so as i go along in today's video we're going to learn about some really crucial and helpful tips
on before and then after in terms of graphic design work you can test your own knowledge
and how you would approach each and every design and see how it fares to my decision making in my
graphic design workflow and we're either going to be making a trip to canva because i found a
pretty hideous logo that i thought would be fun to quickly change and redesign but
first up we have this sale poster that's fashion orientated and it's something i found on freepik
so i want you to take a look at this poster design and all of the knowledge that you've soaked up and
absorbed from my channel or other channels on the internet or just anywhere in terms of educational
graphic design content think about what is wrong with this poster when we're making changes to
a design we want to first identify the problems that need to be resolved and let's be honest with
this design here there are quite a few problems going on so the first thing that i identified as
a big problem in this design was clutter there are too many things going on which makes it too
convoluted too complicated and too busy when somebody views a design especially a sale poster
that viewer needs to access the information as quickly and as easily as possible
and there are so many different ways that this design is cluttered and too busy
for the first step here i have removed some of the background imagery as you can see and
also the dots because i thought they were just insignificant and they're just creating confusion
but there are still a lot of things that i would change about this poster and i'm going to do that
as well but i want you to think what would you do and what kind of steps would you take
to refine and improve this design i've made quite a few changes on this third step and
it's still not finished but as you can see i've put that fashion sale title actually reading in a
horizontal format instead of going vertically which i think is too convoluted you know
also i've really cleaned up the poster in general and it's really refined down to a simplistic form
i've put most of the key information in the top left and i put the main focal point of the
woman in the bottom right again this creates a kind of division and some balance
and also you can think in terms of proximity now the information that suggests the 30
discounts i've put this in a circle so it stands out and is really easily recognizable
but yeah the main problem in this design well actually there were two main problems
in my opinion one of them was things were just way too busy and too hectic and the second was
that the information was displayed in a very poor manner we have dates and we have you know
websites and textures all over the place and it's just it's just crazy and this actually was how it
was downloaded the only thing i had to change was that on freepik it didn't come with the
female model it did show a model but the ai file doesn't come with one so i added one myself but
there are still a few minor changes i would make to this design which we're gonna check out now
and so finally here we have the design on the left is the before and on the right is the after
i have chosen a kind of muted red which i do think works really well for a kind of sail design but
the kind of bluey green did work but i do think this is a good choice let me know what you think
about my design on the right compared to the one on the left and let's move on to the next
design again we have another free pick edition and this is a kind of a save the dates card
that will be giving out to people attending or potentially attending a wedding so do take a look
at this design and consider what would you do to change up this design and make it more effective
like i said before look at the design and try and identify the key problems that are
going on here and that's a good point actually when you're considering your very own design
work be critical and look at it and think what is the problem what is not effective here how is the
information not being communicated efficiently when you start doing this on your very own
graphic designs that is when you will level up in your career now the first change i made was
the font confusion on save the date it was laid out in a very strange way you know aligned to the
right edge and also using three lines and also different fonts so i've gone ahead and enclosed
that with two lines one above and one below and i've used one standard single serif font
at the very top i have the occasion which is the wedding of and then the name of the
bride and the groom and i'm added a little motif of three dots which i think works well
and then for the date itself instead of using this kind of complex layout they had before
i've gone ahead and just put the dates in simplistic terms and yes as you can see on the
right hand side on the original design the free pick ai file did come with a typo as you can see
in the bottom it says one two three yalt instead of your place and so to make it more based around
a relationship and a wedding i chose the address of 123 love street queens new york
but yeah as you can see things just look a lot more together and refined in my design on the left
and so for the third edition in today's video i was looking around the canva which is a free
resource where you can edit and make designs to a certain extent using their built-in templates
and i noticed that canva actually have a logo design section and so i checked it out
and then i stumbled across this quote unquote logo design yeah it is a free template it is
a free logo so it's not going to be outstanding but i thought it'd be quite fun just to make some
changes i know before anybody jumps down my throat i didn't go through the design process because
that would take many many weeks or at least many many days i'd have to create a brief then i would
have to make initial keyword concept ideas refine these ideas and so on you guys know the
process you know how it goes so the first thing i did was take that word steeple which refers to
a kind of a church or a building a spire at the very top and i thought how i could incorporate
that into a very brandable simple icon and so i came up with this arrow or should i say a more
of a steeple refinement and it could be used in an enclosed circle or it could just be used by
itself here but we should all realize the main issue of the previous logo was that typography
the typography is not only pretty ugly beforehand but it doesn't scream brandability and if you have
that kind of calligraphy style lettering with the fashion forward below together it
just doesn't work very well it kind of comes across as confusing because the calligraphy
style writing is really informal and it's kind of personal and then you have the really serious
uppercase fashion forward below and not to mention there is nothing really iconic about
it and so i went for a very straightforward sans serif logo type option and i do think
that the design on the right will be a lot more recognizable than that on the left
as you can see on the right now you can imagine how this would be very brandable and very iconic
say in a magazine or anywhere and in terms of logo design this is what you need to consider
you need to consider how brandable is it how iconic is it and is it going to be memorable
but also it's important to know the use and the application of your logo where is it going
to be used how is it going to be perceived in the scene and so forth and then for the fourth design
today we have a kind of a design for someone who works in a company now this one is going
to be quite subtle because there isn't a lot of things i would change to this design but i would
suggest there are two key areas that i think need to be addressed and changed or potentially changed
so looking at this design what two areas would you consider addressing and paying some attention to
so the first thing i did was to remove a pet peeve of mine and that is a drop shadow
yes drop shadows are relevant and useful in some situations but for me personally a lot
of the time they're just not needed a flat design is a lot more easy going on the eyes and it does
work better in most situations so that's the first thing i did i completely removed the drop shadow
from the design altogether secondly if you notice on the left hand design in the bottom left corner
things are a bit too spread apart and they do take up too much room so i thought they could
be refined down more so and that is exactly what i did i kind of crunched the typography
together a tiny bit and i ensured that it was still legible but also that it now gave more
room to the rest of the design i also made the qr code a bit smaller and i made sure it was still
going to be functional even though it's a tiny bit smaller now everything that you've seen in
today's video is not set in stone but this is how you should approach a design or even your own work
when correcting things or refining them you need to look at things with a critical eye
and see where's the problem why is it the problem and how you can resolve that problem i posted
something on my community tab last week saying how i've been burnt out and just a bit low recently
and i really appreciate all of the great feedback and the well wishes and just the kind response
i got from that i wasn't fishing for sympathy because let's face it all of us at some point
in life have very low points and especially in 2020 and the start of this year as well
but to see all of the love and the kindness out there it's really heartwarming and i really want
to say thank you guys for just being there but yeah if you want to see more content like today's
video just click the video on the screen and until next time guys design your future today peace you