Design Checklist

{ July 16, 2008 @ 6:35 pm } · { rant }
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Design Checklist

Things to do before sending a design off to print

 

  1. Check design over for spelling mistakes
  2. Ensure fonts are:
    1. Embedded in file
    2. Converted to outlines
  3. Make sure images are
    1. Embedded in file
    2. Properly linked and being sent with file
  4. Check file dimensions to ensure that they are correct
  5. Save file in format accepted by printer/client/whomever
  6. Check file size, compress if too big
  7. Submit work according to guidelines given
  8. Contact the recipient to ensure everything is ok on their end.
  9. Rejoice in being done of project

 

I’m sure there are other things that I’m forgetting. If I think of a crucial steps, I will add them later.

Image Crop

{ July 15, 2008 @ 6:17 pm } · { tutorial }
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Pasting inside.

Ever wonder how you take a photo, or other object and cut it so it’s only visible in a box or other shape?
I’m going to do this for Illustrator, cause I always forget how to do this in Illustrator, and in Freehand you just go up to Paste Inside.

Step One
Open your file.

Step Two
Place your image or design or whatever onto the page.

Step Three
Take your shape (box, circle, etc.) and put it on top of the image.

tep Four
Select both objects (making sure the shape is above the object needing to be cropped) and go to OBJECT > CLIPPING PATH > MAKE

Step Five
Realize you wanted to crop a different area? Don’t panic. Just click on the object you cropped with your DIRECT SELECT TOOL

And move the outlined, but not entirely visible object around until it’s just right.

Step Six
Realize your box or other shape is not quite right? Use your DIRECT SELECT TOOL and ever so carefully select one of the ANCHOR POINTS so that it is filled in. I have found no easy way to do this (unlike with Freehand) other than guessing exactly where the point must be and clicking. (the mouse also changes slightly when it’s over an anchor point, but it can still be finicky) Now, you’ll probably want to SHIFT+CLICK another corner so that you can expand the object or shrink it or whatever.

Step Seven
Finish the design, cause you’re done of your cropping!

Of course, you can also make your image cropped and the proper size in Photoshop (which is highly recommended) but remember, in Illustrator, you’re not limited to boxes. Have fun!

Step by step guide

{ July 14, 2008 @ 5:05 pm } · { rant }
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Design process, step by step guide.

 

  1. Decide you need to design something.
  2. Find out any limitations this project may have.
    1. Size (if it’s a webpage, make sure it will fit on the screen, if it’s a newspaper ad, find out which size they offer will best suits your needs, etc.)
    2. Colours (if it’s for the web you’ll be able to use full colour, but for printed products the number of colours used is often limited by price.)
  3. Look at similar designs and lots of them. Figure out what works and what doesn’t.
  4. Take out your sketchbook and start thumbnailing some ideas. (This means draw some very small, very messy sketches that represent what the final piece should look like.)
    1. Don’t stop at one idea. Force yourself to draw 30 or 40 thumbnails. They don’t take that long and it forces you to look at the problem from all angles. Even if you end up choosing the first sketch, more than likely you’ll be using some of the elements from your other sketches.
    2. Don’t get caught up in details. A squiggly line to represent text is fine. A blob that looks more like a coffee stain than a person’s profile is fine too. As long as you can go back and remember what it was meant to represent, that’s all that matters, no one else will be looking at these sketches.
  5. Go over your idea and make sure that it suits the product. Keep in mind who your target audience is and what they are most likely to respond to. Research is necessary at this stage.
  6. Take three of your sketches and develop them to the next level. At this stage you want to go full size (yup, that means measuring) and start adding some colour and detail. You can do this stage completely by hand–drawing an object where you plan to have a photo later–or you can go right to the computer and do the comprehensive there. But remember, you are doing three and so you don’t want to spend a ton of time on these. They aren’t meant to be perfect, just give you a better idea of what the finished design will look like.
  7. Now is when you decide if your wonderful idea is really going to work. Be brutally honest. Just cause you spent a lot of time on the design, doesn’t mean it’s going to look good or work. You may have to go back to step 4 or even step 3 to get to the heart of the design. Don’t feel discouraged though, everyone has had to scrap a project and start again before. Trust me, going back now is much easier than going back after it’s been printed and thinking, “Dang that doesn’t work at all.”
  8. If the project is for a client, this is when you show them what you have. They will choose one for you to continue with or tell you to start over.
  9. If you don’t have a client, (or if you are the client) look at your designs and choose which one is going to work the best. This choice is not necessarily your favorite.
  10. You’re head will probably be feeling pretty fuzzy by this point to step away for a bit. Do something else entirely if you can.
  11. Now sit down and do the design.
  12. Go back and check for mistakes (“Sweat the small stuff,” as my instructor used to say)
  13. Get someone else to check for mistakes, preferably someone who’s had no input into the design so far. They are more likely to see problems than someone who has seen the design half a dozen times.
  14. Get approval from the client. It’s quite possible they won’t like the design even if its one they chose from an option of three. People are fickle. Just remember they are paying you (hopefully) and that you need to smile, nod and make their changes. If there is anything you don’t agree with, try to explain to them why their suggestion wont work. But remember, the customer is always right, so don’t be rude about your explanation, and don’t talk down to them.
  15. Take a big breath
  16. Make any last minute changes.
  17. Get final approval
  18. Send to printer/publisher
  19. Pat yourself on the back for all of your hard work.
  20. Move on to your next project.

White Background

{ July 11, 2008 @ 5:04 pm } · { tutorial }
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How do you get rid of that ugly background on a picture so it’s just white?

Well this one is a toughy that I am by no way an expert at. I’ve read many different techniques to getting rid of backgrounds, and many of them are much more precise than this one, but I find this technique fairly quick and painless.

First open up your photo in PHOTOSHOP.

Next make sure the image is not the background layer. The easiest way to do this is go over to your layers and Double Click on the background layer. A new window will open to make a new layer. You can rename it or just leave it as is and click OK.

Once you’ve unlocked the layer, select the MAGNETIC LASSO TOOL from the toolbar. It’s hidden behind the LASSO TOOL. Now click somewhere on the edge of the image that you want to cut out, and follow along the outline. You do not have to click again after the initial click, it will find its own way to the outline.

Upon circling the item you’re cropping out, you have to click your mouse on the same spot where you started the trace. A tiny empty circle will show up beside your mouse icon to tell you that you linking the finish dot with the start dot.

Beneath the colour buttons on the Tool Bar, you will see two boxes with dotted circles inside them. The one that is usually active is the EDIT IN STANDARD MODE. You want to click EDIT IN QUICK MASK MODE. There should now be a redish colour over all of the background, while the rest looks the same as usual.

Now select your PAINTBRUSH tool and paint in any part of the image you want to be white that isn’t currently red. I used a hard edge sized 50 brush for this.

Now select your eraser and erase any area of red that may be cutting into the photo. Again I used a hard edge sized 50 for the erasing. Remember if you go to far either way, you can just refill or erase that area.

Now return to EDIT IN STANDARD MODE. Go up to EDIT – COPY.

OPEN a new document. This should automatically choose the appropriate size for your copied image. Now PASTE the images into the new document. Tada! You have your image with no background.

There are tricks to making the edges smoother, one of which is to change the feather radius before you COPY and PASTE. Another is to go around the edge with a SOFT ROUND BRUSH. But unless you have a lot of time or need professional quality, this is not really necessary.

Just so you know, I probably wont have any post this weekend, and this will probably be the norm. I hope I’m not dissapointing anyone. Have a good weekend!

White space, friend or foe?

{ July 10, 2008 @ 1:44 pm } · { rant }
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A trend I see in a lot of new designers and even more often in clients, is that they don’t understand that less is more. You don’t need to have your entire company’s history, the name and face of every single employee, 15 different colours, and absolutely no white space for people to understand what you do. Say you’re a construction company, do you need to have 10 construction workers, the yellow and black stripes of construction signs, a construction site and every single bit of equipment on the same ad? No, just take one element and make it work..

Heinz Ketchup has this wonderful ad which is at least 50% white space, and it works. You might not get it at first glance, but if the image is interesting enough, almost everyone will spend the extra second to figure it out. On the other hand, an image that’s too busy will be overlooked entirely.

Just remember, just because you have a design out there, doesn’t mean people are going to stop and look. You have to give them a reason to. A trick when examining one of your brilliant designs, step back and say, “if I saw this in a magazine/website/banner/whatever/ and I had no idea who had made it, would I still like it?” Then be brutally honest with yourself. Truth hurts, but that’s the only way you grow. Please, please remember, white space is your friend and doesn’t need to be filled in with pointless images.

BTW, if you’re wondering why I’m not showing examples of bad design, it’s because I don’t want to accuse anyone of doing bad work. This would just cause trouble, and I’m not one for trouble. If I decide that I need to show an example of what I would consider bad design, I will make it myself. Hope that explains.

Oh and sorry about the lack of tutorial today, I will try and do one for tomorrow.

More on blobby pictures

{ July 9, 2008 @ 11:51 am } · { tutorial }
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A quick note on yesterday’s post. I was curious if photoshop had some short cut for the blobby picture effect, and it seems that it does. You don’t get much control over the outcome so it may not look exactly like you want it to, and it may not be exactly the same in CS3 or any of the newer versions of Photoshop, but it exists in 9. It’s called CUTOUT and you can find it under Filter – Artistic. You would probably want to cut out any background and have the image be at a high resolution before doing this, but otherwise, not a bad result.

Vector drawings

{ July 8, 2008 @ 12:00 pm } · { tutorial }
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This seems to be very popular lately. I nearly chose a template that included a vectored person in the design. Anyway, let’s get started on how you can make a photo look like it’s a graphic image.

First you start with a photo. This can be of anything you want, but for this tutorial I’ll use a woman. (By the way, this is a stock image I borrowed and I’m not sure who to credit)

Next import the image into Illustrator or Freehand or other vector program. I wont bother doing separate tutorials for both cause they are more or less the same.

Once imported, it’s best if you make a new layer so that you can lock the image in place and not accidentally move it while you’re tracing it. (New Layer – WINDOW – SHOW LAYERS – click the arrow/triangle on the upper right hand corner of the new window – NEW LAYER. Now make sure you do your tracing on the new layer or all that was useless. The little circle to the right of the layers name ((Layer 1)) shows you which layer you are on)

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Now, here is where is starts to get a little annoying and very tricky. You need to use either the PEN tool or the PENCIL tool and start tracing out each section of the image that you want to be a different colour. To make it look right, you’ll have to overlap layers. However, this can get difficult the more layers you have, as some layers may have to be above one layer and below others. How do you make this easier? Start with the biggest part of the image, this will probably go on the bottom layer and work your way up.

To use your PEN tool to trace an image, choose a starting point and click, there will be an anchor there. Next, follow the outer line of the image and anywhere there is a bend, you will need to click and make another anchor. One thing I have come to notice that in Freehand, it is easy to go back and pull and move and adjust each anchor, but with Illustrator, this just isn’t as easy. So, to save yourself a lot of grief, each time you are making an anchor, hold down the mouse button for a second and pull, this will create little sub anchors (I’m sure they have another name, but I can’t think of it right now) that you can use to make the line rounded.

As I do each section, I make sure that it’s filled in so I can find it again, but I put the transparency down to 40% so that it doesn’t cover the image allowing me to be able to see where I may need to do more tracing.

Once I have the entire image traced, I add colour to each section I’ve done. Once I have the main colour filled in, I can add blobs of shading to make it look a bit better.

With more practice and a lot of patience, you can come up with some interesting looking graphic images.

Mini Comics

{ July 7, 2008 @ 2:53 pm } · { tutorial }
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How to make a simple comic book

Now there are plenty of sites and books out there that tell you how to write and illustrate a comic book ready to send out to publishers. It involves a lot of work, a lot of planning, and a lot of moments where you just want to give up all together. Instead of going over those grueling steps I’ll tell you how I entertain myself and practice my basic page layouts and drawing all at the same time.

First I start with two pieces of paper. Usually I steal this out of the printer, so I’m really not talking about anything fancy here. Next I fold the paper in half, than fold it in half again.

Now I have a tiny booklet perfect for playing around with. Next I start to draw. Usually I can’t be bothered to actually plan out the pages or even story, but sometimes I do. If I have a ruler handy, than I will use it to box out my panels first so that I can work around those. When choosing where to place your boxes and what shapes to use, I sometime pick a page out of a comic book I have laying around and just steal a layout they have used.

If I really just want to be simple (which is often best for first timers or even for pros) I just make a series of similar sized boxes to fill the page.

Than I just start drawing. Easier said than done I know, but what I suggest, is just draw stick people. Even if you are serious about drawing, this size will not allow for very much detail, so keep it basic and if you like where you are headed with it, than you can take it to a bigger format. If not, than you have a cute little comic for your own enjoyment

One thing that I didn’t mention before, I don’t draw on the back of any of the paper. If I draw on one side, I don’t want to draw on the back as this can cause ripping and ghosting (when you can see the image from the back come through onto the front) when photocopying. This means that if you go with two sheets of paper and follow my fold and cut method, you will have 8 pages to draw on. Not too many that you might never finish, and not to few that you can’t do an interesting story.

Good luck and happy drawing!

Design Programs and uses

{ July 6, 2008 @ 5:58 pm } · { rant, software }
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What program do you use the most? I’ve been asked this question a lot over the past few years, and I am always somewhat wary on how to answer it. I know a lot of pretty good designers, especially web designers, who do all of their work in Photoshop. At my current job I use a combination of Photoshop and Illustrator for every project. If I had InDesign I would use all three. All three, you might be asking? But why would you need to use all three? Well the answer is simple, each program is designed to do a different thing.

Photoshop is meant for photo manipulation. This means, you should probably open this one first to work on all of your photos and make them look as good as you can before going any further in the project.

Illustrator/Freehand/Corel Draw should be used for any graphics you need. From shapes and symbols to any elaborate vector drawings you may need for the final design. Try not to bring photos into this program as they can slow the program down to a snails pace and will probably not look as good as they do in Photoshop or Indesign. Illustrator also limits you to one page so it’s pretty much useless if you are doing booklets or multi-page designs. Freehand allows multi-pages, but as it is a dying program, it is better to use Indesign for later editing.

Indesign/Quark Express are the page layout programs most commonly used. Most of the places that have been around for a long time will probably still be using Quark, while newer companies and places that have recently updated are more likely to have Indesign. This is where you take all of the stuff you made in the other programs and put it together to make your delicious design. Personally I have never done more with Quark than a basic tutorial and prefer to spend my time learning Indesign as it seems to be where the industry is moving, but I have seen plenty of ads for designers that require that you know how to use this program, so I wouldn’t say that it is dead yet.

What program have I not mentioned? Word! Word processors are not design tools. I don’t care if they have those nifty little templates and can accept photos, if you are ever planning on sending the work to a true designer, or even a printer, do not expect them to be able or willing to touch a .doc (word file). They will almost always rip out their hair, cry a little, than have to recreate the entire design if you send it to them this way, which can be impossible or nearly so. So DON’T USE ANY WORD PROGRAM FOR YOUR DESIGN!!! Seriously! Or I will hunt you down and break your computer.

How to arc type

{ July 5, 2008 @ 4:02 am } · { tutorial }
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Yesterday I told you why you should never use arched type, now today, I’m going to show you how to do it in a couple of the more popular programs.

This is one of the easiest things that I had no idea how to do for a very long time. We’ll start with illustrator since it’s probably the most popular vector design programs right now. Oh and if you’re wondering, I am currently using Adobe Illustrator 9, so this could be slightly different for CS3, but I think that it’s similar enough that this should be able to help.

First you start off with a circle or squiggly line (mine was created using the PEN tool, from the tool bar, though you could use the PAINTBRUSH tool or PENCIL tool just as easily)

Next, under the TYPE tool(on the tool bar) there are several options you can bring up by holding the button down for a few seconds. From this menu, choose the PATH TYPE tool. Now click on the area of the circle or line you want the type to start at and start typing.

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And there you go, arched or squiggly type made in Illustrator.

 

 

 

Now for Freehand. This program is pretty much dead now that Adobe bought it, but it’s what I learned on, so I will show it anyway.

 

 

 

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Again, start with your circle or squiggly line or whatever you want. This time type out what you want to arc somewhere on the page, it doesn’t matter where.

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Then SHIFT SELECT both the type and the circle and go up to the TEXT menu, select ATTACH TO PATH, and tada! You have your arched text.

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Now a little tip when attaching to a squiggly line; where ever you start the line will be where you’re text will start once you attach it. So, this means if you start on the left and the line go to the right, then the text will look normal. If you start the line to the right and have it go left, the text will attach upside down and backwards. Handy if that’s what you want, a pain if it’s not.

 

 

Finally I’ll discuss Photoshop. Now I have never done this before today in this program, so I will be learning as much as you. (All of my type I do in Illustrator as I was trained to use Photoshop only for photo manipulation). Also I currently have Photoshop 6 so this is quite possibly different with newer versions.

 

 

 

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Start with your text.

Go up to LAYER, TYPE and WARP TEXT. This should bring up some nice style options and you should be able to adjust the bend and distortion. Adjust to desired.

 

 

 

Now that you know how to arc text, remember to never use that knowledge. Or I will hunt you down. I swear! I know where you live!*

 

 

 

*Christina will not hunt down any readers of the blog and does not know where anyone lives, including herself. Seriously. She gets lost on the way home from work.

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