And my first tutorial!

Live Trace tool in Adobe Illustrator

http://www.fanhow.com/knowhow:Live_trace_from_images_in_Adobe_Illustrator_CS4_75988514

Tips from the Master

I had an AWESOME conversation this afternoon with one of my best friends in the ever ever, the stupendous KTG.  Conveniently, KTG is a design wizard and is currently getting her Master's degree in Graphic Design at the Savannah School of Design (baahh!), and she got super excited about helping me learn design basics!  Woohoo!

One of my first set of questions was around design software, and how to get a little more high-tech with my design stuff!

• Photoshop: pixel-based (those tiny little squares of color that make up pictures). Used for image manipulation and digital painting
• Illustrator - vector based (meaning mathematically created so anything you create in there can become any size without losing integrity). Used for illustrating - logos, typography, vector illustrations (posters etc can be made here too)
• InDesign - the publishing side of this. It handles things with lots of text, great for multiple-page spreads etc... sort of a compiling software where you combine images and text into longer documents. Also vector-based.
  

Some of these cross over a bit, like there are some things, like flyers, that could be done in either InDesign or Illustrator, and in times like that it's really mostly your preference. I would say that Photoshop is the most "user-friendly" and Illustrator is the least, but it's just a matter of knowing A. What it can do and B. how to actually do it.

That effect you're looking for is in Illustrator -> "live-trace" and also in Photoshop under "Filters". I can't remember which one exactly, but it's one of those.

I'm off at 1:30 Monday, so back by 2! (Which is 1pm your time, right?). SKYPE SHALL OCCUR!

I'll compile a list of areas we can cover, with the ideal being that perhaps you get a general intro into a lot of areas very briefly, we choose one to focus on together, and then you work on your program skills to get them up to snuff. The tricky thing about design, is that it is fast becoming a very fluid field. It literally is about "visual communication", by whatever means are needed, so it's not by any stretch of the imagination confined to those programs, but at the same time, if you want to progress, you need to know those programs first.

(That is why undergraduate graphic design is all project based, so we learn the programs, then in grad school they're like "design is anything!!!! design is everything!!! and we all run out screaming like celts to change the world)

Ahh yay now I have my very own graphic design professor!!  Here's my very first reading assignment:

http://graphicdesign.spokanefalls.edu/tutorials/process/gestaltprinciples/gestaltprinc.htm

I absolutely love this quote, and I do my best to live it out as well as I can.  It is one of the things that inspired me to get rolling on this whole blog deal, so I wanted to get it up on here pretty early in the game.  So, my next topic will be "quotes."  We've certainly all seen neat examples of a quote or phrase paired with a well-selected picture or background, and I used this opportunity to think about the fundamental principles of how to frame an interesting quote.  

The first challenge is picking a background.  The background or image you use can have a big effect not only on whether a quote “pops” for the reader, but on the tone of a quote itself.  For example, the serene, skyward-looking image of wheatgrass used above gives the quote a very spiritual feeling, which may make it resonate with more ethereal types of people, whereas a whimsical image, like the bicycle one used here, will give it a lighter (dare I say it), “Y.O.L.O” sort of feeling.

First and foremost, though, the image has to be simple and subtle enough that your quote is A. clear and easy to read, and B. “pops” for the viewer.  I tend to gravitate toward natural and outdoorsy images, hence the wheatgrass silhouette featured above.  You can use micro or macro pictures, as you please, but for thoughtful quotes like these, I find that I like a macro-focus (looking at something small and up-close) with an open, broader background, like looking up at the sky or out over a horizon.  I like the balance this strikes between the here and now, the details and the bigger picture.

Next, I start to think about the placement of the words.  Usually, I find that this is pretty much controlled by the space available in the photograph, so having a photo with a big open chunk of “wasted” space, like the one below, can be helpful.  In this case, the text is close to the subject, creating an intimate sense that this is a thought to hold close to your heart as you move through life.  Placing the text boldly out in the center of the photo, like in the bike image above, poses it as more of a bold, cheerful life philosophy that might be shared on a Facebook wall or t-shirt.  You can also place the text up in the sky to create a reflective tone of personal growth toward an ideal.

The font and color used for the text can also do a great deal in shaping the viewer’s response to your quote.  A whimsical font such as MV Boli gives a very different feeling than the serene Papyrus used in this image.  Regardless of what font I use, I always find that you have to maintain a certain level of simplicity, or cleanness, to have the best and strongest effect.   

To return, for a moment, to the discussion about background, this often makes it challenging to find a good photograph or image to use for your quote without losing the words.  Sometimes, I bleach photos to make the text stand out, but even then I’m often left feeling like I, and therefore the viewer, will be torn between the photo and the quote.  As a result, I worry that the beauty of each is lessened, and the quote would have been stronger standing alone on a blank or empty canvas.

Fun and personal cards

Here is the very first swing I ever took at graphic designing (don't worry...I promise I've gotten better)!  The nice thing about personalizing a card, though?  Unless your sister is a graphic designer herself, you really don't have to be skilled at all to make it a special gift.

You do, however, need a ripe amount of patience.  One October day in Vermont (probably, oh... 0.5 days before my sister's birthday), I spent almost two hours on my hands and knees rearranging and photographing bright fall leaves.  If you've never lived in Vermont, it's worth going some fall, just to get the brightest, prettiest leaves this side of anywhere.  If you have lived in Vermont, you can imagine just how long this took, given how windy the place is in October.

It's worth it, though!  If you photograph an entire alphabet, you've got a working set of letters you can use to spell out anything you want from then on!  I recommend compiling a few sets of these, overtime.  I have a fall set, a pebble set, a "funky" set spelled out with summer boat toys, and I'm hoping to put together a driftwood set next time I encounter some driftwood.  You can make an elegant theme or mix and match to create all sorts of different tones.

Here are a couple more examples:

 

With this last one, I collected most of these silly animal photos from the internet instead of using ones of my own (I haven't been this successful at catching animals in the middle of belting their hearts out).  These are fine to use for your own personal projects and for fun, but remember that they're probably copyrighted, so they cannot be used to make a profit!

Getting started

I am awful at remembering to send cards. 

A sampling from the last few months.

I love cards. I'm even pretty good at recognizing an important date once it lands upon me.  Unfortunately, at that point it’s usually way too late to play it off as "I just keep forgetting to get a stamp," or "I needed to look up your address," and it's just clear that I didn't get my shiz together for the birthday/holiday.

To save paper and to shake my identity as the only card-deficient member of the family, I began putting together digital birthday cards.  That’s where this all started.  As I became more familiar with the graphic designs I could make using low-tech options like Microsoft PowerPoint, I became more and more enthralled at the artistic world that opened up to me.  I don't have any background in art (I studied Geology, for goodness sake), but before long I was beginning to see the graphic designs around me not simply as pleasing images, but as sums of many different, surprisingly simple parts.  If I could recreate these parts through graphics, then maybe I, too, could be artistic!

Let us pause here and appreciate this concept, as I did when it first hit me:  me...artistic?  While I have a healthy imagination, my outlet for creativity has always been in the written, not visual arts.  The possibility that I could create physical pieces of prettiness.... that I could actually play an active role in a visual art, was super exciting!

This discovery came at a good time for me, too.  I recently transitioned from a trumbleweed-style life to a more stationary one, moving to Madison after a couple of years bouncing around the country (Pennsylvania-to-Vermont-to-other-place-in-Vermont-to-California??-to-maybe-other-place-in-California-wait-no-Wisconsin).  Given my roaming nature, I doubt this will be my last stop, but for now I'm relieved to be nestling into one place.  I've spent a lot of time in the last few years looking at "what's next, what's next," and I'm excited to spend some time focusing instead on what exactly I've becoming, while tumbleweeding about.  Including the fact that hey... I do graphic design, now, in my free time!  Maybe I should spend some time honing this!

Hi!  I’m Gwen, and I am a budding/wannabe graphic designer.  I’m hoping that a little blog action will be a fun way to get some of my projects out there for some feedback!  So for anyone out there with graphic design knowledge, with interest, or who are just also terrible at remembering to send cards, I'm looking to you!  Be nice, please... but tell me what you think!