Greg Yoder Graphic Design – Lancaster, PA

Designing for Emotion – Book Review

Greg Yoder — Tue, 14 Feb 2012 04:38:07 +0000

I just finished reading Designing for Emotion, by Aarron Walter. It’s another fantastic addition to the “A Book Apart” series (brief books for people who make websites). Aarron works as lead user experience designer for MailChimp, so he knows a thing or two about making design more emotionally engaging and building brand loyalty.

The premise of the book is that in addition to websites being functional, reliable, and usable, they should also provide their visitors with a pleasurable experience. Why can’t visiting a website and completing a task online be fun, and not just functional? Like Aarron says:

We need a new yardstick to measure the success of our designs. We can transcend usability to create truly extraordinary experiences.

This book makes the case that when you create “truly extraordinary experiences,” you can expect improved conversion rates, improved sales figures, increased brand loyalty, etc. The book delves into human psychology, and principals of design and branding. It explains how to shape website content with a distinct voice/personality. Theory is backed up by case studies from websites such as Wufoo, Betabrand, Twitter, Photojojo, Mint.com, Dropbox, (and of course MailChimp), among others.

For anyone involved in creating websites or working in an online or web-related business, I would highly recommend picking up a copy of Designing for Emotion. Aarron is a great writer, and like the other “A Book Apart” books, this is a quick read and is full of full-color images that illustrate the content.

I’m excited to continue pushing “emotional design” concepts with some current and upcoming projects. I’ll post some new work soon, so stay tuned!

Find me on Facebook

Greg Yoder — Sat, 04 Feb 2012 21:42:08 +0000

I’ve been using Facebook for a while, but only recently created a business page for Greg Yoder Graphic Design. Check it out, and when you get there, click “Like” so that you can follow me. I promise, I won’t bombard your Facebook news feed with posts you don’t want to see! Honest.

Looking back at an older project – banner design

Greg Yoder — Fri, 13 Jan 2012 20:41:30 +0000

I’ve got a lot of exciting projects in the works for 2012. However, I’d also like to use this blog to highlight some past projects I’ve done over the years.

Back in 2004, Lancaster Theological Seminary asked me to design a banner for their graduating class at the time. The theme was “Called to Serve.” After exploring some different ideas, I settled on this concept . . .

Example of one of the traced hands

Each graduating class member did a tracing of their hand on a white sheet of paper. We scanned the papers and then I did a vector art tracing of the hands to use as part of the final artwork that I created in Adobe Illustrator. The hands appear to be launching out into the world.

The banners are used outside the LTS main building at various times. It was a fun project, and I really liked the participatory aspect of how each graduate had a “hand” in the final artwork.

Old hand-painted signs around town

Greg Yoder — Fri, 09 Dec 2011 23:22:52 +0000

In a recent post about my new logo, I mentioned that I’ve been influenced by the typography I see on the old buildings around town. There are some amazing signs that have been hand-painted directly on the brick of various warehouses and businesses. Some of these signs are old and fading and will eventually disappear. Fortunately, some of these signs have been restored as a way of preserving the unique character of the building – even if the original business is no longer in existence.

Here are some samples of these signs. I will add to this gallery as I come across more.

iPhone photography

Greg Yoder — Thu, 01 Dec 2011 05:41:13 +0000

My iPhone has been opening up a whole new world of photography for me recently – probably because it is so convenient to snap photos, and I always have it with me. Here is a composite panoramic photo I took in Clearfield County, Pennsylvania recently. I took several photos of this amazing sky and pieced them roughly in PhotoShop just to play around and see how it might turn out.

Here are a couple photos taken in Virginia when visiting relatives during Thanksgiving. Both of these were edited on my iPhone using some photography apps.

Rebranding EMM – highlighting a recent project

Greg Yoder — Sat, 26 Nov 2011 02:10:59 +0000

In the last year, I completed a comprehensive rebranding for Eastern Mennonite Missions. Above shows the logo/taglines before and after. See more »

Is your website mobile friendly?

Greg Yoder — Mon, 21 Nov 2011 23:10:02 +0000

Gone are the days when you can expect to have your website viewed only on computer monitors. People are connected to the internet through a wide range of devices now in addition to desktop and laptop computers. How does your website look on:

smartphones like the iPhone or Android phone?
tablets like iPad?
TVs?

If you don’t like the way your website looks on these different devices, contact me and we can talk about how we might adapt your site to be more scalable / responsive in nature. It is usually advantageous to have a website that can adapt to different screen sizes rather than one site for desktop computers and a separate site for mobile users.

Making a site “responsive” in nature is done by employing some HTML and CSS magic, creating . . .

Flexible, page layout grids/structures
Flexible, scalable images and media
CSS3 media queries to allow for custom styling at different screen widths
And last but not least, excellent craftsmanship and attention to detail when building the site

Kudos to Ethan Marcotte and his recently published book, Responsive Web Design. I found it very helpful and has been influential in my recent approach to designing/building websites.

My new logo

Greg Yoder — Sun, 20 Nov 2011 23:09:01 +0000

A designer’s biggest challenge is often developing their own logo/brand. Doing this work for a client seems so much more clear-cut. After working on my logo on-again-off-again for a number of weeks, I arrived at a solution that I felt represented me well.

Logo/tagline combination

The design is my reaction against slick “Web 2.0″ style logos (i.e. the new Xerox logo, among others). This design harkens back to Lancaster City’s industrial past and the typographic styles from that era – some of which can be seen on the historic warehouses and business buildings around town. See some examples. »

Logo without tagline

I also decided to incorporate a descriptive tagline “Web. Print. Visual identity.” as part of the logo but it can also be shown without the tagline, depending on the context.

Variations of the logo

A good logo should be adaptable so that it can work well in color, grayscale, black and white, and white against a dark background as shown above. This is one of the things I always try to ensure whenever I am designing a logo for my clients.

Welcome to my freshly revamped site!

Greg Yoder — Fri, 18 Nov 2011 22:05:04 +0000

Check it on your smartphone

At long last, gregyoder.com has a new look and fresh content. For the last few years it was a classic case of “The cobblers children not having shoes.” My own website hadn’t been a good reflection of the skills and attention to detail that I put into practice for my client work. So that all has changed. Please take a look around. I plan to add project images and photos to this blog section of the site regularly, so keep checking back to keep tabs on what I’m doing.

It’s “responsive”

Built using HTML5 markup and the magic of CSS3 media queries, this site has been custom-designed to adapt to whatever device you are using to view it… whether an iPhone, a tablet, a desktop computer, or your TV. Test it out just by resizing your web browser window.

Not only business

In addition to project samples, I also plan to post technical information about creating/coding websites, as well as just some fun photos and entries from my life so you can get to know me.