Graphic and Web Designer London UK

Here (above) are three sierra boxes I did for a music creation software company.
Also in this product range I did a DVD disc label, manual, jewel case and amaray case which are housed, obviously, in the sierra box. The sierra box was also printed with a spot UV or varnish which give the pictorial elements [...]

Article filed under: Artwork, Design 1 Comment

If your client hands you a .PPT from MS PowerPoint or and .DOC Word and says: “The presentation/print deadline is tomorrow, make this look nice”, what are you going to do?
The answer is to use other programs such as Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign, Quark, Premiere or Keynote and get creative!
Here are a few tips I’ve picked [...]

Article filed under: Acrobat, Artwork, Design, Illustrator, InDesign, Photoshop, Quark 8 Comments

Remember Adobe Streamline? Adobe stopped upgrading its vector conversion application some time ago. But with the advent of CS2, Illustrator’s old Trace Tool became the new super Live Trace and opened up a new world of possibilities!
As soon as you place or paste a photo into Illustrator a button on the Control Palette offers a [...]

Article filed under: Artwork, Design, Illustrator, Photoshop 38 Comments

Many people have asked me this question and, in the absence of a Wikipedia entry, here’s my definition.
The term pre-dates desktop publishing when “artwork” or “mechanical art” meant the material (photography, bromide, film, tranparency) or completed, camera-ready pages that could be photographed with a stat camera to make a same-size film that would be used [...]

Article filed under: Artwork 6 Comments

It’s the joyous season of the dreaded companies’ annual report and accounts where artworkers and printers try to make money by producing horribly boring documents full of endless tables with horrendously dull titles like “Intangible Assets”.
But, do you know the trick of how to get columns of figures to line up, as the accountants like, [...]

Article filed under: Artwork, InDesign, Quark 1 Comment

Remember you can choose the keystrokes of InDesign to those of Quark by going Edit > Keyboard Shortcuts…
The table below is for the default shortcuts.

Action
Quark
InDesign
Illustrator
Photoshop

Show/Hide guides
F7
Cmd(Mac)/ Ctrl(PC)-; (Cmd(Mac)/ Ctrl(PC)-H for boxes)
Cmd(Mac)/ Ctrl(PC)-;
Cmd(Mac)/ Ctrl(PC)-;

Bullet point
Option-8
Option-8
Option-8
Option-8

Show/Hide Invisibles
Cmd(Mac)/ Ctrl(PC)-I
Cmd(Mac)/ Ctrl(PC)-option-I
Cmd(Mac)/ Ctrl(PC)-option-I
n/a

Hanging indent
Cmd(Mac)/ Ctrl(PC)-\
Cmd(Mac)/ Ctrl(PC)-\
n/a
n/a

Auto page number
Cmd(Mac)/ Ctrl(PC)-3
Cmd(Mac)/ Ctrl(PC)-N
n/a
n/a

Article filed under: Artwork, Design 2 Comments

I was thinking this was going to be a short post but the ideas just keep on coming. Maybe a little unfair, I’m comparing InDesign CS2 with Quark 6.5, but anyway!
X and Y You can choose where your x and y measurements for page objects are taken in the Control bar – top left, top [...]

Article filed under: Artwork, Design, InDesign 6 Comments

Here are my favourite three blogs of people who, like me, are graphic designers and write about it on the internet. Firstly, from Romania, I really like webee design blog. Webee has really helped me out with his tips and encouragement.
Also a beautiful creative design blog by David Airey who has blogging help as well [...]

Article filed under: Artwork, Design, Freelancing, Internet 15 Comments