Graphic design: the face of Alaska businesses.

• Author: Anderson, Tasha
• Position: MARKETING

Note: This is part one of a three part series exploring the graphic design industry in Alaska.

It was in college during a senior seminar that it first occurred to me that someone wrote the text on a bleach bottle. Not only was it written--instead of, say, spontaneously manifesting--it was written, vetted, edited, reviewed, approved, and then probably tweaked again. And what I really understood in that moment was not that there was too much investment into a simple label, but that the label of a bottle sold worldwide to who knows how many billions of people each year is no simple thing.

Alaska businesses take their message to the Alaska, national, and international business communities just as seriously. For most companies, the most basic symbol of what they are and what they do is a name and a graphic: a logo. Simple, right?

Visual Conduit

In terms of logo design, "I feel designers are the visual conduit between [a company's] mission statement and the visual voice or message that they want to convey to their audience," says Annie Brace, owner of Corso Graphics. And that can be difficult since clients don't always know what they want their logo to say or perhaps don't know how to articulate that message in a visual form. Brace continues, "Sometimes a client gives you the kitchen sink in terms of what they want in their logo ... and it's your job to take that information and meld it together to create a mark that captures the personality and message of that company in a clear and concise way."

She says the process isn't always easy, but her job is to pare it down and deliver a product that her client will love and recognize as representing their goals.

On the other hand, Mike Kirkpatrick, owner of Screamin' Yeti Designs, says sometimes clients don't provide any guidance at all, and while the freedom to be totally creative can be positive, it also has its risks. "Sometimes I get creative ideas, but I'm headed south and their ideas are headed north," Kirkpatrick says. "Even a little inkling of a direction or an idea--it can be a sketch on a bar napkin or a stick figure or just the logo of another business" can keep the creative process on track. "I just need a baseline, and then I can go from there."

It's very possible for a good design to not be the right design for a given company, and sometimes a great idea isn't the right idea for a project, which can be frustrating, Kirkpatrick says. "Sometimes you can be working on an awesome project and...