Top speed!

Being employed by a local paper, I've come across some interesting challenges. First, speed is a priority. Deadlines are tight and the workload is huge. How can one increase speed while designing? Here are some Basics.

Styles: This applies mostly to layout design when working with text in tandem with images and graphical elements. Neswpapers, magazines, annual reports. You can use styles to format text and graphics. Instead of choosing fonts font parameters, formatting paragraphs and colors use styles to reduce your clicking time. Click here for a crash course in using indesign styles.

Actions: You can program your Adobe software to do a series of operations automatically. Say you have to apply the same level change, unsharp mask and a crop to 8 images. Instead of going through those three steps 8 times do it once and record it. Then playback the action for each image. Very cool!Click here for an in-depth look at actions.

Droplets: These are an extension of actions but even more powerful! They are great for handling large amounts of files and folders. Click here for a droplet tutorial.

Keyboard shortcuts: This is an underused way of saving time. If you spend time memorizing keyboard shortcuts you will gain a lot of speed! A quick search in google for shortcuts for the software you use will yield printable files. I keep sheets of keyboard shortcuts near my computer for quick reference. But I've come to know them by heart so that now it's second nature. I've saved many minutes this way!

Study: Whenever you do have downtime, google tutorials, crack open a book about the software you use, tweak your styles, take a few minutes to learn an extra thing. Knowledge turns into speed down the road.

Be creative in your slow times: If you finally get a breather, look over your designs and analyze ways to improve them. Study how others are practicing their craft for inspiration. Jot down a few ideas you'd like to try. Got a cool layout in mind? Sketch it quickly and post it on the edge of your screen. When it's hammer time a quick look at your notes will jog your memory and save you a minute or two.

Patience: You can only do one thing at a time. If you try to rush it too much you'll make mistakes that will cost you valuable minutes. If you have a snag in your software, don't ignore it. Do your best to make the time to resolve hardware and software issues. When left aside, these issues come back to haunt you and punish you.

Take a break: It may be counter intuitive to stop working when a deadline is hanging like Damocles' sword but in my opinion refreshing your mind and your body for a few minutes encourages productivity. Get some air, stretch your muscles, have a laugh!

I hope these tips help! Did you find ways of increasing your speed? Share them if you like in the comments below!

image: Francis Manapul via DC blog

5 dirt cheap things you can do to jolt your creativity

#1: Go for a walk with your camera and sketch pad. Sketching and taking pictures has a tendency to make you look at things from several angles. Plus it's relaxing. Go on! It'll only take a few minutes!

#2: Take a break. Even if you have a tight deadline. Nothing like turning off your computer, cellphone, blackberry for a while and just resting.

#3: Go to an art exhibit. No matter which artist, just go! Take your time and soak in the work. You'll come out of there stimulated and better able to attack your projects.

#4: Engage in an activity that you assume you would not enjoy. Think you would hate ballet? Then go to the ballet! Think scrabble is boring? Round up your scrabble freak friends and get them to teach you scrabble. You may not learn to like to like it but at least you'll have pried open your mind a little!

#5: Turn your TV off for a week. Don't think your up to the challenge? Do it with friends and make it an event! Plan substitute activities like cooking, hiking, playing cards and whatever else comes to mind. The change in routine will have a refreshing effect on the right side of your brain.

Notice that all of these suggestions involve things that take you away from the computer. Nothing is worse for your creativity than long hours in front of a screen.

These are only a few ideas and I'm sure you have plenty more. What things do you do to keep your creative amperage up?

How to stay on track while designing, and why it's important to do so.

Do you lose track of purpose during a project? Losing track of purpose while working on a project can dramatically decrease the outcome. But how do you know if you have lost track? The first step is to remember what design is all about.

So, what is design? Design is, simply put: problem solving.

Whether a company needs a new logo because they aren't being recognized, a small town business needs business cards to make their business known, a new startup needs a new website for clients who browse on their mobile phones, or anything in-between, design is creating a visual solution to a problem.

Often designers - both new and veteran - will lose sight of the problem they are trying to solve with a particular project, ultimately forgetting about the purpose of design. If you are a designer, chances are you have lost track of the purpose of one of your projects at least once before; and chances are you'll do it again.

Perhaps you got carried away with the flashy effects, or maybe you wanted to create something new and unique, but no matter how you put it: the purpose of a project got lost, the ultimate purpose of design was forgotten.

Forgetting the purpose behind a project can lead to devastating effects, including an extremely low-quality final product. To avoid this problem, remember what the purpose behind design is, and remember what problem you are trying to solve.

Remember that the best way to solve a problem is often the simplest: if a company needs a new logo because they aren't being recognized, a chaotic, effects-filled logo would not be a great solution. Instead, a simple logo that would be easy to recognize is the right way to go. Or what about a small town business that needs to make their business known with new business cards? Sure, designing a business card in a unique way would get attention, but simply printing the business logo on one side and a quirky, attention-grabbing summary of the business on the other would be a better design solution.

If you lose track or purpose during a project, don't fret. All you have to do is recall that design is about problem solving, focus on the problem you have been presented with, find the simplest and most effective way to solve that problem, and produce great results.

This has been a guest post by Tanner Christensen. Tanner is a web specialist and designer who writes helpful, inspiring, and creative internet-related articles on his blog Internet Hunger.

the chasm separating concept and execution

In his book, Understanding Comics , Scott McCloud partitions the creative process in 6 steps. It is rather awkward to explain in the written word and I would be doing his book an injustice by trying to emulate his eloquent and easy to grasp style of teaching. Suffice to say that there is a process to creativity, in the long term as in over the course of a career and in the short term like within a single project. Sometimes an artist will get a flash of creativity, but those flashes are occasional at best. Most of the time being creative is quite simply hard work. One must push what may seem to be a completed work, shake it up to see if there are perhaps new angles to look at it. More often than not there are and these new angles spark ideas thus creating more work.

Now for the other end of the spectrum. As Mr. McCloud so elegantly explains, many people who decide they want to be artists/designers are drawn to the surface of things. They see another artists work and think "wow that's so cool! I want to do that." They will copy that artist to the best of their ability and come up with something that may look like the original but lacks its' substance. This phenomenon demonstrates the great challenge that is the execution of a concept. It's one thing to think something up, it's another to execute it effectively. Technical skill and high end tools don't generate good ideas.

A creative person may come up with several great ideas yet if that person lacks the skill and experience to execute it successfully those ideas remain just that, ideas. If an idea is not communicated properly it loses value. I'll explain by example. Say you have an idea to build a house of your dreams. As you envision it, it is gorgeous! Yet you've never used a circular saw and you don't know how to draw up a proper blueprint. That house will stay in your head only. Conversely, having stellar technical skills will not guarantee a great house. Do you see what I mean by chasm? That is why there has been much talk about right-brain / left-brain. Add to the equation the fact that most of us tend to favor the right or the left and you've got yourself a pickle!

As much as possible one must strike a balance between creative and technical skills. I've found that for myself, I can take in creative knowledge in great big gargantuan gulps but I have to sip technical skills. Thus creating an imbalance between my ability to generate solid ideas and my ability to execute them successfully. It's quite frustrating.

The point of all this is? Art is difficult. It's a métier, a trade, a craft. And it takes time, dedication, courage and hard work.

the ever thinning line dividing fine art and design

I went to a very cool art opening here at the college last night. 4 emerging artists were showing the same venue. Laura Teed, Erika Beyea, Nicole Aline Legault and Nick Frenette (sorry no link available). I was already familiar with Nick's imaginative surreal and semi-creepy work thanks to my wife who is herself a professional artist. I was very excited to speak with the artists and was amply inspired by their work and démarche.

Nicole is taking a year off to simply paint. How courageous! When graduating the question asked is often "so, what are you going to do?" for Nicole the answer is simple, "paint." She is journeying deeper into her métier to seek her creative voice. She knows it's okay to be an artist and I say that's fearless.

Coincidentally, my wife just recently experienced what I would call a creative shift. I don't want to give too much away but her upcoming show is sure to make a splash. Her voice is taking shape in a gorgeous and thrilling way. All these artists around me are experiencing such stimulating creative stirrings.

I'm writing about these experiences because they have helped clarify the reason why I was drawn to design. Design is communication. These artists are doing the same thing, expressing and communicating. If artists and designers are to communicate clearly they must have a clear creative voice. And like a singer we need to know the range of our voice if we are to use it to it's fullest potential. This seems to come more naturally to fine artists. Lately I've felt unsatisfied about the creative direction I initially took. I leaped blindly. However, having been inspired by the fine artists I know, I've decided to begin understanding the range of my own creative voice. Just as Nicole, when someone asks me "what are you going to do ?" the answer will be simple, "design."