Mr Bang Tidy
I have just submitted my first T Shirt to the website Quertee. A website where member's submit their designs and users vote on whether to have these designs made into a T Shirt.
The T Shirts that are then chosen are put up for sale, normally for 24 hours, at a very reasonable price of £8.
This seems like a fantastic idea to me to get cool designs onto T Shirts for cheap. Also, it is nice to wear a T Shirt that has very little chance for someone else to have that T Shirt!
My design is a Keith Lemon inspired novelty T Shirt inspired by everyone's favourite ladies man and his infamous hand bandage. The simple description for this T Shirt would be Bang Tidy!
So please click and vote and get my design made into a T Shirt!
COMIC SANS – NO THANKS
Comic Sans is well known worldwide yet it is widely hated by creative designers, especially myself!
My other half is a primary school teacher and obviously loves this "fun, rounded and childish" font and is the cause of much hurt inside when she suggests that work I do to help her should be in Comic Sans!
The BBC has written an interesting article on the infamous font and it's history:
COLOUR AND IT’S IMPORTANCE
Colour is the fundamental design approach to reach and grab your target users. It's key in a design's non-verbal communication and creates the all important physical and mental reactions of the user. Colours, if used well, can instantly convey the right tone of the site as well as convey key important messages to the user. Colour can be used to bring out all kinds of emotions whether it calms, excites or gives the a user the all important feeling of trust. Because of these reasons colour is a fundamental tool to create powerful graphic design.
One of the first things to look at when starting any new design project is to look at a colour scheme. It is fundamental to do this right, and designers, guided by the main principles of colour theory, and of course professional experience.
The Theory
Most people choose colours according to their own taste and end up with something that features the colours that they think look good and work with each other. This is fine if you have a good 'eye' and you can successfully choose colours that compliment each other. However, not all people succeed in their choices.
There are basic theories in colour which are very clear and easy to understand. It is easiest to start with the Colour Wheel.
The Colour Wheel
Invented by Sir Isaac Newton in 1666, he took the bar of colours, or spectrum, created by the passage of light through a prism and transformed it into a circle dissected into various segments, each segment a different size according to his calculations of it's wavelength and it's corresponding width in the spectrum.
The Colour Wheel is used by many designers and artists across the world. The Colour Wheel allows you to pick the colours that compliment each other. The wheel is made of 6 basic colours: Red, Orange, Yellow, Green, Blue and Purple. There are also mixes of the basic colours that are in addition to these.
The theory is that two colours opposite each other on the Colour Wheel will be harmonious. As well three colours equally spaced around the Colour Wheel in the shape of a triangle or any four colours from the wheel that form a rectangle. These colours should compliment each other regardless of the rotation angle of the shape when selecting the colours.
Further Reading
You can read more into colour and in detail the differences between RGB and CMYK.
WHAT IS GRAPHIC DESIGN?
I always get asked by people when I say I am a Graphic designer "What is graphic design?", and to be honest it applies to so many disciplines that I struggle to give a simple answer. Graphic design is all around us every second of every day. It's the box of cereal on your breakfast table, the leaflet on your doorstep, it's the side of your bus on the way to work. Graphic design is everywhere!
Dictionary.com describes graphic design as:
"The art or profession of visual communication that combines images, words and ideas to convey information to an audience, especially to produce a specific effect."
Now if I described graphic design like that the majority of people would be none the wiser as to what graphic design is. A graphic designer's role is to arrange and use different elements on different types of media, for example posters, branding, website design, packaging. With the introduction and wide use of computers the vast majority of people in the industry will now use computer software to create their design work such as Adobe Creative suite, a wide range of programs to cover most creative needs.
In my job I create a wide range of visual communication pieces such as:
- Logos / Branding
- Business Cards
- Advertisements
- Websites
- Brochures
- Menus
- Packaging
- Posters
I pretty much enjoy designing anything and everything and I find it fun, which is a big plus! So next time you find something pretty to look at, just think that in front of you is somebody's hard work, their pride and joy, their life for the duration of time that it took them to create what is in front of you!
CUFÓN – BRING ON THE FONTS!
For years now Web Design has been limited in it's use of web safe fonts and because of this designers were forced to either work with these limiting fonts or use images for their type. This is not good for the user or for search engine's to view the text in aid of SEO for the site.
Over recent years there have been a few fixes and work arounds for displaying custom fonts on websites. One example is using sIFR, which despite its merits still remains painfully tricky to set up and use. I have tried to use this in the past and it was very awkward to implement and the end result wasn't as required.
However, after recommendation, I came across a modern day savior to web designers everywhere. Cufón enables users to implement any TTF (TrueType Font) or OTF (OpenType Face) into their website creations. The type is still readable by search engines while remaining extremely simple to install.
So if you are looking for a way to install a stunning and beautiful font on your next website, Cufón is the answer!
RGB vs. CMYK
Computer monitors emit their colour as RGB (Red, Green and Blue) light. Although all colours of the visable spectrum (colours that we see) can be produced by merging these three colours, monitors can only display a limited range of the visable spectrum.
However, when printing this cannot be applied as inked paper absorbs or reflects specific wavelengths. In printing we use CMYK (Cyan, Magenta, Yellow and Black). Cyan, Magenta and Yellow pigments serve as filters, reducing different amounts of red, green and blue from white light to produce a selective range of spectral colours. Similarly to monitors, inks also produce a colour range that is only a subset of the visable spectrum, although the range is not the same for both.
What does all this mean, in basic terms it means that artwork displayed on a computer monitor may not match that in a print.
Why is this an issue for Graphic Designers?
When designing for print it is a lot easier to then transfer the artwork to screen as you have that colour in front of you and the colour does not change (ignoring variations in light). However, on screen there are several factors that affect what the colour produced is, factors to take into account are the brightness of the screen, how well the screen colour is collaborated as well as the quality of the screen, an LCD screen will have a much richer colour output than an old CRT screen.
We, as Graphic Designers, have to match these as best as possible to create great end results. Useful tools that aid in this are colour books, the main manufacturer being Pantone, who also provide color codes in both CMYK and RGB where available as not all colours can be matched in both CMYK and RGB.
I AM A COLOUR LOVER
A great website that I have used is Colour Lovers.
What Is It?
Colour Lovers is basically a website of colour, it demonstrates colours and how they work together, users submit palettes that they have used and loved! I find it very userful when designing sites for alternative colours that may work together. Sometimes when you are having a bit of a mental block the colour palletes can inspire and motivate you towards a beautiful final design.
This site in my opinion is a must for any designer. It is a large site and has a huge selection and varieties of palletes, patterns and colours.
The Application
A new addition from Colour Lovers is ColorSchemer 2 which is a professional colour matching system for MAC. Again a useful desktop tools for using colour within your design work. Priced at $49.99 it's not going to break the bank so is worth a little look!