Info

Jeff Koromi is a Designer & Illustrator of 6+ years, lives and works in New Jersey and occasionally blogs about topics that annoy him on a daily basis. He's a freelancer as well as an Art Director at Crystal Springs Resort., Creative Director at both 8BitX.com and Trunks-Up! Marketing.

20 things that Stephen Sagmeister, of Sagmeister and Walsh, has learned. Always a good read.

1. Helping other people helps me.

2. Having guts always works out for me.

3. Thinking that life will be better in the future is stupid. I have to live now.

4. Organizing a charity group is surprisingly easy.

5. Being not truthful always works against me.

6. Everything I do always comes back to me.

7. Assuming is stifling.

8. Drugs feel great in the beginning and become a drag later on.

9. Over time I get used to everything and start taking for granted.

10. Money does not make me happy.

11. My dreams have no meaning.

12. Keeping a diary supports personal development.

13. Trying to look good limits my life.

14. Material luxuries are best enjoyed in small doses.

15. Worrying solves nothing.

16. Complaining is silly. Either act or forget.

17. Everybody thinks they are right.

18. If I want to explore a new direction professionally, it is helpful to try it out for myself first.

19. Low expectations are a good strategy.

20. Everybody who is honest is interesting.

That’s a good question. Recently, I started a new company that’s really awesome. We’re called Trunks Up! We provide design, public relations, ad placement, copywriting… pretty much everything. You might wonder why I’m giving up on doing the lone freelancer thing and starting my own company—I mean being a freelancer must be cool right?

Well, being a Freelancer is hard work. And, though starting your own company with other people also is hard work, it’s a lot easier to be able to lean on people with other skill-sets  Not having to do everything myself is absolutely liberating! I’m able to concentrate on the things I’m good on and I’m able to count on others for the things they are good on. I’m honestly more excited about this venture than any previous project I’ve entertained. We’re all confident we’re going to kill it.

I will be taking on side work, but it will most likely be with small projects that have no money to work with anyway. Things that are fun and interesting. If you have something like that, drop me a line. If you want to see my work, temporarily you can see my design here and illustration here. Keep an eye on the menu to the left, as that will have the most up-to-date links (I’m planning on building a CMS slider to plug-in to WordPress and make updating easier for me).

Have a project you want to look awesome and reach good people? Well drop by Trunks Up! and see what we’re about. We’d love to meet you.

As for this site, I’m mostly going to use it to write and occasionally add some work I’m doing into it.

 

NOTE: A couple weeks after I wrote this, it seems like just maybe the answer to this specific post might be here in the form of the Surface Pro. Read Gabe of Penny-Arcade fame talk about his experience on the Surface Pro.

For as long as I can remember, I’ve always dreamed of a future where I could pick up a small device, pull out a pen and sketch straight onto a screen. To people who don’t sketch a lot or even at all we are in that future, but things are still not quite perfect.

All digital “sketch books” have some kind of issue, caveat or poorly considered design flaw that keeps me going back to pen and paper time and time again. This isn’t to say what available options are impossible to work with—there are many, many artist who do amazing work on iPads, Android Tablets and even their phones. I find many of these options lacking. Let’s take a look at some of the major ones.

The iPad (or any large tablet) is a main option for many people. The Cadillac of the digital sketch book world right now, the iPad, provides some key aspects: portability, simplicity and the ability to easily use a stylus to draw (drawing with fingers is a very non-intuitive way to create art). However there’s a major issue here—because the screen of these tablets are capacitive in nature, using a pointed stylus is not feasible. Drawing with Wacom, Pogo or any other brand of stylus is difficult as the point replicates the signature of a finger it gets in the way of smaller details. You can zoom in, but needing to pinch and stretch can easily break up the flow of concentration your brain needs to keep ideas flowing freely. It’s very much akin to drawing in a Moleskine with a dry erase board marker.

Drawing tablets from such brands as Monoprice, Yiynova and Wacom are widely used as power-house tools. These accessories do a great job of replicating pressure sensitive strokes accurately and quickly. Because they are a plug-and-play option for a larger device makes them less portable and adds a further step of setting up ie. cords, drivers, etc. I do love my Intuos, but it would be amazing to draw on the screen. Cintiques and Yiynovas are exactly that: a direct-to-screen input. But there is a parallax between the tip of the pen and the display (up to a .125″ distance) which makes knowing where to put your stylus difficult at first. So, for actually sitting down and hammering out work these options are excellent but for sitting at a café, meeting or anywhere not at a workstation Mac or PC it’s not the best option.

The Wacom Inkling is an interesting concept, and seems to bridge the gap of tablets and drawing tablets by not being a stand alone screen-in-device or app, but actually recording your art while you draw it in a notebook and giving you the option to retrieve it later. This isn’t a device I’ve had the ability to test, though, since the price tag of $200 seems massive compared to what you’re getting. Reviews have been “meh” at best as well. However with the tweaks worked out this seems to be a close current option, especially appealing as it outputs your sketches in vector and you have the hard-copies of your sketches in your choice of notebook. If Wacom dropped the price to $100, I’d bite.

So, with these popular but not nearly comprehensive options laid out, what is a poor artist who dreams of sketching into his digital book to do? I’ve set out the “Why” of the issues but not brought any solutions. To be entirely honest, I’m not sure. I do, however, have a set of guidelines that might help people who (I hope) are working on this issue.

  • The solution must have pressure sensitivity. The sensitivity doesn’t have to be ground breaking—about 512 levels of sensitivity would do the trick, about the third of a Wacom Intuos 4 drawing tablet. Enough for a little shading and opacity blending.
  • A stylus solution must have a fine tip point approximately the size of a fine-point sharpie at the thickest. It can’t get in the way of the line you’re actually drawing.
  • Simplistic design. Tip to draw, eraser to erase. No more buttons than that. No nibs or parts to screw off and on.
  • It must be portable. Ideally a pen to go along with another device, and one built for existing hardware. No extra wires, dongles or cases to have to strap on.
  • It cannot be proprietary. It must be an open device so that people who make apps can work it into their software. Companies such as Autodesk and Manga Studio’s SmithMicro Software, amoung many others, make amazing software that pairs nicely with Monoprice, Yiynova and Wacom hardware.

With these guidelines set up, are there any bright-spots on the horizon? I believe their might be one, and it’s from someone you would not expect: Microsoft.

The Surface Pro is a device that takes the accessibility and portability of a tablet and pairs it with the relative openness of a traditional OS. I could easily see a hardware maker creating some kind of solution that integrates all my key aspects and deploys them seamlessly, having to only install drivers for the solution. While Apple, Kindle and Android would need any solution coded into the mobile OS, Windows could let that work be done by the software makeres instead, streamlining the process. Which is exactly what they do now.

Regardless of who provides the answer, we can’t be more than 2-5 years away for this. I can’t imagine something that fulfills an artists’ need like this not sell amazingly well.

Attempting to write new blog posts comes out very clunky for me. I’m so concentrated on visual communication that the actual art of writing comes very slowly to me (though not as slowly as mathematics). Knowing this, I think it helps me deal with clients. One thing that many designers don’t really understand is how hard translation of the visual comes to most people. The reason we have a profession in the first place is that we have talents that others don’t. They can’t create a logo or advertisement effectively on their own, they need our eye and experience to create something compelling to people.

When I see things like Clients From Hell pop-up I can’t help but agree with the Montiero-school on the whole culture of client bashing in graphic design. Making fun of a client for not understanding that you can’t make the hex color #FFF any brighter than white is akin to making fun of a child for not knowing what a mortgage is. It’s not fair. They don’t have the experience or knowledge to understand something like that, relying on us as design professionals to do that for them.

On the same note: though I try to understand what my clients do, there is only so far I can get without getting confused about their industry. There are so many specialties and reasons their business operates the way it does that there will always be something that totally seems alien to me.

Having that perspective would help a lot of designers that are quick to mock their clients after the phone call ends.

Recently I took a trip south and it’s made me realize how great a state and region I live in. For someone who is an atheist  contrarian, food/beer lover and artist it just cannot be beat. I don’t want to turn this into a “how great is my state” chest-thumping fest, but I really did appreciate where I live a lot more.

I won’t go into specifics (though if you like trying different types of food, the south in not the place you want to travel to), however my southern trip was really great.

I’m glad to be back in NJ.

I’ve always maintained that it’s the people a high-threshold of skepticism towards advertising and media have an advantage others don’t. People have a very high-tolerance for bullshit anymore, so tailoring messages to them becomes difficult. Putting aside the fact that if you have a crappy product no amount of marketing and advertising is going to help you, it’s good to take a look at what avenues you’re taking to your audience and what you’re saying.

You can think of it like this: A chef that has a refined palate and can discern flavors that you and I can’t. Because of his sensitivity he can mold his food to match the flavor that he’s delivering to you. Regardless whether you can taste the difference or not, the difference is there. So it goes in the world of media and communications too.

Remembering that people don’t blindly accept your crap, to put it bluntly, is step one. It boggles my mind when people want to add gimmicks to their communications. QR codes, star-bursts and call-outs, too many exclamation points… these are all things that not only go un-noticed by people but also set off the red-flags of bullshit in their brains.

And, especially don’t do things that will actually annoy your audience. I’m looking at you, Too-Many-Push-Notifications-Guy. And you too, Pop-Up-Ad-That’s-Obscuring-The-Content-I-Want-To-Read-Woman.

+ high-res version

I see a lot of business cards that are so crammed with info in an attempt to be everything to everyone, that they become—if not totally useless and unmemorable—functionally useless. This particular card was given to me by a friend who liked the embossing on the logo symbol (which is admittedly quite nice).

I’ve decided to pair it down to what I’ve found is actually the only useful information. Excuse the sloppy ‘shopping, I’ll probably come back and fix that later.

Name & Title: Obviously not a part of the card you can easily remove (unless of course the company is named after you).

Official Company Name: Here the Macquarie official name isn’t represented in the logo. Using a line clears that up without cluttering. Especially since (without doing much research on Macquarie) my guess is they have a lot of departments and business units that act as separate entities from the parent company.

Phone Number: You only need one, no exceptions. Put on the line you most want to be contacted by. I chose the direct line in this case.

Email: Basically, your emails should ideally serve two purposes. First and foremost, it should allow someone to contact you about the information you don’t have on your card (addresses, faxes, ect). Secondarily, it should also point someone to your company’s website. Some might not make the connection, but most people that I know discern what your site is from your email. The only time you actually need a URL on your card is if you’re using a separate mail service such as gmail or outlook.

Some people might take issues with my approach to business card design, but  with only a couple minutes taken to simplify it is both more easily read, remembered and useful.

Often, I get asked about working on spec and have to explain why it’s a bad idea and I don’t work without a contract and pay. Often I’ll try to explain, but potential clients will come up with dozens of reasons why their scenario is different from all the basic examples I’ll give. I’m just going to start routing them to this video, since it explains it in the most base of ways.

To sum things up for anyone not familiar with the matter, spec work is work based on the speculation (or hope) that you’ll be paid. It’s bad for the following reasons.

If you’re a designer, you’re doing work that is work money for free. Your time is worth a lot more. Also, you’re making life harder for other designers by training clients to see if they can get work for free every time a project comes up.

If you’re a client, by hiring a designer for free or entering a contest you’re throwing away the most important part of the client-designer process: your personal connection. Only through discussion and research can a designer know how to solve your problem in a thoughtful way. Can you imagine writing a summery of your physical ails and having 20 doctors write up diagnosis and you picking the “best” one? I didn’t think so.

If you’re a conman… Well, spec-work might be the best way for you to do as little work as possible and rake in some cash. If you can design 50 or so logos (for arguement’s sake), you can enter them in multiple contests with little chance of being caught.

Moral of the story? You get what you pay for.

Though there are some of web designers out there that go by the approach that any extra kbs required to load a site are a detriment to a site. I agree, for the most part, and always try to keep what I design relatively light on the pixel graphics. However, there’s a point where the crusade against the kbs crosses the line. One of those is having a loss of texture to your site.

It only takes a look at my work (just look at this blog) to see where my loyalties lie. I love texture. I try to put texture into my typography, design and illustration wherever I can. The reason is pretty simple why texture is important and a trend that I think will stick around a while: We live in a world full of texture. Any place you look, you’re confronted by texture. Mostly, we encounter this as paper (books, notepads, handouts). Even the most smooth and glossy look has a glossy feel to its texture. It’s a totally unavoidable sensation both visually and tactilly.

This is why when people claim that Instagram’s new website doesn’t feel as “human” as it’s old (and in my opinion inferior) user interface, I don’t really see what they’re talking about. Yes Instagram has gotten rid of much of it’s skeuomorphic elements, but by simplifying and retaining a light texture and slight—though a little played out—rounded edges of it’s boxes, it indeed feels VERY human. Especially when compared to its parent company’s site: Facebook.

What Instagram loses in the 9.13kb file size(1) it gains in the visual impact. The money lost in GBs downloaded is gained in user experience.

This is Apple's best shot at a notetaking app, and it's pre-tty sad.

Really, Apple? This is the best you can do?

Though I think this only goes to a point. Going too skeuomorphic can be a detriment. Just take a quick look at the worst notetaking app I could find on my iPhone 4S. Not only is Notes an awful program to use, it’s ugly and too kitsche for a company that should have known better. Going too far does the total opposite and turns people off.

So, like most other things, the lesson to take from all of this is:

Take all your design elements in moderation.

(1) If you multiply 9.13kb by, say, 120,000 people you get a bandwidth download of just over a GB of data. And Instagram has many more people accessing it’s website from twitter on the browser than that.

One of the things that I’ve never really seen first hand was the ability of communications I work on be ineffective. That’s right, ineffective. Fall flat on their face.

It might sound boastful but I’ve either always worked in places—both for others and for myself—where either you see results clearly after having time to craft a well-thought out communication or where the company is so big you’re too far from the front lines to see a reaction. In the former situations, my clients have always seemed to have great reactions from the audiences that they were targeting.

In a large company with a marketing department, however, things are so shortly timed that you’re just rushing and reacting quickly to get things out as quickly as possible. It’s much akin to throwing shit against a wall and seeing if it sticks. Most importantly, you see what works and what doesn’t. The result: the shit rarely sticks.

So you fling a little more.

Because of this I spend a lot of time analyzing why this might be. Occasionally I’m not happy with the visual communication part (my part) of things. Maybe something was rushed, maybe it was compromised and maybe I just cut one-to-many corners due to other pressing concerns. However, I think much of it is the fact that people have a finely tuned ability to detect bullshit.

Thinking about it logically, the ability to detect bullshit is something that our brains have evolved to do well to survive. Since we’ve been able to talk and communicate, you can be sure that we also developed the ability to lie. Detecting the bullshit is our counter-measure to the lie—something we’ve honed about as well as we have lying to each other.

So, when you come at people with what I call Marketer talk, it’s no wonder that you’re fighting the up-hill battle of being ignored by a majority of people. It’s vital to avoid this at all costs if you’re looking to communicate well. I’m not going to lie, it’s not just marketers that are guilty of marketer jargon and cliches: everyone is! It’s extremely hard to avoid. I’m guilty of it at times and so are you (you smart person reading my blog, you).

One way I  attempt to avoid falling into this pit is to follow a short checklist:

  • Do not talk down to your audience. They might not be all smart, but most of them are not dumb. Part of our built in bullshit detectors is to know when someone is talking down to us, even when we don’t know as much as the speaker.
  • Never, ever boast of absolutes. You don’t have the “most” or “best” anything. If it really is an absolute, people will spread the word after using/experiencing it.
  • Do not be everything to everyone. Identify who your main audience is and drive that nail, otherwise you’re not only watering down your message, but also wasting resources at the ground level to accommodate all people.
  • Do not try to explain all the details. Communication is like lingerie, a little bit will leave more to the imagination.
  • Do not use four words where three will do. Keep it simple and plain. If you want to work style into your points, work it into less words. It will have the benefit of looking more stylish, too.
  • Do not use more than 5 communication elements. Grade all your designs with the number 5. For every element you add (a logo, an image, a headline, a block of text) subtract one from that score. The higher the number, the better your communication will get through. (Disclosure: I personally like the number 3 when it comes to this rule. Also, make the number a bit higher if you have a captive audience… but always assume someone isn’t as captive as you think they are)
  • If you’re on the fence about something, cut it out. Err on the side of less.
  • If you don’t buy that, no one else will. This is what I know as the “Golden Rule of BS Detection.”

I find this list helps me out. Hopefully it’ll help you.