Visual Research

When I start each project, I start with visual research. I know this sounds like a fluff term, but it’s probably one of the most defining steps in the process. If I’m working on a piece for middle aged women, I’ll might pick up Real Simple, O, Vogue, and Martha Stewart magazines. These are things that these women are paying attention to. Each of these magazines have spent millions of dollars in research to determine trends. Why not take cues from them in determining what’s popular?

Visual research doesn’t have to be all about the audience, though, it can also be about content. For example, if I’m working on a site that’s copy heavy, I might look at other sites (CNN.com and USAToday) that face the same “problem” and take notes on how they solve it. How many columns did they use? Do they show the full article? excerpts? or headlines?

I’ll take all the images that I find and post them on my wall in my office. This helps me think in a particular stylistic direction, as well as, make connections based on what I’ve seen.

A secret about creativity:

“Creativity is just connecting things. When you ask creative people how they did something, they feel a little guilty because they didn’t really do it, they just saw something. It seemed obvious to them after a while. That’s because they were able to connect experiences they’ve had and synthesize new things. And the reason they were able to do that was that they’ve had more experiences or they have thought more about their experiences than other people.

“Unfortunately, that’s too rare a commodity. A lot of people in our industry haven’t had very diverse experiences. So they don’t have enough dots to connect, and they end up with very linear solutions without a broad perspective on the problem. The broader one’s understanding of the human experience, the better design we will have."

Steve Jobs

It’s true. I take screenshots all the time. I’ll take pictures on my phone when I’m out and about. I keep everything in my Evernote account. (I wrote a post about it, too.)

Create a Moodboard

With a few of my clients, I’ve started making mood boards. It’s essentially what I’ve done for myself in the visual research phase, so it’s just a matter of sharing what I’ve found with the client. I’ve found that a lot of times the design vocabulary I use is different than theirs. So, if we have actually images we can point to, it guarantees that we’re both talking about the same thing. By getting their feedback early on, it let’s me know if I'm moving in the right direction. Do they like large, bold typography? large header images? muted color palette?

I submitted a mood board to a client a couple of months ago and they came back and said, “This looks great, but it’s not at all what we want.” I said, “Perfect! The mood board did exactly what it was supposed to. It prevented me from spending a bunch of time designing something that you didn’t want.” From there, the mood board was able to launc us into a healthy conversation about what they really did want.

Sketching Everything

I design everything in my moleskine first. I’ll write down all the elements that we already agreed need to be on a particular page. I’ll write down on all the main navigation items. I’ll sketch different layout ideas, getting everything out of my head and onto paper. I’ll draw design elements: chevrons, rules, squares. I’ll make notes about how things will work responsively or if I want a section to animate in. I’ll write out the good and the bad. –Even if I know an idea is bad ahead of time, I’ll still write it down just to get it out of my head. Then, mentally, I can move on to other, better ideas. I can process a concept so much faster on paper than I can on the computer.

All this happens before a pixel is created in Photoshop or a single line of code is written.

What are some things that you do to prepare or inform your designs?

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First, I drew it out on tracing paper, layering up. This allowed me to go back and redo a section if I didn’t like it without messing up an area I had already finalized.

Then, I scanned each section into the computer and assembled the artwork in Photoshop.

Lastly, we cheated a little bit. We used a projector to get the art on the wall and then went to town tracing.

I was really pleased with the end result.

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Update May 27, 2016

I’ve revised this piece into something that I can sell! If you’re interested in purchasing, there’s a white version and a black version available.

Recently, Lydia and I had the opportunity to do some interior design work for our new Vice President at LifeWay.

This office, not part of the executive suite, is meant to make him more accessible, providing a comfortable atmosphere for all day meetings. (I know, I just put “comfortable” and “all day meetings” in the same sentence.)

When Lydia and I were doing visual research, I stumbled upon this image.

I knew I wanted to do something similar in this space. I started trying to come up with phrases, I wanted to use biblical phrases (this is after all a Christian company), but not cliche. I also knew that some of our compapny’s most important decisions would (potentially) be made in this room. Therefore, I wanted “Be Strong and Courageous” to be the most prominent element.

Originally, I took the art to Kinkos to be printed on their 3′ wide draft paper. However, my piece had too much black and the printer started streaking. Unacceptable. I tried inverting the artwork, which definitely had an Esquire feel.

It works but, it wasn’t best.

In the end, we printed the banners in house on a thicker paper. The end result was much more along the lines of what we were looking for.

The total piece is 20′ x 7.5′

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My co-worker, Micah Lanier, actually, helped me out on the cover. (the rest is all me, though…I’m all about giving credit where credit is due.)

So, how did I land here? Well, I always start a project off with a moodboard. Whether the client actually sees it or not, I try to find elements that line up with the direction I want to go in. This allows me to (1) see what the current trends are and (2) it helps me start thinking in that mind set: page layouts, assets, etc. For this particular event, I always lean on Free People, Anthropologie, American Eagle, and Aerie.

The watercolor effect / style is one of favorites because it’s a quick and easy way to make something feel organic. So, how do I go about doing that? The key, here is to use the brush more like a stamp tool. If you’re going to “stamp” the brush more than once a given page, change the size and rotation. Your eye is incredibly good at picking out patterns and repetitiveness.

For this particular project, we bought a watercolor texture pack from Go Media. You can do a lot by adding masks, adjustment layers (mainly, Hue and Saturation) and blending modes (i.e. color and multiply).

There are tons of other places online where you can download Photoshop brushes (just be sure to check the licensing). NOTE: I didn’t use all of the following links, but included them to help get you started.

• 18 Absolutely Stylish Designs Using Photoshop Brushes and How to’s
• Sad Monkey : DeviantArt
• 500+ Watercolor Brushes for Photoshop
• 50 Must Have Photoshop Brushes

BittBox has my personal favorite:

• Watercolor, Set 1
• Watercolor, Set 2
• Grungy

For the illustration pieces, I went to the bookstore (old fashioned, I know) and bought a book of clip art. (Clip art, what?!)

I know these books look ridiculous. They’re definitely a reminder of the 90s. But, for something like this, they were actually perfect. I copied and pasted them into my Photoshop document, gave it a blend mode of multiply, and dialed back the opacity to give it a pencil feel.

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One of the pieces that I’ve done recently is for the NOW Conference being held this weekend. Because the way the budget was structured, I was able to do some things that I normally don’t get to do…like letterpress the covers!

We used a local printer, Isle of Printing, to run the covers. In fact, a couple of weeks ago, we took a field trip to Bryce’s studio. I even got to run one set of the covers.

Amidst all this stuff, he had cases and cases of type. He had a couple of different machines. Including, this Original Heidelberg from 1942!

The insides look great too. We wanted it to resemble a moleskine notebook. The format of the conference lended itself perfectly to this concept. It’s 15 speakers in 2 days. Everyone gets 18 minutes on stage. Each speaker gets a spread in the listening guide, with plenty of extra notes pages in the back to use once the conference is over. I ended up turning it horizontal, though, to do something different.

—and because I’m always interested to see other designers’ process. I’ll share these, too. I almost always sketch out ideas and layouts before doing anything on the computer. It’s a habit I picked up in college. I can get a lot of ideas out of my head and onto paper a whole lot faster this way. I can also tell if an idea is going to work, without wasting my time, pushing pixels and forcing a design on the computer.

Shameless promotion

If you’re interested in attending the conference, it will be this weekend, April 15th and 16th at Brentwood Baptist Church in Brentwood, TN.

You can register online or check out their blog if you want more information, first.

The speaker line up is quality:

Jeremy Cowart

Definitely my favorite photographer. We’ve never met, but we have a lot of mutual friends. I first heard about Jeremy when I was in college. Since then, he has gone on to take most of the Christian Band photos, gone back and forth between here and LA doing all kinds of shoots, as well as done humanitarian projects for Haiti, Africa, and started Help Portrait. Its so refreshing to see other artists using their skills for good and not evil.

Jen Hatmaker

I’m really excited about meeting Jen.. I worked through one of her Bible Studies a couple of years ago. She is one of the few authors in life that can truly make me laugh out loud.

Jon Acuff

Jon is hilarious. He is the author of Stuff Christians Like. He started his blog, nine days later, he had 4,000 hits! That type of following is almost unheard of, at least, not within first two weeks! His book makes fun of the stupid stuff believers do, but always with a point. Side hugs? Power key change in worship songs?

Pete Wilson

Pete is a pastor of a church, here in Nashville. I’m currently in the middle of his book, Plan B. It’s all about what you do when life doesn’t go the way that you planned. I think every college graduate should read this book. There are plenty of things they don’t tell you when you graduate. Plenty of unmet expectations.

The ironic thing about this book: three weeks after the book was released, we experienced the Flood in Nashville. He and his church had the opportunity to live out this book’s message.

Matt Mooney

Matt has a fantastic story. His wife gave birth to a son that they were told would only live 5 minutes. However, he ended up living 99 days. Matt made a video that serves as a letter to his son, telling him all the accomplishments and things that he was a proud father over. His son lived for 99 days. At his funeral, they released 99 balloons: one balloon for every day that he lived. From that, Matt started a nonprofit, 99 Balloons. You’ll need a box of tissues when you watch this:

99 Balloons from Igniter Media on Vimeo.

There are plenty more speakers, but these are just some of the ones that I havne’t met and the most excited about. I’m shooting pictures at the event, so I should have more stuff to share next week.

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I’ve struggled to blog, but as Seth Godin would say, I’ve been busy shipping.

“What you do for a living is not be creative, what you do is ship.”

One of the projects that we got proofs back on yesterday was the LifeWay Kids Conference Listening Guide. It’s a conference in Birmingham, next week, themed “Brand New Day.”

It’s funny…well, not that funny. Most of the people on my team have been struggling creatively, myself included. We’ve affectionately(?) called it “the curse.” I know every creative person experiences it. Those moments when designing comes easy and then the moments when it’s pulling teeth, beating your head against the wall, and considering a career move. The hard part? The past month has been filled with those moments. It’s not just me, it’s been our video producers and writers too.

I’m not sure that we’re all necessarily out the dark, but it has been a good learning experience. Once we all came to the place where we admitted we were struggling, we were able to sit down over a two hour lunch to discuss how we got there and how we can help each other get out.

All that’s to say, this project, Brand New Day, has been that project for me.

When I started out, I wanted to do something similar to Carsonified’s Chirp Conference. It’s a beautiful site with great attention to detail.

With Brand New Day, we were trying to communicate a new look, sunshine, breakfast, Saturday morning cartoons…a brand new day.

Definitely, not wanting to copy Chirp or rip it off, I went with a green color scheme, which naturally lent itself to a farm. In my head, I was thinking Garfield and Friends. Anyone?

This is what I came up with:

When I walked away from the cover, I knew something was still missing, but knew I’d come back to it. Well, I struggled even more with the interior pages.

Finally, I talked to Darrel, my creative director. The good part was, I wasn’t attached to this design. So, when I had the conversation with Darrel, I was willing to walk away from “Farmville.” He was fantastic and encouraged me to go to the grocery store and look at pictures of cereal boxes.

The hardest part with the shift was feeling like cereal boxes are gaudy…which they are…but embracing that. The new (and much improved) cover:

One thing I love about the kid’s team projects I’ve been able to work on is that I can interject some personality — like saying on the cover “Free schedule inside.” Well, of course you’re going to get a schedule! Or making a cut out watch with the head of the president of our company.

I also love hiding things. We have a list of exhibitors and sponsors. Boring. How can I make it interesting? I made a word search. Not only is that better visually, but it actually helps our sponsors and exhibitors. People will spend more time looking at their names trying to solve the puzzle than they would have before. (Plus, I hid “Haywood” into the puzzle. )

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Well, add the CentriKid camper devotional book to that list.

Like the set, I drew everything first in my moleskine, scanned it in, and then traced it on the computer, in Illustrator. I did this for a couple of reasons. First, I’m not as good at freehanding it on the computer. Second, (and more important) when you create things on the computer, they tend to look perfect, exact. Take a straight line, for example. I can draw the straightest line you’ve ever seen on the computer. Click and drag. Cake. Give me a pen (no ruler), I’ll draw a “straight” line. It will have waves. I couldn’t draw a truly straight line if my life depended on it. —part of the kid art direction this year celebrated those waves. It embraaced the jagged edges and crooked angles. It was easier for me to keep the integrity of those lines if I drew it by hand first.

I did a lot of visual research for this project. First off, if you’re not a graphic designer, you may giggle at the term “visual research.” I know when we throw it around at work, people snicker because it sounds like a fluff task, an excuse to play around online, but there is so much value there. When I went to a design conference at the beginning of June one of the things they talked about was your art collection, images of things (or the actual objects themseves) that inspired you, challenged you, things you admired. A big chunk of graphic design is being able to make connections with things that you’ve already seen.

So I googled pictures of chefs, trying to think of new poses I could put the characters in. See the sprinkling in the bottom left picture, look familar? Look at the drawing included above

I also spent a lot of time going through Flickr. There are several collections there where users have uploaded pictures of vintage cookbooks. — These proved invaluable.

The first thing I designed was the cover. It actually went through several variations before we finally landed on the one that went to print.

This one was never finalized. You can tell, I’m struggling with spacing with the logo and title of the book.

I made headway here, by moving the logo to the top. But, I’m still struggling with spacing with this cover.

This one is getting close. I haven’t added the circle around the logo and the CentriKid logo is at the bottom on the back cover.

Here’s the final.—Definitely the strongest option. It’s all part of the process.

Then, I began to lay out the copy. —and there was a ton of copy! That’s the thing about working for a publishing company, they their love copy.

In some cases, I could pull from the library of characters I had already created and design the page layouts with them in place. But, on other pages, I added the characters last. I printed out what I had already designed and overlaid tracing paper and drew the characters on the tracing paper to see if I could get the positioning and spacing right.

The thing that I loved about this project was I was able to interject some of my personality and hide some easter eggs.

When I was working on the copyright page, I was trying to figure out what to write. I couldn’t delete that page, we had to have it. So, I included “boring copyright information, the lawyers made us” — which is so true!

For the memory card cutouts page, I put “cut along the jagged line.” When, I was creating it, I thought “this sure is a jagged line more than a dotted line.” —So I used that.

A clean kitchen is a happy kitchen? Anyone?

The last few pages were reserved for notes. When, I was creating it, I thought, “How many kids are actually going to take notes? They will draw all over these pages.” So, I wrote “Notes or Doodles.” *Plus, I got to draw a pie in the face

If you look carefully in the bowl of alphabet soup, I hid my name.

I’ve already started working on next year’s theme, Shipwreck Island. In fact, yesterday, we finalized the logo. It should be a fun project too.

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A year ago, last spring, Darrel (Creative Director) and I sat down to brainstorm the Kid art direction. We had already decided on a cooking motif, titled “Bon Appetit.” (For you CentriKid Trivia lovers out there, for a while it was going to be “Taste and See.” “Dig In” was another option, but we finally went with “Bon Appetit”).

Darrel had found an artist named Derek Yaniger that had a very distinct style.

This style is not unique to Derek, though. Jim Flora was an artist (1914-1998) known for his jazz and classical album covers. He also did children’s books and illustrated for magazines.

You can see the same feel in the Monsters, Inc title sequence.

We decided to stay within that same flavor (no pun intended).

Can I do it?

I was one of those weird kids that always knew that I wanted to be an artist. Hey, I spent all my birthday money when I turned 10 on Disney’s Art of Animation, from Mickey Mouse to Beauty and the Beast. I would judge babysitters on their artistic ability. My favorite ones would sit and draw with me. My mom talked about how you could always entertain me at a resteraunt by giving me a pen and a piece of paper.

I believe that when God created us, he placed a part of himself in everyone. “Then God said, “Let us make man in our image, in our likeness…” (Genesis 1:26) It’s the Imago Deo. We each have a diffrent piece and it’s only when everyone gets together that we should look even more like Him. My piece? I’m a creator, a builder. One of my favorite stories in the Bible is the creation story. Creating something out of nothing. But, it doesn’t end there. The entire Bible, our lives even, are all stories of God molding us and making us. The book of Isaiah talks about the potter and the clay. Jesus was a carpenter. Priscilla and Aquala, tent makers.

Can I do it? I think that’s every creative’s secret fear. Can I do it? Will my last idea be just that, my last idea. For me, it’s that insecurity, that “thorn” that forces me to literally pray everyday for inspiration, to ask the author of the universe to inspire me, grant me the ability to create something today.

I fear the well will one day run dry, but look at Jesus’ encounter with the woman at the well in John 4. “…whoever drinks the water I gve him will never thirst. Indeed, the water I give will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life.”

So, like the boy with only five loaves and two fish, I ask God to multiply my efforts to the point where I have basketfuls left over.

The pieces that I work on that people enjoy and appreciate the most are the ones that I’ve prayed over the most. That’s not a coincidence.

So, just like any other project, I asked myself “Can I do this?” I wouldn’t categorize myself as an Illustrator. We were curious if we would need to hire a freelancer. I began to do some tests.

The blue lady was the first thing I drew. She actually made it to the Camper Devotional book, but I flipped her in the final piece.

The chef was my next attempt. He never made it.

The third and final charaacter test I did was a food critic. This character also made it into the camper devotional book, except in blue and sans wine bottle.

COLOR PALATTE

Last fall, I designed the CentriKid website. When we had designed the logo, a year ago, last spring, we determined our main color would be orange. When, I designed the site, Darrel and I decided that each section would have a different background color. I developed the other 3 colors based on the orange. —For the non graphic designers out there, that means that I needed to find colors that would compliment the orange. No clashing here!

Since we were really trying to reinforce the new CentriKid look, we decided to use the same colors with the theme. —And actually, we’re planning on allowing these colors to make another appearance next year with Shipwreck Island.

LOGO

For the logo, I always knew I wanted the type to be in a script.

I began looking at different fonts online and hand letting different options.

I ended up pulling some of my favorite letters together and creating what eventually became Bon Appetit.

Then, it became the issue of adding the character. I started drawing different options. This was the first one.

But, we decided the man made the overall shape too tall. The work did not go wasted, though. He made an appearance inside the camper devotional book.

The next option was the one that we finally landed on. I think it’s a good case in point: never go with your first idea unless you’ve explored several other options. Nine times out of ten, your next idea will be better than the first.

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A couple of weeks ago, I got to post some of the work that I did on the CentriKid set for this summer. That’s not all I did for camp this year. I also worked on all the print pieces and animated bumpers.

One of the print pieces that I worked on was the Group leader folder. Essentially, when a church group leader takes their group to camp, they get a folder with everything they need to know: schedule, missions information, etc. The first page in the folder has a picture of the staff that work in the LifeWay office, in Nashville, year round. They spend all year planning, getting site location information, hiring the teams that will work camp, registering churches, determining logistics, etc.

I got to lead the photo shoot. Jeff Venable helped me set up lights and Lydia Campbell helped with props. Darrel Girardier, our creative director gave me an idea of what were looking for. He suggested pulling out the chef outfits and kitchen utensils that would go to camp and have them dress up. This was a great idea, except for the fact that we didn’t have enough outfits for everyone. We ended up taking two pictures and I stitched them together, after the fact, in Photoshop.

Front row: left to right Laura Fillingim, Lance Howerton, and Jeremy Echols.

Back row: left to right Eric Sampson, Andy Dukes, Mary Carlisle, and Meredith Teaseley

We kept the chairs in the back row picture so that they would know where to stand, hoping it would make my job easier when I got ready to stitch them together. —It did help. The only problem was we actually took the back row picture first. I miscounted, and so we originally had 4 chairs on the front row. Meaning, I eventually had to Photoshop out the extra chair.

The first step was to cut out the front row.

Everything looked dark. So, I created a mask, cutting everyone out, adding highlights, and making their outfits look like a true white.

The cool thing about our eyes is that we recognize white when we’re inside under fluorescent lights or outside in sunlight. The camera is different. When you take a picture outside, it has a blue tint to it, fluorescent adds yellow. You can compensate for this by changing the white balance in your camera or modifying it after the fact, like I did. Most photographers will carry around a white card. Before they start shooting, they’ll hold the white card up, zoom completely in on it with their camera, and adjust the settings, that way the camera will know what true white looks like. Interesting, huh?

The next step? I adjusted the color of the background to make it white. In fact, I even put a black and white filter on the background to desaturate it.

Then, I had to photoshop out the floor and the chairs. The hard part was corner on the left.

If you look at the picture now, it would probably work. But, the area where our eyes tell us something isn’t right, is lghting and shadows. Watch movies carefully. A lot of places where they mess up in compositing are places where the shadows don’t line up, especially if you’re outside. There’s only one sun. —or at least for the planet I live on.

I added shadows behind the front row and around Eric’s legs, especially on the left side. Remember, I had to paint in his legs?

Here’s the final picture. There are a few places where I can tell, but for the most part? not too shabby.

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One of the things I was challenged with in January was designing the set for CentriKid. This year’s theme was Bon Appetit. We went a French cafe, cooking motif.

One of the first things I did, was sit down with Neil, our event producer. He handles anything that happens on stage. Scripts, programming, set, you name it. For this particular set, Neil came up with the brilliant idea of portraying the outside of a cafe. Then, all the pieces spin around, and you’re inside the kitchen.

In our initial meeting, Neil gave me with a couple of things. First, some images that he had found online with elements that he enjoyed: cafe windows with plant treatments, awnings, umbrellas.

Second, he had “built” the set in Google Sketchup. He listed the dimensions of all the pieces and what he envisioned each piece being. (The piece that you see the drummer on, is actually a revolve that spins around, pretty fun.)

I left that meeting and did some “visual research” of my own.

I also spent a lot of time looking at Ratotouille

…and No Reservations. — any excuse to pull out a chick flick, right?

Most of these images I printed out and hung above my computer in my office. –I LOVE the whole mood board thing.

Then, I set out, drawing in my moleskine. First, I tried to think big picture.

Once I knew where I was going, I drew each piece according to scale (still in my Moleskine).

As you can tell, this sketch didn’t happen. We (we being my creative director and me) decided the artwork was so flat, that forcing perspective with the door would veer away from what we had already established.

You can tell this piece went through several iterations as well. I thought about creating a reservation stand. But, obviously, that didn’t happen either.

I scanned in all my drawings and traced them in Illustrator.

With the design finished, we hired an outside painter to paint all the pieces. We have 7 CentriKid teams that travel around the country during the summer. So, that meant she had to paint this set 7 times! — What a trooper!! She projected my designs onto each of the pieces and traced them. –As you can tell below, there are a few practicals. The lamp posts and the hoods both light up.

The final piece:

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