Swipe files can reveal a lot about yourself

Thursday’s Management Tip for Graphic Designers

Swipe files can reveal a lot about your tastes. It can also solidify graphic design concepts you’ve picked up along the way. Or, if you are a beginner, it can show you what style you are leaning towards.

Keeping a swipe file is an education in what professional design is and what goes into creating a pleasing design.

Why should you keep a swipe file

1. Keep up with trends. Categorizing your swipe file into fields (financial, pharmaceutical, food industry, etc…) is a great way of noting what trends are used. You can learn about: color palette, font choices, design styles and formats, to name a few.
2. See what other designers are doing. Innovative type treatments, color combinations, etc…
3. Serves as inspiration for your own work
4. Teach yourself about page composition and balance
5. Learn different printing styles
6. Notice different bindery styles, die-cuts and folds available
7. See the effect of using a variety of types of papers how they print
8. Observe the effect of printed color with paper type
9. See what style you are leaning toward (professional, whimsical, lots of white space, dark pages, …)
10. Find out why certain pieces work and why

What should you keep?

That’s different for everyone. I keep things that inspire me, are good design-wise, and that catch my eye. I keep a variety of formats: brochure, ads, stationery, magalogs, magazine articles that I like.

I also keep:

1. Layouts that I think are great
2. “Original” designs
3. “Concept” pieces that I think are good
4. Color combinations that are pleasing and/or that I would never have thought to use together
5. Great typographical treatments
6. Clever use of filters and effects
7. Nicely printed pieces
8. Things printed on beautiful paper
9. Clever bindery, folds, and cuts to the design
10. By industry (I’m particularly drawn to financial and health)

C O N C L U S I O N

Sometimes, what I keep are not entire works but sections or cut outs — such is the case with typographical treatments or colors. Other times I keep the whole since I love keeping things that work intact (to see how they work together).

I also want to address a negative use of the swipe file: using it to “copy” someone’s design. To knowingly and consciously copy someone’s design is dishonest, unprincipled, and plain unethical. It will happen that your design “looks” like someone else’s. Our brain after all takes a lot into our subconscious, but to knowingly set out to copy someone else’s design and pass it off as your own is a no-no in my books. It’s cheating.

I’ve seen many design portfolios that copy designs and pass them off as their own. What’s horrible about this is that design is much more than just a technique. You have to have an eye (and imagination) for design. Copying someone else’s hard work (and thought that went into the design) is just plain wrong in my view!

Technorati Tags: Design Theory, Management, The good, the bad, & the ugly

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