You could argue, as some of the commenters do, that his isn't workable. Who cares? This is far and away the best demonstration of the proper interaction between designer and client that I've seen. For me, it's more important as an ideal than as a workable plan. Once the ideal is defined, then a workable subset of these rules can be made. When no ideal exists, what do you work towards? The Design Constitution

Great work results from a near obsession with detail and nuance. Done right, a brochure, a web site, a catalog, and so on, is so carefully structured, changing a single significant element can drastically impact the whole. Rather than dictate specific changes to a design--"move this here" or "change the color to,"--let's agree the Client will request a new design or a variation of the original that addresses specific problems.

Hat tip to Evolution of Intelligent Design.

I found an interesting post by the Grammar Girl's called Correcting Other People's Grammar today. One aspect of graphic design that is always underestimated by designers and clients alike is corrections. Clients always think that their supplied copy is perfect, graphic designers know better. Graphic designers know that our design is flawless, customers disagree. Grammar Girl's suggestions for making grammar corrections could just as easily be applied to getting corrections done on graphic design projects.

In any other case, you must ask yourself if the person you wish to correct would actually like to be corrected. If the answer is "no", then you should keep it to yourself. One exception to this is if you are putting together a work product, and there is a grammatical error that would make you or your company look bad. In this case, you should just suggest the edit and your reasoning behind the correction and refrain from delivering a grammar lesson.

Whether you use this method or another, there will always be corrections. It's the nature of the business. Being prepared for them, and dealing with them in an organized an appropriate fashion will save yo time, and clients. Sure, clients don't want to be corrected, but they don't want to look bad either. It may be awkward pointing out a problem to a client, but it's better to do it yourself before the project is completed, than to have someone else inform the client of it after it's completed.

I saw something at writerus drivelus this morning that got me thinking.

Stop trying to be 'right' and just do something that works. The implication being, go back to tables; it's a simple page requiring a simple solution.

Do I do what works, or what's right? As an individual, designing my own site, I can design on a whim, there are no rules. As a point of reference, my first design for this site had jagged edges instead of straight lines, I just wanted to see how it looked. As a graphic design professional though, I have to choose option three, "all of the above". It has to work, and be the right choice. It doesn't do my reputation any good to do something that works, only to have client come back six months later to ask why it isn't "right". My philosophy has always been to leave my work in a condition that would allow another designer to sit down in my chair tomorrow and take over. Make the right design choices, and do the production work in a straight forward and predictable fashion. Maybe another designer can't match my technical skills, or understand why I did something, but there should be no confusion about the product they're looking at. So to answer the question "Do I do what works, or what's right?" I would have to say... yes! As a professional, making the right choice work is the only option.

As I've said before negative space is a very underutilized aspect of graphic design. So when I see good writing on that subject, it catches my eye. This morning I spotted an article by Mark Boulton on A List Apart. Mr. Boulton's Whitespace article covers many of the different ways that whitespace is used in modern design. From Direct Mail:

I soon discovered that the graphic design principles I'd learned in college were of little use when I designed for direct mail, where big, bold, and crowded is the order of the day. In the words of one client - words I will never forget "whitespace is empty space."

To Brand Positioning:

A lot more goes into brand positioning than just whitespace, but as a brief lands on your desk for a luxury brand, it's very likely that the client - and their target audience - expects whitespace and plenty of it to align the product with its competitors.

To everything in between. Go read the whole article, it's worth your time.

I've been thinking a lot about proofing lately. It's something that comes up often. As a graphic designer, and as a blogger, my work is always under the scrutiny of others. Whether it's design critics, superiors, or my own proofreaders, everyone seems to look over my work. Never the less, things get missed. Are you a designer, writer, or blogger? Here are a few ideas that have come up over the years to help keep my work free of errors. Proofreading

• Always have others proof your work. It's hard to proofread your own work.
• Never put all your trust into the proofreading ability of others. In the end, responsibility falls on you.
• Always proofread from a printed copy. I don't know why, but it works better.
• Set it aside and come back later. Looking too close blinds you to your own errors.

Design

• Check the design in black and white. If it doesn't work in black and white it doesn't work in color.
• Look at the design in it's final context. if it's going to be 4" x 6", proof it at that size. Large monitors can cloud your judgment about the size of your work
• Set the printed piece on a table and step back until it's unreadable. Does the design still work? It should.
• Turn it upside down. A good layout will still be interesting upside down, and a bad layout will look horrible.
• Start at the bottom, and work up. Have a coding problem you can't find? Putting the code out of context like this lets you see it with fresh eyes.

Grammar Girl's have some good suggestions for proofing your writing. You'll notice a few are familiar. Here are the key points, but you need to go read the whole thing

.

1) Read your work backwards**, starting with the last sentence and working your way in reverse order to the beginning.

Despite checking my HTML code backwards, reading the design copy backwards had never occurred to me, I'll be trying this one.

2) Read your work out loud.

I'd never heard the read out loud suggestion before, but I'll be trying this one too.

3) Always proofread a printed version of your work.

I never miss this one.

4) Give yourself some time.

Difficult to do sometimes, but always a good idea. The important thing to take away here, is to proof, and then do it again. Find out what works for you and stick to it. Careful proofing will improve the quality of your work, and you won't be the only one who notices.

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.

Copyblogger has some great quotes from Mark Twain that he thinks apply to bloggers. They could also be applied to writing for advertising and promotions. Too often I see good design spoiled by mediocre writing. The Mark Twain Guide to Better Blogging | Copyblogger

"The difference between the right word and almost right word is the difference between lightning and a lightning bug."

All of the elements of a design project need to me held to the same level of scrutiny. None can be overlooked. A poor choice of words will ruin a promotional piece just as fast as a poor design.

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.

Planning a mailing? ChurchRelevance.com has 15 Questions to ask yourself before applying the postage. Some of them are graphic design basics, like

9. Does your imagery reflect the end benefit?

13. Is your type easy to read, using only one or two fonts?

Others are difficult for the designer to control. Content is often under the control of someone else. While I'll strongly suggest corrections and edits, in the end, the customer is always right...

1. Is your offer simply stated and easy to understand? 2. Is it clear what you are asking the reader to do? 3. Is your headline incredibly compelling? 4. Is your copy short and easy to process?

Read the rest of the list before you design your next mailer.

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.