Posts Tagged ‘design’

postheadericon Graphics Design Defined

Graphics Design Defined

When considering the question, “what is graphics design” I’m reminded of the movie Groundhog Day, where the camera man tells a would be female companion, “you know, people think I just take a camera and point it at stuff, but there’s a lot more to it than that.” The same goes for graphic design. Take a look at the video these guys put together. I can’t say that I’m excited about their choice of background music, but the meat is there anyway. Good job dude.

postheadericon Adobe Creative Suite 5

Adobe Creative Suite 5 Announced

Adobe has at long last announced Creative Suite 5 and furnished specifics regarding its innovative new features.  The new Creative Suite 5, along with the various programs inside it, is supposed to deliver within thirty days.  It doesn’t seem like that long ago that I got CS4, but here we go again with a new and improved Creative Suite of products.  Here are just a few of the benefits of going with the new upgraded version.

New CS5 Features
Creative Suite 5 programs, for the very first time, incorporate access to Omniture technologies–Web tools which capture, store, and evaluate information and facts created by World-wide-web sites and some other sources.  Creative Suite 5 Design Premium will additionally integrate with Adobe CS Live, a brand-new collection of services which Adobe claims will speed up crucial elements of the creative work-flow and allow designers to concentrate on making their finest work.  Furthermore, Creative Suite 5 introduces Adobe Flash Catalyst CS5, a new design tool which enables you to generate web application interfaces without the need for writing code.  Creative Suite 5 delivers complete version upgrades of flagship creative tools, as well as features integration with on-line content and digital advertising and marketing measurement and optimization abilities along with technology from Adobe’s purchase of Omniture.

Are you buying CS5?
Creative Suite 5 builds on the user interface improvements brought in by its predecessor to draw the integrated tools even closer together, with a stronger emphasis on the designer workflow, while at the same time incorporating around two hundred and fifty fresh features to the bundle. I’ll give them a little time to get the bugs worked out, but in the meantime I’ll be saving my pennies so that I can add CS5 to my own suite of design tools.

postheadericon Adobe Creative Suite 4 Really Fits the Bill

Adobe Creative Suite 4 Really Fits the Bill

It doesn’t matter if you happen to be an artist, a webmaster or a graphic designer, you have without doubt relied upon Adobe software applications to help you get your work completed. At present, the graphics community is still aglow in regard to Adobe Creative Suite 4, a compilation of computer imaging design tools which are thoroughly integrated to permit users to operate in nearly any medium.

Adobe boasts 6 various editions of CS4, created to suit the requirements of a wide variety of graphics pros. The six versions are as follows:

Adobe CS4 Design Premium – Created for the graphic designer that operates in mobile, Internet, as well as print publications, CS 4 Design Premium consists of the ‘Pro’ or extended variants of Flash, Photoshop, InDesign, Illustrator, Acrobat and Dreamweaver.

Adobe CS 4 Design Standard – Ideal for the specialized designer who functions mainly with printed output, CS4 Design Premium comes with Illustrator, Photoshop, Acrobat Professional, and InDesign.

Adobe CS4 Web Premium – Adobe has taken this world wide web design software package to a higher level by giving designers the ability to work on projects that cross virtually all Adobe products, including Photoshop Extended, Flash Professional, Illustrator, Fireworks, Dreamweaver, Bridge, Contribute Cue, and Device Central.

Adobe Creative Suite 4 Web Standard – Perfect for website design, this graphics software integrates Dreamweaver, Flash Professional, Fireworks, and Contribute to create an unmatchable set of internet design tools.

Adobe Creative Suite 4 Production Platinum – Adobe has attacked the difficulties of video production and post production by incorporating a broad variety of solutions, such as Dynamic Link, Bridge, Device Central, After Effects, Acrobat Connect, Photoshop Extended, Premiere Pro, Illustrator, Flash Pro, Encore and Soundbooth. For pros operating on an MS Windows platform, Ultra and OnLocation are included as well..

Adobe CS 4 Master Collection (cue the angelic choir) – The CS4 Master Collection is a proffesional graphic designer’s dream package, including practically every single Adobe product built-in  so one may develop graphics in pretty much any medium, whether it be print, web, interactive, mobile or video. The Master Collection comes with Photoshop Extended, Acrobat Pro, InDesign, Dreamweaver , Illustrator, Contribute, Fireworks, Soundbooth, Encore, After Effects and Premiere Pro. Web apps include Bridge, Device Central, Version Cue, Acrobat Connect, Stock Photos, Dynamic Link, Ultra, and OnLocation.  I’m kind of drooling just thinking about it.

Basically, CS4 supplies professionals with software configurations which  allow them to effortlessly achieve their particular goals. For instance, creative designers are able to design web pages, user interfaces, develop games, create  e-learning products, produce animations, and do develop for mobile devices as well. Those of us who like to edit video for a living can do production and editing, multi-media, audio production, as well as visual effects. It goes with saying that CS4 users, as always, are able to combine and edit images and produce sophisticated page layouts for print.

Graphics pros will also appreciate Adobe website design software as it works on a number of platforms, eg. Windows XP and Vista on the PC and either Tiger or Leopard on the Mac. In addition, for those who have already purchased Adobe products, it is straightforward to upgrade to Creative Suite 4 – even if you currently have stand alone graphics applications. Last but not least, for those of you who buy one edition of  CS4 but then change their mind and decide that they need a more powerful version, going from say, Creative Suite 4 Design Standard  up to Design Premium, are able to effortlessly make the switch and get the additional functionality they need to accomplish their goals.

Apparently, the creative feats of designers in the various mediums has encouraged Adobe to rise to the challenge and create a set of tools which has, in turn, empowered video, graphics and web pros to achieve far greater results than could previously have been imagined.

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postheadericon Five Graphic Design Blunders That Will Make You Look Like a Noob

Five Graphic Design Blunders That Will Make You Look Like a Noob

I. Utilizing internet images on printed materials.  With countless new designers arriving primarily from web design and style foundation the move over from internet design to conventional design for print may carry with it a number of web design sins. Photos delivered at 72dpi and shrunk down in order to load quickly on a web site are generally going to end up looking very poorly in print. One may be able to get away with little thumb nails however, blowing items up to any kind of noticeable dimension is likely to be pressing your luck. Presently there are a great deal of on-line websites providing totally free or extremely low-cost high quality hi resolution graphics which are a great resource for appropriate images.

II. Not permitting sufficient bleed. A rather frequent mistake is to deliver to print a file or flattened graphic which has no bleed whatsoever. Generally, you ought to allow a minimum of 3mm around each and every single edge. Not doing so will offer the printing companies zero slack and will possibly crop off the edge of the page or present you with a white border. It’s always a nice idea whenever providing graphic files to offer a psd version of the files with layers. That way, in the event that the image needs extending or possibly cropping, it can be done on a layer, thereby saving you some effort.

III. Utilizing obscure fonts along with not embedding them all for output. We have probably all been guilty of that at some time and it’s usually okay if you are planning to be the sole person opening your own art work or document. Even so if somebody else wants to change the files or make use of your vector logo design in one of their publications, you must provide the fonts. Unless you bundle up the utilized fonts, these people are possibly not going to end up being able to open up the files properly and several software applications might substitute any unfamiliar fonts using a default font, profiding inaccurate results. This is usually a major issue when you have to search out information which was produced a number of years beforehand and you simply no longer have the previously used fonts on your machine.

IV. Providing print ready art work utilizing spot colors or even RGB
There are good motives for utilizing spot colors in art work, logos that have to reference specific pantone colors for example. In normal design work however almost all print is processed on four color presses CMYK together with occasional fifth color for metallic colors or for localized Ultra-violet varnish. It’s very commonplace for couch potato creative designers to simply put RGB graphics in to files and depend on the glorious colors displayed on the monirtor to be reproduced in print.

V. Enabling design and style illiterate buyers to dictate your entire design.  The say that The customer is always right,however, having said that, it is occasionally said with clenched teeth and a certain amount of dismay, that identifies that these fools will at some point in time be giving over a extra fat check for your effort. It is usually a fine idea when you first submit pictures to your customer to put in a few  junkers that would potentially lure them into admiring the
creation you would most like them to agree to. There still exists a possibility, however, of them choosing the piece of garbage that you thew together in three and a half minutes in order  to help them believe that you have been working hard to earn your money. Oh well, you can’t win them all, but as long as they’re happy, we’re happy.

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