Being Unique as a Graphic Designer

I was recently asked the question about being a graphic designer, "Other than serving a niche market, how do you differentiate yourself from other designers or small design shops?"

Graphic design is a saturated field. But the bigger problem lies in getting recognized and hired in a flooded field of talent.

I find that graphic design is very much like acting -- you're only as good as your last performance. However, in addition to raw talent in what you do, what will set you apart from other designers is customer service.

Graphic design unfortunately suffers from a bit of a "bottom-feeder" syndrome in that everyone believes they can be a designer, but few actually can. With that said, the dollar figure attributed to graphic design tends to be quite low.

So to distinguish yourself from the pack, you must cater to your clients uniquely from the rest. Be good to your clients, treat them with the utmost respect, and they will respect you.

With respect comes repeat business.

Flaming Hot Rod Text for Rez Rides

Ever since my fascination with Star Trek as a wee lad, I've wanted to be on TV. I was just discussing this with my lifelong friend turned Hollywood director, Michael Greenspan. When we were in elementary school, we did a lot of role-playing together and we're convinced it set things in motion for him to end up in film school and me doing my shtick in video production and editing.

While I knew my path would never lead me to appear physically on TV as an actor, I had the pleasure of witnessing a logo I designed appear as part of the title sequence for the second season of Rez Rides, a Quebec production that airs weekly on the APTN network. It was quite a thrill!

For the second season, the original logo (also designed at Red Dream Studios) was revamped to give it a classic hot rod treatment -- flaming tracer stipes painted over a hard, red glossy body. In fact, two versions of the logo were created -- the first was a pitted, mottled and rusted steel gray version, complete with spot welds, which after a digital painting, sanding, and buffing, transitions into the final version of the logo, the premise being, "bring your rusted crappy car into Mad Mohawk's autobody shop and walk away with a killer set of wheels." The transition effects were created by our partner, Rev13 Films.

The first pass of the logo showing Rez Rides in a "before" condition.

Creating the logo was actually straightforward. The basis of the logo is the word "Rez Rides" written in the font "NiseHotRod" upon which various textures of flame decals were applied and masked around the letters. The flames themselves are also font-based, letting us easily scale up our design to conform to an HD resolution, the format in which the show is produced. The rest of the look is achieved simply by using Photoshop's own built-in style effects, although to get the proper highlighting and texturing, mutiple copies of the logo layers were assembled and composited using different transfer modes to get the final result.

The second pass of the logo showing Rez Rides in an "after" condition.

Getting Noticed in a Crowded Room

Red Dream Studios recently completed the design for a full-page advertisement spread that will appear in the upcoming edition of the popular bridal magazine, "Let's Get Married," which features a plethora of ads and editorials covering all the components of a wedding. With this catalog getting bigger and bigger every year, designing an eye-catching ad that distinguishes you instantly from the rest of the competition is the greatest challenge.

Our loyal client, Arrt, the company name for the make-up duo comprised of Anna Montesi and Rina Patel, retured to Red Dream Studios to create the most compelling story of their service offering with the least amount of rhetoric possible. We chose to push a minimalistic approach with very little verbiage, focusing more on the allure of the photo, the vibrant company logo, and of course, the make-up.

The end result, a fresh advertorial that distinguishes itself from among its competitors who typically rely on straight-forward boxiness and designs that are anything but en vouge.

Branding Ink Blot Design

I've blogged before about customer loyalty and how one of the most important factors in a prosperous business is to maintain excellent service and safeguarding your integrity among existing clients. No truer is the case with one of our clients, Arrt.ca, a pair of extraordinary make-up artists who typically apply blush to blushing brides and bridesmaids.

One of the founders of Arrt.ca, Anna Montesi, decided to launch another venture, pursuing a longtime passion of hers -- creating and design custom event and party invitations. Anna returned to Red Dream Studios to help her develop a corporate identity for her new company, Ink Blot Design (and yes, we will be producing the website as well). With the company name alluding to all sort of inherent designs, Red Dream Studios produced the following corporate identity and developed a series of business cards in a mere couple of days. Talk about drive-thru entrepreneuring...

With this logo, we obviously played upon the ink blot connection and modified a typeface that we found on the font website DaFont, called The Great Thunder. The background splatter is a composite of several paint splatter brushes that we obtained courtesy the Photoshop resource website Brusheezy.

Red Dream Studios featured on LogoDesignLove.com

Red Dream Studios received some surprising news today as its blog banner was featured and short-listed in the award category for "Best Design and Photography Blog Logo Designs." I'm not exactly sure what the overall prize is, but it's sure flattering to be nomiated with 19 other designs from among hundreds of original entries.

Sensational Branding

Another company got its image courtesy of us at Red Dream Studios today, with Sensational Bites benefiting from sensational branding. Shant Kancachian is the proprietor of a gourmet baked goods emporium who wanted to convey freshness and pure goodness in his image rather than blatant baked goods icons such as cookies, brownies, and so forth.

With a sleek and clean interpretation (and with a great colour to boot), the cherry was chosen as the icon of choice which spoke most to Shant's inner self. We chose a handwritten font as the main script for the company name to highlight its whimsical nature, alluding to the fact that Shant's work appeals to your every "sense." The tagline was then written in a bolder, more classical script with a bright orange colour such that it pops from the rest of the logo.

The business card design is shown below:

For more information, visit Red Dream Studios.

Branding Sara Kurtz Photography

Sara Kurtz is an up-and-coming event photographer who met with me because she loved the work Red Dream Studios did on another event photography, Dominic Fuizzotto. Not only did she want a complete redressing of her portfolio website, but after some talk, it was agreed that a new corporate branding would bring a measure of prestige, professionalism, and freshness to her image.

In talking with Sara, we determined that while it was important to convey that her company provided photographic services, we didn't want to overkill the point with a photograhic icon. We therefore made the logo "her own" by incorporating a dragonfly -- an insect that for her represented grace, beauty, and wonder. I naturally agreed to this because for me, injecting personal flavours into a brand is what makes the company adhere to the imagery the most.

In order to get the classical, professional look, we used a very scripted font, and in the end, placed the dragonfly along the path of one of the letter's loops to give the illusion that the dragonfly had traced the path of the lettering. In this manner, we were able to tie together the script with the icon -- one of the hallmarks of good logo design.

Sara's new logo is shown below:



For more information, visit Red Dream Studios.

The Power of Social Networking (Part 2)

Another fantastic example of the power of social networking came yesterday when a former colleague of mine from at Matrox Graphics Inc. requested that he and I be LinkedIn. I've been using LinkedIn for many years now and am approaching 200 business contacts, most of whom are clients, or those who represent potential clients.

After seeing his list of connections, I noticed another former colleague from Matrox that I wasn't yet connected to and decided to link with her. When she was working at Matrox, she was the one of the heads of the Marketing department, and sure enough, she was still in a pretty prestigious position at a different company.

She accepted my LinkedIn request pretty quickly, but the amazing thing was that she sent me a message asking me whether or not Red Dream Studios could fulfill a bunch of graphic design requests... Her company was looking to outsource to a new company. Could the timing have been any more right?

So I was once again blown away by the power of social networking and its ability to connect to new business opportunities. It's no wonder why convential advertisers are scrambling... At least in my company's case, I haven't been resorting to it (yet...).

View my profile on LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/in/nealcaminsky

For more information, visit Red Dream Studios.

Evolution of a Website

Designing, producing, and developing websites is a large part of our business at Red Dream Studios. Customer service, reliability and dependability is an even larger part. It is our advice to all entrepreneurs that relationships are built on 2 fundamental factors: Trust & Respect.

By adopting these principles, Red Dream Studios builds relationships with our clients, thereby adhereing to these famous quotes by T. Whitaker:

"It's not what you do, it's how you do it."
"They don't care how much you know, they want to know how much you care."

A case example of this happens to be with a client that has been with us since 2003. Aquatica manufactures underwater housings for digital cameras, as well as a host of other underwater photography gear. We approached them through a word-of-mouth referral and quickly landed the task of redesigning their online presence.

The original website, shown above, is a classic example of many design accidents:

1. Inconsistent design throughout the page as well as the site
2. Poorly flowing information
3. Broken links
4. Too much information below the browser's line of sight
5. Bad navigation

So in 2003, we submitted the following redesign:

The 2003 Aquatica website made use of the latest web technologies and features: an ASP-driven dynamic catalog (for easy catalog maintenance), Flash-driven header animation of an underwater vista, a more appropriate colour palette that matched the company's offerings, and an overall cleaner, more sophisticated navigation system.

Having lasted 4 solid years, Aquatica returned to Red Dream Studios (there's that client relationship thing again) to provide a more contemporary web design for its company, in line with a slight shift in their product offerings and company's marketing direction.

In late 2007, the new Aquatica website was launched with the following design:

This design, which proves yet again that the clean, simple method usually works best, further refines the way Aquatica presented its products and services. The design focused more on the photographic results one could achieve by using Aquatica products, and sorted the Aquatica catalog into a more efficient manner. It still features a dynamic database and an interactive dealer locator map. The colour palette shifted away from the mostly blue/ocean theme to a more technical gray feel, in line with Aquatica's focus of being a more technically-oriented company, but we preserved elements of blue to still portray the company as offering products for an underwater experience.

For more information, visit Red Dream Studios.

Anatomy of a Corporate Identity

As a graphic and website design company, Red Dream Studios is often charged with creating most, if not all components of a Coporate Identity. This begins with finding the most effective way to brand one's company. Designing a corporate logo is one of the most challenging aspects of our work, as it involves creating an image for someone who you've most likely just met, or have spoken to only briefly over the telephone.

How does one convey the essence of the company or person when that person has had years of experience being who they are?

This time around, Red Dream Studios was fortunate enough to work with Michael Greenspan Films, the film company spearheaded by the award-winning Los Angeles-based director, Michael Greenspan. Michael is a one of my first friends, so having known him for about 30 years, the task of creating a new image for him wasn't necessarily as daunting as with some other clients. But the pressure was there to knock his socks off...

Michael, much like the films he creates, is bold, classical, yet simple. He knows what he wants. So the idea behind designing his identity was to convey a prestigious film company, harkening to the glory days of the silver screen. And of course, it had to be simple.



From a pure graphic design sense, the logo comprises all the elements: contrast in both colour and font, and simpicity. The contrast is used to draw attention to Michael's name and what he does. "greenspan" is brighter and bolder than either the "michael" or "films". We also chose to use an all lowercase style that is more stylistic and contemporary.

The business card is all black, which in itself makes a statement. With minial text, you can't help but read what's written there. We also opted for a double-sided card in order to minimize the amount of copy you'd see when looking at any given side. In order to immediately distinguish Michael's venture as a film company, we subtly added a stock photo of some film on the front side.

For more information, visit us at Red Dream Studios.