Has the thought of putting a newsletter together ever crossed your mind? As a business person, you know the value of keeping in touch with your client base, even if its only once in a while. You start it and before long it is relegated to the back burner as more pressing matters compete for your time. Six months later the remnants of your thoughts and writings come to the forefront as if to remind you of your forgotten task.

Ours did over the holidays—for the third or fourth time now—and I finally realized it is an important part of our business plan and needs to come out from under the coffee cup.

As both designers and producers of paper and web-based newsletters, we caution our clients to be prepared with at least three to four issues in advance. Should they find themselves to busy to prepare an issue, one is already at hand. It is critically important that once you start with a monthly, bimonthly or quarterly issue, that you continue. Your customers will be expecting it and delays or missed issues will reflect on you and your company as being unable to meet simple deadlines.

Well, here it is—at last—and along with it, our commitment to bring you an informative and entertaining publication. In naming our newsletter we thought we’d pick a name that suited our profession and we know that other designers understand right away. Yes, we work during the day, but those real creative moments come when all is quiet and usually, after the clock strikes twelve!

Each issue will address a particular design topic as well as little tidbits of information to make some of your tasks simpler. From “Cheap Tricks” to helpful tips, we hope to help you with your visual design needs. We also encourage questions “A reader asks…” that we can answer in a future issue.

In upcoming issues we will look at types of logos, branding, colour and the voice of type. Yes, presented properly, type speaks volumes!

We hope to answer the question, “What does a graphic designer do?” We all know what illustrators, photographers and writers do. As graphic designers our role is to take these elements and put them together in a dynamic manner and that the text is smooth, flowing and pleasant to read.

Take a look at book & magazine covers, product labels on the shelves, the signs in the windows and isles of your favourite store. What attracts your eyes? What made you pick up that particular box? Chances are it was a combination of illustrations, photos and type, the realm of the graphic designer.

So, for this our premier issue, I thought we'd start off with what most design work is about, the many faces of type. Take a moment to flip through the pages and we hope you enjoy After Midnight.

Creative Director
Koster Interactive Design Inc.

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