LogoLounge.com has posted and interesting article regarding trends in logo designs for 2009. A very cool read, and you will almost certainly come out inspired.

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Every year, thousands of new graphic designers flood into the creative world like eager salmon swimming upstream. They have the best of intentions, but just can't seem to find their target, and thus, get gobbled up by bears. But it's not their fault. They've bought into the notion that aesthetics are your primary concern as a designer. And in that goal, multitudes of designers are a success. But it's fools' gold. Have they done their job just by making something look sexy if they have neglected to properly transfer the thought from their medium to the viewer's mind?

The true test of a designer is when they can not only seize the attention, but guide the entire viewing experience from the moment that attention is won, to the last impression the viewer walks away with...to fully and completely communicate your message to the viewer in such a way that ambiguity should only occur when that is the intention. Do not misunderstand your job as a graphic designer: to communicate first. Making things pretty is secondary.

When you communicate, such as talking, your first goal is to transfer your thought to the mind of the listener. It's function first, and no amount of flowery embellishment will help if the basic thought is not conveyed. Graphic design is a language, and it has a structure that is as critical to understand as sentence structure is to a reader.

A sentence is composed of building blocks: verbs, adjectives, pronouns, and prepositions. Each of these elements, depending on where and how they are used in context, guide the reader to a complete understanding of the intended message. Likewise, design has similar building blocks: line, color, shape, type, and texture. Each of these have context-specific purposes as well. The key to understanding the language, is understanding how they work together to the best effect to convey your intended thought. And just like writing a story, you need to use these buildign blocks in a sequence for the story to make any sense. This takes a plan.

1) Get a plan

The first step is understanding what you are trying to communicate. This sounds simple enough, but there is some organization to be done before you can truly understand the message. You must first break down the message you think you need to communicate into a hierarchy, or in other words, define what is most important. For instance...say you are designing a concert poster. What is the most important element here? The band? The date? The venue? A headline? Once you have made the determination of what is most important, you can begin to assign priority. But at it's most essential level, you need to communicate the three most important points as quickly and as clearly as possible, because that's about all the time you have with an audience. If you do your job with the first three and the reader is intrigued by the subject matter, they can get the rest of the information at their leisure. Again, this seems very basic, but we are all guilty of taking this basic step for granted. We just start "playing jazz" instead of giving thought to the notes we are playing.

2) Guiding The Eye

Once you have organized your information into a hierarchy of importance, you can begin to rough in where the most important elements could reside, and begin experimenting with how to assign visual prominence to these elements...to allow each a time to shine without competing with the other. Good design isn't a shouting match. It's a gentlemanly conversation where each element awaits its turn to speak. The initial thought is to simply make something bigger to make it the loudest voice. But this isn't always the best way to draw attention to your most important element. The best solution might be carving out some negative space around your most important element to draw the eye to it. Or possibly just using an interesting typeface or color. Point is, there are many, many ways to accomplish your goal once you have figured out what the goal is.

Here, I used diagonals, color, and other elements to guide the eye.

Guiding the eye to the subsequent elements is then a bit like following the path of least resistance. Your eye is lazy, and it wants to just fall naturally wherever you lead it. Diagonal, whether literal or implied, are a great way to give your eye a ramp to glide down...leading the eye straight to your next item of importance. You can also you straight horizontal or vertical lines...or even implied lines created by the shapes in your type. Get creative in how you control the eye. Remember, YOU should control this conversation.

Another way to lead the eye is the oft-forgotten use of negative space. For instance...look in the back of the yellow pages where you see all these tiny ads competing with each other for your time. Where do you look first? Most likely, you don't have any idea where to look first. But, as mentioned above, your eye is a lazy organ. When overloaded with information, the eye simply wants to rest. Imagine, among all that noise, there is a largely empty ad space, with a very short and very simple message within. Your lazy eye will bed down in that nice and quiet little space and listen to it's bedtime story as you own its complete attention. You own the conversation at that point. The other lesson to be learned from negative space is this...sometimes you just need to shut up. Let the conversation breathe by giving your points of interest a little space. The less there is to compete with them, the more clearly they can be heard.

Michael Carpenter is a master of negative space and selective embellishment.3) Embellishment with purpose

That is not to say that a stark, minimalist approach is required for good communication. To the contrary, embellishment is a key to a good conveyance of information when used well. Without adjectives and adverbs, a sentence would be a dreadfully boring affair. Consider illustrations, bright colors, large shapes and type, etc. to be your color words. Just remember that, like when your friend calls something "awesome" every five minutes, it loses its meaning with overuse. Take that lesson into your design, and you'll see that sparing use of embellishments can make their appearance all the more meaningful. And if you use them in unconventional ways, then you get even more mileage from them.

4) Put it to the test

As we mature as designers, a process that hopefully never ends, the benefits of discipline in how we approach a project becomes all the more apparent. And that's really all this is about. Discipline to have a basic plan of what you are trying to communicate, and the discipline to organize that communication into a clear hierarchy of ideas so that you can guide the viewer where you want them to go. Learning this discipline is the design equivalent of snatching the pebble out of your master's hand. To truly test this skill, design a chart. In all my experience, there is no better exercise in putting function over aesthetics than that. And I mean, try something really mundane or obscure. Figure out the best way to organize the data and communicate it succinctly. Is it a graph? Is it a flowchart? Is it a completely new thing the world has yet to see? Who knows. The fun is figuring it out. After you've cracked the code on the best solution to organizing the data, THEN move on to figuring out a way to make it visually appealing. When you can organize your communication in a beautiful way that both captivates and informs, then you are a true design ninja. Grasshopper, you are now ready.

A great little article up at Design Observer with some good insights into being in the graphic design industry, particularly as a freelancer. >Check it out.