Awesome quotes by famed designer Carin Goldberg from the 2009 AIGA Design Conference

On inspiration…

“Inspirational loot is our designer’s crack. It looks good, tastes good and feels good. We are hooked on its revelatory highs and illuminating epiphanies, but inspiration is fleeting and ephemeral, always leaving us wanting.”

On motivation…

“Whether driven by money, neurosis, love, fear, fame, revenge, or the seven deadly sins and their extended family; these motivating forces, albeit never as sweet and delicious as our inspirations, are the demons and the desires that get us out of bed in the morning… and I advocate succumbing to these forces with aplomb.”

Does the world really look better through rose colored glasses? According to Pantone the answer is actually PMS Honeysuckle 18-2120. Pantone has declared the Color of the Year for 2011 to be Honeysuckle. Read the post at the Pantone site about this year’s color and download color swatches for your Adobe programs.

There is no one, set formula for designing a logo. As with anything in advertising, sometimes it comes to you in a flash of inspiration and other times you actually have to get your hands dirty and grind it out ’till it works. At times like the latter, the more time you’ve spent just observing the world around you, soaking in imagery and information, the more you have in your mental toolbox to use as ideas for starting points.

Any resource is valid for creative inspiration: something you remember seeing, interesting typesetting, elements of nature or someone’s face. Even other designs that you’ve liked that can spark a new, original idea. Any image or object can be broken down to it’s simplest forms, shapes and shadows to create an interesting, visual graphic. It doesn’t always have to be literal. What it does have to do is communicate in a way that is faithful to the company or product the logo will represent.

The logo represented for this article is our most recent. It was created for a very talented photographer located in Kansas who specializes in rural landscape photography. Having grown up spending a great deal of time visiting my grandparent’s midwestern farm, I had the fortune of having quite a bit to draw from in my “mental toolbox” for this project. The logo, as a whole, has the feel of a country-style plaquard that might be found on the property gate of a ranch. We used elements often found in a rural setting: the grungy type face, as though it had been weathered on the side of an abandoned country building, the placement of the “r” within the circle like a cattle brand, and the wheat… one of the primary and most recognizable crops grown in the region. In the end, the client was thrilled and so were we.

Of course any client input toward what they may have in mind is always important. Some know exactly what they want and just need someone to build it for them. Some have no idea whatsoever and need some guidance, wanting to see what you can come up with. Most are somewhere in the middle. All are welcome at GS visual.

Advertising, marketing, design. It’s what we do.

Finding creative solutions to your advertising goals is our passion. Creating something unique that puts your message on target is what gets us up in the morning. Take a look and see what we do. Print design, web and ecommerce design. Not just pretty pictures, but built to deliver your message to your consumer. Effectively, creatively and economically.