Jiro Dreams of Sushi

I love devouring documentaries on Netflix, but this one has me salivating. Jiro Dreams of Sushi is a beautiful story of a world renowned sushi chef. He is over 85 years old and still works hard everyday and considers each piece of sushi his chance to improve himself. I just imagine if I had that kind of passion in my own work.

You become the best not just by being talented or have the desire to be the best.

"Even at my age, in my work... I haven't reached perfection."

Constantly striving for better work and perfection is what helps this world be filled with good design, ideas, and for Jiro—great sushi.  The message that is continuously repeated in this documentary was the choice of self-improvement. Hard work is not easy, but that is how you get to be the best at what you are passionate about. Each day and each project that I get to work on is just practice for my work to come, and I should do my best. Now I need to find some tasty sushi to savor.

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Minimalist Movie Posters

It is no secret that I love simplicity. These posters really tickle my fancy! (whatever that means.)

Back to Basics

With all the jazz we sometimes ad to our designs, such as graphics, textures, layers, effects, and multiple type treatments it can be refreshing to get back to basics.

http://lovelypackage.com/brand/

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wKho1aDikBI

These packaging examples prove that simple and elegant type along with simple color fields can make simple look expensive and intriguing. One typeface: Helvetica, it is always a safe bet using Helvetica because it is simple clean and never fussy. Helvetica also gives you many styles and weights to choose from. I also goes to show generic does not need to look cheap.

As I mentioned in Getting the Right Kind of Attention http://designmorsel.blogspot.com/2011/06/getting-right-kind-of-attention.html

It may seem easy, but have a simple and unfussy design can be the more difficult to accomplish. I encourage anyone who is reading this to take a look at your work this week and remove the excess and leave the essentials to a design. Using simple black and white can be elegant and save your client money. Giving yourself a challenge is a great way to bounce off new ideas that would not happen in the same way if you did not give yourself any restrictions.

A recent birthday card I made from my brother. Really simple just black and white. He has that modern aesthetic so this really fit him for me. I could be a little more fun with the interior of the envelope for a surprise punch of color. This was my attempt at going back to basics could clean type. Maybe a little boring with Helvetica, but it is always a classic choice.

Getting the Right Kind of Attention

Sometimes working on ad can be like teenage girl applying makeup. Clients can be prone to fall into the more is more category. "That type needs to bigger, bolder, more brighter, wider, and more content, and don't forget the!!!!!!!" You want your clients to be able to trust what you are doing as a designer, but sometimes they don't believe you can sell their sale with clean type and striking simple copy rather than all bold large and very full ads. Honestly all this busy-ness creates distraction from the sale more than anything else.

Especially when you provide a quality product to your customers, you should be willing to look for quality design as well. One one to get clutter off the page is to drive people towards your website or social media account. You can provide full details of the sale or product in digital rather than in a printed. Of course the most important information should be visible and stand out, such as the sale name, date, and time. Percentages and amount can be useful to grab the consumer's attention. And this information should use a variety of sizes and weights to draw attention to what is most important. If everything is large it is hard for the consumer to distinguish between information.

Be careful on any graphics you use to enhance the ad. The graphics should be fitting in quality to you product and help attract the right customer. It could be photos of your product or photos of how you want your customer to feel about their 'purchase'. Or graphics that fit the style of your intended customer. But if the graphics take away from your message or make the ad too busy it is not doing you any good and it should be removed or possibly simplified. Sometimes the photo or illustration can have too many elements that draw too much attention to themselves.