Graphic Design Tips Archives

WordCamp San Francisco 2014: Champion Purpose Driven Design in Client Work

October 27, 2014 Jennifer Bourn

WordCamp San Francisco — the event, the talks, the people, the fun — was amazing.

I was honored to be selected as a speaker for the flagship WordCamp event and to give a talk alongside some of the most talented people I know and new people I was lucky to meet.

This year, WordCamp San Francisco did something a little different. Instead of each session featuring one speaker, giving a longer talk, they peppered in lightning talk sessions throughout the event, each featuring short 5 minute talks by three different speakers. I spoke in the design and business lightning talk session with Taylor Aldridge and Tracy Levesque.

My five minutes were dedicated to designers and encouraging designers to champion their design and be the expert they are hired to be.

In a world where web design can quickly turn to web decoration, designers are problem solvers who must not only lead clients through the creative process, but protect the integrity of the solutions they deliver. With an abundance of options readily available, it is imperative that designers step up and become the voices of, and champions for purpose driven design, where each element has a specific purpose and only the elements needed to compel action are included. No more, no less.

7 Ways To Alienate Your Designer & Go From Client to Contract

May 15, 2013 Jennifer Bourn

In a perfect world, working with your designer would be a perfect partnership of creativity, communication, and collaboration — at least that is what designers strive for. But that’s not always the case…

A designer begins every project excited about what they will create and about bringing the client’s vision to life — they wouldn’t have accepted the project is they weren’t. They are excited about solving problems, helping their clients succeed, and building a new relationship or strengthening an existing one. They value their client and look forward to becoming their long term creative partner.

Designers have so much pride in their work and so much invested in their clients’ success, that they will often bend over backward, throw in extra work, and go above and beyond your contract just to make sure the final result is as good as it can possibly be. Mainly because the success of your project puts their reputation on the line.

But occasionally, a switch gets flipped, and the dynamics of the relationship change. Something happens, or several things happen, that cause a designer to shift the way they view a client and a project.

It’s the critical point where a client stops being a client and starts being a contract that needs to be fulfilled — where a designer throws their hands in the air and gives up trying to make it totally awesome, and instead just wants it to be good and done.

Want a Design Job? 9 Tips to Get Hired at a Creative Agency

May 10, 2013 Jennifer Bourn

When I graduated with my degree in graphic design from Sacramento State University, California, finding the job I wanted was tough. I worked mostly full-time through college for an amazingly talented woman with 3 children who owned an advertising agency she ran out of her home (Hint: Inspiration for starting Bourn Creative). By the time I graduated, I had completed four internships and several intern/student projects — yes, I’ve always been a driven, over-achiever.

Upon graduation I wanted to work at a big agency, I dreamed of working my way up the agency ladder to Creative Director — and I was willing to do the work to make it happen. Then reality hit. I began looking for a job in my last semester of college. I researched the creative companies in and around Sacramento, researched who was hiring, researched who their clients, were, what their mission, was, what they stood for and represented. I figured out who I wanted to work for and why … then I applied.

Enhance Your Website and Sales Pages with 3D Graphic Design for Information Products

August 16, 2012 Jennifer Bourn

In today’s fast-paced, competitive business world, more and more business owners are turning to the Internet to boost their profits. And, in an age where high-quality, useful content is deemed king, people just like you are looking to capitalize on their expertise, increase their impact, and boost their profits with passive income information products — all while being able to help more people.

Entrepreneurs of all types are joining in the information marketing community, productizing their knowledge and expertise, and creating multiple streams income. But here’s the catch — Think about the last time you were at the book store or at the grocery store. If you didn’t have a specific book or product in mind, you more than likely looked for the one that grabbed your attention first or looked the most appealing.

How to Get The BEST Business Headshots

March 1, 2012 Jennifer Bourn

WooHoo! We just had new photos done! We love them and Kelli Hansen over at Hansen’s Photography couldn’t have been more awesome. We were in and out with individual head shots and a couple of us together in just over an hour!

It didn’t take long because we came prepared! Often head shots and photos cause delays and problems during the design phase, so this is the perfect opportunity to share some tips with you. Here are 4 must-have tips for getting great business head shots that have flexibility of use for the future built in!

The MUSIC of Great Logos

November 17, 2011 Jennifer Bourn

Many entrepreneurs, in the excitement over our newfound independence, often want to express their newly liberated tastes in the design of their logo. In exuberance, they often try to include all of their favorite colors, graphic elements, and even an elaborate thousand-word story into our logos.

It’s perfectly natural. Finally emancipated from someone else’s ideas about what looks good, they want to proclaim they own. Our logos often become repositories for all of that previously pent-up creative energy.

But in reality, we have to step back and take a wider, more long-term look at the function of a logo. Because the elements that go into designing a great small business logo, including the graphics and illustrations, typefaces, and colors — should not be based on our tastes. In fact, in trying to include everything we adore into our logos — every image, every font, every color that expresses our personal fancies — entrepreneurs risk seriously cluttering up not just a logo, but the core message of a brand.

3 Things You Must Know Before Hiring a Designer to Design Your Logo

September 7, 2011 Jennifer Bourn

A logo is more than a visual representation of your business, product, program, or even service. When done right, it will also become one of your most valuable assets, as it is placed on everything and opinions about you and your business will be formed based on a single glance.

While you will most likely work with a designer to create your logo, it is important that you educate yourself so you can not only communicate clearly with your designer, but make an informed decision when selecting your final mark. There are three areas that you need to understand before hiring a designer to design your logo:

Corporate Identity Design Isn’t Just For Corporations

June 20, 2011 Jennifer Bourn

As a business owner or entrepreneur, your corporate identity is a part of your overall branding. It is an extension of your your visual brand and includes everything that has your logo and contact information on it. It adds consistency to your brand and uplevels your professionalism.

Also sometimes referred to as a stationery package, a corporate identity package, or the identity and visual graphic design of your business encompasses things like:

Color Meaning: Meaning of The Color Red

February 25, 2011 Jennifer Bourn

Color has a huge impact on our emotions, our perceptions, and our spiritual and physical well being. When choosing colors for your brand, color that will represent you, your business, and your message, are you choosing the right colors? Understanding the meaning behind color is important. When you understand the meaning and power a color holds you can leverage that to help you better communicate your message and connect with your clients and customers.

That is exactly why I am doing the Color Meaning Blog Series, detailing the meanings associated with colors such as red, orange, yellow, green, blue, purple, grey, black, white, brown, pink, turquoise, gold, silver, and beige.

Red, the color of blood and fire, is associated with meanings of love, passion, desire, heat, longing, lust, sexuality, sensitivity, romance, joy, strength, leadership, courage, vigor, willpower, rage, anger, danger, malice, wrath, stress, action, vibrance, radiance, and determination.

Red is assertive, daring, determined, energetic, powerful, enthusiastic, impulsive, exciting, and aggressive. Red represents physical energy, lust, passion, and desire. It symbolizes action, confidence, and courage. The color red is linked to the most primitive physical, emotional, and financial needs of survival and self-preservation.

Color Meaning: Meaning of The Color Orange

February 16, 2011 Jennifer Bourn

This post is part of the Color Meaning Blog Series, detailing the meanings associated with colors such as red, orange, yellow, green, blue, purple, grey, black, white, brown, pink, turquoise, gold, silver, and beige.

Orange, the blend of red and yellow, is a mixture of the energy associated with red and the happiness associated with yellow. Orange is associated with meanings of joy, warmth, heat, sunshine, enthusiasm, creativity, success, encouragement, change, determination, health, stimulation, happiness, fun, enjoyment, balance, sexuality, freedom, expression, and fascination.

Orange is the color of joy and creativity. Orange promotes a sense of general wellness and emotional energy that should be shared, such as compassion, passion, and warmth. Orange will help a person recover from disappointments, a wounded heart, or a blow to one’s pride.

The meaning of the color orange is stimulating, vibrant, and flamboyant. While made up of red and yellow, it carries less aggression and fierceness than the color red due to its combination with the calming color yellow.

Color Meaning: Meaning of The Color Yellow

February 5, 2011 Jennifer Bourn

Yellow, the color of sunshine, hope, and happiness, has conflicting associations. On one hand yellow stands for freshness, happiness, positivity, clarity, energy, optimism, enlightenment, remembrance, intellect, honor, loyalty, and joy, but on the other, it represents cowardice and deceit. A dull or dingy yellow may represent caution, sickness, and jealousy.

Studies show that the meaning of the color yellow can be warmth, cheerfulness, increased mental activity, increased muscle energy. The color yellow helps activate the memory, encourage communication, enhance vision, build confidence, and stimulate the nervous system.

Color Meaning: Meaning of The Color Green

January 25, 2011 Jennifer Bourn

Green, the color of life, renewal, nature, and energy, is associated with meanings of growth, harmony, freshness, safety, fertility, and environment. Green is also traditionally associated with money, finances, banking, ambition, greed, jealousy, and wall street.

The color green has healing power and is understood to be the most restful and relaxing color for the human eye to view. Green can help enhance vision, stability and endurance. Green takes up more space in the spectrum visible to the human eye and it is the dominant color in the natural. It is a natural choice in interior design as an ideal background or backdrop because we as humans are so used to seeing it everywhere.

With the color green’s association with renewal, growth, and hope, often green stands for both a lack of experience and need for growth. Green also stands for new growth and rebirth, common in the spring season when all of the plants are coming back to life with fresh growth and life after the cold winter months.

Color Meaning: Meaning of The Color Blue

January 15, 2011 Jennifer Bourn

Blue represents both the sky and the sea, and is associated with open spaces, freedom, intuition, imagination, expansiveness, inspiration, and sensitivity. Blue also represents meanings of depth, trust, loyalty, sincerity, wisdom, confidence, stability, faith, heaven, and intelligence.

The color blue has positive affects on the mind and the body. As the color of the spirit, it invokes rest and can cause the body to produce chemicals that are calming and exude feelings of tranquility. Blue helps to slow human metabolism, is cooling in nature, and helps with balance and self-expression. Blue is also an appetite suppressant.

However not all blues are serene and sedate. Electric or brilliant blues become dynamic and dramatic, an engaging color that expresses exhilaration. Also, some shades of blue or the use of too much blue may come across as cold or uncaring, and can dampen spirits.

Color Meaning: Meaning of The Color Purple

January 5, 2011 Jennifer Bourn

Purple combines the calm stability of blue and the fierce energy of red. The color purple is often associated with royalty, nobility, luxury, power, and ambition. Purple also represents meanings of wealth, extravagance, creativity, wisdom, dignity, grandeur, devotion, peace, pride, mystery, independence, and magic.

The color purple is a rare occurring color in nature and as a result is often seen as having sacred meaning. Lavender, orchid, lilac, and violet flowers are considered delicate and precious.

The color purple has a variety of effects on the mind and body, including uplifting spirits, calming the mind and nerves, enhancing the sacred, creating feelings of spirituality, increasing nurturing tendencies and sensitivity, and encouraging imagination and creativity.

Color Meaning: Meaning of The Color Grey

December 27, 2010 Jennifer Bourn

Gray is a cool, neutral, and balanced color. The color gray is an emotionless, moody color that is typically associated with meanings of dull, dirty, and dingy, as well as formal, conservative, and sophisticated.

The color gray is a timeless and practical color that is often associated with loss or depression. Dark, charcoal gray communicates some of the strength and mystery of black. It is a sophisticated color that lack the negativity of the color black. Light grays can carry some of the attributes of the color white.

Color Meaning: Meaning of The Color Black

December 15, 2010 Jennifer Bourn

Black is associated with power, fear, mystery, strength, authority, elegance, formality, death, evil, and aggression, authority, rebellion, and sophistication. Black is required for all other colors to have depth and variation of hue.

The black color is the absence of color. Black is a mysterious color that is typically associated with the unknown or the negative. The color black represents strength, seriousness, power, and authority. Black is a formal, elegant, and prestigious color. Authoritative and powerful, the color black can evoke strong emotions and too much black can be overwhelming.

In heraldry, black is the symbol of grief. The color black can be serious, professional, and conventional, but black can also represent the mysterious, sexy, and sophisticated. Black is a visually slimming color for clothing and like other dark colors, in interior design, black can make a room appear to shrink in size.

Color Meaning: Meaning of The Color White

December 5, 2010 Jennifer Bourn

White, an inherently positive color, is associated with purity, virginity, innocence, light, goodness, heaven, safety, brilliance, illumination, understanding, cleanliness, faith, beginnings, sterility, spirituality, possibility, humility, sincerity, protection, softness, and perfection.

The color white can represent a successful beginning. In heraldry, white depicts faith and purity. As the opposite of black, movies, books, print media, and television typically depict the good guy in white and the bad guy in black.

The color of snow, white is often used to represent coolness and simplicity. White’s association with cleanliness and sterility is often seen in hospitals, medical centers, and laboratories to communicate safety. The color white is also associated with low-fat foods and dairy products.

Color Meaning: Meaning of The Color Brown

November 25, 2010 Jennifer Bourn

Brown, the color of earth, wood, stone, wholesomeness, reliability, elegance, security, healing, home, grounding, foundations, stability, warmth, and honesty, is a natural, neutral color that is typically associated with the seasons of fall and winter.

The color brown is a warm color that stimulates the appetite. While it is sometimes considered dull, it also represents steadfastness, simplicity, friendliness, dependability, and health.

Shades of brown when combined with green create a palette often used to convey concepts of recycling, earth-friendly, or all natural. Dark brown can be used in place of black and brings warmth to color palettes.

44 Different Holiday Card Messages for Small Businesses

November 22, 2010 Jennifer Bourn

Updated: December 14, 2016 —The time of year all business owners must decide how to show clients and customers they care and appreciate their business. It is the season of the holiday card!. Whether you choose to send a Christmas card, Thanksgiving card, or New Year card, you’ve got to think of a holiday message or greeting for inside the card!

We know you stress out over what message to include in your holiday card because we do too! So I thought I’d share with you a list of 44 holiday card messages for small businesses and hopefully help make the process of selecting your holiday card message easier!

Color Meaning: Meaning of The Color Turquoise

November 20, 2010 Jennifer Bourn

Turquoise, a blend of the color blue and the color green, has some of the same cool and calming attributes. The color turquoise is associated with meanings of refreshing, feminine, calming, sophisticated, energy, wisdom, serenity, wholeness, creativity, emotional balance, good luck, spiritual grounding, friendship, love, joy, tranquility, patience, intuition, and loyalty.

Tints of turquoise color have a sweet feminine feel. Darker shades of turquoise, such as teal have a more sophisticated feel. Variations of turquoise, which often is used to represent water, also is referred to as aqua and aquamarine.

Color Meaning: Meaning of The Color Pink

November 15, 2010 Jennifer Bourn

Pink, a delicate color that means sweet, nice, playful, cute, romantic, charming, feminine, and tenderness, is associated with bubble gum, flowers, babies, little girls, cotton candy, and sweetness.

The color pink is the color of universal love of oneself and of others. Pink represents friendship, affection, harmony, inner peace, and approachability.

Pink is the official color for little girls and represents sugar and spice and everything nice. Pink is the sweet side of the color red. While the color red stirs up passion, aggression, and action, large amounts of the color pink can actually create physical weakness.

Color Meaning: Meaning of The Color Gold

November 5, 2010 Jennifer Bourn

The color gold is the color of extravagance, wealth, riches, and excess, and shares several of the same attributes of the color yellow. The color gold is a warm color that can be either bright and cheerful or somber and traditional. The color gold is cousin to the color yellow and the color brown, and is also associated with illumination, love, compassion, courage, passion, magic, and wisdom.

Gold is a precious metal that is associated with wealth, grandeur, and prosperity, as well as sparkle, glitz, and glamour. Gold is the official fiftieth wedding anniversary gift, with copper as the official seventh wedding anniversary gift and bronze as the official eighth wedding anniversary gift.

Color Meaning: Meaning of The Color Silver

October 30, 2010 Jennifer Bourn

Silver, the metallic refined, distinguished color of riches, has cool properties like gray, but is more fun, lively, and playful. The color silver is associated with meanings of industrial, sleek, high-tech, and modern, as well as ornate, glamourous, graceful, sophisticated, and elegant.

Silver is a precious metal and, like gold, often symbolizes riches and wealth. Silver is believed to be a mirror to the soul, helping us to see ourselves as others see us. As a gemstone silver represents hope, unconditional love, meditation, mystic visions, tenderness, kindness, sensitivities, and psychic abilities.

Silver affects the mind and body as a conductor and communicator that aids in public speaking and eloquence. Silver is believed to draw negative energy out of the body and replace it with positive energy.

Color Meaning: Meaning of The Color Beige

October 20, 2010 Jennifer Bourn

Beige is dependable, conservative, and flexible. The color beige is neutral, calm, and relaxing. The attributes and meanings associated with beige change based on the colors it accompanies.

The color beige offers some of the warmth of the color brown and the some of the crisp and coolness of the color white. While it is a relaxing color, beige is often seen as a dull and boring color.

A similar color to beige is ivory, a neutral, relaxing, and calming color, has some of the same pureness and softness of the color white, but with a warmer tone. Ivory represents quiet and pleasantness. The color ivory sets relaxed tone of understated elegance.