How to use the four principles of graphic design to create images that engage audiences and make your organization look good As a 20+-year professional veteran of the graphic design field – most often working with nonprofits – I believe an organization’s marketing materials need no, require good design. In my experience good graphic design has…
Can you answer ‘yes’ to any of the following problem statements about your logo? My logo has too many colors and it’s difficult to see or make it look good on different backgrounds My logo has a complicated colorful gradient which is too expensive to reproduce My logo looks blurry when I try to print…
For 30 consecutive days during Nov–Dec 2017 I drew a minimal cat picture using a 9-in x 12-in sketchpad and a black sharpie. (It wasn’t always easy since I was looking at a small cell phone screen and usually had cats and a dog trying to climb all over me.) Then I posted the original photo +…
I was supposed to write a final paper for a grad school class, an elective, on Educational Leadership but took a risk and designed and wrote a graphic poster instead. The assignment was to read a scenario and respond as if I was a student in the principal preparation program. Which I am very much not – and the…
Exciting update to my grad school MFA (Master of Fine Arts) plans (see Why I decided to go back to school at age 48): I’ve enrolled in the NEW #designthinking for innovation and collaboration certificate program at Herron School of Art and Design in Indianapolis. Hopefully I’ll get a bunch of credits transferred to Indiana State University. With apologies to my ISU…
Experiments with #digitaldrawing continues. This time it’s #sketchnoting while listening to a 17-min. #TEDx talk in my studio. I used a #Wacom #Cintiq and #AdobeIllustrator. It was really hard to get the control I wanted from the pen, but it was fun to be able to move elements around and colorize stuff, which I can’t do…
Today I locked myself in the studio and practiced my digital drawing skills. Starting with photos of a few of my sweet kitties, first I drew them by hand, then traced and colored the digital sketch using Adobe Illustrator and a Wacom Cintiq tablet. My ultimate goal is to get familiar enough with the tools so I can…
Why I chose to read this book “Facilitation: helping, improving, or making something easier” ¹ “Leadership emerges from a desire to help others” ² I was drawn to this book since the author is both a visual scribe and a master meeting leader, as well as a frequent keynote speaker and author of several books…
I’ve spent most of my professional life involved in visual communications, but that’s not what I studied as an undergrad (environmental education, at Hampshire College) because I didn’t even know what graphic design was then, and I was terribly intimidated by the “art students”. By my late twenties I had taken a single life-transforming class…
If you dream of making your content more engaging so people actually read it, try adding some simple infographics. This engages the reader by making it easier for them to understand your point. It’s kind of like a visual pull-quote. Here’s five ideas – and lots of examples – of how you can use simple…
