Author: Curtis Newbold

Any time you approach color in a design, ask yourself if the color you are using meets common conventions and expectations. While many designs will offer you a free reign of color choices and palates, some colors really ought to be used for specific purposes. In certain industries, cultures, companies,

Color has the tremendous ability to draw attention, aestheticize, create meaning, and give emphasis. To effectively do any of those four, though, you have to be strategic about creating harmonies and relationships. Sometimes the relationship can be contrasting or jarring, but if done intentionally, the contrasting relationship can give meaning

Color is complex and would require a lenghty scientific discussion about wavelengths and prisms and reflective light to really grasp how it works. But truthfully, for the average information designer, knowing the complex science of color and how the brain perceives it isn’t all that critical, even if it is

You may have heard about a little trend lately to ban PowerPoint from businesses. Most notably, Jeff Bezos banned PowerPoint from meetings at Amazon, in favor of replacing them with…”briefing documents.” Geoffrey James at Inc.com supported this silly move, citing research about how PowerPoint reduces organizational intelligence. That’s when I

Once you have a firm grasp on common color terminology and on how the color wheel works, explore how different colors can affect the mood, emphasis, and overall effectiveness of the same content. Always be strategic about the colors you are using, as they will significantly affect how people react

The color wheel is one of the most important tools you can use to develop color schemes and, by association, moods and experiences for the people using your information. Once you recognize how the color wheel works, you can pair colors, shades, and tints in ways that evoke the specific

When you cite a source and you put an in-text citation at the end of your sentence, the punctuation (usually a period) goes AFTER the final parenthesis in the citation. Your sentence, with citation, should look like this: “Punctuation keeps sense on the rails” (Truss, 2003). NOT like this: “Punctuation

Using appropriate color terminology will significantly aid you in being able to strategically design information. It will also assist in you speaking to designers and printers who may help you in developing a final product. An alphabetical shortlist of color terminology important for working with color is below. Review the

If you’ve ever caught yourself saying “we need to hire a graphic designer for that!” it’s possible you’ve missed the point entirely. Perhaps unfair, perhaps more colloquial than accurate, the term “graphic designer” has often become synonymous with “the guy or girl who makes things look pretty.” But pretty is