He was interested in my services, but felt that my rates were too high. I have extensive experience in rebranding firms, so I personally consider my rates to be quite fair. After all, you don’t want to wind up with a botched MasterCard logo or Tropicana Packaging. Believe me, that’s way more expensive! My rates are reflective in the fact that you don’t just have a pretty picture as your finished project. I take your entire business strategy into account. This ensures that you wind up with the best graphic design possible to meet your company’s marketing goals.

I explained this, however, my prospect still felt despite my expertise that I was too expensive. That’s fine, believe me I understand it’s a competitive marketplace and the industry is saturated with Art Directors and Graphic Designers. The conversation terminated by him saying, “I can hire someone straight out of school or from India for much less.

You may be able to hire a Web Design Firm in India, for less than I charge. However, you won’t get any relevant business strategy. You also won’t get the creative work from someone who is in touch with American culture. There might be some creative people in India coming up with beautiful work, but do they really hit the mark? Will your customers be engaged by the message that your Indian national has brainstormed? More than likely no. Beyond that there are actually security risks to consider.

Large companies like IBM have a history of off shoring some of their programming to India. A friend of mine used to work for IBM and she would often lament about the subpar work that was returning from South Asia. She moaned that her team would always have to rewrite the code from India because it was written so poorly.

The bottom line of it is that with graphic and web design you get what you pay for. If you care about the message that your company is publicly displaying to the world, then there really is only one thing to do, that is buy local! Get your graphic design made in the USA!

Have you experienced any horror stories working with foreign companies for your graphic design project, I would love to hear about them! Please post your experiences below.

Clearwater was blessed with some of the most gorgeous late spring weather the Hudson Valley has seen in years. The crystal clear day with unobstructed 15 mile views up and down the Hudson River resulted in an amazing sunset. This created a stunning backdrop for the band as they performed an eclectic blend of world fusion on Clearwater’s Hudson Stage.

Since I was mostly attending the concert as a spectator I brought a bare bones camera rig with me. I only came prepared with a Nikon D90 and a Nikor 18-105 3.5 lens as well as a 28-300 mm Sigma Lens. Fortunately the evening sky was perfectly lit and didn’t need much assistance from me in creating a dynamic concert image. I particularly like the way the audience’s hair glistens in the rays of summer sunlight. It creates a great example of graphic closure for the silouhetted foreground.

The series of photos taken could be suitable for advertising campaigns in the following concepts and industries:

• Summer
• Concert Promotions (Tickets, Posters, Flyers)
• Entertainment Industry
• Album Covers
• Alcoholic Beverages
• Youthful Lifestyle

Click here to view, or purchase more examples from this series of photographs.

Mountain Lake Estates signage for a real estate new development on County Rd. 21 in Wallkill, New York

It is always so exciting when you unexpectedly run into one of your old designs on the street. While driving some back roads through Orange County, New York  to go to the Shawangunks this morning for a hike, I stumbled upon a project I worked on in the fall of 2010. It was some signage for the real estate new development, Mountain Lake Estates, near Newburgh, NY.

I remember being disappointed with the outcome of the project because there were many changes made that I didn’t really think were improvements to my initial design comps. However, I was surprised to see that the actual sign came out a lot better than I expected it to. It actually really stood out on the road.

The stone wall graphic on this signage was  drawn by hand, scanned in on a flatbed scanner, and then Autotraced in Adobe Illustrator. The Mountain Lake Estate’s sign layout as a whole was also created in Adobe Illustrator.  The sign was created as a  6 foot by 4 foot grand format print mounted to allumalite and installed on 4×4 posts. I kind of wish the installer had cut the posts down a little bit. I guess I’ll have to call them about that on Monday.

Cover for catalog insert in the Wall Street Journal promoting the new "Distinctive Collection" luxury real estate brand created in Adobe InDesign

Realogy’s Better Homes and Gardens franchise has dropped their Premier Selections luxury brand and replaced it with the Distinctive Collection brand. It was perfect timing for Better Homes and Gardens Rand Realty as they entered their spring market campaign. The Rands decided to promote their extensive inventory of luxury homes with a catalog insert in the Wall Street Journal.

Being such a high profile marketing campaign it was incredibly important that the cover use a highly compelling photograph. Conveniently Rand Realty had just struck up a new relationship with Edberg Marketing. Edberg specializes in real estate photography and has the capability of taking elevated photographs.

Simply put, elevated photography raises a camera on an extending mast and tethers the camera to the operating photographer on the ground. The photographer has some limited ability to pivot the camera in order to get the correct angle. However, due to the height the mast often sways in the wind causing some motion blur on many of the exposures.

The Distinctive Collection cover proved to be a very complicated shoot for a variety of reasons. The first reason being that, as always in the world of marketing, we were on tight time frame. The time factor was further compounded by the terribly wet spring that prevailed in 2011. Edberg was forced to try and make the shot in iffy weather at least three times before they finally got some decent light. A second complication was that Edberg was unable to take a vertical photo due to the way that the camera mounts on the elevated mast. Typically in real estate photography this wouldn’t be an issue because horizontal compositions tend to be the preferred format. Unfortunately, Edberg was only able to mount an EOS Rebel on the mast, so a horizontal photo did not hold the required resolution for a high quality cover photo. After a great deal of back and fourth Eric Ortner finally was able to figure out a solution to the problem. With a great deal of reluctance on their part Eric managed to get Edberg to release him the Raw CR2 files. He then opened them in Photoshop at the largest Raw settings effectively faking in resolution. This gave resulted in a large enough pixel dimension to create a hi-res cover photo.

The work didn’t stop there however. Due to the home’s foliage there was a great deal of retouching required. The tree in the front of the house cast unsightly shadows all over the front of the house. The solution, remove the tree and shadows in Photoshop. This required about three hours of retouching. As we all know though, a cover photo with blemishes might as well not be printed. This is especially true when pitching to a luxury market, where everything must be perfect. The following examples are the before and after of the retouched photos.

Original photo with branches and shadows obscuring the front of the home.

Photoshop Retouched cover photo which removes the tree's branch and shadows.

The Distinctive Collection cover proved to be a rather hi-stress project, but in the end it resulted in a great quality high impact presentation piece.

Looking back on the past fourteen years of professional experience, I’ve found that I barely remember the majority of projects that I’ve worked on. My hope is that this blog platform will aid me in inspiration for future projects, and help to keep me from slipping into similar pitfalls of past projects.

I believe that as the field of graphic design continues to evolve it will be interesting to watch design trends and techniques emerge through this weekly catalog of work. My goal is to only include my own creations or possibly the work of my subordinates. However, I may also include designs that I deem to be especially revolutionary regardless of their creator.

The type of design work that I expect to publish in this site will be primarily graphic in nature and I anticipate that it will include:

• Logos
• Layouts
• Illustrations
• Photographs
• Websites
• Flash Banners
• Motion Graphics
• Video
• Discussion on Branding and Brand Strategy

My plan is to include some textual explanation along with the specific examples in order to examine the overall marketing strategy of the piece. In some cases where there is an interesting design process I may also include the proofs that lead up to the final approved design.

In short, I’m really looking forward to discovering where this blog forum on the world wide web takes me.  Thanks for your interest in my work!

So without further ado, let me introduce the First Design of the Times.