A lot of the work a graphic designer produces is never seen. From logos and flyers to letterheads and websites, only one concept will make it through to be seen by the world.
Even when that final concept is chosen, most people don’t realise the hard work that has gone into a single image which may just be a small part of the final design. This can actually be seen as a good thing at times, for example with photo editing. If you can’t tell that the photo has been edited then the work done must have been pretty good but of course no one knows it.
Photo editing can come down to three sections and more often then not they are all used together:
Manipulating: Altering the original photo but not necessarily adding in anything new; adjusting what’s already there.
Eg. Using digital tools to carry out colour correction and special effects
Painting: Painting in new or removing certain sections of a photo.
Eg. Airbrushing a magazine cover, creating a background scene, refining details
Composition: Possibly creating a new image from the original one (layout).
Eg. Cutting sections out, adding in new elements and overlaying text.
What it involves:
A piece of graphic design can utilise all of these skills to create one document so as an example I’m going to show you what a graphic designer does when it comes to photo editing.
Brief: Seeing as this is an example I can do pretty much whatever I want but this can lead to design doom! I’ll give myself a brief to clarify the goal.
A banner for a HTML email, targeting VC’s. Must reach out and relate to them, be professional but also creative.
1. The idea - As mentioned in the previous episode, the idea is the hardest part. Luckily, after finding some stock photos I have inspiration.
2. Images - The image I have chose is one of Canary Wharf’s city scape. It’s a hi-res photo, not in proportion to the size of the banner (it won’t fit into the banner space) so I’ll have to re-size it and loose half of the original photo whilst also creating a new part.
photo editing 2
3. The image Is not the right size so I’m going to be clever and recreate it myself. With a selection of tools I’ll precisely cut out the city scape and the then the sea ( by tracing around them) to create two duplicate but separate elements.
photo editing 3
I’ll flip the sea horizontally to give it some natural consistency and then paint over the part where it joins give it natural look.
Lastly I’m going to trim off the edge of the city to make it look a little more natural (although it differs in reality).
At this point I’ll also do a little colour correction to make the image more vibrant ( more often then not, ill do this part at the end).
Now we have half an image that fits. (kind of:))
4. We’re missing a sky and the easiest way to solve that problem would be to add in a sky from another photo but finding a matching sky can be a pain because they change constantly in tone, texture and content.
I’m not going to do that. I’m going to be clever again and paint it in an alternative sky by matching the colours to the original photo to create one seamless skyline.
5. The image looks good but not finished. Now for a little creativity.
photo editing 6
6. With the use of some 3d text created in another piece of software, I’ve created a pound sign which matches the perspective of the scene.
7. With a little more creativity I’m going to give it a classy designers touch, (creating the pound sign needs a tutorial of its own).
8. After doing so I’ll add in some more detail on the lighting and shade to make it look more real and then give it an extra kick with some water splashes and a reflection to set it into the scene more effectively.
9. Looks good but what does it mean. It needs some text to make it clear. I choose a classy black serif font to counteract the creative splash of the pound sign and lay it over a white transparent block.
10. There we have it, a HTML emailshot header. Saved and optimised for web.
It sounds quicker then it actually was and the idea can take up most of your time. Each step will then provide a problem which may take multiple attempts to solve. (eg. The perspective of the pound sign) and in general its about exploration and judgement.
If this was for a client I’d probably have created a couple more concepts (taking just as long) in which only one would have been chosen and the rest would have gone to the design dump yard.
What does a graphic designer do? – Turns a good photo into an effective message.
