what is up people welcome back to Satori graphics and today I'm going to kick off
a three-part series we're going to follow along in my development and my
process for designing a poster and in today's video I'm gonna teach you
exactly why research is so important when it comes to graphic design and
pretty much any design project for that matter let's get stuck in
so why is research so vastly important you might have heard that you know it is
part of the graphic design process you might not truly understand why it is and
why it's important you really need to research your clients the industry and
also most importantly maybe is the target audience of the clients projects
and their business but let's take a deeper look at research and exactly why
and how it is effective in graphic design before designing anything and
even before creating concepts I suggest that on most design projects you do need
to spend quality and lengthy time researching follow this four-step
process in your research phase and you really cannot go wrong firstly ask
yourself what is the purpose of the design what is the end goal going to be
when you really know and have a firm understanding of the purpose you can
then build a better idea of your path and your journey along the project
secondly take a look at the other existing brands or companies in that
niche that you're designing for now this is important because you want to design
something that stands out yet a design that still follows the conventions of
that niche the third step is to look at the target market of the design and the
company this might be one of the most crucial steps in this process but think
about the consumer of the design product are they old are they mainly female are
they of high status in society when you know the target markets you can then
effectively target your design to them and finally you need to look into the
industry sector as a whole relevant to the design that you're working on so as
an example if you're designing something for a fashion label you're going to want
to look at the entire culture of the fashion industry and the people who
operate within it what is the subculture that surrounds the industry are there
specific words or phrases exclusive to that industry and are there certain
color schemes linked as well these are all questions and more that
you need to be asking yourself and then you need to look into because you should
fully understand the industry of the client that you're working for so let's
quickly go back to the idea of designing a logo for a fashion label or a brand
now if you conduct all of the research I've just spoken about you're going to
be able to fully understand what visual cues typefaces
colors and layouts are going to appeal to the target markets understanding
exactly what evokes a positive response in the target market is precisely what
equates to a functional and a successful design now by a positive response I
essentially mean the design resonates with these people and then it leads them
to invest time interest and even possibly money into the client services
or the products
so yeah one of the key processes and aspects of research and development in a
project is debrief and I've talked about this many many times on my channel
however Miller notes has a really nifty built-in tool that allows you to write
your own briefs and also organize the brief or a project or projects mass will
begin to look at right now the brief is essential to their progress and their
relevancy of a graphic design now as a designer you probably will be given a
brief by the clients however it's not always going to be satisfactory you
might want to expand on things as this will help the creative design process
milah notes has a built-in section when you can just drag and drop a brief
planner into your workstation as you can see I've got some auto-generated content
right here and then it's a pretty good start we have things such as the client
and their goals or their purpose and these are things that I was just talking
about previously in the video also there are details on the target markets and
other information to having all of these details in one location is very very
helpful because I can then just refer back to them throughout my project and
as you can see I've gone ahead and added some information on the poster projects
that I'm working on at the moment not only do I have some client background
information but the hex color codes are there too which links back to their
branding I can just take these and implement them into my design pretty
easily so this is a good start in terms of the brief and I'm probably going to
add to it as I gather more information through my research
so my design is a poster design and it's actually going to be a campaign to raise
awareness for motorcycle safety on the roads because let's face it if there's
one dangerous thing to be doing every day it is riding a motorbike on the
roads and funnily enough that is something I do I Drive a motorbike every
day and I didn't drive a car I prefer motorbikes and the aim of my poster is
to really target a specific group of people and let them know the dangers of
motorcycle riding along with a few statistics and so forth
and speaking of statistics let's take a look at some of those right now in 2016
over 5,000 people died from motorcycle crashes in the US people who ride
motorcycles are 20 times more likely than passengers in a car to die in a
crash 25 percent of people who ride motorbikes and who were involved in
crashes in 2016 were actually found to have above the legal limit of alcohol
now if one motorcyclist in fatal crashes had worn helmets in 2016 the report
stressed that an estimated eight hundred and two lives could have been saved
driving a motorbike is inherently dangerous and that's exactly why I've
chosen to make my poster as a means to help people be more careful on the roads
now as part of my research it's important to see the real dangers here
and one of them seems to be a lack of wearing a helmets which I feel is
something I'm going to add into my poster maybe something relating to the
brain or the head in some kind of way and maybe part of a concept
so another key aspects for research in any graphic design project is the use of
typography now you hear me say over and over again
typography can literally make or break your graphic designs and that is a hard
truth and so it is vital to research your typography and how you're going to
use it as well as the actual typefaces that you need to use remember typography
says a lot but just how it appears and not just the words that are written
and the last key aspect of research here is going to be Grapher design principles
and layout styles especially with a poster design the layouts and the kind
of balance that you have is going to be really impacting in the end result to
the viewer so again this is something I really want to include in the research
phase of my design
researching your layouts and possible use of graphic design principles
beforehand really helps you visualize the final design a lot easier but also
it allows you to establish the content in the most effective manner now I've
been toying with the idea of using the Z layout pattern and that dictates that
the viewers eye travels from the top left of the design over to the upper
right and then diagonally down to the lower left oppose the design layout is
pretty crucial in the way it delivers the information to the audience and so
this might be useful but another key aspect that I want to focus on is
balance within graphic design and the two main options I believe I have opened
to me for my poster are symmetrical and asymmetrical I probably prefer
asymmetrical for my design because this is going to allow a focal
point and then the textual content on the other side and this might help
ensure the poster has enough negative space and not to be too crowded but also
so the poster itself is kind of balanced and visually appealing
but yeah in the research phase I do think is important unhelpful to consider
the layout and maybe some principles that you want to use before making the
actual design or even the concepts
so that was today's first of three of videos on the poster design process
using mini notes and this was a video based around research now I hope you
better understand why research is so important for your graphic design
projects and please do not ever look it next time you work on something it's
actually quite common to have graphic design agencies and branding agencies
who spend weeks on the research phase alone sure granted they've got the time
and the manpower but that just illustrates how important research is in
the graphic design process the more you research the more you know the better
you can target your designs to the client and the audience I'm Tom Satori
and be sure to come back for the following two videos in this three-part
series and of course design your future today peace