Design

1264 Items

Sort by Date | Title

The Weapons: Visual Lies, Manufactured Needs: Apr 20, 2009; No longer just a product enhancement, branding became the commodity. Our ability to transmit information and products to new markets has never been less expensive or more immediate. David B. Berman looks at the state of branding and design.

There's Always Something to Bounce Light Off Of: Apr 21, 2008; Veteran author Joe McNally, whose work has graced the pages of Sports Illustrated, National Geographic, and Time (to name a few), shares the stories behind some of his greatest shots as well as the lighting techniques he used to make them great.

Things Every Designer Needs to Know About People: Peripheral Vision Determines where Central Vision Should Look: Oct 29, 2015; In this excerpt from 100 MORE Things Every Designer Needs to Know About People, Susan Weinschenk explains why you shouldn't base design decisions solely on eye-tracking studies, and why it would be a mistake to leave peripheral areas blank. Instead, include information that helps people decide where to look (with central vision) next.

Thinking Outside the Box-Shaped Photo: How to Create Cool Photo Edges in Photoshop CS2: Feb 17, 2006; Don't be satisfied with boring rectangular photos! Thanks to Photoshop, you can use simple techniques to create amazing edge effects and cool artistic borders that can add the ultimate finishing touch to your photos. Dave Cross shows you how easy it is to create many different variations from three key techniques.

Thou Shall Not Use Comic Sans and Other Graphic Design Sins and Virtues: Feb 27, 2012; The authors of Thou Shall Not Use Comic Sans: 365 Graphic Design Sins and Virtues: A Designer's Almanac of Dos and Don'ts share their rules of typography, including strong opinions on Comic Sans, Times Roman, and "trendy" typefaces.

Three Steps to Designing Effective Logos: Dec 17, 2014; Maggie Macnab, a professional designer and educator, shows how an effective logo maximizes a client’s budget by using meaningful visual descriptors that are at once universal and concise. For the audience, this relationship translates into interesting, commonsense and sometimes surprising a-ha! connections, prompting longer viewing times and more likelihood of recall.

Three Ways to Adversely Impact your Google Pagerank: Jan 7, 2005; There are plenty of tips you can use to increase your pagerank, but some of these can actually backfire, hurting your page's score. Find out what you might be doing to hurt your search engine visibility in this article by Dave Taylor.

Time-Saving Tricks for Working Smarter and Faster in 3ds Max 8: Aug 18, 2006; You may be familiar with the general layout of 3ds Max 8's user interface, but a few of version 8's interface features aren't readily apparent to new users. They are, however, critical if you want to navigate quickly in 3D space. The goal of this chapter isn't to show you the nuts and bolts of the interface, but rather to introduce you to a few of these fundamental features that will enhance your productivity.

Tips for Drawing with Brushes in Illustrator CS2: Aug 25, 2006; The heart of Illustrator is the ability to define vector paths, usually using the Pen or Pencil tool. The paths can have an infinite variety of fills, stroke properties, and other effects. Among these effects is an amazing variety of brushlike stroke attributes. In this chapter, you'll learn how to draw with brushes; create calligraphic, art, and scatter brushes, and more.

Tips for the Digital Photographer on Working with Layer Masks in Adobe Photoshop: Aug 20, 2013; Harold Davis walks you through the process of solving a particular exposure challenge using layer masks in Adobe Photoshop, in this chapter from The Way of the Digital Photographer: Walking the Photoshop post-production path to more creative photography.

Tips on Designing Newsletters: Jan 1, 1999; by Robin Williams, from The Non-Designer's Guerrilla Marketing Guide

To Get the Shot, Ya Gotta Break the Rules: Feb 15, 2008; Veteran photographer Joe McNally—whose work has appeared in Time, Life, and Sports Illustrated magazines—shares a few of his favorite tricks from his runaway bestseller The Moment It Clicks, in which Joe shares how he got some of his best shots.

To Photoshop or Not to Photoshop: May 3, 2010; How do you answer a student who begins a design or digital imaging class with the question, “Are we gonna learn Photoshop in this class?” In this article, the question is re-addressed to the student: “Why do you need Photoshop when so much can be accomplished in the camera using formal compositional properties?" xtine burrough explains a recent assignment based on Cracked.com’s popular article, “15 Images You Won’t Believe Aren’t Photoshopped.”

Tool Time: Creating in Illustrator CS2: Nov 22, 2006; You can never have enough tools. Dave Cross and Matt Kloskowski share their most killer tips on how to use Illustrator's tools to, in their words, "create stuff."

Top 10 Fireworks Public Beta Features: May 27, 2008; Jim Babbage escorts us through his 10 favorite parts of the Fireworks public beta.

Top 10 New Features in Adobe Illustrator CC 17.1 (January 2014): Feb 5, 2014; Brian Wood loves the handy new (and often long-awaited) features in Illustrator Creative Cloud (CC). In this article he shows you what they are and how to use them.

Top 10 New Features in Adobe Illustrator CS5: Aug 25, 2010; Brian Wood, contributor to Adobe Illustrator CS5 Classroom in a Book, loves the handy new (and often long-awaited) features in Illustrator CS5. He highlights 10 of his favorites for users who want to know whether CS5 fulfills its promises.

Top 10 Reasons Why Adobe Lightroom Rocks: Feb 24, 2006; Matt Kloskowski doesn't just like Adobe's new Lightroom application; he's crazy about it. With a ton of useful features, Lightroom helps digital photographers to get in, get done, and get away from the computer, so they can focus on what they do best: taking pictures.

Top 10 Reasons Why Illustrator CC Is Great for Web Design: Jun 29, 2015; With the proliferation of different devices that visitors can use on a site, designing for the Web has become ever more complicated. Why not take advantage of your old friend Adobe Illustrator to design a new site, or to freshen an existing one? Brian Wood, web developer and author of Adobe Illustrator CC 2014 Classroom in a Book, presents some compelling arguments for sticking with this well-known product, including some features you might never have explored.