![[decorative element]](http://designorati.com/wp-content/themes/d3/images/nav1_topics_OFF.png){kind=small}
Articles by Elisabetta Bruno
-
Apple Launches iPhone
If mobile phones are becoming mp3 players, THE mp3 player has become a mobile phone
Let’s face it. Mobile phones have got little left of their “phone side.” You can use them to play games, watch TV, listen to music or watch music videos, and a lot more. You might think that the next thing will be mobile phones that make coffee. While that’s the dream of many designers, that hasn’t happened yet. However Apple thought of evolving their iPod into the iPhone. You can still ask Jobs to add a coffee function if you will.
-
Finding the Right Visuals and Graphics for a Design
Have you ever opened a magazine, read an article and wondered, “How did the designer think of THAT design element?”
This is a question I have asked myself so many times that I lost count. Then I again I haven’t been counting. As a designer you need to know how to visually communicate a message, that’s the essence of your job. Yet sometimes you see an article about cows and you see a bell or a stylized face of a cow used as a bullet. Or you are doing a car catalogue and you notice that the page numbers have the same elements of the logo of the car. Sometimes you manage to think at those things in a snap, while other times you just have a design block. What do you do in that situation?
Read more on Finding the Right Visuals and Graphics for a Design…
-
What is “creep” in Desktop Publishing?
And how do you compensate for it?
Since we are in Halloween mood and creeping “monsters” knock at our doors asking for candies, I thought it was very appropriate to treat a subject such as our own creeping desktop publishing projects. Yet, if I have to tell the truth, I was just visiting one of my favourite sites about DTP and I saw an interesting article about creep and how to compensate it and I thought I should bring it to your attention. Jacci Howard Bear from About Desktop Publishing does a good job in answering a question of one of her forum members about the subject with this very useful article.
-
“Do It Yourself” Logos
The best way of “doing yourself” in
I was peacefully surfing the internet, in a moment of cyber relaxation. Suddenly I realize my Firefox has an open tab with some site waiting to be looked at and, wondering whether lack of coffee was getting to my head or my touchpad decided I clicked on some Google link, I clicked on the tab.
-
Freeware Friday: LPS Scripting Utility
A scripting XTension for those sharing QuarkXPress files on a network
Many QuarkXPress users, especially printers as they are most likely to move files through a network, will be familiar with this little but annoying problem. As the developers over at Emerasoft say:
-
Freeware Friday: LPS Guides Fixer
Yes, even guides need to be straightened out from time to time… when you use QuarkXPress…
From proud Italian compatriots (now don’t you say I am bias) here’s a little fix to a bug in QuarkXPress 7. From Emerasoft:
-
Freeware Friday: Photo to Sketch
How many times have you ever wanted to get your friends’ or family members’ photo to look like a drawing?
Whether you do desktop publishing or not, you probably had to deal with graphics at some point, maybe to create a personalized birthday card or just to do something fun. One of the nice things that can be done is to get a photo to look like a sketch, just to give it that taste, that… something to add personality to it. You can of course use progams like Photoshop, but for the occasional user it’s bound to be a little too much both in costs and in learning curve.
-
Old Habits Die Hard
Why are people still using EPS files for raster graphics?
I have explained in an earlier article when one is to use EPS files and when he is to use TIFF. I can never stress enough the point I made in that article so here I am again.
-
Printer’s Spread, Definition of
To save on costs and speed up the printing process, books, flyers and so on are printed on parent sheets. Because of this pages cannot be printed on the sheet following the same sequence of the acual page order, that is, page 1 is usually not printed next to page 2, even though the finished book will result in those two pages being next to each other.
-
Reader’s Spread, Definition of
When you open a magazine you see all pages in order, from first to last. The pages that are next to each other are called spread, also known as “reader’s spread” in printing terms. That kind of spread, as the name says, it’s that which the reader sees, i.e., page 2 next to page 3 and so on.
-
Freeware Friday: Your WordPress Blog on a Canvas
Customize your themes simply with a drag and drop
Not long ago I discovered a very well thought out WordPress theme, called Kiwi. It’s a fabulous theme by Yasser Dahab, Yas to friends, which delivers all the information the reader needs in logical fashion right in the home page, and it has a nice professional look and feel.
Read more on Freeware Friday: Your WordPress Blog on a Canvas…
-
Beware of Faux Bold and Faux Italics
It’s so easy to just press that “b”
We all know that DTP is done with WYSIWYG applications. Aside from the colours of your images which might shift if you used the wrong colour mode or didn’t properly colour manage them, not considering the font reflows which happen if you don’t provide the font files to your printer and without mentioning those lines that don’t come up right because you chose the airline setting instead of a weight .25 pt, well… We all know that DTP is a WYSIWYG affair.
-
QuarkXPress 7 Will Launch in June
Earliest launch in the UK, followed by the US and the rest of Europe
The final version of QuarkXPress 7 is ready. Everybody run. Whether you will decide to run to the counter and get your copy or run away where nobody can reach you is up to you, but the first launch will be on June 2, in London, so you need to make up your mind before then.
-
Freeware Friday: FontHit Font Tools
A free Windows font management application
FontHit Font Tools is a free application that allows anyone with a Windows platform to view, install, uninstall and print fonts. While it lacks certain functions which I deem essential, such as on-demand activation and deactivation, it lets you view fonts in many and useful ways and it can even view zipped fonts. You just need to drag and drop them into the application.
-
No Support for Boot Camp Applications… Yet
Publish.com questions: “Who Will Support Your Graphics Software Running on Boot Camp?”
Apple’s announcement of Boot Camp, the application that will allow Mac users to run Windows on their Apple computers, seemed to have caught everyone unprepared.
-
QuarkXPress 7 Beta 2 Now Available
Quark launched the second phase of its public beta program
Quark released the first beta of their layout program at last Macworld’s conferene. The beta was to expier by the end of March. You now have the possibility to download QuarkXPress 7 beta 2, which will run until May 2. Quark rightly makes a few points which should be taken into consideration when using QuarkXPress 7 beta 2 :
-
Preflight While You Design
Think with the final output while you design and you will save time at preflight stage
If you have read last How-To on Designorati:Desktop Publishing you know what you are looking for when you want to prepare a file for printing on an offset press. I am now going a step backwards to show you what to do to avoid problems even before they happen.
-
New Solution in Broadened Product Line Removes Technical Complexity of Barcode Creation and Preflighting
Birmingham, UK (IPEX – Hall 6, Stand A20) – April 4-11, 2006 – As part of its strategy to offer more practical solutions that remove technical complexity from the life of creative professionals, Enfocus adds Instant Barcode to its ‘Instant’ product line. A plug-in for Adobe® Illustrator®, Instant Barcode allows professional graphic designers to easily generate, check and read barcodes — a rapidly increasing design component — within their familiar software design environments.
-
Enfocus Announces Expansion of Technology Partner Program at IPEX 2006
Partnership with PerfectProof Brings Both a Certified PDF® and Certified Proofing Solution to Market
Birmingham, UK (IPEX – Hall 6, Stand A20) – April 4-11, 2006 – Enfocus announces it has broadened the scope of its Technology Partner Program, originally established to allow other developers to integrate Enfocus’ PDF preflighting and editing technology into their own products. The program has now been adapted to include the company’s automation technologies, and has also been made more transparent so that developers can become an Enfocus Technology Partner more easily. The program reinforces the company’s leadership in PDF quality management and automation-enabling technologies.
Read more on Enfocus Announces Expansion of Technology Partner Program at IPEX 2006…
-
Alwan Color Expertise Joins Enfocus Technology Partner Program
Alwan CMYK Optimizer® to Plug Into PitStop Automate Creating Collaborative Solution for Automated PDF and Color Preflighting & Optimization
PRESS RELEASE
Birmingham, UK (IPEX – Hall 6, Stand A20) – April 4-11, 2006 – As part of its ongoing efforts to develop cost-effective tools for production automation and PDF quality management, Enfocus announces its technology partnership with France-based Alwan Color Expertise.Read more on Alwan Color Expertise Joins Enfocus Technology Partner Program…
-
Enfocus PitStop Professional 7 & PitStop Automate Demonstrated at IPEX 2006
Next Generation PDF Quality Management and Production Automation Tools will be available May 1
PRESS RELEASE
Birmingham, UK (IPEX – Hall 6, Stand A20) – April 4-11, 2006 – IPEX 2006 is the international launch platform for version 7 of Enfocus’ flagship product, PitStop Professional. The company is also showing PitStop Automate, the latest toolset in Enfocus’ customer-focused mission to make graphic arts workflows more reliable and productive.
Read more on Enfocus PitStop Professional 7 & PitStop Automate Demonstrated at IPEX 2006…
-
A Fake Circus, but a Real Opportunity
A showcase for designers, new and old, to help them have more presence in the creative world
Recently I came across a site called Fakecircus. While the name deceived me at first, I had the pleasure of speaking to one of the people who is behind the project and once I really understood what it is about, I found that the project was an excellent idea.
-
Preflighting with InDesign
Want a happy relationship with your printer? Follow the guidelines in the first of a series of articles about preflighting with InDesign.
I remember the face of the guy working in the service bureau I used most when I told him I was going to use InDesign. Sweat pouring off his face that had assumed the typical white coloration of someone who just saw the scariest thing in his life. Turning over to me on his swivel chair he said in panic: “Why don’t you just stick with Quark? You don’t know how many prepress problems you are going to run into with InDesign!”
-
Freeware Friday: Two in One
This week featuring two freeware downloads: Ghotscript and the ReplaceInPlace Xtension fror QuarkXPress
I am seeing scripts… err… ghosts!
Back to the time when I was still looking learning how to make PDFs and didn’t know much about the PostScript language, I came across a free utility called Ghostscript. At the time I wasn’t really impressed with it. I found it was clumsy and some fonts didn’t embed properly or in some cases they didn’t embed at all, especially if they were True Type fonts. However I was also using QuarkXPress 4, which, when making EPS files, just didn’t embed True Type fonts; I suppose that the same problem occurred when making PostScript files and the probabilityiesof success were already slim by the time I converted them to PDF with Ghostscript. Add my lack of expertise to all that, and you can see how frustrating my Ghostscript experience was.
-
Free QuarkXPress 7 Hands-On Training
Training for both designers and printers will be available at the Ipex exibition
The release of QuarkXPress 7 is near—at the Ipex Exhibition in Birmingham, UK, Quark will demonstrate their latest and yet-to-release version of their layout program, and will offer training for both designers and printers. The exhibition is one week long from April 4th to April 11th, in the National Exhibition Centre.
Suggested Links
domain registrationWorldlabel is a source for equivalent Avery® labels sizes and free label templates for designing.
