Accomplished musicians are keen appreciators of good design.
Musical design elements, of course. Form. Harmonic movement. Thematic development. Phrasing. Melodic framework. Orchestration.
Visual elements are important to musicians–elements such as staff layout on the page, page turns, clarity of notation.
Not to mention such design elements as programming, stage design, concert attire, and standing arrangements.
And yet, we are not necessarily as keen at understanding and implementing good visual design. In the age of social media, this becomes increasingly important. Since a good portion of our audience listens with their eyes, it’s vital that we not undermine our musical excellence with visual mediocrity.
A few ways to consider developing visual design skills:
- Do some casual reading of design websites or magazines. I closely follow Debbie Millman and Tina Roth Eisenberg, among others.
- Take a basic design class – especially focusing on using good design software, such as InDesign. Having gotten good at InDesign, I can’t imagine making a concert program look good in a word processor like MS-Word or Google Docs.
- Google “choir logo.” You’ll see lots of good ones and lots of not-so-good ones. What designs do you respond to? Consider working on your own choir logo, incorporating elements you like – or commissioning a design on a website like VistaLogos.
- Try an aided design app like Typorama to create text with stock images. Apps like this one are helpful because they’ve devised some well-designed looks that you don’t have to reinvent. You can also use watermarks to add your newly designed logo to your images!
Most of us, musicians, can’t afford to hire someone to take care of the visual design elements of our online and offline presence. So we must take a little time out of our musical work to develop those design skills so that we can present ourselves with at least a fair visual representation of our musical skills.