10 things I learned in a year at EMU Marketing

Working at EMU Marketing has been one of the best experiences at University of Oregon, and has given more portfolio material then I can keep track of. After working there for a year I’m looking back and thinking about what I’ve learned.

Pixel perfect

Every pixel counts and the less you have the more each one matters.

One of my first jobs was working on banner ads for food services to go up on the Oregon Daily Emerald website. Being just 685×60 pixels cramming all the information in required some creativity on my part, but also imparted the lesson above.

Content makes the site

The most important thing is your content, don’t neglect it. Don’t let your clients neglect it either.

My coworker Tristan is working on a case study on the EMU Ticket Office website. If you take a look, the real focus of the site is the content. It is well written and correct. The photos are vibrant and fit the website. There is no horrific use of bold and italics to mar the readability of anything.

If any of those elements were out of place the whole site would be ruined, The Ticket Office handles all of their content. Because of the minimalist design they control how good or bad the site looks.

Push it to the limit. Then pull back.

This is actually something I learned back in my theater days. Our teacher always told us to push it to far and then he would tell us to pull it back.

When I was working on the Civil War LAN posters I did the same thing by going out on a limb and taking the minimalist flag and character design and adding both smoke and black bars on the top and bottom. The smoke stayed and the black bars went. My coworkers know when to say somethings goes too far. Just goes to show you to get the opinion of others. Which leads me into my next point…

Always get a second opinion

If you don’t get a second opinion something will be wrong.

Most of the mistakes or slip ups come around when things happen to fast and no one else takes the time to look over simple information like times and dates. Getting a second opinion helps you make better designs and catch silly mistakes that you wouldn’t notice.

Recycle, Reduce, Reuse (your designs)

If a design doesn’t work out save all the parts they might come in handy later.

This should be a no brainer. Saving parts of designs helps you get ideas and save time later.

Make it flexible (Raster vs. Vector)

Vectors are easy to scale and can be easily redesigned across all the different media.

Another lesson the Civil War LAN posters taught me was that a raster image is a pain to transfer across loads of different ads. Having to wait several minutes to open up a 600mb file just to resize the component to make a 2×3 ad is a pain. Use vectors for as much as you can to speed stuff up.

When I say redesign I mean everything

Just trash the old design and start over.

I learned this doing the new Cultural Forum website. I tried using the original colors from the website for the new and the same rounded corners. And everyone hated it. Including me. So I trashed the old design totally for the new grungy headers and striped color bars.

Be a packrat (design freebies)

They are free. That means you should have them. Even if you don’t use them.

Having a collection of freebies is a great way to get inspiration quickly as well as adding subtle effects to your designs like paint splats, subtle watercolor effects, grunge textures etc.

Proofread as much as possible

No matter how many times you proofread there will always be something wrong.

I rely on my girlfriend, since she’s a grammar Nazi and has a good eye. Things will always go wrong. After 6 proofreading sessions and well over 4 people looking at it we still get basic errors on some project. Make sure to triple check dates, times and costs.

If you make a mistake, don’t sweat it fix it

Don’t worry about that important bit of information you just forgot. Think about how you are going to fix it.

I’ve done matching stickers to go over bits of info on posters that have had gone to press with the wrong information. I didn’t sweat it and tried to keep my cool and come up with the best solution.

Let it stew

Try to let your projects stew for a week or two to get ideas going.

I try to know what I will be working on a month or a few weeks in advance. This gives my brain time to work on the problem and gives me an idea of where to when I start it. Times when I have had to start a project cold have always been the hardest to get going.