By now if you’re still reading this then that means I have made a few good decisions when designing this blog. From my personal banner, to the font type and color scheme, there are a lot of things to consider when developing a blog. In this post I will discuss some of the things you may need to consider down the road. That being whether you decide to create your own blog, or are hired to create one for a client.

The first thing you need to consider is platform. There are several different sites that allow you to produce a blog page. I chose wordpress.com because I had previous experience with it and had a general idea on how to customize it. However, there are other blog platforms such as blogger, wix, and squarespace. All offer the ability to create a blog, but wix and squarespace allow you to develop other types of websites as well. Each have different levels of customization so it is best to do some research before deciding on your platform.

From there you need to consider your/the subject for the blog. This will help with artistic decisions such as color scheme. If the blog is about gardening its good to use colors such as greens and dull oranges to mimic a terracotta pot. While a blog on space may want to have dark blues and purples. Along with color you must also decide on images. I created a simple banner with Affinity Designer to add some color to my page without it necessarily having to relate to my subject. If working with a client make sure to ask if they already had some ideas on colors and imagery.

Once the big picture is out of the way you can decide on the smaller details such as which type face to use. For more serious blogs it would be best to use a Serif font and for more fun and less serious blogs it would be better to use a Sans Serif font. Subtle details such as these can add a lot to a blog.

Based on my blog you can assume I am no master/expert blog creator. But its a good idea to think about these kind of things early on while still developing your career interests. This way you’d have more time to experiment and practice your skills so you’re ready for the challenge when the time comes.

Not all graphic design involves static material such as posters and billboards. As I had mentioned in my last post, jobs like a multimedia designer involving working with video and audio. I’d like to discuss another project I worked on while earning my Bachelor’s degree.

For a Digital Literacy course, we were tasked with creating a 30-sec piece of audio for online radio. The theme for the semester was the 80s. I decided to create a commercial for the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, which came out in 1984. This was the first audio assignment I had ever worked on, so I had some difficulties getting it to a higher level of quality. As I had mentioned in an old post, there are creative common resources, which means they are free to use under certain conditions, that are available on several different websites. For this project, I got all of my sounds effects and music from freesound.org. This is an excellent place for beginners to find sound samples.

Along with finding the audio samples, I was also in charge of writing my own script and editing the final cut of audio. To record and edit all of my audio, I used a free software called Audacity. I’d recommend using it if you’re just starting out with audio editing.

This is a great project to try, and I’d highly recommend giving it a try. First, choose a product you’d like to sell. Next, write up a script and write down what kinds of sound effects you want. Search through sites such as freesound.org and collect your audio files together. Finally, use a program like Audacity to record your script, add in the effects, and export your audio file. Feel free to upload your final project to a site like SoundCloud and share your link in the comments.