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