Graphic Design Portfolio
Vital for Website Construction
It’s critical to have a proficient command of graphic design to build websites and create any necessary assets for digital marketing.
How we use Graphic Design for Websites & Brand Identity Projects
Graphic Design is a part of our daily toolset in designing or developing websites, and we use several Adobe products:
- Adobe Illustrator primarily for vector graphics
- Adobe Photoshop
- Adobe Fireworks — this is our go-to day-to-day tool for web/digital graphics.
- Adobe InDesign — normally for items like infographics or deliverables that require very crisp text using specialized font sets.
Even when a third-party graphic designer supplies the design assets for a website, our graphic design skills are still required to optimize, crop, change file format, or pick colors when we’re not provided a definitive brand standard document color specs.
What’s a composite image?
According to Meriam Webster: “a composite photograph is made by combining several distinct photographs either made one over another on the same plate or made on one print from a number of negatives.”
For an image composite, using a software tool like Adobe Photoshop, multiple images can be combined, or the software tool can be utilized to manipulate existing pixels. Frequently when we perform an image search that meets a specific creative brief, we cannot find one that fulfills all criteria. Budgets usually do not permit a custom photo shoot; composite images enable a budget-friendly option.
Creative by Clark’s Portfolio
In keeping with our brand, we created a composite image for our Portfolio pages. Slide the handle to see the Before & After results.
Changing Seasons… Sort of…
The Haven of Hope used the images below on their previous website. This nonprofit organization supported cancer patients and families, and its brand identity metaphorically used the icon of a strong tree. The organization was absorbed into a hospital network. Our vision was to present an unchanging tree with noticeable season changes.
It’s Magic
A customer wanted to display “strong businessman hands” holding a blue crystal orb. Well, surprisingly a search of Royalty Free Stock images returned a few possibilities. We found the right hands holding a world globe and another image with the blue crystal orb. However, we didn’t like the hands holding the blue crystal. We worked some composite magic to make the client happy.
Richens/Timm Academy of Irish Dance
Print Recital Program: A Celtic Kaleidoscope
For anyone familiar with traditional Irish Dance, the costumes are colorful and robust with Celtic design. The Richens/Timm Academy of Irish Dance – originally founded by the late Ann Richens, was Internationally recognized not only for turning out World Champions but also for their iconic school dress.
For a special tribute recital program cover, we took a photograph of their school dress—with vibrant embroidery and kick panels—and created our vision of a Kaleidoscope.
Richens/Timm Academy of Irish Dance Dancers wearing school dress
Isolated Richens/Timm School Dress front
Further isolate Richens/Timm school dress skirt
Single dress panel triangle
Form the Kaleidoscope of single dress panels arranged in a circle
Richens/Timm Dance Recital - Celtic Kaleidoscope Program show creation progression
Recreate Artwork from Photography/Scan
A few hours before the publisher deadline, we had not received the artwork for a full-color back program cover for Colonial Music. They could not locate their source files except for a grayscale template. With very little time, we were able to locate a damaged hard copy of a previous back cover ad from the same advertiser.
We worked some fast magic.
Image 1 – Colonial Music Grayscale Artwork provided to us with no components
Image 2 – A scanned copy of the damaged previous back cover artwork
Image 3 – Our recreation within a couple of hours. Not perfect, but given the constraints, it was as close as we could get without official resources: logo and other brand elements, fonts, official colors, or other assets.
No Re-Shool Possible
A beautiful outdoor project required a bit more color for a print piece and to take on a more finished, live-with appearance. It was not possible to disturb the owners for a staged photoshoot. Creating a composite photo with some components from royalty-free stock images solved the issue.