The Need to Know Design

How much do you know about graphic designing? Having you ever bothered to open up Adobe Photoshop to browse through its features, see what it can do? Having you ever served the internet for a brochure design you liked? Ever really taken the time to take a serious look at what is out there and what the competition is handling?

I know, you probably hire someone else to take care of all that. You have your graphic designer that you’re paying to get all of that design stuff taken care of just like you have a printing company you hire out to get all that color printing done. But let me ask this instead: have you ever gotten something back from your designer and said, “I don’t like the way this looks at all. It isn’t what I’m looking for”?

My point here is that tastes are something that varies quite a bit. Quite often you might have an idea in your mind about exactly what you’re looking for in your advertisement, you just can’t put it on paper yourself, and so you hire out a designer to do it for you. They translate that idea as best they can, but it just isn’t quite what you were looking for.

The point here isn’t to always say that you should be designing this stuff yourself. After all, not everyone has the time to handle every single job in their company, but the first question still stands: how much do you know about graphic designing?

The more you know about a subject the better you’ll be at explaining to people what you’re looking for. If you have this one particular design you want for some nightclub flyers, you can know how to explain it to your designer in terms they’ll understand.

On the other side, it’s a lot easier to converse with your graphic designer if you know what it is that they’re trying to tell you. When they say they’re planning to make a 4 color brochure you’ll know exactly what they’re saying.

Communication is certainly important when it comes to any kind of interaction, but with something as potentially subjective as design, it becomes necessary for you to know what a person is talking about when they tell you about various design techniques, or you’re trying to tell someone exactly what you want from them.

As I mentioned at the beginning of the articles, I’m guessing you probably have easy access to various design programs. Poke around in them and see what different features they have. If you can find some of the same software that your designer is going to be using than that’s even better.

If you know what they can do you’ll be better positioned to tell them what you’re looking for, or to understand them when they tell you what they’re planning.