I’ve been doing graphic design for fifty years. For pay for more than forty. Usually as part of another job. Never had any formal training, just on the job, including lots of help from more experienced people. To show my age and experience, my artist sister Annie taught me how to do wax pasteup early in my career and I’ve bought many a photostat.
I’ve described my personal graphic style as BILLBOARD. Or, should I say, BILLBOARD! (WordPress isn’t allowing me to enlarge the word, darnit). I’m happy when you can read my designs while traveling at sixty miles an hour in your car.
One of my objections to the styles of a fair number of graphic designers I’ve hired, is – they tend to get wimpy and refined the more you work over the designs with them. Even when I explicitly say “I don’t want refined, I want BILLBOARD!” Maybe they teach anti-billboard at graphic design school. I’m not sure where wimpy style comes from.
The same priniciple applies to logo design – I’ve told designers to “aim for an iconic logo”, like IBM or GE or lots of others. I’ve asked them to design a logo “I can scratch with a stick in the sand, put anywhere on a printed piece or web page, write on the sky with an airplane”. I request square or round logos, not long skinny ones with pieces sticking out. I don’t want pictures or drawings, I want a graphic logo that works in one or two colors. I get blank looks, too often. and wimpy logos.
I’m not bragging, BILLBOARD! isn’t better, it’s just my style. It’s not always the right approach. It fits well with my writing and editing which tends toward spare and direct. I spend a lot of time omitting needless words and removing indirect speech from my writing, and I examine my graphic designs with an eye toward the same goal.
One of my marketing mentors, at least in a book or two, is Lew Kornfeld, who turned Radio Shack into the marketing and selling powerhouse it was for decades. He said he practiced “the hard sell”. He defined that as “Here’s what we have, here’s the price, and IT’S AVAILBLE NOW!” Can’t beat that.
Oh hell, more later . . .