insignificant while also being incredibly significant needs to show
24:10contrast between the size of the cigarette and the size of the type so it does make sense for this type to be
24:16quite large because it allows the cigarette to look a lot smaller than it is so it this this small seemingly
24:23insignificant object is actually horrifying to most people who ever ever touch it so that’s when the space is
24:32needed and obviously this is a really famous Volkswagen one things small this only works because the Volkswagen is
24:39small if it was a normal size that you it wouldn’t come across so the space is needed to really really show that we’re
24:47showing you how small car is even though most reasonable human beings will know that that is not an actual sized car now
24:55this the other thing I’m going I want to show you is how to deal with OB objections specifically for this one so
25:01you can learn all these techniques but you still have to ultimately show the final work to someone who will not know
25:07these techniques so will need a little bit of Education in the term in the um
25:13in the way of you wording these things a little bit differently so let’s imagine you get an objection that says can we
25:19just fill in that space you’ll come back and say we could but that would reduce
25:24the impact of the message right now the space is helping to guide the viewer’s
25:30eye so anytime you mention words this will reduce the the impact that’s
25:36normally enough to shut people up or if you get it looks it just looks empty you’re going to reframe the word empty
25:43to no no no it looks intentional the extra space keeps the focus on what
25:49matters most so reframe the word empty to intentional and and then just tell them
25:55you’ve been on a course or use the words it’s been scientifically proven um
26:00because that you know people love that but that’s actually a fact there’s loads of studies that have been done on AB
26:06testing different designs and tracking where eyes go onto them using like these um these heat maps and uh the space is
26:14the way to go um objection I want to use every inch of space you’re going to say
26:20that’s understandable because we all know one of the main factors in conflict resolution is to show the creton that
26:26you’re talking to that you understand with they coming from first before explaining to them why they’re ultimately wrong very wrong um cramming
26:34too much in will have the opposite effect it can feel overwhelming and reduce engagement if you use the words
26:41reduce engagement to anyone they’ll generally cack themselves and back off um then we’ve got can we just make
26:47everything bigger to which you will respond increasing Everything at Once actually makes things harder to read
26:54everything starts fighting for your attention wh space ensures the right things get attention and like
27:00I said before if you know you’re dealing with a music fan just throw out a well-written song isn’t just about the
27:06notes it’s about the space between them and if they’re a reasonable human being they’ll go oh God you’re right and then
27:13they’ll be like oh my God you’re amazing and you know promotions and all the other stuff we talked about earlier and then if diplomacy fails you could just
27:20say what the hell have you employed me for you absolute weapon um that one has
27:26uh that one has a a a a smaller hit rate but if you’ve lost the will to live just
27:31use it it’s generally fine um right alignment alignment takes you from utter
27:38chaos like this and heart palpitations to beautiful order and beautiful um
27:45beautiful balance and this generally comes from grids now I’m sure you all are aware of this um in most design
27:53software you will have these rulers along the the top and the bottom if you drag out from these you will give
27:58yourself a little grid that you can use to snap elements too and you can line
28:04everything up so as default canva I don’t know if you’ve ever noticed this or you know how to use it if you move
28:11things along you’ll notice this little purple binding box that appears um along
28:16the edges that’s there to help you line things up it also creates its own margin
28:21along the edges and it it’s by default canva applies a 10% Marg 10% of the
28:27overall canvas size to the margin and it just means it’s there to give you it
28:32doesn’t so much apply to images because images can stretch out really that kind of helps them but with text if you have
28:39anything too close to the edge again looks a little bit jarring puts people off puts that friction in between you
28:45and the viewer so a general nice rule of thumb is to just stick within the margins for any text that you have um
28:52and if you want to make it very very clear that all of the images and text you are showing are part of the same
28:59family and should be shown and read and understood together you line them all up together right so that works left
29:06aligned works right aligned and I’ll show you an example this document not
29:11everything’s aligned to the same lines but you’ll see everything here is all aligned to the same line on the left so
29:17you inherently understand that these are part of the same group I should read these together they are all connected in
29:23some way this little bit on the bottom right hand side again is all aligned to the left it’s just a different left so
29:30you understand that they are all kind of grouped together and they’re part of a family same with everything here and
29:35then the more and more elements you have you can enter grid aedon um and really
29:41really go to time um making sure that everything is aligned properly and all all that kind of business right let’s
29:47talk about emphasis uh emphasis uh another tricky thing can be
29:54if you have an image a larger image knowing where exactly to place it and there’s a rule that’s used a lot in art
30:02and photography uh know as the rule of thirds um some of you may may not be
30:07familiar with this again this is something you can use your grid lines for whatever the width and height of
30:13your canas you’re working on divide them by three and place grids in those thirds
30:19right so I’m working with a 10x 80 10 x 80 one here so I’ve placed these lines
30:25uh on the thirds and how this works is on the intersecting points of each one of these lines that’s where you can draw
30:32people’s Focus There’s Something About Us inherently as human beings we just like things in groups of three and it
30:38works even when you’re looking at an image that isn’t um immediately obvious that it’s separated into threes but we
30:44can use that to our advantage so if we look at this image of this the Radio City
30:50tar um I might have to place this in an image and I think to myself I know I’ll
30:55place it in the center there’s balance that’s fine and that works that’s absolutely fine but if you want to do something a little
31:01bit more interesting in it something a little bit more Dynamic you can use the rule of thirds where I would just take
31:06this Sim image and I would place the center point in it where I want to draw attention where those intersecting lines
31:14meet and you’ll see it just creates a slightly more interesting slightly more
31:19Dynamic image gives you room to put some text in there if you wish and it’s just a nice way of it’s an interesting way of
31:26giving you a framework to work to so you know where to place elements of an image when just chucking
31:32them in the center is a little bit boring um I’ll show you another one with this model she’s in the middle lovely
31:39fine nothing wrong with that but if I want to look at a little if I wanted to look a little bit more Dynamic a little bit more interesting I’ll just Place her
31:46ey line in another one of those intersecting grids and it’s just a little bit more interesting you’ll start
31:52noticing this a lot in photography if you if you’re not familiar with it already when you see a bit of space at
31:57the center if you’ve ever thought why have they framed it that way it’s because of this it’s because it sits
32:04nice and neatly into the rule of thirds um so it just looks nicer it’s the same thing here with the head shot or sorry
32:11with the head of this scare and I’ve done it here with this bird the eye of
32:16the bird now sits in the rule of thirds it now sits down here at the bottom left
32:22so you know if if you had this image and you had this text you might not be sure where to place the bird so you may you
32:28Chuck it there but it just looks a little bit sort of awkward doesn’t really make quite as much sense but
32:34putting it there again it creates a lovely amount of space but that’s absolutely fine because it’s intentional
32:42space um proportions this is another thing that trips a lot of people up I’m going to
32:48use please forgive me I’m going to use a very wanky term now right but please forgive me um you’ll hear this a lot
32:54from pretentious designers right which I am not one um but the golden ratio right you’ll
33:01have heard people talk about this before essentially no one uses it right and if they tell you they do they’re probably
33:06lying to you but the reason that I mention it is because you’re probably familiar with the term so I want you to
33:13be able to recall this number quite easily and the number is 1.618 right I only want you to remember
33:20the 1.6 right and if you ever forget it just think ah what was that on that
33:26call saying oh golden ratio and you’ll remember 1.6 and there’s a reason for that when you’re working with
33:33text um I hear this a lot and people have no idea how to size the text and
33:39they’ve no idea right what size should I make the body copy versus the subheader versus the header how do I know what’s a decent one
33:46and there’s a very very simple rule for doing this and again like every other rule it can be played with it can be broken but let’s say I’ve got this
33:53little caption text here which I’m starting with right I’m starting with my smallest text and I want to size it 10
33:59right so that’s my starting point to then decide what the next level of text should be I multiply it by the
34:071.6 and then I get 16 and then I want to know what my header should be so I again
34:14multiply that by 1.6 and I rind it up to the nearest number uh and then again with the header so it’s a nice neat way
34:21of um creating that hierarchy between text um because quite often you’ll just
34:27grab one of these binding boxes and go that’ll do um but general rule of thumb
34:32and a nice easy way to do it is just multiply it by 1.6 and you’re done again
34:37sometimes headers you just really want them to look nice and chunky just whack them up or just keep multiplying them to
34:421.6 until you get something that is nice but that’s a nice easy way to remember how to um separate the sizes of your
34:50text and a simple one here to end on is usability right just think to yourself
34:57the vast majority of time you will be designing on a desktop or a laptop but
35:03most people will see what you’re designing ultimately on a smaller device on their phone so just think to yourself
35:10this might look perfectly passable on my on my desktop currently is it still going to be readable on a phone because
35:16not everybody um is as fancy as you are with your eyeballs so um just just think
35:23about the usability right so that’s the principles I’m going to show you some examples now of putting them into action
35:32right so I’m going to bring back my little thingy thingy here and I’m going
35:38to use DHL as an example they have their brand guidelines online as well so I’m going to show you a lot of
35:45you will have brand guidelines that you have to work with you’ll also work with people who insist that these guidelines
35:52are some sort of biblical text that cannot be deviated from and that’s not true true at all they’re called
35:59guidelines for a reason they’re just a guide they’re useful in times and there are times when you need to throw them
36:05out the window and do something completely different and again I’m going to show you an example of when it’s
36:10appropriate to do that and how you can justify why you’re doing it at the same time but if we take an example as to
36:16when these should be used you know for internal Communications customer facing materials new product launches official
36:22documents all that kind of nonsense let’s imagine DHL have just given us a brief right and the brief is they want
36:30us to create an image promoting their services to e-commerce Brands they wanted the logo in there they want the
36:36tagline Excellence simply delivered in there they want this URL they want their brand colors and they want to try a
36:42version with a box a van and a happy customer right they want it in a square format portrait format and Landscape
36:49format oh the joys so this is our brief um I’m going to show you what I’ve done
36:55with it right so this first example nice simple Square image I’ve got the logo
37:00here I’ve got their um tagline and I have got their URL and just a nice image
37:06of the box at the bottom nice and simple you’ll see that everything is centered and that is absolutely fine
37:12because we’re not dealing with loads and loads of text perfectly readable all Grand let’s try the one with the van now
37:17this image of the van is um cut off here so I have to throw it to the left which
37:23means I’ve got this sort of juny image here so I’ve moved everything everything to the left to compensate for that I’ve
37:30separated these more because I’ve got space to do so you know that these two should be read together this one could
37:36be read separately all good and then an image of a happy customer which I’ve again put nice in the middle uh DHL
37:43probably wouldn’t approve of what this guy’s just bought um but that’s fine this isn’t a real project it’s just for
37:50me um then the portrait version of all of these you’ll see that they all work
37:56pretty much the same except for this one it’s elongated so now I’ve kept it exactly the same layout I’ve just
38:02introduced a load of space and look no one’s dead no one died it’s all fine
38:08there’s space it’s intentional space it works just fine these images work by taking up the space so we can inuse I
38:15can give our little um happy uh I’m assuming single man um some space here
38:22where he can enjoy his boxes and then the landscape versions nice and simple nice and Balan B image on the right text
38:29on the left each one of these work quite similarly so that’s that now let’s try a
38:35second brief something where we take the brand guidelines and we set them on fire because we just don’t need them so let’s
38:41imagine DHL like they’ve just asked us they’re wanting to advertise the e-commerce Brands but this time a very
38:49specific subset of e-commerce Brands so this one they want to Target Ecom Brands who serve Sports Nuts and gym fans right
38:57so now we’re not talking to our overall demographic anymore we’re kind of honing in on a very specific audience so we
39:04need to appear in their world so they understand that we understand them so in
39:10this instance I’m not too concerned with our normal yellows and reds I want to
39:16look at what people already do in this world so I look at the kind of type
39:22faces used the kind of chunky type and the gritty type textures and the angular
39:29fonts and the more bold sort of color palettes and serious imagery and then
39:34you things get a lot more dark in this world you know everything’s like black backgrounds and you got Pops of red the
39:40photography is more Dynamic there’s more movement in it there’s explosions so this is a a massive world away from our
39:47normal little lovely DHL world so I could create something in our little you
39:53know visual ecosphere um but it won’t really speak to these guys specifically
39:58so that’s when I would create something like this it’s a lot darker you know you’ve got grittier chunkier angular
40:06text um I’m going to apologize to the copywriters in the room because it’s not what I do but no pain no gain your
40:12proteins on the plane um this kind of a thing and eat sleep gift repeat so I’d
40:19you know create these sort of these taglines in this more gym friendly
40:24Sports nut kind of style and D devate away from the usual one so if I am
40:29trying to talk to just a large subset of individuals then this obviously is
40:35completely Grand but if we’re really honing in and we’re going for a specific thing that’s when you can say listen I don’t think we
40:41should really worry about our brand guid lines too much now because we’re talking to this specific audience like if you were advertising for a
40:48specific Festival that was happening then then you’d want to hone into the visuals around that Festival rather than
40:54worrying too much that we must stick to the brand guidelines cuz we paid a fortune for them um you want to
41:00do something that actually makes sense so you know when to go from this to this
41:05because the definition of graphic design should maybe should have started with um
41:10is this the art and practice of visually communicating ideas messages and
41:15information through the use of typography images colors and layout blah blah blah the it exists to communicate a
41:24message and if your brand guidelines do not serve those message don’t use them now I’m going to show you a really good
41:30example of graphic design right and Joe’s going to be surprised but if any of you were on LinkedIn last Friday you
41:38might have seen this image that Joe created to advertise this course and I’m
41:43going to tell you why this is actually exceptional graphic design the reason for this design
41:50existing is to show that I don’t know how to design stuff so there’s a course
41:57that’s going to show you how to design some stuff and so this doesn’t need to be this quaffer thing it would be it
42:05would get zero attention if it was he’s displayed exactly what the problem is
42:11and therein has created a an exceptional piece of graphic design although he would not have thought it when he
42:16created it but it’s communicated the message he’s trying to communicate
42:21perfectly so I think it’s great uh so well done Joe I think it’s Brant um now
42:27let’s imagine you’re starting from scratch right in a tiny little company you don’t really have brand guidelines
42:33you don’t really have a color palette to speak of you you’ve got nothing so where the hell do you go now I’m going to
42:40pretend for the purposes of this experiment that I’m creating a product right I’m creating a pet
42:48probiotic um and I start looking at my competitors I’m seeing what they’re doing I’m seeing their packaging the
42:53kind of Graphics they’ve got and I think to myself right I want to get into this
42:59Niche but I want to be something completely different the way I would tackle that is the way you will already
43:06be familiar with Brands building their sort of brand identity but you might not be too familiar about how to translate
43:12that into actual visuals so generally you define your Brand’s personality right for me and this um this probiotic
43:20type dog brand that I’m going to build I want to be the fun person in this space
43:26right everybody loves their dogs I can’t every time I look at my dog I can’t help but smile so I want to convey that in
43:32whatever product I’m producing for this pet owner so they just feel happy when
43:38they see it so I want to be the fun one rather than the medically serious one
43:43I’m still obviously taking what I do seriously but I wanted to do it with a smile you’re you normally Define your
43:48Brand’s origin story your mission and your values but how do you take all of
43:53that and actually assign it to visuals that can be the thing that can uses a lot of people and if you don’t have a real sort
44:00of defined Brand Story then it can be useful to find a metaphor that works with it so I’m going to show you a way
44:07that I do this and then I’m going to show you a way that will work uh that might work better for you if your brain
44:12isn’t wired in the same way that mine is so I’m not a fan of looking at what other designers do I’m not a fan of if
44:19I’m looking to create packaging I rarely look at other packaging um because I because you can’t help but you know
44:26emulate those what’s already out there and I like to try and approach it from a different way so if I go back to building my Brand’s personality I want
44:32to choose a physical person that exists that I want to emulate I want to choose
44:38a celebrity that I want to be that person of this space so I want to be the
44:43will feral of pet probiotics right so I
44:50would Google will Ferell and I’m going to
44:55start looking at pictures of will Ferell to see what comes to mind this one of his most famous characters elf is green
45:02and yellows I might play about with that color palette I like his wearing his little hat there’s another image here
45:08that I absolutely love him in little tight pants from an old SNL sketch that
45:14might um that might send me in some directions but I’m looking at just different things and outfits he’s
45:20wearing and different scenarios and just seeing what that kind of informs in my
45:25head um and it it’s taking me here so
45:32first of all I wanted to think of the name for my um probiotic I came up with
45:37gutle because Mutley is a famous dog and this thing helps your dog’s guts so we’re calling it gutle um I’ve created a
45:44quick little logo for it with an intestinal tract in the U you know that’s questionable but there it is um
45:49and a little a cheeky Little mascot and I’ve given him little tight you know
45:55little small pants which have been Loosely inspired by Will Ferrell’s um tight pants in that image um I’ve gotone
46:01with a green and yellow color palette like elf and I’ve created this packaging design for it which has been informed by
46:07me looking at just some images of a celebrity I’ll generally look at like movies and album covers and just shots
46:14of people that I kind of want to emulate to try and pick ideas from that rather than packaging designs but I appreciate
46:22that um I’m a little odd so I’m going to show you another way of doing it if you got
46:27zero um zero experience Z zero to work from and it’s an AI tool called
46:33perplexity right now I know there will be various different opinions on AI in the room but this one we’re not using
46:39this to do the work for you we’re using this as a research tool to give you some information and the reason that I like
46:46perplexity is it’s only going to give us a handful of images as reference images
46:51if you go on to Pinterest or you go on to Google Images you are met with thousands of images and it’s complete
46:57overwhelm you know where do I look first how am I how is this supposed to help me
47:03build my own visual identity when I’m looking at thousands of images this will literally give us a handful to work with
47:09so you don’t get that sort of paralysis of having too many options so I’m going to stick in here and I’m going to do
47:15this live and hope it works um I’m creating a dog supplement brand and I
47:20need some inspiration to help develop the visual identity around it zoom into
47:25that in case you can’t see it want my brand to be comical uh imagine us like the will feral of dog supplements
47:31playful friendly and comedic we really care about dogs we want our customers to feel the same and welcome in our hands
47:38can you give me some visual inspiration for graphics that match this similar tone right I’m going to hit uh hit the
47:46old button there and hope that this works so what this should do he says um
47:53I’m not too worried about the text it produces here right I’m worried about about the images it generates on the
47:58right hand side which for the love of God if these don’t come up this is going to be they
48:03haven’t come up okay I literally did this yesterday it was fine um what normally happens is
48:12this will bring up some images on the right hand side right hold on oh the link it’s got everything’s gone hold on
48:19technical issues my friends technical issues okay imagine this worked right
48:25and on the right side it will bring up some images that show um similar Brands
48:33and it it restricts it to about 10 images when it’s in a good mood obviously um it restricts it to about 10
48:39images and it’s it’s a nice sort of condensed way without you getting the paralysis of having too many options and
48:44I really really like it and what it normally does when it’s behaving itself is these little um titles are also
48:52clickable so if I clicked color palette it would tick me down the page a little bit more and it would
48:58then show me some images of some color palettes that I can get um some inspiration from but the reason that I
49:04like this when it works is because of the fact that it restricts the amount of
49:10inspirational images it shows you um so you’re not overwhelmed with loads of choice if we just ignore the last minute
49:17though pretend that was a roaring success um I am going to
49:24summarize the bits we’ve just been through so so the principles remember
49:29your balance right remember to split things so there’s equal WID Distribution
49:37on either side of the image that should help you figure out how to place things and especially with text try not to
49:42overwhelm people by having more than 50% um small copy on on a design um unless
49:50it’s something you know people really want to read and then obviously they’ll be invested but vast majority of the time they won’t be so make it slightly
49:57more engaging use contrast in the form of color size or shape remember we got
50:03this little site web aim which can really help you see if there is genuine contrast so you know that things are
50:09going to be properly legible remember your hierarchy if you’ve only got two or three lines of text you can play with
50:15the size to draw people’s attention any more than that stick with the standard um north to south left to right if you
50:22limited on assets you have to work with just repeat the liit hell out of them and you’ll get something nice don’t be
50:30afraid of white space it is your friend it is there to help things look more intentional more impactful and more sort
50:37of refined and if you do deal with any agits tell them it looks intentional not
50:43empty and if diplomacy goes out the window say get in the bin you ask
50:48cabinet or words to that effect alignment uh grids remember you can pull
50:54out little oh God what’s happen you can pull out little grids from the rulers to
50:59help you line things up if you’ve got a few things you want to make it very clear that they’re part of the same family line them all together and put
51:05other elements separately you got the rule of thirds if you don’t know where to put an image pick a point in an image
51:12that you want people to be drawn to and stick it in one of these little cross sections
51:18um use the wanky golden ratio term um whenever you want to size text and just
51:24think 1.6 right because if you ever forget that number Google the golden ratio and that number
51:31will come up and you’ll go oh yeah 1.6 and that will help you size text and then remember
51:37usability whatever you’re designing it will generally always be seen as a smaller version because most of us spend
51:43our entire lives looking at our Becket phones um so make sure that sizewise it
51:49still works when it’s translated on your smaller device and do not be afraid to throw the rule boo completely out of the
51:56window if it serves the purpose for the reason the design is existing in the first
52:02place goodbye that’s me mate congratulations like I’m saying
52:09congratulations because that was just
52:15Wicked was that too I don’t know that might have been too much hon I I love
52:20you know like there was a clear moment for me like about half an hour in where you got very comfortable and the swear the swear count started going up and
52:27that oh sorry man yeah that’s that’s involuntary I’m sorry not at all but
52:32like you can see the reactions coming in today uh you can see hopefully that the
52:38chat message is coming in if you can’t Dave then I’m G to send it to you afterwards because you get the biggest
52:43ego boost in the world but um thank you thank you to the community as well
52:50for yeah but yeah but hopefully hopefully guys that was um in in some way useful and there’s something you can take from that absolutely design
52:57principles generally when when talking about them as dull as hell it genuinely is so um hopefully that was you know not
53:04horrific to go through absolutely not absolutely not um spot on as as Antonio
53:10has said in in the chat let’s um are you okay to take a few questions because there oh God that took an hour I’m so
53:16sorry right it’s all good there’s 18 open questions from the community so like maybe the the only encouragement I
53:23can give to folks watching is we probably won’t get through all of them in fact definitely won’t get through all of them so if you want to go into the
53:30Q&A feature and um give a thumbs up to any questions that you like then then
53:36I’ll make sure to prioritize oh oh okay well I can do that can I no well you can
53:41you can you can go through the questions as well you’re right uh but let’s let’s take the top one um because there’s a
53:48couple of questions that come in from folks about like choosing the right app to do the right job and so you’ve been
53:55phenomenal today and you did exactly what I asked you to do which was um you you based it in canva because that’s the
54:01tool that so many of us will have access to in in our day-to-day uh job but the
54:07question here is what’s your top apps for graphic design do you use different ones depending on the nature your project IE web design prints logos Etc
54:16um it’s the question that’s gravitated to the top so I think people want to know what you use and what you recommended okay so what I use is the
54:26industry standard um the Adobe the Adobe suite um Photoshop
54:32illustrator all all of all of the things I’ve been using them since this is going to age me but I’ve been using them since
54:38the late 90s um so I am so familiar so
54:43many people are angry with Adobe n they’ve got me like I’m not going anywhere else um because I’m so so
54:49familiar with how those apps work and I I I just spent pointless hours learning them um but I I have no desire to go
54:57anywhere else um unless they murder someone on live television I’m going to I’m going to stick with them so
55:04um you know M no matter how much they’re bankrupting me um no but that I I I love
55:10Adobe software so I’m I’m still still a massive fan um that’s a very very steep
55:15learning curve if you haven’t gone anywhere near them so that’s you know you can probably ignore that for the most part um I think can is decent I’ve
55:23I’ve done quite a few posts in the past slagging it off but they’re all very tongue and cheek like it’s it’s it’s
55:29decent for what you need to do anybody that asks me to design something and they need it editable I will generally
55:35design the parts that I need to in Adobe and I will bring it into Cano to add the text that they can then edit I’ve tried
55:41um actually speaking of adobe I’ve tried Adobe Express I didn’t find it as intuitive as
55:48Cana funny enough even though I’ve grown up using Adobe um so can is my one um
55:55the main sticking point for people about uh Adobe is the monthly subscription costs right I know that there is there
56:03is another company called um Affinity AF f i n Ty y they do the same
56:11software um but they don’t I might be wrong about this it’s either a much
56:16cheaper monthly cost or it’s just a one-off fee in fact I think it’s a oneoff fee so loads of people are going
56:22over the infinity because they don’t expect this ongoing you know this
56:28ongoing cost so um that’s a good option for people who want to take it a bit more seriously but they don’t want to
56:33have to re morgage their house every month to to pay for it and Affinity is a good option um and then I think for
56:40everything else like you just got to kind of it’s It’s what works for you really because you know I I think canva
56:45has been designed to be very very intuitive so I think it it’s the reason that it’s it is one of the most used
56:51ones so it’s really just playing about and see what you think but again there are more and more options
56:56coming up for this world so it’s the whole option paralysis thing again just find one get used to it and stick with
57:03it I love that I mean like that was definitely like at the beginning there like your answer is like I’m used to this thing so I use it and like I think
57:10that’s to your point about the paralysis sometimes like you see so many options out there and you’re like oh goodness
57:16you know but if you’ve got that option you’re like I’m familiar with this roll with it I think that’s with it unless they do something
57:23terrible morally question well actually no that’s not true because they always do things morally questionable let’s say
57:28do something like you know horrific you I love it let’s go to the next
57:34question uh so we’ll we’ll take the top one here from Sarah um so Sarah’s asked
57:40we often have to produce event posters that require a lot of info uh what it is where it is how much the tickets how to
57:48book uh etc etc how would you go about trying to include all the info with a
57:53less is more approach so say is what’s in the curve ball at the end there so I
57:59don’t know if you remember the when I was talking about alignment alignment I
58:04showed you um a document that had about it had three different sections on it
58:10they were all aligned differently but each bit was aligned together so you knew it was a family of info that’s kind
58:17of the way you it’s kind of the way you treat that kind of stuff so you decide what the most important information is
58:22and you group that together so you align it you align it together and with with
58:27stuff like that it’s you know where is it when is it you know that kind of
58:33stuff how much is it right so you you bulk those things together then all the
58:39information the more detailed stuff can generally like sit at the bottom can be a lot smaller so depending on what if
58:46it’s going to be a poster you know it’s going to be like A3 size then you know you can go quite a bit smaller on the
58:52text at the bottom excuse me and and you will generally have some sort of bright
58:59vibrant graphic in there that will draw people’s attention to it from afar to get them close to inspect a bit more so
59:05you need to give that as much attention as possible so it draws people in from a distance which is generally what you’re
59:11trying to do with print work is they will initially see it from afar and they should be intrigued enough to get closer
59:17and read all the stuff so you should never be worried about all of the finer details being read from a distance
59:22because you know people will get close up for that kind of thing so I would say just prioriti group things into families
59:29right so group the first most prevalent most important information into family
59:35one family two is the second priority information family three is the third
59:40priority information and then make your most prominent stuff right at the top nice and big nice little space for your
59:46image and then along the bottom just group it into two separate things and and um and then distribute it uh as you
59:52see fit but yeah pop things into priority f I’ve never said that
59:58before I love that but I just love seeing your brain work on this as well like it’s you know it’s actually
1:00:05completely foreign to me you know and and that’s the joy of this so so thank you for sharing that it’s like you can
1:00:10take a lot from just hearing you speak through that process so um that’s work K okay cool um there’s 24 open questions
1:00:18mate so I’m I’m I’m sort of dude I’m fine I’m I’m Grand we’ll keep on going I don’t if
1:00:25people are still here is any still here oh mate there’s like hundreds of people still here so we’re we’re we’re doing
1:00:31good um so we’ got Martin uh in the Q&A who says uh what are some useful YouTube
1:00:39channels you recommend for continuing to learn design principles but I’d probably broaden that out like to just resources
1:00:46in general or places where you go to learn uh about design or have done in the past
1:00:53um hold on I won’t be able to remember these off by oh Brian Cox is just
1:00:59started talking on my YouTube hold on hey I’m all I’m all here for Brian Cox um calming Vibes um what’s his name
1:01:07actually ask me another one and I’ll pull up some stuff while you’re doing that because I I need to remind myself the names of these people but there are
1:01:13some great people on YouTube um I’ll just pull up their names yeah go for it the the next one is um from amarie then
1:01:21so I noticed when you were doing your DHL example you were using some AI
1:01:27imagery part so amarie says any tips on how to use AI to produce custom
1:01:32palatable graphics and illustrations while avoiding The Uncanny AI look um
1:01:38but I probably broaden that out and just sort of say AI imagery in general uh when exploring this as part of our
1:01:45graphic design um what’s what’s your views and when to use it okay so I had a
1:01:52I had a huge moral conflict with AI when it first came out cu obviously the way the models have been trained and it just
1:01:59trained on other people’s work and it just felt wrong and then I started and then obviously adobi started to integrate AI into their tools and there
1:02:07were things that I used to spend an inordinate amount of time doing that I can I do in seconds and I was like oh
1:02:14this is good isn’t it um so I think about all the time I’ve wasted over the last 20 odd years gr
1:02:22images of the penil or expanding images to make them look bigger than they are
1:02:27um it would take so much time and and ni I can do it with with the click of a button so and the more of those kind of
1:02:33little tools I used I was like oh I can’t I need to square this away in my
1:02:38own head because at one stage I’m I I don’t like how these are being trained
1:02:43so I’m against this the other half of me is using it now for loads of different things I can’t have both of the like is
1:02:51this just a
1:02:56and eventually like everything else um you have to sort you have to land somewhere you know there’s
1:03:03like this is quite a crude example right but I’m going to share it anyway because hopefully most people understand where
1:03:08I’m coming from most of us have our electronic devices are M the batteries
1:03:16for them are mined in incredibly unethical ways most of the clothes we wear are manufactured in incredibly
1:03:22ethical ways there comes a point where you either live in society and put up with some stuff MH and you kind of get
1:03:29on with it and then there’s stuff you really really care about that you hone in on and you do you know you do active
1:03:34things to stop that thing it just became one of those for me and that’s probably
1:03:41the I’m not trying to this is this is me doing the opposite of taking the moral High Ground I’m taking the moral low gr
1:03:47I decided that I I it came to a point where it was becoming so efficient to my workflow that I just had to be okay with
1:03:54the other stuff cuz I can’t be both and just be transparent with when I’m using it so image
1:04:01wise the slight benefit that I have is I have Photoshop skills so if I ever
1:04:08create an image on it I can get rid of the juny parts I know how to fix them and make them look decent I can take a
1:04:14proper hand from a photograph and superimpose it onto the janky hand the AI created and make it look like it’s
1:04:21supposed to be there so when I come across the janky stuff I just I just fix it um for me it’s um a lot of my stuff
1:04:29is um creating um visual identities for people so it’s creating logos and the
1:04:36brand guidelines and stuff so AI very very rarely forms a part of any of that kind of stuff so I I don’t I do not use
1:04:42it for any of that kind of stuff but if I need an image created like that DHL ad
1:04:48what I would have done before is go so people are rarely paying for a photo shoot for stuff like that so you you’ve
1:04:55got to just make the image work so I would have gone to I either would have paid for the stock imagery um I
1:05:02subscribed to sites like invado and stuff so I would get a photograph that already exists and a load of other
1:05:08images that would already exist and I would mash them together to create a composite of that image so in order to
1:05:14do that I’d still I’d always for as long far back as I can remember I’m always
1:05:19using other people’s work to create you know I I don’t design the fonts that I
1:05:25use I haven’t created the software that I use to create those things in the first place it’s all other people’s work
1:05:32that I’m just bringing together to make something new yep and I kind of started looking at AI that way you know it’s
1:05:40it’s it’s um the one thing I I don’t want people to use AI for it’s the one
1:05:45thing I’m always against it for is anything that you enjoy doing anything that actually fires up your brain don’t
1:05:53use it for so for me I I am I I Adore coming up with ideas whether it’s for
1:06:00content on LinkedIn it’s or whether it’s from the there’s there’s a guy just earlier on today wants me to create some
1:06:06t-shirt designs for his business and some stickers and some mugs and he said just go nuts so I sat and I just thought
1:06:13of a load of ideas for him and I just emailed them off earlier on this morning and I love that right Outsourcing stuff
1:06:19like that to me is the death of my mind and I have no desire to do that but if
1:06:24it’s the dull stuff the stuff that used to take me hours and I got no enjoyment from and AI can quickly speed up that
1:06:32process then I’m all in so I kind of had to decide you know I I’ve I can’t be
1:06:37anti- it in one ways and pro it you’re in you’re not like shut up D so um so
1:06:43was that so sorry I I don’t think I’ve answered this question at all have I um the the to deal with a jankiness I I
1:06:52honestly think in about a year and a year half time the jankiness won’t be an issue anymore and that’s when we’re all
1:06:58screwed because we won’t be able to tell who’s um you know what’s real and what’s not so that’s actually quite terrifying
1:07:05um at the minute you just have to prompt as good
1:07:12as you can and get better at framing things so if you create an image and a
1:07:17part of it is quite janky that’s when you can start using the rule of thirds
1:07:22that I showed you earlier on you might just want you might have a whole body image of someone the lower half looks
1:07:27crap but you can take their eyeline and put it D to one of those intersection
1:07:33inter sectioning points on the grid the rule of thirds you don’t need the other parts of their body but if the face
1:07:38looks well enough that might be all you need so it’s learning how to get better with framing things and the rule of thirds can help with that so you can cut
1:07:44away the the juny bits and use it CU you know as much as and I know a ton of
1:07:50people who are publicly against AI speak to them privately they’re using it
1:07:55yeah so um yeah it’s it’s it’s part of our Lives now we just have to figure out a way to you know live with it and have
1:08:02it not destroy us your question yeah I think it
1:08:11did uh let’s go to the next one so there are there’s probably four more that I
1:08:17can see towards the top which I think uh will ask and then uh we’ll we’ll bring it to a close after that um so um
1:08:26first oh uh so we were’re going to circle back to the resource actually first so um with the YouTube search did
1:08:32you get to the bottom of no I started randing about AI sorry that’s cool I can take another one
1:08:38so um I forgot that I supposed to be multitasking so Marie uh asks in the Q&A
1:08:47what tools who processes do you use to get a decent brief out of people now there specific questions I should be
1:08:53asking my team uh when asking asking them for what they want us to do
1:09:00um it’s different for different projects I suppose if you look at the the reason um
1:09:09I highlighted Joe’s graphic as being actually a really good example of good
1:09:15graphic design is because it doesn’t obey any of those rules I used but it
1:09:21delivers on the actual goal um it’s I I always try and find out what
1:09:27the goal is you know what what do you actually want to happen as a result of
1:09:32this thing existing and you can extrapolate loads from that is the you know how much emphasis do we actually
1:09:38need to put on these brand guidelines or how much how much does the copy on this how much copy needs to be on this maybe
1:09:44we just need a quick um quick headline and then the viewer will be directed somewhere else um yeah it’s really
1:09:52really trying to nail down what what the goal is and what action needs to be
1:09:59taken at the end of this if there is a specific action that’s needed and and
1:10:05often from that when you do get feedback you can go back to that goal and say
1:10:11I’ll tell you why I haven’t done that or I’ve done it that way because in our initial conversation you mentioned that
1:10:17you wanted this to happen you wanted you wanted this to be the goal and that’s why I’ve done it like that and quite
1:10:22often that will um alleviate any push back cuz they’ll know like I have I
1:10:28have 60 to 90 minute conversations with people before I start projects generally
1:10:33to really really hone in on you know what they’re trying to achieve what visual directions they like
1:10:40I’ll normally present people with some sort of mood board to begin with so they so I get the Buy in and what they like
1:10:47it’s really just to have a load of receipts at the end you go ah you told me that you like this and this is the thing um but it’s to get a buy in for
1:10:54them so they know at the end of our call I know what they like we’ve both looked at the same thing and they’ve told me
1:11:00they liked it I’ve then explained how I can take that similar idea and apply it to what they want so at the end of the
1:11:06call before I’ve produced anything we both agree what I’m about to go and do even
1:11:12though they can’t see it they both agree what I’m going to do and actually um coming back to the last question about
1:11:19AI um although it is generally pants at creating anything like good design um
1:11:27it’s quite useful at um building a quick concept yep y so you can throw out a
1:11:34quick concept and go look this is this is AI by the way like I always be transparent when you use it as well
1:11:41because Jesus don’t get into that so um like prompt a quick thing and go
1:11:46right listen here’s a quick mock up of the kind of thing it’s it will look very differently to this when I’ve done my
1:11:52thing on it but this is an idea of sort of color-wise where we could go with it and is this the kind of thing that
1:11:57you’re thinking of and you can kind of you know get a bit of Buy in on a visual Direction and a goal Direction you
1:12:04should always just get people’s Buy in before you start working on something so they know before you end the call
1:12:10exactly what it is you’re about to go away and do so there’s never any surprises the only time there should be surprises if people ask for surprises
1:12:17which is rare but sometimes people will say to me Dave just do your thing and and almost nine times out of 10 that
1:12:25doesn’t end up going well I rarely do it because even though people say it they don’t really mean it
1:12:32yeah it’s it’s funny so you know I I remember this and I think this is an important lesson the other way around
1:12:38for marketers who are looking to speak with graphic designers or folks when you
1:12:43are briefing them in I used to make this mistake all of the time with our in-house graphic designer that I would
1:12:50go to them and sort of say I’d like a brochure that looks like this can you go
1:12:57and do it and actually you know the lesson that she taught me over a series of interactions and we found ourselves
1:13:03in a really nice place with it was you know I’d come to her with a problem like you said in at the beginning of your
1:13:09answer there I sort of say well I think I’d like to achieve this and actually the outcome that she produced was a
1:13:15billion times better than anything I could have briefed in in terms of a solution and so like I think it it goes
1:13:21both ways you know whether or not you’re the person creating the graphic or the person briefing in that that sort of problem point I think is a really really
1:13:28strong one Dave so thank you let’s um let’s go to the next question because um
1:13:34it’s gravitator to the top um which says when designing a logo do you build to a standard size uh then make it fit spec
1:13:41or the other way around so I guess this is in terms of size of design oh um well
1:13:47logos are created in a file format known as Vector okay of course which means
1:13:53they can be infinit scalable so um so you don’t really create them to any sort
1:13:59of size what you should do when designing a logo is create a responsive
1:14:05logo so for example I might be able to show you an example actually um that
1:14:10might take too long to pull up um say for example you’ve got a company that has quite a long name and then you’ve
1:14:17got the an icon that sits alongside that right you would create a ver so that version will look will work perfectly
1:14:23for the header of a website you know because it’s nice and long and thin
1:14:28great but anywhere else it’s useless so you need to have versions that work um
1:14:34horizontally uh horizontally vertically when they’re small so creating a
1:14:39responsive logo generally means you give people an option that just has a simple Mark that can be used in like a profile
1:14:45image you have an option that would work if they have like a square um canvas to
1:14:51work a square you know shape to fit the logo into it’ll still still work it’ll still be legible whereas the long one
1:14:57would have to be tiny in the squar one you have a version that works on the long version so you have a couple of different variations that people can use
1:15:03and a couple of different color variations and the reason that I mentioned Vector is you don’t have to worry about size so vectors are made
1:15:12mathematically as opposed to in pixels so if I want a a logo to be the size of
1:15:18a pencil to fit along the side of a pencil it’ll work if I want it to fit on the top of a skyscraper it will expand to that size
1:15:25and it will never lose Clarity because it Ed math it uses maths to calculate
1:15:31the Angles and the lines and all that kind of stuff so it can just infinitely scale them and um change the you know
1:15:38the the ratios proportionally as you bring it up so um size is very rarely a factor because you don’t have to worry
1:15:45about it because the vector format and um whatever you create you create different variations of the logo so it
1:15:51will work in multiple different scenarios because there are tons of different scenarios logo needs to sit into so that’s generally generally the
1:15:58thinking bang on love that Dave it’s the type of thing that like um I’ve been in
1:16:03marketing for over 10 years now and like while um I’m aware of that kind of stuff
1:16:09and and you know have even created them in the past like my mind doesn’t immediately go there so even just having you sort of speak us through that is is
1:16:16really really fantastic so thank you very much um Dave I’m gonna I’m GNA call
1:16:22it there because uh We’ve we’ve got some Fab questions but what I’m I’m going to do is I’m going to send them through to you so you’ve got you’ve got uh them for
1:16:29your own content if you want them uh but I want to encourage folks uh to uh just
1:16:36say hello to Dave um on on LinkedIn because his content today has been fantastic please do I’m very lonely over
1:16:43there honestly your vide is is really really fantastic so connection request
1:16:49Joe have you oh that’s fantastic somebody wants to talk to me
1:16:56I love that so much um so I’m so glad and and um please also do take the time
1:17:01to check out all of our sponsors everyone because without these sessions without our sponsors we wouldn’t be able to bring you these sessions and so
1:17:08that’s it’s just a really really important part of our community uh so with all that said Dave
1:17:14you’ve been a hero thank you so much for taking us through thank you mate it’s been a pleasure I just I I just hope it’s been useful for your your fine your
1:17:20fine friends that who have showed up to listen to my horrific voice but thank
1:17:25you guys a pleasure think it really has been what a legend all right uh take care everyone we will see you in two
1:17:32weeks unless you are joining us for the marketing Meetup conference in which case we’ll see you Thursday uh take care
1:17:38everyone and uh we’ll see you very soon cheers oh