A trio of professionals describe life behind the scenes of artistic design

With how much media we consume, it can be easy to take graphic designers for granted. When we turn on the TV, we don’t think about what colors were used in an ad or how the font for the TV guide was chosen. And yet, someone had to make those decisions.

Take this magazine you are reading for example. All the decisions from the font size to the design theme were hand-selected by our Niche Publications Graphic Designer, Julie Barichello. Through her creativity, she breathes new life into articles like this one. “A lot of it is working those puzzle pieces together of text, photos, and graphics, and then packaging it into something that is easy for readers to digest,” shares Barichello.

Her favorite moment, however, is seeing the final product. “The second it’s in your hands, it’s like opening a Christmas present,” emphasizes Barichello. “I know what every single page looks like, but it looks different when it’s printed. It’s just a great feeling when I can finally see it at its finished stage.”

The joy of seeing the final product is also felt by screen printers like Andrew Heppner, owner of Black Cactus Print House in Batavia. Screen printers make and produce graphics on a variety of materials through a mesh screen. This manual art medium can make it difficult to recreate computerized images, but Heppner’s twelve years in the business has allowed him to find uncommon solutions.

“Make sure to design knowing what the output is going to be,” advises Heppner. “If I’m designing a poster versus a t-shirt, I have a different set of tools I bring to the table. Those little details can make a really big difference.” Heppner has expanded this mindset into Black Cactus’s newly launched marketing firm, Nothing Firm, which aims to provide art direction to small and medium-sized businesses through both physical and digital marketing.

The internet has become a hotspot for marketing, with most businesses now owning and running their own website. But these sites don’t just show up on their own; they need to be coded and designed by website designers like Randy Baum, owner of Randy Baum Design in Geneva.

When building a site, Baum emphasizes the importance of loading speed. “The majority of people who visit websites want it to load fast. No one likes to wait for anything, so the speed and performance of your website is critical. It’s also something that Google will rank your website on.” Through various lines of code and design tweaks, Baum is able to optimize his client’s websites and bring them to the top of the search list, a feat that can be difficult to obtain if not for his online prowess.

The skills of each of these individuals is nuanced and requires years of training, but to see their work come to fruition makes it all feel worth it. It’s time to raise the curtain and acknowledge the person behind the screen, behind the art, and behind the page.