As any graphic designer would know, it's a hard job convincing a client about the benefits of good design. But good design is good business. And in all my experience I think It comes down to a lack of understanding about what is actually considered to be good design – and how to recognise it. Most people in the general population don’t have an eye for good design. They can’t look at a design and see the balance, the hierarchy, the positive and negative space. They can’t see how the interplay of these principals make for a more appealing and effective presentation...

11 May, 2018 /

Having only got back from a west coast tour of America I thought I just had to share some of the design highlights.First things first, I started my trip with a good book. I wanted something that could give me a bit of perspective on local social issues while I was driving from San Francisco to Seattle. I ended up with Naomi Klein's great book No Is Not Enough: Resisting Trump’s Shock Politics and Winning the World We Need. If you're a designer, you may recognise Klein form her amazing book No Logo and if you haven't read that then you need to...

09 April, 2018 /

This is something I try to do every day – Take a pen and paper, wacom and tablet or anything and just play for 20 minutes. You have to have side projects that take you away from the paid work otherwise you'll probably go insane. Mine is undenk.com. I really should post there more often! I post most of my stuff on instagram because its so easy.They really need to make a better mailto function for wordpress...

20 March, 2018 /

Design can be both a benefit to society and a scourge on our senses. Think the useful design of an emergency exit sign or anti-smoking campaign then compare that to a giant red hand screaming at you on TV telling you the prices are down down. As a graphic designer which would you prefer to do? Did you know that back in 1964, designers in Britain were having the same feelings. Ken Garland along with 20 other designers, photographers and students wrote the First Things First manifesto. This was a response to the the "fast-paced and often trivial productions of mainstream advertising." Their hope...

11 March, 2018 /

I just wanted to do a quick shout out to a group of people I met during Sydney's Design Festival.  The people from The Rizzeria, in Sydney, were hosting an event on how to Risograph print… and what the hell is that?Risograph printing is a fast, affordable way of producing high-quality prints much like screen printing. It uses spot colours on plates to create a wide variety of print results.I won't go into the details because you can get super nerdy about it here at Wikipedia. I just wanted to say how much fun it was and also what an amazingly...

08 March, 2018 /

Without a doubt, one of the most important parts of being a successful designer is organisation and this starts with an organised job folder and file structure. Imagine this scenario: You're finishing a job for a client, they give you the approval to send it to print and in the mess of your "filename v8.6.indd" or "filename v9 old.indd" or "filename - this is the final version.indd" you package up the wrong file and send it to the printers and boom – waste $20,000!You now owe the client a lot of money!I've often picked up work midway through a job and...

06 March, 2018 /

It's an amazing feeling to begin afresh. I try to do this daily and I think it's a technique you can apply to any situation. I don't like to see it as 'starting over' because with that comes the baggage that before this there was something to regret. I always prefer to 'begin again' which to me means that you acknowledge everything that came before with no bonds and simply move forward with more understanding. You can start small by clearing your computer desktop of folders or go one step further and erase and reinstall your whole machine! In design, you often have to...

02 March, 2018 /