Design Philosophy
Purpose of Design
Design has one, and only one, purpose: to visually communicate a message. How does a designer accomplish this? By using color, typeface, spacing, shape, art, and a thousand other tools to logically group elements on a page, to emphasize key elements, to illustrate concepts and ideas, and to lend credibility and professionalism to every piece of communication, whether it be an ad, a page spread, a logo, or a web page. Any design that fails to do this, no matter how spiffy it looks, is a poor design. My goal for every project that I work on is to communicate what you have to communicate what you have to say as clearly as possible.
Tools of Design
A designer has in his tool bag many different tools. He has all the little nitty-gritty tools like spacing and color and typeface, and he has commoner tools, like photo editing programs, layout programs, and drawing programs. Using the wrong tool will create a design that may look fine, at least in some settings, but won't be reproducible in all formats. And if a design won't reproduce well, what good is it? A well-thought-out, attention-getting logo that can't be reproduced as a tiny letterhead, set in a web banner, blown up and added to a light-up sign, printed on vinyl and stuck on the back window of a car, or whatever else no one ever thought it might be used for, is useless in the end. A page laid out in Adobe PhotoShop might look okay, but it won't print well, because PhotoShop is a photo editor, not a layout program. That's why I take special care in using just the right tool for every job, to make sure that each and every design is as limitless as your imagination.