Corporate Branding
I’ve always known that I was creative and artistic but it wasn’t until I took Photography in high school that I understood the real-world applications that were possible with this skill. I credit my photography teacher with expanding my mind to the range of possibilities that I could apply my creative skills to. He taught our class how to use Photoshop to edit images, Illustrator to create custom vectors, and InDesign to organize those elements into meaningful designs.
It blew my mind to discover that I was now a graphic designer with that tool belt of software proficiency. These new tools that allowed me to combine imagery, typography, color effects, graphic elements, and the fundamental design principles he was teaching us simultaneously, enabled me to communicate stories through a visual medium.
These Adobe programs were responsible for my foundational design education and as the Adobe Creative Suite evolved, so did my range of design capabilities and my confidence to design outside of my comfort zone knowing I would be supported with the functionality and software to make it happen. These foundational skills I learned to apply using these programs ultimately set me up for success in my professional career as a creative.
As a creative who handles the majority of asset development for the agency I work for, I’ve had to self-learn several skills in order to create the high-quality designs our clients pay for.
Since Photoshop works primarily with raster images, or images made up of pixels, it is an excellent tool for photo editing and retouching. Think of a pixel as a tiny square – thousands of little squares make up one raster image. With Photoshop, you can enhance colors, adjust lighting, add someone in, or even take some out! If you have a portrait of someone, you can remove blemishes, smooth skin, and adjust the lighting to take your photo from great to exceptional. If you want to isolate your subject in order to change or remove the background, you can utilize the program’s Pen Tool, Quick Selection tool, Properties Panel, and Layers panel to create a transparent background.
In addition to editing photography, you can use Photoshop to create digital art. Yes – paintings, illustrations, drawings, and animations can be created in Photoshop! You can start with an image you’ve created yourself, like a photograph, and add in artistic filters from the program’s extensive Filter Library. Or, you can start from a blank canvas and use Photoshop’s extensive brush library to paint or draw stunning creations.
A huge benefit to the Adobe CC Suite is the cross-collaboration of its programs. Many programs collaborate easily with one another, like Illustrator with Photoshop. Adobe Illustrator allows you to create precise designs, illustrations, and vector graphics. Unlike raster images, vector graphics are created with paths, so no resolution is lost when a graphic is resized. This is particularly important for creating branding assets because a logo will need to be implemented across a variety of mediums and platforms in a range of different sizes. With Illustrator, you can create one logo for use on stickers, billboards, t-shirts, and other products.
If you edit your photos in Photoshop, and you’ve drawn your logo and illustrations in Illustrator, what can you use to put it all together in a book, magazine, poster, or other layout designs? Adobe InDesign is your answer! The program is packed full of typesetting and layout tools to help you develop a clean and consistent design. While it can be used to develop a one-page poster, InDesign really shines with multi-page spreads. Functions like Master Pages and Style Sheets ensure that your aesthetic is consistent across all pages and makes editing styles a breeze.
While I wasn’t classically trained in Web Design going into my career at Bell + Ivy, I’ve had to establish web design processes for the agency and teach myself how to build and design websites from start to finish as it has become one of the more in-demand services among our clients. Programs like Adobe XD have played a fundamental role in that process.
The fact that the client felt comfortable and at ease made my experience working on this project that much more efficient and majorly reduced my stress throughout the process.
I continue to use Adobe XD to share and review wireframes and mockups with clients on web design projects today and it has made the biggest difference in a seamless process and working relationship with our clients.
Interested in creating websites, mobile applications, UX/UI assets, and creating real-time prototypes? Adobe XD is a great program for wireframing and prototyping. Its preset artboards make creating screens for iPhones, Androids, laptops, and tablets a breeze. Whether your project is a few screens to hundreds of screens, Adobe XD’s Symbol Tool allows you to make one edit and implement that change across all screens. What a timesaver!
One of the best features of Adobe XD is the prototyping tool. You can test your interactions in the program or even live on your phone. Using the interaction and prototyping tools available in the program, you can create prototypes that users can tap, swipe, or scroll through. If you are designing as a team, XD even allows multiple users to collaborate on one file.
After Effects is an industry favorite for developing motion graphics and visual effects for video, TV, and web. It’s primarily a post-production tool and its extensive effects library can help you manipulate and animate text, graphics, and a combo of the two. It can be a very challenging but rewarding program to learn.
If you are feeling more comfortable with the applications in the Adobe CC Suite and want to keep practicing a variety of skills, you can find some helpful tutorials on YouTube. They feature some awesome techniques and give you step-by-step instructions to create stunning effects and assets using many of these programs.
But, if you’re trying to promote your personal or company’s brand, Bell+Ivy can help. We specialize in graphic design and utilize the entire Adobe suite. To learn more about our services and how we can help you reach and attract the right audience, check out our new services.
One of the most valuable lessons I’ve learned in my career as a designer is not to feel shame or shy away from using available resources to find inspiration. There’s often nothing more daunting than staring at a blank page or Illustrator artboard when getting started on a project. I’ve given myself the permission as a creative professional to utilize resources like the Adobe Stock templates and vector graphics as a supplementary tool when building out assets for my client deliverables. The quality and breadth of the Adobe Stock library is unparalleled, and I can say that confidently having tested just about every other option on the market.
The confidence that the Adobe Creative Cloud programs and tools provide is profound and the correlation between the higher quality of work that I produce is discernible. I have more faith in myself and my skills as a designer knowing that the Creative Cloud programs are evolving alongside me and the other creatives that make up the Adobe Creative community.
