The PixelHaze Principles of Design

Welcome to the first in this series of articles that will give you an insight into our training process for designers.

When setting out with a career in the creative industries, the torrent of information you can be provided with can be a little overwhelming…

Yes, it can certainly be said that you need to live and breathe creativity, design, content, and copywriting (plus, a bunch of other important factors to tap into your full potential as a designer). But the one stumbling block that you can repeatedly come up against is that there are just not enough hours in the day to absorb all of this information so you can quickly go about your new life and career in this wonderful industry.

To assist with this, we have been developing a series of hacks or shortcuts to enable emerging designers, small business owners, and marketing managers to get results, efficiently and with the confidence that the new artwork is well designed.

Before we jump into our first principle, I'd like to lay down the foundations. I fully believe there are two types of creatives in the sector: designers and art workers.

The Art Worker

Let's start with art workers as this is the easiest category to define. Many successful designers start off as art workers in the early parts of their careers. Simply put, an art worker is not a fully-fledged designer just yet, but can be a fantastic mimic.

So what do I mean by that?

An art worker would see an existing brand, and can comfortably arrange components, content, and in some cases even generate content that fits with the brand, like a glove. All the spacing is neatly aligned, there's a great deal of focus on key aspects, nice sharp contrast throughout the art work. All in all, a thoroughly professionally laid out piece of work, upon which the artworker moves on to the next project.

Being called an art worker is certainly no slight, and it takes a considerable amount of skill and practice to become adept in this art form. The missing piece for an art worker to become a designer is strategy.

The Designer

Having worked with both designers and art workers, and in turn, converted art workers into designers, I feel the difference between the two job roles, is the ability to grab an existing brand, campaign, or project, and take the lead on steering it in a new direction.

You could argue that that's the role of a creative director, and in larger organisations and agencies, that's certainly the case. However, I believe that any small project, from a social media post to additional publication or poster can sometimes be led in a new direction.

Let's give you an example. At PixelHaze we like to ensure that our brand has a very playful colourful style, with the focus of demystifying technology is rolled out across all social media posts, or at least whenever possible.

Although an art worker can achieve this with certain parameters and a framework in place, a designer can take it a step further. They can be thinking about the language, both visual communication, and written text. They may even look to apply a degree of animation to the post or come up with the idea of launching a new series of posts through a campaign.

An art worker holds true to the brand, at all times. A designer can be trusted with picking up a brand, and taking it in a new direction while staying true to the original brand guidelines. The difference may seem subtle, but the results can be considerably different with the two approaches.

So who fits in each bracket?

Although results may vary depending on skillset, the number of hours put into learning this craft, and other responsibilities, in most cases we can say that a graphic communication or design student who has been through and achieved a degree in the subject matter should be considered a designer, or be a junior designer from day one.

You don't go through that level of training to be constrained in your role and graduate designers should always embrace the challenge of working with a brand and have the versatility and skillset to create. On the other end of the spectrum, an artworker can be trained in a far quicker turnaround.

This is where the PixelHaze Principles of Design come in.

We can give a rule book, or even a cheat sheet, (depending on your interpretation), that will fast track you through the process of understanding what makes a good design, and helping eliminate the inevitable issues that an inexperienced designer will create.

We don't have three years plus to learn how to create a social media post. Therefore, we keep our focus a little bit narrower and we start off with simple elements. I have trained a number of art workers over the years, from staff in versatile roles. For example, a social media manager, who wanted to have a better grasp of design so they can create their own social media posts without having to depend on the in-house designers at every stage.

Likewise, I've worked with a number of small business owners or marketing personnel within those companies, again, to fill the gap and reduce overheads by in turn, removing the heavy reliance on a freelance designer to create all artwork for them. This is very much achievable, especially with the flexibility and versatility of software available, for example, Canva, and even Squarespace.

Following our PixelHaze Principles of Design, we can get you on brand and eradicate the silly little errors that can cost so much more.

Will this make a designer redundant?

I don't believe so. What generally happens is if you don't have the budget to work with a designer, quite so regularly, then the likelihood is you just won't post as much content, or you will produce the same content, but with all of the errors and design issues in place.

By working with you to become a strong art worker, we can improve the design work that you would already do yourself. This, therefore, allows you to escalate key design decisions to your existing designer. They have far more challenging, and therefore rewarding work to run through whilst you're in charge of rolling it out.

I hope this has whet your appetite for the PixelHaze Principles of Design which will be rolled out in the next few weeks.

If you're interested in becoming an art worker yourself, improving your core design skillset, then follow this series. We can also provide one-to-one mentorship programmes either remotely or in person, depending upon your requirements.

As always feel free to get in touch if you have any questions.