Branding – Old School to Present

Way back in the day, cutting my teeth in the Graphics industry was a lot of fun with great buddies to work with and so much to learn and explore in an ever evolving industry. (Not to mention the youthful exuberance and endless energy…I think I miss that the most)

The tools of the Graphics industry back “In the day” were of the old school variety, the design work was done with actual ink and masks were hand cut on Rubylith to create large fills of color.  All of the elements of the finished piece were then loaded onto a 15 foot horizontal camera and set to whatever scale or percentage of the original you wanted.

The resulting film was hand fed through the developer, rinsed off and dried for the next step in the process which was also photographic in shooting the resulting image onto a direct emulsion coated screen, rinsed off then dried…Wow…that used to take a while to do and was a process I still hold close to my heart.

Now  I “live” in the Adobe creative suite and can effectively create a design today in less time than it took to change the developer fluid in the old days…I don’t miss that part..blech.

Having the old school fundamental experiences has given me a solid understanding of the techniques and the process involved in creating designs and layouts, but the end result has never changed.

Branding is the process of creating, broadcasting and circulating your brand name and creating an image for your business.

Branding can be applied to your entire corporate identity as well as to your visual identity which includes everything from logos to business cards and stationary to packaging to advertisements as well as online presence.

The visual identity component is what always interested me, designing a  logo that is strong and transfers well to the business card which transfers well to the signage and all other graphics, each component should resemble the other including your online presence.

I have always taken great joy and pride in creating new corporate identity packages for aspiring business people ,  or giving a facelift to a business sitting on a plateau.

Either way I chuckle to myself when I think back upon the old school ways versus the new age techniques and I salute the graphic designers old enough…and fortunate enough…to have experienced both worlds….cheers!