project details
Client: Arts Garage
Completed: 2014
Project Duration: 3 months
Budget: N/A
Introduction:
Arts Garage is a local favorite venue located in the Pineapple Grove Arts District of downtown Delray Beach. The venue attracts visitors from all over town to enjoy live theatrical performances by featured musicians, playwrights and other artists. They also host youth classes for theater, dance, visual art and music.
Problem:
Upon joining the team at Arts Garage in the fall of (2014?), there wasn't much design structure in terms of brand guidelines, color palette or other decision-making aids. All that existed was a vague trend in layout and design that had no concrete rules and was often modified without cross-referencing other related materials.
solution:
After designing the first few print ads and flyers, I began to pick up on which layouts were received best by the crew. There was at least a trend to the placement of important elements like logos and sponsor content. So I began using design elements from previous successful compositions and created a theme and palette for each art area or event type. Educational materials were kept visually consistent across flyers and registration forms, while displaying an individuality separate from that of the company's other marketing materials.
Problem:
There was definitely an issue around the advertising culture of having too much to say, but not enough room in the budget to buy enough publication space. Many tasks involved formatting a page worth of information into a quarter page print ad, with photos. There was a lot of instruction to "just make it work" only to be met later with "this isn't legible" or "let's cut it down some yeah?".
solution:
Not a big solution to this one other than a lesson in dealing with non-designers who make the rules. I don't understand why people hire designers only to dictate exactly what should go where, how large it should appear, what font, color, background to use, etc. even if these decisions are not the best use of their money. Trust me, I love a client who know what they want just as much as the next designer but, there also needs to be some trust to allow the designer to expose any weak points in your visual message. Especially when paying to have your message in a publication, designers are going to prioritize communicating it clearly with readers over satisfying client-imposed design requests that may impede this main objective.
My time spent here at Arts Garage culminated with being told that my "style doesn't fit the brand" after organizing all design documents, creating standard form templates, and structuring some semblance of brand guidelines. Later I learned it was simply a budget issue, that I ended up being too expensive to keep after I'd created all the copy-and-paste tools I needed to make my job easier. So they replaced me with someone cheaper to use those very same design tools and structured layouts.
Probably the best decision in the long run not to look back. I learned a lot about people during my time spent at this position. There was a lot of culture around back-door politics and awarding project bids internally to favorite coworkers and colleagues.
