As designers you should always strive to put the visual face on a business,  don’t try to invent the face but  instead express what already exists. Find the heart and soul, the uniqueness of a brand. Capture it. Express it, and you’ve expressed the brand.

So much poor design has been made in the pursuit of  “originality,” “creativity,” “self indulgence” and “grabbing the viewer” and not articulating that communication is the key goal; and art is the tool.

“Don’t try to be original, just try to be good.”

In order for a graphic designer to stay alive in today’s cutthroat market competition, one has to be diverse and multi-talented. Many designers prefer sticking to their comfort zones. For instance, a logo designer would fear trying out developing code. Similarly, print designers probably wouldn’t fancy learning CSS, PHP or  XHTML to develop websites. Always strive to  expand your design skills and broaden your horizon. The design industry no longer lives in a tunnel of specialized expertise. Today’s “marketable” designer is one who has demonstrated expertise in multiple design and media disciplines.

1. Always draw the basic object in a mid-tone gray. Whether you then add highlights and shadows with the Dodge and Burn tools, or adjust the contrast with Curves, or add a metallic effect with Layer Styles, you only need be concerned about the luminosity: there’s too much opportunity for color images to go haywire. Add the color later, when the basic object has been built.

2. Duplicate, duplicate, duplicate. Make copies of your layers after each successful stage. It can be frustrating to get near the end and find there was a mistake early on in the process–but if you have an earlier version to return to, you can correct your errors far more easily.

3. Name each layer as you create it. If you use a filter, consider naming it with the settings you used – such as “Unsharp Mask, 2, 150, 0”–so you know how the effect was achieved.

4. Always experiment on a copy. Photoshop is ideal for tinkering and trying out new ideas–but make sure you keep a copy of the original before you start down an unknown path.

5. Be creative with filters. The Plastic Wrap filter doesn’t just wrap objects in plastic, it can be used to create liquids of all sorts. The Clouds filter may produce lousy clouds, but it’s a great random texture generator. And give the Wave filter another chance, it’s better than it looks.

6. Don’t erase anything. Use a Layer Mask instead. That way, you can always reveal pat of a layer you’d previously hidden. Once it’s erased, it’s gone.

7. Rather than applying a Curves or Color Balance adjustment to a layer, use an Adjustment Layer instead. The effect will be the same, except that we can go back and change the adjustment at any time–or copy it to a new layer.

8. Learn to use the Pen tool. It’s the single scariest Photoshop tool, and many users just give up on it. Take a day to master it and you’ll value it for the rest of your life.

9. Don’t forget the shadows. Shadows on objects, shadows beneath objects, shadows on the wall behind objects. Once the composition is finished, it’s the shadows that really bring it to life.

10. Convert layers to Smart Objects in complex compositions. Each time an object is scaled, rotated or distorted, some quality is lost. With Smart Objects, we can tinker as much as we like without losing any quality. It can be heartbreaking to see an image looking soft or ragged, simply because we changed our minds one time too many.

There has been many Photoshop disasters in 2011 by agencies. Some of them we have highlighted in a recent blog post. At the professional level there should be no excuse for bad cutouts, missing limbs, disproportionate body parts and over done digital makeup.

However, this Levis ad takes the inexcusable to a whole new level; notice the reflection. This is an error that you may expect from a teenager just learning Photoshop but certainly not at the professional level.

Come on Guys!

Have you forgotten the design process ?

• Receive requirement
• Sketch out rough
• Get approval
• Create artwork
• Review
• Create finished artwork
• Preflight and proof
• Print
• Notice reflection is upside-down*