If I had the opportunity to give one, and only one suggestion to a young graphic designer... it would be "simplify". It might sound too easy, and maybe it is, but that one word is a major key to design.

I saw the angel in the marble and carved until I set him free. - Michelangelo

The most difficult aspect of the design work I do is setting my design free. I experienced a turning point in my growth as an artist while in college studying sculpture. I had built a nice, but not great, sculpture of a horse out of welding rod and wire. My professor looked at it and said, "simplify". I was shocked by this because it was already very minimalistic. After a lot of work, I managed to take the five pieces of welding rod that defined the body of the horse, and simplify it to two. Up until then, I'd been thinking along the same path that had brought me to that point. The only untouched element of the sculpture left, was the fifty feet of wire I'd used in the mane and tail. While I could see the professor's point, I couldn't see how to simplify them, they defined the horse's movement. Somewhere in that mess of wire, I had a breakthrough. I simplified that fifty feet of wire, by adding another five hundred feet! One minute it was hundreds of individual pieces of wire. The next moment it was a horse's mane, made of thousands of individual components. I had visually unified the element, bringing apparent clutter into a unified whole. In simplifying a design, some things need to be removed, others need to be unified. Sometimes simplification means removing, sometimes it means adding. I can't tell you whether to add or subtract, but it's something that we all need to consider. Will removing elements simplify the design, or will adding elements unify it? If five elements looks like too many, do you need to use two, or twenty? So here is my opportunity to give that one suggestion... simplify, simplify, simplify.

Here's five interesting methods for working with color. I personally use a method very similar to Boulton's Begin with Grey method. I start working in grayscale. Only when the layout is working do I introduce the primary color. Then I add accent colors as necessary. I'll be trying Mr. Boulton's other methods in the near future. Five Simple Steps to designing with colour : Journal : Mark Boulton

Designing with colour is perhaps the element of graphic design which is the most difficult to get right. Why? Well, because it is the most subjective. For some, a palette of dark grey with splashes of bright pink will be just great; to others it would just be all wrong. Too many designers, whether schooled in colour-theory or not, end up making subjective decisions about colour and then when it comes to explaining those decisions to a client, things begin to unravel.

Cory Miller at Church Communications Pro has a very interesting take on designing logos.

...in his mind, he isn't thinking about your typical brand logo, like the classic Apple or Nike ones... what he's thinking about is a complicated family crest. The "logos" in this scenario are actually detailed stories, almost an essay, where it takes an hour for you to "hear" the whole story. Or "they're like one of those old 3-D wall paintings where you have to stare at it for 15 minutes before you actually see what's trying to be communicated there. That's the idea they have in their mind when you say, "Logo." I've lost hair because of this. Or... else that's the reason for the gray popping up.

This problem can be very difficult with logos, but I've seen this problem designing advertising too. The client wishes to portrait something in a much more complex way than is necessary, or even possible. There's nothing wrong with the story they wish to tell, they're often fascinating actually, but they are irrelevant to the purpose of the ad. The trick is to simplify the "story" into something which can be as simple as a feeling the ad can portrait. Read the whole post at Church Communications Pro, it's well worth it. Update: Church Communications Pro had a clarification in the comments that I thought was very important. In the post of his that I referred to, he was describing his solution to a "typical scenario" rather than a specific design theory. That might seem like a subtle difference to some, but it's actually quite significant. While I did understand his point correctly, I could have been clearer in my post.

For the last few weeks, I've been designing a site called 1000tongues.org for Bethlehem Evangelical Lutheran Church in Brainerd, Minnesota. The name of the site and the design were inspired by the Book of Acts.

And there appeared to them tongues as of fire distributing themselves, and they rested on each one of them. And they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak with other tongues, as the Spirit was giving them utterance. - Acts 2:3-4

The basic site is now up and running. It's an online resource for church members to download audio and video recordings of sermons, bible studies and events. A blog has been recently added to the overall plan and should be debuting soon.