I have a bunch of new work that needs to be posted but this is kind of a long one so we’ll start here.

Since I used to work full-time with an in-house design department and know all brand and all the players, a lot of times I work like an auxiliary designer to their team when they’re in a pinch.

In the Fall there was a piece that had been waiting on feedback from the project manager and then the designer was going on vacation right when the piece needed to go to the printer to make it in time for an upcoming conference so it’s safe to say with a week left– they were in a pinch. It was one of those “it’s half done, we’re just waiting on copy edits” and then I talk to the project manager and find out it’s more like “we don’t like it at all and haven’t been able to vocalize what we don’t like so that’s why we haven’t given any feedback.”

This has happened a couple of times and surprisingly is a situation I like. I read an article not too long ago that really resonated with me by Andy Rutledge about how Creativity is Not Design (which I got to via Astheria’s Learn about Design, Not Making Things Pretty) so I see these opportunities to really solve a problem. I know, terribly corny.

Anyway here’s a small sample what the files looked like when I got them.

It was a 12 page self cover with various treatments for the tables/call-outs and one page that just has “need one page of filler type here to eliminate ‘white space’” written in big letters with a graph spilling over onto the blue side bar opposite it.

And here’s the solution I provided:

The brand surrounding this piece is pretty weighted to futura and shades of blue (except for the pie chart which remain the colors seen to continuity from earlier pieces) and a lot of times all that blue and all that futura just way too much. I added some coordinating colors and some neutrals to round it out a bit while leaving the blue for the call-outs and the cover (not pictured) and in the process dropped the page count from 12 to 8. Yay! Thrifty designer!

Now I’m not saying it will run out and win any awards but I think anyone who needs to know the information contained within will be able to easily find it and reference it later.

Hm, why don’t we give out awards for that again?