By Esben
August 20, 2008 – 7:00 am
A few months ago I saw some photorealistic vector images and I thought to myself – that’s cool! I don’t know why someone would do such a thing, but it amazed me that it was possible.
Please realize, this is far from a beginner guide and if you have only a little experience in vector drawing applications, sorry, then this article is not for you. I won’t go over every detail—there are steps that simply won’t be mentioned—so it’s not a complete step-by-step guide.
If you don’t have a graphics tablet (like a Wacom), then it’s going to take you twice as long to accomplish drawing these kinds of images. A mouse just isn’t precise nor fast enough.
You need to be fully competent with the Pen tool and have a complete understanding of using anchor points and anchor handles.
Got that? Ok, let’s get going!
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By Esben
August 18, 2008 – 7:00 am
Making a pattern in Illustrator is an excellent tutorial for beginners. Not only does it help you gain some familiarity with the Illustrator tools, patterns can also be applied across all kinds of different projects, including posters, websites and flyers. Today everyone can find a large numbers of patterns on the web, even pattern generators, but making your own pattern has a certain sense of satisfaction and of course, you get some great practice in with Illustrator.
There are a few approaches to making your own pattern.
1. Find some vector images, play around and make something you like.
2. Some fonts come with ornaments that can be useful. dafont.com is one resource if you don’t have professional fonts that include ornaments.
3. Drawing it yourself.
In this tutorial, you’ll learn how to do it yourself.
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By LaurenMarie
August 15, 2008 – 7:00 am
Give your design a personal touch. Think about adding some origami or note-folding to it!
See examples and get plenty of links to money folding, note folding, traditional origami, Toy Paper monsters, even Star Wars origami (and diagrams!), plus amazing paper art by the likes of Jen Stark, Peter Callesen and Richard Sweeney!
Will this inspire you to create something unique for your next design or ad campaign?
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By LaurenMarie
August 13, 2008 – 7:00 am
Direction is realized in the movement of the eye through a design. It helps you as a designer to draw attention to the key points of the layout. Direction gives peace to the design because as a viewer, you know exactly where to go next in the information and you are not left feeling overwhelmed. Direction is used to create focus, emphasize important areas and organize information. Learn more about this vital principle of design and see some examples of it in use.
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By LaurenMarie
August 11, 2008 – 7:00 am
I was able to finalize the restoration of the SP15 on Saturday! Yay! I’m finally ready to print, but I’m going to take a break for a couple of weeks to recover. See before and after pictures, get a link to the Flickr set to see more photos of the restoration process, plus a step by step guide to reassembling the paper gripper and announcing the winners of Creative Curio’s birthday giveaway!
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By LaurenMarie
August 8, 2008 – 7:00 am
By Stephen Tiano
I logged my first experience setting type during the pre-computer age in a mandatory, ten-week high school shop class forty years ago. We took individual pieces of metal type, lead I believe—lowercase characters from a compartmentalized drawer and uppercase in a drawer above that—and set type one line at a time in a frame. We sometimes needed extra, blank pieces of metal to space out lines. Just as likely, though I do not remember doing this, would be the need to fit type by shaving tiny slices of the soft metal from either side of an individual character.
Despite—or perhaps because of—what I remember of that old class, the first thing I check after setting a page of type is word spacing.
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By LaurenMarie
August 6, 2008 – 7:00 am
Contrast is an opposition of attributes. It can be present in any of the elements of design—not just value with which it is commonly associated—which is why it is not grouped with them as an element. You don’t always have to make objects be in high contrast to each other, though; low contrasting items can contribute to the sense of unity within a piece.
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