Graphic Designers - advice please!

MisChief said:
Also, for those talking about clients etc... I am the client. We use a lot of agencies to do work for us, but sometimes it can be frustrating as we pay them a lot of money yet they don't deliver the work on time. The tiniest of amends will cost us a few hundred quid and with me being a perfectionist even things like misalignment of some text will annoy me :o
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Lol, this could be an explosive comment.

:D
 
bloodiedathame said:
Typography - a dark art. ;)
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Indeed!

It also makes me chuckle to see this:

Which actually reminds me one more thing you need to get used to, and that's being told that the best thing you think you've ever done, is "just not good enough". Being a creative professional is physically easy, but mentally tough... but ultimately highly rewarding.
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:D :D :D :D
 
I'm not a Graphic Designer and would never position myself as one, but since I left Uni (nearly 13 years ago :/) I have used Quark/InDesign/Photoshop/Imageready/Illustrator. I work in Marketing where it's a good skill to have.

I would position it to your boss as not only a learning and development point but also as a cost saving initiative... once you get original ideas and templates from your agency you can reuse them again and not have to pay for all the amends etc. Plus it would be quicker if you did the amends then having to wait for a 3rd party to do them.

Work from a desktop and have dual screens.

Ask for original files from the agency - starting from now.

Go on courses - online is all well and good, but you can't ask questions on specifics that easily to a computer.

BB x
 
BrightonBelle said:
I'm not a Graphic Designer and would never position myself as one, but since I left Uni (nearly 13 years ago :/) I have used Quark/InDesign/Photoshop/Imageready/Illustrator. I work in Marketing where it's a good skill to have.

I would position it to your boss as not only a learning and development point but also as a cost saving initiative... once you get original ideas and templates from your agency you can reuse them again and not have to pay for all the amends etc. Plus it would be quicker if you did the amends then having to wait for a 3rd party to do them.

Work from a desktop and have dual screens.

Ask for original files from the agency - starting from now.

Go on courses - online is all well and good, but you can't ask questions on specifics that easily to a computer.

BB x
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We already ask for the original files from the agency, but I only have photoshop at the moment which unfortunately means I cannot open their .ai or .indd files.

I'll be putting something together to show the amount of money we currently spend on agencies and also how much we could potentially save if I took on some of the creative work.

I won't be getting a desktop computer though. Our company only use laptops and I will need a laptop to work from home. I already have a monitor at work and use dual screen, I just need to upgrade my laptop now so that I have a 17" screen to use with my 22" monitor :)
 
In terms of the machine you need, which just to interject doesn't have to be balls of the wall to do some graphics/photoshop work.

You just need a reliable machine that can support the large raw .INDD and .AI files and at least 8 GB of ram as you will have a lot on screen at the same time. (photoshop, indesign, bridge, illustrator, web browser, sublime text 2) just to name the usual suspects.

The most important thing I've found in the few years I've worked in the design/web industry working as a freelance designer (while at uni) is screen real estate.

The more pixels on screen you can get for projects the better, when I first bought my 2nd screen it changed everything, doubt I will ever go back to a single screen for design work.
Spent just over a year working from a 15inch macbook pro and it was murder moving between programs and comparing files/design iterations on a single laptop screen.

A real mouse is also another important thing to mention, I did become a wizard with a track pad but moving to a real mouse my work speed increased 10 fold.

Also if you are working towards something that will go to print make sure
A) your monitor is color calibrated sufficiently.
B) make sure you are using an IPS display, TN panels suffer from color shift. Moving the angle of the monitor even slightly will change the image on screen. Not so much of an issue for gaming but when designing for print it is a huge issue.

The last thing you want is to send artwork off to a printers for a proof and receive the proof only to notice the colors are completely different. Not because of a fault from the printing company but because either your monitor wasn't calibrated or you have been using a TN panel and it was on your desk at a slight angle.

Or worse you are sat with 100,000+ flyers and the companies corporate red is a nice shade of magenta. On your screen it looked red but the file sent to the printers wasn't.

Aside from that, the guys above have covered everything else.
 
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Russinating said:
We met with a design agency the other week and they were talking about a candidate coming in who wasn't very good and, to quote, "didn't even work on a Mac".

That raised a few eyebrows with us, mainly at how stupid they must be to think that makes any difference at all.
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Not that a daft a comment if the studio in the design agency is 100% integrated with Mac hardware and software as a lot of them are. Nearly every design agency (over 50) I deal with wouldn't have a PC within a 100 yards of the studio.
 
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Thanks cypto, very helpful post :)

cypto said:
Also if you are working towards something that will go to print make sure
A) your monitor is color calibrated sufficiently.
B) make sure you are using an IPS display, TN panels suffer from color shift. Moving the angle of the monitor even slightly will change the image on screen. Not so much of an issue for gaming but when designing for print it is a huge issue.

The last thing you want is to send artwork off to a printers for a proof and receive the proof only to notice the colors are completely different. Not because of a fault from the printing company but because either your monitor wasn't calibrated or you have been using a TN panel and it was on your desk at a slight angle.

Or worse you are sat with 100,000+ flyers and the companies corporate red is a nice shade of magenta. On your screen it looked red but the file sent to the printers wasn't.
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Whaaaaaat?? :eek:
How do you colour calibrate a monitor?? What's IPS and TN panel?!? *goes off to google...* :o
 
If you are doing any amount of colour sensitive work you should absolutely be investing in a Spyder4 monitor calibration device or similar. Monitors can lose their calibration in a relatively short amount of time too so you should probably recalibrate once a month or something.
 
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MisChief said:
Thanks cypto, very helpful post :)

Whaaaaaat?? :eek:
How do you colour calibrate a monitor?? What's IPS and TN panel?!? *goes off to google...* :o
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You need to calibrate because what you see on screen is not what it is going to look like when you print it out. You have to match that or you'll be screwed, people's skin will look wrong for example.

IPS and TN is mostly to do with viewing angles, but also ideally you want a 10bit monitor, for more colours.

That's partly why some people like Macs, the iMac has a IPS screen, and the new iMacs are calibrated in the factory.
 
So the IT guys at work said I could get one of these and they can support it...

Model name - ** No competitor names, thank you **
Category - mobile workstation
Processor - 3rd Gen Intel Core i7-3940XM Extreme 3.0GHz, 8M cache
Graphics - NVIDIA Quadro K3000M with 2GB GDDR5 dedicated memory
Display - 17.3" FHD(1920x1080): Dell Ultra Sharp™, wide view, anti-glare, LED-backlit, w/ HD webcam
Memory - 8.0GB, DDR3-1600 SDRAM, 4 DIMM (with 4 total DIMM slots)
Primary storage - 256 GB Solid-state drive (SSD) SATA 6Gb/s capacity for two slots
Optical drive - DVD+/-RW Drive Slot Load
Weight - 8.3 lbs (3.78 kg)

The cost of it is... (excl VAT)

Standard laptop - £1820-00
Upgrade from 8GB to 16GB - £312-49
Upgrade from 256GB to 512GB SSD - £134-14

What do you guys think??

I will probably need a new monitor as well... Can anyone spec me one please? :)
 
Atlas23 said:
£312-49 for an extra 8GB of RAM?
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Yep. We outsource our IT and they tend to charge us a fortune for equipment, which is why most people in the company just buy things like external hard drives, keyboards, monitors etc from elsewhere and expense them instead of going through the IT guys :o

BrightonBelle said:
Off topic: Are you doing the half marathon walk or the full marathon walk?

I've signed up on the full on my own! Can we meet up? Let me know :)

BB x
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I'm doing the half - don't think I can manage the full one! I think you will be starting at a different time to me though - mine starts at 7.30pm. So if you're there around that time then sure we can meet up! :)
 
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