Supplying initial ideas

Some designers will tell you that they always design one option for themselves and one for the client. One very beautifully “designed”; the other more commercial. Personally, I like to supply two or three options, all of them for the client.

Try to show the client variety in your options and discuss the strengths and weaknesses of the different designs so that you can understand exactly what is needed.

Choosing great typefaces

Sometimes I like to use a combination of a serif and a sans serif typeface. Here the title is in the elegant Didot font and the body is in Futura, mostly Futura Light. Also instead of making body, or even title fonts, in black, I’ve experimented with different shades of gray.

Dealing with photography

If your advertisement has a product image in it – or any image for that matter – it is necessary to get it to reproduce as well as possible.

The photo that was decided upon for this ad was of a mature man modeling the product. There were a number of things about the photo that were improved upon (blotchy skin, dirty fingernails, wrinkles, etc.) The original photo is on the left; the re-touched photo on the right.

To make these improvements in Photoshop I used the Clone Stamp Tool (S) to get rid of blemishes and the Dodge Tool (O) to lighten areas.

Lastly, I changed the image’s mode to CMYK and made sure in Image Size that it was roughly the size it will be when reproduced with a resolution of 300 ppi.

Writing great copy

I could write a lot more about this subject, especially about the headline. This headline actually came from the client and, along with the picture, fulfills most headline criteria. It is attractive, attention-grabbing and clear.

Always be at pains to make the text as simple as possible, being informative about the benefits of the product or service.

And … don’t forget the spell check.

Supplying the artwork

Make sure all images and logos were high resolution and CMYK. Also make sure that the text was CMYK, especially that the black or gray text is made out of K (key black), without any C, M or Y. There should be no RGB colors in the artwork.

I laid this out in Adobe InDesign and exported it as a PDF/X-1a:2001. I finally checked it in Adobe Acrobat Professional where you can see all four plates separately to check that there aren’t any rogue elements in the ad that may cause problems later.

I have written further information about preparing artwork for print and supplying artwork to printers in this website.

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 up over the years of doing this.

Make sure you import your client’s text into InDesign and Quark rather than copy and paste it

Why? Because it keeps the formatting (bolds, italics, heads, subheads, notes, etc). If your client has gone through the document and done this there’s no need for you to do it again. OK, you may not like your client’s choice of formatting or font, you can change that globally over the whole document in seconds. Use the Style Sheets or Utilities > Font Usage in Quark and Paragraph Styles or Type > Find Font in InDesign to turn the sow’s ear into a silk purse.

If you want a presentation to look good don’t do it in PowerPoint

I know this isn’t always an option as all the world and his wife seem to want to use PowerPoint for any purpose but, if you can’t persuade the client to go for Premiere or Keynote, there’s always the PDF. The good old PDF will give you an excellent presentation with vectors supported, movies played and excellent interactivity.

You’ve got to do it PowerPoint, now what do you do?

In PowerPoint go File > Page Setup and that’ll give you the size of the slide. Then go to Photoshop go File > New and type in the same height and width values from PowerPoint, create your attention-grabbing masterpiece, save it as a PNG (transparency is supported) and then back in PowerPoint go Insert > Picture > From File… and select your PNG.

OK, so you can do that for every page of a 40 slide deck if your client wants to edit the text, but it’ll add a bit of extra fizz to the proceedings.

Get your client to provide you with the source files

If there’s a blurry bitmap graph or chart that you need to beautify, ask if it exists as a PDF or ask for the source files. Even if it was the ugly result of a PowerPoint-Excel partnership the chances are it can be copied and pasted into Illustrator and the type can be changed and the excess crud can be deleted.

Similarly a PDF can be opened from within Illustrator with the type and the vectors editable, if the wind is blowing in the right direction, if you’re lucky!

For both of these routes you may find all the elements refusing to be ungrouped. If this is the case go Object > Clipping Mask > Release and Object > Compound Path > Release and then ungroup and see where that gets you.

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, with the bracketed figures (negative numbers) aligning with the figures not in brackets (positive numbers)? If producing the tables in normal tabbed text in both Quark and InDesign the solution is to select the tab icon that looks like an arrow with the decimal point after it in both applications. This not only lines your numbers up on the decimal point if you have them and also “hangs” the brackets outside the numbers.

Choosing a group of colours can be a daunting exercise. OK, so there’s some golden rules to follow, like “always choose from the same third of the colour wheel”. Golden rules are made to be broken.

Adobe has a colourful website to make this a bit easier. If you sign in you can download the colourways as a .ase which can be imported to CS2 and CS3 applications via the Swatches palette (InDesign CS2/CS3: Load Swatches; Illustrator CS2/CS3: Open Swatch Library: Other Library; Photoshop CS2/CS3: Load Swatches). A pleasure to use!

X and Y You can choose where your x and y measurements for page objects are taken in the Control bar – top left, top centre, top right, middle left, middle centre, middle right, bottom left, bottom centre or bottom right. With Quark it’s top left – and that’s it!

Duplicate spread You can add a new spread or page exactly the same as another one, in Quark you must add a page and then copy the elements.

Fill frame proportionately (Command (Ctrl for PCs) Option Shift -C) Get a picture to fit into a box without the edges showing. After this go center content (Command (Ctrl for PCs) Shift -E) and you’re just about there with most photos!

Interactive PDFs Put buttons on a master page to go to next page, previous page and contents/home page. InDesign has the ability to add numerous other interactive options to PDFs that Quark doesn’t. More about this here.

Print ready high resolution PDFs Export direct from InDesign, don’t even think about exporting them from Quark for final artwork – you have to print a PostScript file and distill it. More about this here.

Constrain proportions You have the choice to constrain proportions of boxes in the control palette by clicking on the chain/broken chain icon, you can’t constrain proportions in Quark’s measurements palette. This is so handy!

Change case Everything in caps and you want it in lower case? Can’t be bothered to capitalise words? It’s a time-saver.

Overprint preview Ever set white-out text to overprint? I have. Wish I didn’t!

Data merge Order fields from a spreadsheet direct to your document.

I haven’t even talked about drop shadows, object styles or transparencies – let alone importing AIs and PSDs.

On the other hand I still prefer the way Quark handles type and I haven’t found reliable quick keys for editing point size, leading, tracking and baseline shift in InDesign. I’m also still getting to grips with the way InDesign handles hyphenation and justification.

The advantages of PDF publishing over internet publishing are:
1 No need to worry about browser and platform differences or about being standards compliant – if you can view a PDF properly in Reader the chances are that everyone else in the world can.
2 You can use any font you want.
3 Vector graphics appear pin sharp at any magnification.
4 You don’t need an internet connection to read or print it.

Ah, I hear you say, the web is interactive but PDFs aren’t. Wrong again!

More about this subject and how to create them in InDesign.

Take navigation. Everybody loves to click on articles in a contents page to go to that page, or click on an icon to get back to the contents page, or click “next page” or “previous page” to move through the document. Set up a master page in InDesign with a button set to the bookmark of your contents page and left and right “page turners” set to previous page and next page and, bang, you’ve done it! No need to mess around with your PDF in Acrobat Professional tediously setting all the links.

But what if you want some text boxes to wrap around images and others to flow over? Move to front like Quark? No! Go Object > Text Frame Options and check Ignore Text Wrap whilst having the text box selected. However, if you do want Text Wrap to work like Quark’s Runaround in Preferences (Command/Control -K), under the Composition tab, you can check Text Wrap Only Effects Text Beneath. Text beneath an item with Text Wrap applied will flow around the object – move the text to front and it will flow over the object.

You can still use most of the keyboard shortcuts, including F7 to show and hide guides, command-shift , and . to increase and decrease both type and pictures within a box, command-option-shift ; and ‘ to increase and decrease leading by 1 point, command-option-shift [ and ] for tracking/kerning, command-option-shift – and = for baseline shift. (Shift) F5 for move to front (back). Command (PC Control) -I to view/hide text invisibles.

However, setting the Step/Repeat is command-option U, and opposed to command-option D in Quark. Whereas command- D is still duplicate.

There’s a speedy shortcut for editing text in InDesign (Illustrator users will be familiar with this). When you’re using either selection tool, just double-click on any text box—your cursor will immediately change to the Type tool.

Quark users migrating to InDesign will find the master page items behaving differently. Elements on master pages appear locked on the normal pages. To edit an item on a normal page, command-shift click on the object. Beware! This also moves the item to the front. Use layers to keep it behind other elements if that is desired.