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Archive: 2005 October
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Spoooooky Halloween Symbols
Halloween is almost here, so here are some spooky Illustrator symbols to spice up your holiday illustrations!
Spice up party invitations, stationery, or other illustrations with these Halloween symbols! These symbols will work in Adobe Illustrator CS and above for Mac or Windows. Download the .zip file to your computer (714kb). You will need winzip or other unzipping utility to extract the file. To load the symbols in Illustrator, open the Symbols palette and from the options menu choose Open Symbol Library > Other Library. Browse to where you extracted the file and double click on it to load the symbols, and use in your illustrations.
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InDesign Advanced Typographical Controls
Find out about the Paragraph Composer and Single Line Composer. Control hyphenation and more.
One of InDesign’s strongest points is its typographic controls. I don’t know of a better layout program in this respect. In this InDesign Tip, we will start covering some of the typographic features. I will cover most of them with several articles.
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ZOMBIES! or, How To Add Some Color To The Living Dead
Thanks to amateur digital photographers, we see dead people.
Digital photography has changed the world of Photoshop and photography in amazing ways, with designers, sales reps and even clients now able to grab their digital camera and take a product shot or portrait shot with the resolution to print in a fine magazine. Who needs professional photographers, now that a $500 camera can capture enough pixels for just about any computer application, which itself is only a few hundred dollars off the shelf, and that digital image can be used practically anywhere? Who needs professional photographers? Some might argue that we ALL are professional photographers.
Read more on ZOMBIES! or, How To Add Some Color To The Living Dead…
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SPOOKY! Building a Halloween Typeface in Photoshop
Here’s a fun Halloween typeface you can build right in Photoshop in five easy steps!
Step 1: Type something up in your favorite spooky font and kern it as needed. I used Manson in Figure 1.
Read more on SPOOKY! Building a Halloween Typeface in Photoshop…
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Cartography Word of the Day: Loxodrome
Third in an irregular series
A loxodrome, or line of constant bearing, between New York and London, plotted on a Mercator’s projection world map (base map courtesy Cartographic Research Lab, University of Alabama) -
Color Correct Flat Panel Proves Back-Lighting is Back
Utilizing LumiLED back-lighting technology, the new NEC SpectraView Reference 21 monitor is ready for high-end, color critical work.
The NEC SpectraView Reference 21 2180WG-LED (“WG” stands for “wide-gamut”) is the new top of the line in color gamut width and accuracy. In fact, the SpectraView Reference 21 is one of only a handful of monitors capable of fully rendering the Adobe RGB color space. It’s the only back-lit device with that distinction.
Read more on Color Correct Flat Panel Proves Back-Lighting is Back…
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Mary Baker Eddy’s Marvelous Mapparium
Stained-glass globe that “takes you to the center of the world” celebrates its 70th Anniversary
A group of people at the center of the great 30-foot diameter Mapparium (graphic © The Mary Baker Eddy Library for the Betterment of Humanity -
Realigner or Redesigner?
Does the design support the content, is the design just cool?
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Duffy Shows the Importance of Design in Branding
Branding legend, Joe Duffy, examines the process of design to create a lasting and memorable brand in his latest book Brand Apart.
Brand Apart, written by Joe Duffy and published by The One Club, provides a series of case studies and direct interviews with some of today’s most recognizable brands: Harley Davidson, The Bahamas, Citibank, MINI, Starbucks, Tazo Tea, and the agencies who launched them: Wieden & Kennedy, Fallon Worldwide, Crispin Porter & Bogusky, Pentagram, BBH and of course, Duffy & Partners. The book attempts to answer the increasingly popular question asked by marketing, advertising and design professionals–”how do we penetrate today’s visual melange and engage our audiences?” Duffy explores the design behind these brands to prove that their successes are not mere coincidences, but rather, the hard work and dedication to excellence by some of the creative world’s most promising professionals.
Read more on Duffy Shows the Importance of Design in Branding…
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I’m not an Ad Slogan, but I play one on T.V.
With more and more exposure to media, advertising slogans find their way into the popular lexicon. Here are a couple lists of a few memorable slogans from recent memory.
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Dan Margulis’ Photoshop LAB Color
Dan Margulis’ new book focuses on Photoshop’s nuclear color space. But who is it written for—the novice or the expert?
A few weeks ago I wrote a very favorable review for Ben Willmore’e Up To Speed: Photoshop CS2, and one thing I really liked about the book was its specialized focus and in-depth coverage. Too many Photoshop books cover every teensy-weensy feature of the application and each with only a passing comment or paragraph. Now Dan Margulis, whose “Professional Photoshop” book has been the bible of color-correction for many years, has put out “Photoshop LAB Color: The Canyon Conundrum and Other Adventures in the Most Powerful Colorspace”. It sounds like a doctoral dissertation, but it’s actually a substantial book devoted to a single obscure menu item that almost no one understands or even pronounces correctly. However, as Dan spends much of the book trying to prove, LAB is a valuable “nuclear option” for the arsenal of any Photoshop professional.
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Photoshop Elements 4 Adjust Color for Skin Tone Command
Adobe Photoshop Elements 4 has several new tools to help photographers adjust images. One of these in the Adjust Color for Skin Tone command. As well as improving color in a photo, it has a surprising use as well: it makes a great sepia tone image.
Read more on Photoshop Elements 4 Adjust Color for Skin Tone Command…
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The Big Squeeze
How automated technologies and manufacturing processes including workflows, job management, computer to plate and the PDF file format have delivered on the promise of increased efficiencies, reduced rework, standardized processes, and reduced headcount in commercial printing. Print has squeezed out the excess and is setting its sites upstream, looking directly at you.
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Wickedly funny design consultanacy site satire cuts close to the bone
The home page of the greatest design consultancy there ever wasThe site design is clean and understated; the faces on the pictures are young and fabulous. You read the following copy:
Our designers ride Razor scooters around the office, while wearing mail-bag style backpacks to hold their iPods.
Read more on huhcorp.com: They Do Stuff…
In addition to all the wonderful things in our lives to be thankful for this season—loved ones, health, happiness, and Designorati—we thought you might also like to give thanks for some free Thansgiving fonts.
- Type Bits-The Secret Word is “Creepy”
FontHaus and MyType get in the Halloween Spririt
In thier periodic mailing to customers, online fontmonger FontHaus “gets creepy”:
Vistors to FontHaus’s online presence (www.fonthaus.com) who seek type in the “Category” pulldown will find a new category, “creepy”, in the listing. Listing that category will display a list of tasty seasonal looks, complete with appropriate names such as “chaotic” Bludgeon, “cold” Chiller, “drippy” Creepy, “bizarre” Hollyweird, a very victorian CarpeDiem Initials, Schmutz Clogged, and the well-known ITC Blackadder, heavy with Goreyesque connotations. Priced from $21, you too can get creepy without necessarily breaking the bank.
- FontExplorer X VS Extenis Suitcase X1
You often hear about the comparison between Quark and InDesign. Here is a like for like comparison between two excellent font management applications.
Being a Suitcase X1 user, it was imperative for me to compare it to Linotype’s new release FontExplorer X. Both applications are excellent and are definitely tools for pros. If you are looking at a font management application for Macs and you are not sure which one you should use, this feature comparison might help you make a decision. This comparison was done using Mac OS X 10.4.2 (Tiger), with Classic environment version 9.2.
- Space Monkey and Other Photoshop Easter Eggs!
Photoshop has a long history of Easter eggs and other oddities
Hold down the Command key (PC: Ctrl), select Photoshop->About Photoshop… and you’ll see this:
It’s the latest Photoshop Easter egg, those goofy little jokes software developers work into their products just for fun! Photoshop and ImageReady has had a long history of Easter eggs, and you can learn how to uncover some more in the earlier versions by clicking here.
- Tutorial: Manipulating Grayscale Images for Better Bitmaps
What do you do when you need a bitmap image but only have a grayscale image, possibly with midtones? Here are three techniques to get you good line art
My recent tutorial on eliminating jaggies from bitmap images was responded to by Mac Wizard,
Read more on Tutorial: Manipulating Grayscale Images for Better Bitmaps…
- PDF: History, Features & Co.
While this is not a complete guide to PDFs, here you will find the major types of PDFs and their purposes
Like for any other graphics, a person using a PDF has to make sure he is using the right one for the job. Saying that a PDF “is good for printing” is like saying that “EPS files contain vector graphics”. Both statements are inaccurate and to a certain degree even untrue. PDF files serve many purposes–you cannot use a PDF which was intended for onscreen viewing also for offset printing, unless you want poor results. PDFs that were originally intended for offset printing, cannot be used for online viewing due to their size, the same way you wouldn’t use TIFF or EPS files for web design.
- Is Illustrator’s “Convert To Grayscale” Option Press Worthy?
Is it better to convert a photo in Illustrator or in Photoshop?
I have run some tests in both Illustrator and Photoshop to examine whether Illustrator’s Convert To Grayscale capability is press worthy. While Illustrator does convert the image to grayscale properly and running colour separations demonstrated that only the black colour is used (while Cyan, Magenta and Yellow are not used at all), the quality of conversion compared to Photoshop is not good. The problems arise when using the Convert to Grayscale function on a file that contains raster elements.
Read more on Is Illustrator’s “Convert To Grayscale” Option Press Worthy?…
- Use Picture Package to Show Off Your Kids
Photoshop can create a set of printable pics with just a few clicks
I think Photoshop’s Automate menu (under the File menu) is wonderful. There’s lots of great tools for automating some useful things like web gallery creation and batching an executable action. Picture Package is one that you don’t hear much about, but if you have a newborn or new family photo and you just have to give your family some wallets or five-by-sevens, Photoshop has you covered.
Get over 1500 free custom made vector symbols for Illustrator
The IAN symbol libraries contain over 1500 custom made vector symbols in 32 categories. The libraries are for use with Adobe Illustrator 10 and up; however, they also offer eps and svg versions for non-Illustrator users. The symbols include enviromental mapping and navigation symbols as well as diagram symbols and many plants and animals. A PDF manual and catalog of the symbols is also included.
- In-House vs. Strategy: a 360-Degree View of Working for the Man
The following is an excerpt of a recent conversation between Designorati:In-House and Designorati:Strategy.
This conversation will spawn a series of articles covering topics from two different viewpoints, hence the title: In-House vs. Strategy. One viewpoint, In-House, includes how a creative on the inside is affected by trends in the industry including justifications, organization and workflow issues, as well as staffing and interacting with other disciplines within the organization. The other viewpoint, Strategy, includes how a decision-maker perceives the creative discipline and factors that weigh heavily in decision-making regarding the very same issues.
Read more on In-House vs. Strategy: a 360-Degree View of Working for the Man…
- Vitaly Friedman’s 20 Best License-Free Quality Fonts
German designer compiles list of 20 great free fonts, includes download links
Vitaly Friedman is a web designer based in Sarrbrücken, Germany. In his own travels about the net he’s found many free font resources, and has compiled his own 20 best free quality presentation-grade fonts here.
Read more on Vitaly Friedman’s 20 Best License-Free Quality Fonts…
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