Graphic Design Art of War

Sure everybody known how to drag photos and combine with paragraphs, and called it a design. But the essence is in the balance, the harmony, and more importantly the message that acts as a guideline to your customer. One right move is better than ten unnecessary. Just like the Chinese idiom “adding feet to a snake” (畫蛇添足), whether is it still considered as a snake depends on individual. Don’t cloud people mind, if clients aren’t confident on what you’re selling, they simply walk away, or even worse spreading the false impression as a suspicious. The key is focus only on what is most important.

Design are always involved in marketing purpose, even fine art need its audience too. It would be very difficult to imagine how something can be design or paint without a topic. Excluding one, that is called Zen — the emptiness, but that’s not the topic of today.

In theories of ancient Chinese, everything is in a constantly changing state — yin and yang. Just like creativity has no fixed rules, you have to use your imagination to correlate the meanings.
- Earth for Layout — acting as the wire frame like earth that don’t change in shape.
- Fire for Message — the story that will spread like flame that burns everything.
- Wood for Theme — it evolves and growing branches overtime but always as the same tree.
- Water for Culture — water changes its shape in every second, just like the culture changes based on all local events.
- Metal for Strategy — like using a hammer, you decide when and where, and how to strike.

The plot is more important than the graphic itself, just like making of a good movie or game. Good movies relied on the script, and good game depends on the game play experience. Working out a logo is only the very step of your business, what next is more important. There could be all kind of associated graphics to enhance, and elaborate your message. Certainly if you’re having just a small shop, you wouldn’t bother things like stationary design, instead think about banner or catalog that can present your products visually. Business card are not as old-fashioned as would have imagined, many companies still use it in considerable amount.

In general, logo are listed in 2 major categories — minimal, or elaborated. You might have already read about this many times before, so I’m not going to bombard this with a giant paragraph,

Minimal — as it’s named, including all the flat design that without small details, 1 to 2 colors, crisp edges & filling. They are normally easier for web use, as well as prints friendly.
Elaborated — for example, you can correlated to emblems, mascots, 3-dimensional, or a reference of McDonald’s logo in 1953.
Certainly there are companies that use the same only logo for more than a century. A good example is General Electric, who haven’t change their logo since 1892, BMW is another if you prefer auto motors. Unless you’ve already grew into a giant corporate like them who have their image hardwired in people mind, you will still need to update on your brand from time to time.

Back to the five elements, below is a logo designed for a night pub. A bold and strong typeface is employed to provide the sense of wildness. The unusual shape & pointy letters gives out the aggressiveness, or adventure, you can think of Star Wars logo. The geometric texture inside the alphabet can impress the eyes (mind) for a second time when the person is closing in. Backlight can also pass through from the tiny gaps to enhance the glows.

1. Strategy — Backlight, eyes-capaturing from distance, presenting in open area.
2. Layout — Requirements on different settings, single-line & double-line layout.
3. Message — Welcome for entertainment.
4. Theme — Mid-night, pub, disco, wild and exotic.Touch-up with a sense of unknown & space feeling.
5. Culture — Mature, heavy music, classy, beats, adventure, bold environment.

3-dimensionals is just a matter of perspective, it is only the light that doing the works. But it can significantly enhances the visual.
The Greek philosopher, Empedocles once said:
“It is in the light that man’s wisdom is increased. Imagination has gained its name from light, since it is not possible to see without light.”

The only draw back using a 3D logo is the richness of colors could, and very likely to raise an issue in individual categories of production / manufacturing.
As new platforms coming up everyday, more companies prefer to have a flat logo limiting to 1 to 2 colors. However, if you plan to limit a design to digital use only, you can neglect this. Or a different versions of logo could be applied accordingly.
A clean design is right; a dynamic design is also right, the only thing is if it is Suitable. Think again on the “culture” part in the five elements. It might not be as easy as it’s sound breaking down the facts, unless you’ve enough experience to back you up. Organize and priority are always the keywords.

Imagine it like in cooking, a Chinese fried rice with some secret • dark • fermented •exotic recipe is very delicious. Secret ingredients are one way to keep clients on returning. But when doing a poster or a layout, you wouldn’t want all the info to chopped up equally and mixed together — an exceptional case is when you’re doing a pattern design. Rather think about it more like a grilled salmon with rice nicely arranged in a French plate. It needs the arrangement, and an appetizing combination of colors.

My work focus primarily in three categories — branding, digital graphics & vector artwork. Which including all kind of logo, stationary, advertisement and prints preparation. Please visit and follow my portfolio and facebook page from below:


Design Portfolio — onceuponzero.com
Facebook (@designedbyHayes) — bit.ly/fbHayes
