This is kind of a self-reflective post, but I'm beginning to realize more and more the differences between good and bad design. One thing that's really hard for me to do is find faults in my own work (whether it be design, drawing, or painting). Not because what I'm doing is necessarily good but because I get stuck in this "bubble" with the piece I'm currently on. To remedy it I really have to take it and put it side by side with stuff on conceptart.org to get my brain going again so I can finally go, "Ahhhhh....I'll change this and this and this".
So when I was at work today I was in a similar situation. Take for instance, this sign I'm designing. Cool colors, symmetrical, nothing too fancy, and utterly horrible. I was doing variations on this piece for a while until my boss finally changed my perspective by saying, "damn Nate...you suck so much I want to kill your babies" (well not in those words). So what's wrong with it?
First, with good design you need to get your point across in 5 seconds. That's pretty much the rules on the internet, and definitely the rules for when you're driving by something at 60 mph. You need to express what's important. Saying your message in a digestible form that sticks with your audience. With this sign, its a business about breeding poodles. So having the name of the business as all the same font, size or style is a mistake. "Cuddly", "Candy", and "Companions" aren't really that important. "Poodles" is the most important while "Chrissy's" comes in 2nd.
So a potential solution for this is to make "Chrissy's" and "Poodle" larger while downplaying the other three words. Also, the type needs to change. While script does come across as pretty, for readability purposes, its on the bottom of the barrel. That doesn't mean you need to have extreme bold on all the time, but you can achieve the same "style" by using a type that's a little thicker and more vertically balanced.
Another big problem with this sign is the color choices. While not bad together (see the palette) they don't really provide great contrast to each other as well. You don't need stark contrast for everything, but on a sign you need the important things to pop as best as possible. One problem with the sign is that the most contrasting colors are the background and border color while the main title's colors mush together. One thing that exacerbates things is the over use of outlines. It works fine with the phone number but the "breeders..." type is muddy and the title becomes confusing. Changing this, I would put the high contrast colors between the main font and 1st outline while making sure both colors pop against the background. Overall, I think the colors need more saturation and intensity.
For the poodles (the bitmaps) I'm on the fence about whether to just have silhouettes or to actually have detail. I do have photos of poddles (the client gave me this "family portrait" of about 8 demon poodles staring at you....claiming your soul) Generally though, I've never liked signs that use real photos. I suppose I could make it work but photos always seem to stand out way too much (well when surrounded by vector objects).
Oh....and just forget about the little design in the middle. It's an okay spacer but probably unnecessary. Soooo...that's that for right now. I'll post the new and improved tomorrow and do a compare and contrast between the two.
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...the customer is always right. Above is pretty much the final design for the poodle sign. I'm a bit uneasy about it but its what they wanted and hey that's great.
