In the rush to the Web over the last dozen years, much attention has been given to the website "user experience". To a certain degree, this extensive dialogue has been reapplied to print marketing pieces as graphic designers strive to combine traditional print design with visual elements familiar to web users.

Here is an example of how the designer can help at a press check. I recently attended the press run of 25,000 4-Color books, which I had designed. After the job was set up on the press, I was called to look at the initial review sheets, and noticed that the registration (the 4 layers of overlapping process colors) was slightly off.

Graphic Design is the ordering and arrangement of informational and decorative elements (content) according to a rational concept and theme, in order to communicate the theme/information to a specific audience and move them to a desired response.

Branding isn’t just about a brand name and trademark—it is about personality development. A critical and foundational part of that personality is the language in which your company expresses itself.

Full lifecycle proposal development is the outsourcing of the entire RFP response process. This includes (as needed) win theme development, management, writing, team reviews, design, partner coordination, and production.

Choose a typeface, and you’ve made a design decision. If something “as simple as that” has a great impact on the effectiveness of your written materials—and it certainly does—what impact will “more significant” decisions have?

The graphic design process is really a process of refinement from rough concepts to finished deliverables (printed pieces, logos, web sites, electronic documents, packaging, etc.). Refinement means change, revision, alteration. Large changes should be confined to early stages of the process which gradually give way to smaller revisions as the process reaches the finished deliverable form.

If you are a company that utilizes graphic design in any way to speak to your customers, you need to know who they are so that you can produce design pieces that speak to that constituency, or the individual segments within that constituency, personally.

Trinity's Art Director discusses part of the design process in the creation of the Supplier Management Council logo for the Aerospace Industries Association.

Trinity reviews Notable, a web application enabling better collaboration/review on design drafts, including web and other graphic design.

In today’s market, being on the web is imperative for most businesses. The degree to which each business needs a web presence is determined by the expectations of the market: you need to respond to the needs of your potential/current customers and keep your competitive advantage. These are the primary considerations when exploring the necessary scope of building a new web presence.

Choose a typeface, and you’ve made a design decision. If something “as simple as that” has a great impact on the effectiveness of your written materials—and it certainly does—what impact will “more significant” decisions have?

Commercial graphic design is a coordinated process of mutual responsibilities between the client/employer and the graphic designer. This post is intended to be orienting, not comprehensive. However, if the following general principles are observed within projects, you increase the likelihood of getting a superlative design solution in the final product.

Beyond actually having the tools of the trade (or, the ability to produce excellent graphic design), being a good producer of graphic design solutions is about pursuing a true consultative approach.

I recently read an excellent book by David Travis, "The Fable of the User-Centered Designer". It's a short story about a young designer who learns the secrets of user-centered design from three clients of a designer he found in a nearby town. It is a very enjoyable read and the three little lessons learned are great reminders for any designer (or for any executive approaching a product/service design project).

Graphic Design involves the organization, prioritization, and presentation of ideas, concepts, and information at the service of a defined purpose. If the ideas are many, the concepts are complex, the information is vast, and the purpose is multi-phased—then the scope of the Graphic Design services could be enormous. The cost would be commensurate with the demand.

It can be a great benefit to have your veteran graphic designer attend the "press check"-the last phase of production for print communications.

Commercial printing has not "gone away" as some cyber publishing enthusiasts predicted. Environmentally friendly inks, high efficiency paper recycling, and state of the art presses have allowed commercial printing to remain an invaluable business communications medium. So, how do you get an important communications piece designed and printed? You enlist a print-savvy graphic designer and engage the Print-Design-Production-Cycle.

This year marks Trinity's thirteenth year in application development using ColdFusion. In that time, Trinity has written more lines of code than anyone at the company can count. Trinity has improved business processes for multiple organizations, and has served multiple different industries.

Content is still king—particularly on the web, where the content has the potential not just to just be persuasive, but also to draw an audience just by its very existence. With 14 years of web content development experience, isn’t Trinity the right company to help make you the king?

Web Development is about conveying a message not about looking good. Very often the primary goals of web projects are focused on improving look and feel.

In this workshop we focused on presenting some of the online applications/tools that Trinity has used to improve its own business operations, and how they may do the same for our clients.

As mentioned in my last post, here is the second half of my review of some web tools that Trinity uses to facilitate business success in the areas of Time Tracking, Web Conferencing, and Online Office Productivity.