Wednesday, April 29, 2009

Unspoken Rules of Design

Just because right now it seems like everything I do with my designs is terrible, it felt appropriate to post this. Anway...


1. Your fonts will default to the worst possible font available on the machine you are showing your work on.

2. If you have two versions of a photo, the wrong one will make its way to the printer.

3. The less time you have the more useless your computer will become.

4. Promises made by the sales staff have no basis in reality.

5. The sales staff will promise anything.

6. If the text consists of two words, one will be misspelled.

7. Speed. Quality. Affordability. Pick any two.

8. If the run is wrong, it's never the press operator's fault.

9. Spell checkers don't.

10. Grammar checkers don't, either.

11. Proof raeders are useless.

12. Global search-and-replaces aren't.

13. The index entry you leave out will be the first one the client looks under.

14. Optical Character Recognition (OCR) is good comedy.

15. If three designs are shown to a client, your least favorite will be chosen or any combination of worst components of each.

16. If two designs are shown, a third will be requested. If provided, then one of the first two will be chosen.

17. If you ask for more copy it will be sent as a .jpg. If you ask for images they will send powerpoint presentations.

18. Clients don't have their company logo in a usable print ready format so don't bother asking.

19. Blue line proofs reveal previously invisible errors.

20. The best designs never survive contact with the client.

21. You will misspell the name of the client's spouse.

22. Your best idea is already copyrighted.

23. The best way to find errors in your code is to show a client "a new feature".

24. There is no stock photo ever made that matches the image you have in your head.

25. Creative inspiration flows in inverse proportion to the distance from the studio.

26. Time allowed to complete work is inversely proportional to time taken by client to work out what to complain about.

27. Doctors, astronauts, and plumbers need training to do their jobs, but anyone with a computer is a graphic designer.

28. No matter how detailed the tech support FAQ is, nobody has ever heard of your problem.

29. The number of colors in a client's design will equal the number of colors in the original bid specs, plus two.

30. The client's disk won't run on your equipment & when it does will contain unusable copyrighted images.

31. If you purchase new equipment to read your client's disk, it will be the last disk of that type you will ever receive.

32. Your client will often not like your design but not quite know why.

33. Computer crashes always happen exactly 30 seconds before saving.

34. A client who knows exactly what he wants is worse than one that has no idea.

35. Clients who do not provide content upfront will complain about the use of Lorem Ipsum.

36. Everything has to be done immediately, deadlines are incredibly important unless client has to provide materials or approve your work.

37. The customer is always right . And an idiot.

something cool I found to help with composing/designing.

http://jakegarn.com/the-rule-of-thirds/

Friday, April 17, 2009

What the f*nt?

I'm starting to get behind on my tutorials... I will be doing that this weekend. PROMISE!!!! It's really hard to do tutorials at work. Oddly it's not too difficult to do search on this kinda stuff....

Buuuuuuut, I have found some really cool websites for fonts. Working on my 118 project, I really wanted a very condensed, light, sans serif looking font type. I looked through all the fonts that were already pre-loaded in Illustrator, but no luck. Tehre was some stuff, but nothing I actually liked and fit with the design I was kinda hoping for. Anyway, with a little help from my mom, I found these awesome sites! A lot of them let you download the font for free. And they have them available in both Mac and PC formats. Sawweeet!

DaFont

What the F*nt??

Type Now

1001 Free Fonts

Wednesday, April 15, 2009

I don't know how many of you guys have really looked at Colour Lovers yet, but I'm seriously so happy to have this resource. I'm working on my 118 project right now, and am really having a hard time figuring out what I want to do for a color scheme. I know that I tend to use colors that I **like** as opposed to thinking of a set of colors taht work well together and are interesting. I'm definitely making a concerted effort to try to stay a little more open minded to colors that aren't necessarily my favorite.

Tuesday, April 14, 2009

You k now what I love?



Perfectly matching, perfectly circular circles.




This edition brought to you by late nights in the Broadway lab and lots of caffeine.







That is all.

Thursday, April 9, 2009

Amy states, “To me, feeling the completion of a piece is like reaching that ethereal finish line, and you feel the way that you do when you see the ocean from the shore, or when you exit a matinee and squint into the sudden light, knowing all along it was there.”


We will never forget the first time Amy Ruppel came into the shop. It was like some famous rock star had come to visit. We were like giddy little school girls! We were even more excited when she agreed to be a Student Of The Month. Amy's work is so well known & loved and rightfully so... Everything she creates is adorable. She is a true professional through & through. It was such a thrill to work with her. Thank you Amy for being such an inspiration! This limited edition print titled "Tree Factory" is printed by our friends at Pinball Publishing on post-consumer recycled paper with soy-based inks. 11x14" signed & numbered. 5% of the proceeds from the print will be donated to Amy's charity of choice: The American Bird Conservancy, www.abcbirds.org

I haven't been buying anything lately...well besides An Awesome Book by Dallas Clayton. I couldn't resist Amy Ruppel's newest bird series based on state birds. I was missing California (a daily occurrence) and decided that I had to have this little quail creation. I emailed Amy and minutes later it was mine. There are still a few states left and the next sale for the second half of the states is Friday. I'm already thinking of investing in New York...

it’s only fitting that today’s first (yup, we have two today!) sneak peek belongs to artist amy ruppel because she was both the original inspiration for the sneak peek column and is my gracious host while i’m in portland this week! i can’t wait to have dinner at her new restaurant (along with her husband randy) cava and check out all of her insider haunts. in the meantime, she’s sharing a little insider sneak peek into her brand new studio space today. full of light and beautiful little vignettes, it’s a great way to see how amy works and what she keeps around her for inspiration. as always you can click here for full sized (and additional) photos of amy’s studio, or click “read more” below to see many more photos after the jump. [thanks to amy for sharing- and for hosting me this week!]
Some images I wanted to stick in here done by Amy Ruppel. <3