Reading Assignment - Week 1

From what we discussed in class and from what I have read, I could probably sum everything up in a few words. Not everyone can create a good design. Many have the ability to create their own business cards and websites, but how many of them are good?

In order to have a good design, you have to keep your "CRAP" together. In other words, look for consistency, repetition, alignment and proximity. By combining all of these functions, the ad should look clean and be concise. Not everyone has time to actually read an advertisement to find out what you might be selling. Therefore, it is important to have the ad focus on main topics by highlighting the main topics and keeping subjects together. For instance, you would probably not want the phone number at the top of the ad and the address at the bottom. You would want to keep both of those items together. Understanding graphic design will help convey your message quickly to your market. I found it surprising that taking one bad ad and just reorganizing it can make such a difference and turn it into a good ad. An example would be taking an ad that is aligned all in the center and aligning it to the left. This can make the ad look much more clean and sharp which in turn will appeal to more people.

After discussing bad designs in class the other night, I was looking through some magazines and it is funny how you can say to yourself, that is a bad ad or that is a good ad. We are all impacted by graphic design as advertisements are all around us. When you are driving down the highway, there are billboards. When you go on the Internet, there are advertisements all over the place. The question is, how many of the billboards, websites or print advertisements are you going to pay attention to? Probably those that are quick and easy to read or the good ads. Does that good ad get you to buy that particular product or service? If it did, then it did its job. We are all affected by advertisements as that is a way for companies to reach out to their target market. Businesses need to determine which type of advertisement is right for them. It may not make sense for some companies to advertise on the web. It may also not make sense for companies to advertise in the paper.

For me, everyday at work I am surrounded be graphic design on the web. Our company has an employee portal which allows employees to request vacation time electronically, enroll in trainings that are offered as well as inform them about new employees, their benefits and other information about the company. It is important for this system to be set up correctly so that employees may navigate through it with ease and find the information that they need to quickly. In other words, having knowledge about graphic design is helpful to setting up this website.

I personally think that designing for the web would take much more time and thought than designing on paper. When designing on the web, you have more room to show your reader what you would like to show them. When designing for print, you are limited with room, color and sometimes wording. However, it may be easier to come up with a one page ad versus an entire website. When designing for a website, you have to consider several items; such as, how big is some one's monitor, is the color going to look the same, are the graphics going to display the same, will people want to scroll down or just click to the next page and so on. As you can see, there are many things to keep in mind when designing for the web. If you have links on your website at the very top of your page that take you to another website, do you want them to leave your website to soon?

Trust me, I am not saying that designing for print is easy either. When designing for print, you have to keep in mind that it will probably need to be updated at some point. Can you image if something was misspelled and you just printed 1,000 fliers for an event? How much will it cost to either correct or update the information? On the web, it would be a minimal cost. Something else to keep in mind when creating an advertisement is that it will not necessarily look the same on paper as it does on your screen. Another bad thing about print is that it will eventually end up in the land-fill. A website will still be there even if someone does not want to return to it. It is quite easy to update a website to make it more attractive, but there is a lot to think about when creating it.