Hi everyone, let me start by saying I'm the opposite of a graphic designer I.e NOT a graphic designer!
I recently started to learn how to make videos for youtube. So far, it has been a very difficult learning curve, and I'm far from considering myself reasonably competent.
I am trying to keep costs to an absolute minimum by doing what I can myself, or learning what I can. Obviously, this has limitations, having only just started on a completely foreign career path.
My initial videos used text to instruct viewers on what to do, but I want to appeal to the widest market possible by using animations and symbols etc.
I wanted to denote that some of my videos are for laptop/large screen and some are for mobile phone. Initially I spent time designing a TICK (check mark) in photoshop, overlayed it on the video, and duplicated it 3 times to convey that mobile phone is ok (1 tick), a tablet is better (2 ticks) and laptop or monitor is best (3 ticks), only to discover that a tick in Sweden and Finland means the opposite of good, and a cross (X) mean different things, too! So I had wasted hours doing what I thought was good, only to find out that I need to replace (redo) parts of my videos.... but with what? I thought maybe a 'thumbs up' would denote good, too. But the thumbs up symbol in West Africa and the Middle East means 'up yours!'
What are the best ways to convey a particular meaning that are universal, so I'm not inadvertently offending an entire country or region?
How do you graphic designers get around issues like this?
Thanks
I recently started to learn how to make videos for youtube. So far, it has been a very difficult learning curve, and I'm far from considering myself reasonably competent.
I am trying to keep costs to an absolute minimum by doing what I can myself, or learning what I can. Obviously, this has limitations, having only just started on a completely foreign career path.
My initial videos used text to instruct viewers on what to do, but I want to appeal to the widest market possible by using animations and symbols etc.
I wanted to denote that some of my videos are for laptop/large screen and some are for mobile phone. Initially I spent time designing a TICK (check mark) in photoshop, overlayed it on the video, and duplicated it 3 times to convey that mobile phone is ok (1 tick), a tablet is better (2 ticks) and laptop or monitor is best (3 ticks), only to discover that a tick in Sweden and Finland means the opposite of good, and a cross (X) mean different things, too! So I had wasted hours doing what I thought was good, only to find out that I need to replace (redo) parts of my videos.... but with what? I thought maybe a 'thumbs up' would denote good, too. But the thumbs up symbol in West Africa and the Middle East means 'up yours!'
What are the best ways to convey a particular meaning that are universal, so I'm not inadvertently offending an entire country or region?
How do you graphic designers get around issues like this?
Thanks