Print Design
How to Pick a Good Designer
Question How do you judge the quality of a designer? They don’t have a typical résumé like a sales rep. I’m sure there’s more to it than “ooh, I like this website”. Answer What a beautiful and potentially self-serving question. There are several things you can look at to determine the quality of a designer.…
Read MorePantone Color Chart
Need to explain to your designer exactly WHICH color you are trying to describe. Use this color chart to get your point across.
Read MoreHow to Turn Off Adobe Typekit
I use Adobe’s Creative Cloud and I also use font management software. I don’t use TypeKit and was growing tired of having Adobe’s Typekit popping up every time I needed a font. I finally spend some time finding out where to turn it off. It’s not hard to do. Just not intuitive. Look at the menu…
Read MoreHow to Create an Outlined Drawing in Photoshop
Image –> Adjustments –> Desaturate. Filter –> Stylize –> Fine Edges Image –> Adjustments –> Brightness/Contrast (Adjust the brightness and contrast to your liking) Then go to Filter –> Sharpen –> Sharpen More.
Read MoreWhat’s the Difference Between Spot and Process Printing?
Spot Color Printing The ink that goes on the press is hand-mixed or comes out of the can the color you want More expensive than process printing Unlimited paper choices Colors are exact Process Printing The ink on a process press only uses four colors: Cyan, magenta, yellow, and black. Those colors are printed in…
Read MoreHow to Change the Colors of the Guides in InDesign
Question Hey Lena, Do you know how to change the colors of these red guides in InDesign? I got a document that I have to work with but the red is driving me crazy. Mine are usually light blue. Its not under the Guides and Pasteboard options in preferences. Answer The guides you are talking…
Read MoreInside a Designers Mind – Logo Development
Aaron Draplin does a great job showing what it’s like to work on a logo design for a client. We all start out with rough thumbnails and lots of ideas. So, if you’ve ever wondered what is going on at your designers desk, this is a pretty good example. And, if you are a fellow…
Read MoreThe True Cost of using Comic Sans
If you are a designer, you know we hate the font Comic Sans because of its overuse, readability and a dozen other reasons. What you you may not know it is that Comic Sans is costing you money to use it compared to other fonts. Via PixartPrinting
Read MoreInDesign: Powerful Search and Replace Examples
Wikipedia says… Grep is a command-line utility for searching plain-text data sets for lines matching a regular expression. Grep was originally developed for the Unix operating system, but is available today for all Unix-like systems. Its name comes from the ed command g/re/p (globally search a regular expression and print), which has the same effect:…
Read MoreNeed a flip book? Use InDesign!
You’ve seen digital flip books. You see them online. You can click the pages and they do this neat page curl and you can make your mouse “flip” the pages. Traditionally (which is funny, since tradition doesn’t go back THAT far in our digital world), these created with Flash. Later we have learned to do …
Read MoreIs this picture big enough for my brochure?
I get this question a lot from clients when working on a printed piece. Resolution for printed pieces is totally different than for websites. Website (or screen) resolution is only 72dpi. This means your images look like they do on your monitor. But, when you use them for high quality printing, the resolution must be…
Read MoreAdobe Illustrator pressure sensitive brushes don’t work with my Wacom Tablet anymore!
Question I recently had to update my drivers for my old Wacom tablet due to a system upgrade. I was very disappointed to find out that my pressure sensitive brushes don’t work any more in Adobe Illustrator CS5. I can draw with them, but they aren’t pressure sensitive. Is there any way to fix this? Answer I…
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