The Beauty of Simple Graphic Design

Think of all the most memorable images that stick in your mind, chances they are all pretty simple. From the Nike 'swoosh' to Apple's, well, apple, we remember simple imagery. Logo design is difficult because it revolves around getting something through in the simplest way possible - afterall a logo needs to work in colour and black and white, as well as look good on a billboard and a business card.

Simplicity in design goes beyond logos though. On the Montreal metro system (our subway), there are ads plastered all over the place, and seeing as how I look at them each and every day I see the full gambit of great to horrible design all the time. One of the most ironic things about the metro ads though, is that the most effective ones are advertising the city's public transport system.

Recently they launched a new branding effort, and I love it so much. It's super simple, build around the four colours which correspond to the colours they use to designated our train lines, and it is really powerful. It's powerful because of it's simplicity. You don't have to fight to find the message, it's just there and always really clear.

Their old system, well, didn't really exsist. They had a logo, and as far as I know that was about it. If they did advertise it wasn't effective as I was completely oblivious to it. This new one is everywhere, but has such a great feel and attitude about it, it doesn't become obnoxious as can happen at times with over saturation.

And while the imagery is always simple, it's effective because of how clear it is. They keep the images as basic as possible, but always have the recurring 'V' used in creative ways, and they always find cleaver ways to get their message across without having the write it out for us. Below is one of my favourite examples; the new bus service going to our airport, which they also did a great job of picking a route number that people will associate with a plane. The use of negative space allows them to have one symbol, which they've branded well enough for people to associate with the STM. They don't even have to include text to say where they are going. It's awesome.

Overall they've done a great job of creating a visual identity, aided with recurring symbols, colours and what I would assume is a strict guideline to keeping the right look. By keeping the visual language simple, it helps it become recognizable very quickly. They've created a fun, lighthearted campaign that makes you feel good about using the public transport systems (many of their ads revolve around being green), as well as being a part of something, with the main slogan revolving around our public transport system being a collective movement.

It's not very often a government funded program does something like this in this province, and I really feel they need some kudos for pulling it off so well.

Photo Retouching Fun!

Back to working with photoshop at school, this time doing some photo retouching. Being self-taught in photoshop years ago, I knew most of the basic things (clone/heal/patch) and being someone who's doing his best to keep up to date I'm wishing we had CS5 so I'd have access to some content aware features, which would speed things up.

But what I wasn't aware of really blew me away, mostly with how quickly and well a really messed up picture could be cured using channels. Really some amazing stuff. Not sure how practical it is to use though, because I don't know many pictures that look as the ones we've been practicing on, but oh well.

Anyway for a quick idea of what I've been up to here are a few really quick family pictures I fixed up this morning, as well as one major retouch job I've been working on for about 6 hours. The hair is a bit flat around the parameter and I should fix up the BG, but I'm a bit fed up with it. Oh, and I changed the body because I don't have the patience to fix that up. (sorry that the others are sideways, again I'm a bit lazy).

My Favourite Graphic Design Blogs

When I changed this over to be a graphic design blog I was hoping I'd be able to use a lot of my school work to talk about since I am only working on only the rare side project. Sadly things are really slow in class now, almost to the point of frustration.

We're working on typography right now, but not exactly in the pure sense. While a lot of what we are learning is essential, the module is too short and lacks some of the minute details I would have really liked. I'm slowly becoming a typophile, and would really like to know more of the minutia in regards to fonts. The teacher we have now is awesome, simply because she is really picky about pretty much everything, and is good at explaining things in clear, concise ways, but I'm often left to my own devices because I find the work pretty simple most of the time. I should be encouraged the majority of the class often takes up to twice as long to complete the exercises we're working on, and often with more errors than myself (not to sound conceded or anything), but it can result in me being rather bored, specially since the school has a lot of sites blocked.

From this I end up reading a lot of blogs and am always looking for new ones to subscribe to. I mainly read other graphic design or typography blogs, which both make me realize how much I still have to learn.

So here is a list of blogs I follow, along with a quick little something about them. If you somehow stumbled upon this site in search for graphic design insight, these would probably much better suit your needs for the time being. These links are in the order that I have them in Google Reader, so there is no real order to them.

•Brand New - Part of UnderConsideration.com, this is one of my favourite blogs. It goes into companies rebranding efforts, comparing their old logos and brands to the new brand. It'll also examine new companies from time to time. While they don't go too deep in to overwhelm, the insight into how they see new brands is educational and they don't hold back on their criticisms, even of efforts they deem well done.

•We Made This - An interesting blog that seems to cover a range of different items, seemingly whatever the authors seem interested in. They offer links to some cool and interesting stuff, and occasionally talk about different projects. While they don't delve as deep as other blogs often do, it makes for some faster reads and it's updated often enough to keep my happy.

•Swiss Miss - I just recently subscribed to this one and I love their content. It's not a deep site, but they put up several posts a day of either great pieces of graphic design, interesting links or simply some cool, quirky stuff.

•I Love Typography - Another one of my favourites, which sadly isn't updated as much as I'd like. It really goes into the 'hows' and 'whys' of type design and is definitely a site worth scouring the archive if you are at all interested in type. When there is an update (seems to be bi-weekly these days) it always puts a smile on my face as the content is always super informative/interesting and really well written. If it weren't for the lack of constant updates, it would probably be my favourite read.

•The Font Feed - From what I can tell, it's a site made to plug FontShop, but it's done is a non-obtrusive way, and the content is just too good to pass up on. Obviously this is another font related site, but rather than delve into the hows and whys that I Love Typography touches on, it goes more into where type is being used, occasionally announces new fonts (from FontShop, of course) and has an awesome, monthly post going into movie posters and media stuff.

•David Airey's Blog - The first graphic design blog I started reading, and probably the most unique I've come across. Rather than delve into design, David Airey instead goes into the world of being a designer. He talks about how to deal with clients, how to land a job, build more experience and all the ins and outs of working within the industry. For anyone who is working in the industry, or thinking about working in the industry, I'd strongly suggest checking this blog out.

•Logo Design Love - Another blog by David Airey, where rather than going into industry details, he now goes into logo design, as the title indicates. The archives here are stocked full of great information including logos he's created for companies and the details of the design process, and new content is put out on a regular basis. If you are at all interested in graphic design, branding, or logo design, I'd say this is a must read.

I have several others I read as well, but for the most part I have simply subscribed too recently to comment on, or feel others I have already talked about are better examples of the same type of thing.