Hello and welcome to design and business conversations for creatives. I'm Cheyney
and today I'm chatting with you about doing your own design. I wanted to do
this video because I'm in New Zealand and I work with a lot of small
businesses and see a lot of small businesses with small budget come to me
for a logo and then continue on to do their own graphic design. As a business
owner myself, particularly at the beginning, I really understand this and I
think that New Zealand has a very big culture of DIY, do-it-yourself. In this
video I will go through some design principles, the fundamentals, which is a
crash course in graphic design. I will then move into the area of safety, so how
you can protect yourself if you are going to be doing your own design.
I'll then go in to quality, how you can ensure that your designs are looking as premium
as possible for a DIY job. I will then discuss some of the programs that you
can use for your design and lastly I'll discuss with you why I think it is
important to work with a graphic designer and how working with a graphic
designer can actually save you money. Number one,
design fundamentals. I studied for 4 years at university and in that time I
learned a lot about conceptual thinking and when people come to me for design
they're paying for the technical skill but they're also paying for the
conceptual thinking and the creativity. And what I'll do today is share with you
a couple of little tidbits of information that can help elevate your
DIY design. The number one thing that I notice straightaway when people decide
to do it themselves with design is issues with consistency. Loads of fonts,
loads of images with different tones and feels and generally just lacking a
cohesiveness. I always recommend, if you are going to outsource any of your
design, start with the logo. From there putting your logo into your own design
is going to be a lot easier if you've had a professional work on the look and
feel for your brand and work on a tone of voice
that you want to communicate with your ideal audience. Work with a color palette.
Less is more. This also goes with fonts. Choose a
couple of fonts to work with and just stick with them. That way you can ensure
the message that you're delivering to your clients is clear, concise, consistent
and looks professional. If you're somebody that wants to use 20 different
fonts, I would suggest you work with a designer to do this properly. Another
thing that I see when people are doing their own design, the busy-ness of the
design and not honoring the white space and the breathing room for all the design
elements to breathe and sit in a space calmly and peacefully. When you're
delivering a message, you want to capture your audience quickly and as a designer
it is our job to guide the viewers eye around the page and direct people where
to look first. So this is what's known as hierarchy. You want to break down the
information and sort out what is the most important and what would you like
your viewers to see first. Hierarchy can be demonstrated in a number of ways such
as color, font choice, bold font if you want something to be seen first, scale,
big to little, and this all ties in to layout and composition as well. The rule
of thirds will be very useful when you are plotting out your design composition.
Another thing to consider is the balance of your design. Are you wanting to
communicate some tension and if so perhaps you'll consider an unbalanced
layout, or are you wanting somebody to feel balanced and soothed when they look
at your design, and if that's the case you're going to want to create a balance
within your layout that makes people feel at ease when they look at your
design. This is literally dipping your toes into the design fundamentals. The
next thing I want to talk to you about is safety. What do I mean by this? When
you pay a designer, you're paying for their knowledge and their skill and their
experience that they've developed for years and years and years. And part of
this which a lot of people don't realize is the safety in design. Are your images
and fonts that you're using free for commercial use, or are you inadvertently
ripping off another artist that could land you in some deep water. If you're
using images within your design, say you are a hairdresser and you are creating a
pamphlet, if you're using images that you have taken in the salon of your
clients, have you had your clients permission to use that photo for
marketing purposes. Or if you're taking images off the internet,
are these either "paid for" images or free for commercial use. This is something
that is very, very, very important. Just because something is on the internet, it
doesn't mean that it is free for you to use. There is a search filter in Google
where you can actually check the images and filter for 100% free use public
domain. You'll find there aren't many options available and that is because
when people put things on the Internet, they're not usually putting them on the
internet for other people to, and I know it's a harsh word to use but, steal. Ways to
get around this, if you don't have a big budget, and you're just a small business,
and you're wanting to DIY your own design and make sure that you do it
safely, you can use what's called "free for commercial use" licensed images or
fonts. Certain sites like Unsplash, Pexels, and Kaboompics and a whole lot more,
I'll link these below, they have artists that contribute to their website that
upload images that are free for commercial use, and I found this out
recently in YouTube comments, somebody asked me about it.
It doesn't necessarily mean that they're actually always free for commercial use,
there are people that rip off stock images that aren't free for commercial use and
put these on the free site. So it isn't always the safest way to do it, however
it is a lot more safe than taking it off the internet. My best advice if you're
going to be using any images is search for the license. Just because it is free
for commercial use, it doesn't mean that the artist has intended that to be sold.
So for example, downloading an image from one of these sites and then blowing it
up on a canvas and selling it, might be a huge no-no. So there is a difference
between using the images for commercial purposes and marketing, and actually selling,
reselling the images. The same goes for fonts. So to break it down, there are font
designers in the world and they create these beautiful fonts and for some
reason, I notice this all the time working in the creative industry, people
assume that because it's on the internet it's up for grabs whereas these font
designers have spent years and years and years developing these beautiful fonts
for us to use and that's their living, so you need to pay for the fonts. Just
because it's a system font on your computer it doesn't mean that it's free
for commercial use. Purchase the fonts or make sure they're
free for commercial use. The best place to find free for commercial use fonts is
DaFont.com which I'll link below, and again make sure that you're filtering it
by "100% free public domain". Then also when you download the file, it will come
with a user agreement and make sure you read the User Agreement and ensure that
the fonts are free for commercial use. I have seen it sometimes when I download
the font off DaFont and go into the User Agreement, and I've had the font
with the check mark on "100% free for commercial use" but then I've read the
license and it isn't in fact free for commercial use. Sometimes
the font designer will encourage you to donate and I've done that from time to
time, or if I've used stock images or stock fonts that are free for commercial
use, sometimes if I've used them for my own
marketing purposes, I've actually tracked down the designer and linked the designer
and just given them the credit where credit's due. The next thing I want to go
into is quality. Nine times out of ten, I can spot the difference between a
professional designers design and someone who has chosen to DIY their
design. One big giveaway comes with the quality, particularly if the design has
been printed. There are differences between print quality and screen quality.
So when you are using images, make sure that you're using massive images, make
sure that you aren't scaling them, only scale an image down. And having a
high quality image will make your design look more polished. Another thing to
consider is what you're printing on. So if you're printing your design, have
you thought about printing on a paper that's just a step up from your average
printer grade paper. That can make a huge difference in how your design is
perceived. Moving on to programs that you can use. Canva is the biggest one. So
Canva is great. I have only used it two or three times and I've put together
some templates for clients in Canva who do want to do their own designs. It's
very intuitive for the average user. If you're doing mock-ups use Placeit.net.
Kapwing to make little movies and videos and animate your graphics. If you
have access to design software such as Adobe Illustrator, Photoshop, Indesign,
there are some really great tutorials on youtube.
Same with Canva, there will be tutorials of how to get the best out of the program
and if you are deciding to do your own graphics, I highly recommend you look
into these tutorials so you know how to do it properly and save yourself time.
This is a little side note, but one thing that as a designer I hear so often is, I
have been doing things on Photoshop. What have you been doing on Photoshop? Posters
and invites, and I'm like, ohhh. Photoshop should be used for manipulating and retouching
images only. If you're using type or fonts in your designs, make sure that
you're using Illustrator or Indesign, something that is a vector-based. A quick
little rundown on the difference between an image and a vector, is an image is made
out of pixels, so little tiny squares, which means that if you create a design
and you blow it up to be on the side of the building it will look rubbish, it will
pixelate, won't be any good. But if you're using vector-based, that means that it
will scale without diminishing the quality of the design. So you can imagine
if you create a poster and scale it to the side of building, it's nice and crisp
and clean. The other thing is web safe colors. If you're going to be doing your
own design, look up web safe colors and use them. Web safe colors just ensures
that you're going to have the best color consistency across different screens. So
you might have noticed one time in a design if you've DIY'd your design, you
do say a light blue and on your iPad it looks like
certain color and on your computer it's gone neon all of a sudden, and you're
like what is happening here. Use a web safe color, that is the best way to ensure
that that won't happen. It does limit your color palette, but it does just make
things a whole lot more consistent. My last point is hire a graphic designer.
Sure, at the start you might not have the budget to, and I totally get it, and use
some of these tips to make sure that you're creating the best designs that
you can. But hiring a designer will actually save you money in the long run.
If you're running a business, you want to be doing what you're good at, you want to
be spending your time as wisely as possible. Something that might take you
two days to create on the computer, might take a professional and an experienced
graphic designer half an hour, which if you calculate what your time is
worth will save you a whole lot of money. Having a graphic designer will ensure
that your designs are consistent and high-quality. Two of the most important
things that I think, when you're looking for a graphic designer,
is make sure that you like their style because it's very difficult to bend out
of your style. I have a certain style and sometimes I'll get a client that will
challenge me on something and push me slightly out of my comfort zone and I'm
really thankful for that, it pushes me into a direction that I wouldn't usually
take it into, but I'm happy with the result and the client is also happy with
the result. Make sure that you like your designers style, if they have a certain
style it's likely that what you're asking them for will look in that
similar kind of style. And the second most important thing is make sure you're
a good fit. I cannot stress this enough, It's a relationship, you need to be happy,
the designer needs to be happy, and you need to work together to ensure that
you're getting the best design. I recently did an interview with Jo Whyte
from Simply Whyte Design and she talks about that in our interview so I will
link that up here, I can't remember which side, but I'll link the card so you can go
and watch that video. She has some very good advice. Thank you for watching. If
you like this video, give it a thumbs up or subscribe using the button below. Hit
the notifications bell and I'll see you next time. Bye.