About.com Desktop Publishing
Designing Obama
9/8/2010
One of the players in this Friday's Layer Tennis match is Scott Thomas, Design Director for the Obama campaign. His new book (& iPad app) is now available for purchase. You can take a peek inside Designing Obama. There's some great artwork and it doesn't matter what your political leanings might be, the book is lovely to look at and it's full of some really cool stuff too in so many styles (love the Jimm Lasser shoes, see pages 282-283). There's more than just pretty pictures. Read the beginning of Chapter 4, The Visual Voice, for a discussion of the how the Obama brand was developed and Chapter 5, An American Typeface, for insight into font choices and typography standards for the campaign.
Watch Scott Thomas in action on Friday, September 10, when he takes on Mark Weaver (see some of his impressive illustration work) in Match 4 of Layer Tennis, with commentary by John Gruber.
Designing Obama originally appeared on About.com Desktop Publishing on Wednesday, September 8th, 2010 at 14:11:54.
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Put Nothing in All the Right Spaces
9/8/2010
White space is the absence of text and graphics and all the spaces in between and around. Learn where white space goes.
Put Nothing in All the Right Spaces originally appeared on About.com Desktop Publishing on Wednesday, September 8th, 2010 at 07:41:39.
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Magazine Covers: The Good, The Bad, & The How-To
9/8/2010
Thinking about designing and publishing a magazine? Cameron Chapman has a tutorial for you on Creating a Magazine Cover. He offers tips on preparing your main cover image, setting up a grid, adding the text, and preparing the file for your printer. It's not an in-depth look at stunning magazine cover design, but it offers one view of the basic technical process. And, as he says at the end, "These methods can easily be adapted to creating covers for brochures, magazines, catalogs, or even for creating full-page display ads." Not enough information for you? Read more...
Magazine Covers: The Good, The Bad, & The How-To originally appeared on About.com Desktop Publishing on Tuesday, September 7th, 2010 at 18:51:39.
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Make a Happy Ghost Halloween Card in Publisher 2010
9/8/2010
I'm still digging into Microsoft Publisher 2010 to discover its cool features and its quirks. My latest project is a Halloween card. It's a special card too because I created the Happy Ghost featured in the card in Illustrator by following a cartoon drawing tutorial at our About.com Drawing/Sketching site.
In my first look at Publisher 2010 I did a birthday card from one of the installed templates. I discovered some oddities with the (otherwise rather nifty) color schemes features. This time around I've got you a step-by-step tutorial that shows how to add a background fill, insert and modify clip art, insert a picture, and use WordArt. Read more...
Make a Happy Ghost Halloween Card in Publisher 2010 originally appeared on About.com Desktop Publishing on Tuesday, September 7th, 2010 at 08:15:57.
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Does Color Matter, Really?
9/8/2010
Some of the most popular pages on this site deal with color meanings and the emotional and physical impact of specific colors.
But does it really mean anything? Chad Engle, writing at the Fuel Your Creativity blog poses the question Is a color just a color? and challenges us with some familiar logos in not so familiar colors. How does a red Facebook look to you? Or the Target bullseye in green?
Does Color Matter, Really? originally appeared on About.com Desktop Publishing on Monday, September 6th, 2010 at 08:11:02.
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Using Publisher 2010 Right Out of the Box
9/8/2010
Although I have used Microsoft Publisher in the past, I'm not a frequent user of the software. So, to test out the ease of use of the new Publisher 2010, I started creating a greeting card minutes after installing the program. If I hadn't been stopping to take screenshots or gotten carried away with template customization, the whole process would have taken just 15 minutes or so from start to print.
Read more...
Using Publisher 2010 Right Out of the Box originally appeared on About.com Desktop Publishing on Sunday, September 5th, 2010 at 09:57:27.
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Ditch Lorem Ipsum In Favor of a Purple Otter
9/8/2010
Most of us are familiar with Lorem Ipsum . If it's getting a bit old and boring for you, consider spicing up your placeholder text with Philip the Purple Otter (Talking of Design blog). And feel free to continue Philip's story in the comments on Kev's blog.
Ditch Lorem Ipsum In Favor of a Purple Otter originally appeared on About.com Desktop Publishing on Saturday, September 4th, 2010 at 10:14:22.
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How Do You Fix Up Your Photos?
9/8/2010
For Mac and Windows, Adobe Photoshop may be the top dog in photo editors but if it's too much power or too much price tag for you, there are still plenty of other ways you can get your photos fixed up before importing them into your design software.
Here are some top pro choices for Windows photo editors and Mac photo editors. And of course we have an entire About.com site devoted to Graphics Software that offers up even more options and tons of tutorials.
How Do You Fix Up Your Photos? originally appeared on About.com Desktop Publishing on Friday, September 3rd, 2010 at 18:12:21.
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Designers Need to Know Print and Web
9/8/2010
At Creative Boom Alan Anderson writes, "[web designers] are losing clients on a weekly basis, not down to the fact that their design work isn't good enough but the fact that today's client wants a designers to build them a brand up from scratch and transfer that brand over several media types both electronic and print." (Why Every Web Designer Should Learn or Offer Print Design) Read more...
Designers Need to Know Print and Web originally appeared on About.com Desktop Publishing on Friday, September 3rd, 2010 at 11:47:04.
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Drawing With Your Mac: Vector Illustration Software
9/8/2010
When we think of vector illustration software, Adobe Illustrator is usually the first software to come to mind. That, or maybe Inkscape. But there are plenty of other quite affordable and pretty nifty options out there. Check out some Mac Illustration Software to go with your Mac Desktop Publishing Software.
Drawing With Your Mac: Vector Illustration Software originally appeared on About.com Desktop Publishing on Thursday, September 2nd, 2010 at 16:07:15.
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