When selecting and designing wedding invitations, it’s important to choose options that make your invitations stand out as one of a kind. Paper types, font and color choices, along with printing techniques, and of course hiring a top of the line graphic designer can all lead to the perfect invitation for your special day! The first step is knowing what speciality printing techniques are available for wedding invitations and how they effect the design of the invitation itself.

• Letterpress: once considered an old-fashioned printing technique can give your invitations the look and feel of a vintage and classic design.
• Thermography: originally developed as a less expensive alternative to engraving, uses heat to gives text a raised look with a sheen.
• Engraving: the most traditional form of wedding invitation printing and also the most expensive, provides a clean and elegant look and often uses a soft high-quality paper type to create the effect of raised crisp text.
• Embossing: often used on Monograms creates a raised impression by running the paper through two metal sheets.
• Offset Printing: generally used on less formal wedding invitations presnts invitations with bright color and crisp contrast.

Have you wanted to learn about the new Adobe CS5 Creative Suite that recently launched? Here is your chance! The AIGA Detroit Chapter is offering the opportunity to gain important knowledge about all the updates in the new Creative Suite. See below for more details!

When: October 9, 2010

Where: LTU College of Architecture and Design

AIGA Detroit is teaming up with Adobe to bring you a three-hour workshop that goes over the new features in CS5. In addition to learning all the tips and tricks from Adobe’s Terry White, one lucky attendee will receive the Adobe Creative Suite 5: Design Premium!!

AIGA Members:$25.00
Non-Members:$50.00

At this three-hour seminar you will:
Discover how you can finish routine tasks, from masking images to adjusting layouts to finessing strokes, more quickly and efficiently with new features in Photoshop CS5 Extended, Illustrator CS5, and InDesign CS5.

Learn how to turn Photoshop and Illustrator artwork into high-quality interactive content without writing code with new Adobe Flash Catalyst CS5.

Find out how you can add attention-grabbing interactivity, animation, video, and sound to your digital documents and presentationsall in InDesign CS5 without learning new software.

Find out how you can maximize design time by streamlining critical processes like client reviews with CS Review and previewing web pages on leading browsers and operating systems with BrowserLab. CS Review and BrowserLab are part of Adobe CS Live online services, which work with Design Premium and are complimentary for a limited time.

Visit detroit.aiga.org for more information and updates

A company’s brand is the essence that identifies their products, services, or business. It offers the chance to create brand recognition and to market to potential customers.

Logos are a common element of a company’s branding package. Logos allow potential customers to identify and recognize businesses using a symbol or icon.

Often a company’s logo is the first item a client may see, and will offer the customer a first impression to the company’s professionalism, goals, message, and mission.

Using a pre-made logo will not only limit your customization possibilities, but it will make you blend in as a business. Branding is all about providing your company with a voice and image that stands out in a crowd.

A company’s brand should be simple, memorable, timeless, versatile, and appropriate. Is it truly possible to obtain all of these key factors through a pre-made design? Most likely, it is not. Pre-made designs are often generic and do not convey a company’s message clearly.

Custom graphic design work will give your company the professional image it needs to succeed and allow your branding to identify your specific company and what it has to offer. By using a professional design process, you allow the designer to be the foundation of your brand, and your company will end up with stronger and more effective branding.

I am currently reading a wonderful book called “Logo Design Love” by David Airey that my husband recently got me for my birthday. It is truly an amazing book and I feel that every Graphic Designer should own it.

It starts from the beginning and explains the core steps of design, and gives away tips and tricks every freelancer should know!

It has some pointers specifically for logo design and is easy to follow and read as well. I highly recommend this book to any designer, freelance or not!

Laguna Springs Spa & Resort
Arts 253, Final Project

Magazine Ad

Front Cover of Presentation Folder

Inside of Presentation Folder

Welcome Letter, Price List, Brochure, Coupon

Brochure Close Up

Website Mock Up

Inspiration is something that all designers use when coming up with new ideas and designs. Seeing someone else’s perspective, can really get YOUR mind pumping with new ideas and make your overall final product much stronger. I love seeing things in magazines or on billboards and collecting those images to provide me with inspiration as necessary.

Over the holidays, I was staying in Nashville, TN at a Sheraton hotel, and noticed some of their fine promotional products. I of course captured an image to keep around for future inspiration, but I thought I would share it on here. They literally had a designer come in and create everything from their note paper to their door hangers. And these were not your traditional items you see in a normal hotel. These items had style, class, and used the Gestalt principle of similarity to interconnect as a set. This reminds me a lot of the high quality and classy design work I hope to create in the future. Props to these designers!

The final product is always the fun part for a graphic designer. To see all your hard work pay off certainly gives a sense of accomplishment and motivation. To the left, you can see my final products for my business card and letterhead with my new logo. Of course being a designer, I am sure I will want to tweak and change my logo again in the future, but for now, I am quite pleased.

As a graphic artist, design is on my mind a lot. Whether I am driving in the car, reading a magazine, or eating at a restaurant, I am always noticing ideas that could lead to inspiration for new designs.

Well it seems that some of those inspirational ideas have paid off. I had felt that my previous logo didn’t express me as a designer quite as much as I would have liked. It was a neat idea, but it had a very industrial feel to it. I came home today, and all of a sudden, voilà – new logo ideas!  The new logo I created gives a very, well, creative feel to it. Its artsy, girly, and much more me. I am quite pleased with it and hope that represents me as an artist for years to come!