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What is stroke?
Stroke refers to the thickness of a line. You can have pretty much any size stroke that you want. The stroke can be on the outside of a box, text, a line by itself is considered a stroke. Strokes a lot of times are used as lines to add organization and they are simple. You can either use the line tool, add a difference color to the outer edge of the box or you can use the pen tool to create curved strokes or to follow a path.
Written by: Kim Woods
How to set up crop marks
When you need to print something that has a bleed, which we covered earlier is colors that go over the edge or “bleed” over the edge. You will need to give the printer a lot of times crop marks so that they know how far to cut into the color, this will save them and you a headaches. If you do not send them crop marks they may crop in too or too little. This causes problems especially for things that are being mailed. If they do not fit into the envelope then you are in trouble. By helping out the printer you are keeping both of you happy. You can can set up bleeds when you make your pdf out of Illustrator or InDesign. Just go to Marks and Bleeds and add whatever size bleed they need and be sure to put the Printer’s Marks on.
You can also do it when you are designing in InDesign when you set up the document just say use the documents bleeds in the pdf saving.
Written by: Kim Woods
Opacity is used by Graphic Designers
I wrote this article because I found that web progammers sometimes have no clue graphic design terms, as you will read in the next blog tomorrow. Both graphic designer and web programmers both use opacity. Opacity is having something transparent or partially transparent. There are different levels of opacity that can be used and they are meant for specific purposes at times other times to just add some dimension. Each layer can be an opacity which usually you don’t want to do, but you can depending on the project.
Written by: Kim Woods
Bleeds are for printing
When a graphic designer needs to get something printed that goes all the way to that edge that is called a bleed. It is called this because the ink bleeds to the edge. To get a bleed you have to overdesign usually by an 1/8th of an inch though be sure to ask the printer how much of bleed you will need. Some will need you to set up the bleed with crop marks while others will not, it varies from printer to printer.
So the next time you hear a graphic designer talk about bleeds they are almost done with your project or at least someone’s. What did you use to think when you heard this term?
Written by: Kim Woods
Bitmap Images are made up of pixels
Bitmap images are all around us. They make up our pictures, our color and anything that is not designed in a vector program. Pixels are what make up the bitmap meaning that each color is a pixel. Pixels are little squares of color that if you get really close to an image or if the image is blown up or downsized can be seen. And you do not want to be able to see the pixels. Each specific color is a pixel. To the ordinary eye this is no big deal, but if you have a small picture and need it to fill a big area you will notice the difference. The image will become blurry and pixelated. Pixelated is when you can see the individual pixels in the image.
Bitmap images are meant to stay one size and not to be resized. Have you ever seen a pixelated image? I have and they are not pretty.
Written By: Kim Woods
Avoid Mergers, aka things that make your photos look odd.
Case in point this photo. While this is a a photoshpped not your everyday photo it still have a photo merger. The merger here is the pole coming out of the man’s head. It just makes the picture odd. Many times people won’t realize that their a branch sticking out of someone’s head and it makes it look they it is growing. These are bad things. Mergers can also happen colorwise with your artwork or even photography. Colors that are so close in pigment that they merge together to the eye you want contrast.
Written by: Kim Woods
Even though design has rules, sometimes you have to break them
Rules are meant to be broken. You can’t not have a rule and not break it it’s like that unwritten law. Put a rule in place and at some point it will be broken and may turn out horribly or in some cases beautifully. Certain rules for certain things can be broken and you get an amazing affect, but the key is to not do this all the time. Broken rules are okay but not in large amounts. You only want to break one rule in the composition typically, that or every single rule because otherwise it just looks like bad design. You either want it to be an obvious breaking of the rules or just one that is that thing that is perfect.
Written By: Kim Woods
Use framing to help imagery
When using framing you are setting up the image to put the focal point as the main focus. That is why framing works so well. It gives the viewers a focal point to focus on and sets the scene for the image. They can either be natural framing or other kinds of framing. The frame below is one of the more popular ways to frame is through tunnels. Tunnels work as framing because they inevitably have a light at the end which lets you see the outer area and front or foreground is darker but still can be seen. Framing can go either way, the foreground can either be in focus, really dark, out of focus, or almost non existent.
Written By: Kim Woods
What makes a good composition?
There are a lot of things that go into composition. Some of which we have explained but I will go more into depth here in some future blogs. Composition is what makes up the piece the whole idea behind the idea and what makes it look great. The word composition can be associated with many kinds of art. It can be used for painting, photography, music, videos, sculpture, and fabric. The composition is the piece as a whole. A composition can also be part of a series. For instance, photographers will sometimes do studies which means that take lots of pictures of either the same exact object from different angles, lighting aspects or it could mean that take a bunch of pictures of the same type of object. I once did a photographic study of park benches.
The composition is the most important part of the design or the piece and should be thought about before you start anything that is too complicated especially like a sculpture or painting so that halfway through you don’t think where I am going with this again. The idea should be thought through.
Written By: Kim Woods
Graphic Designers work with book covers on occasion
Not always, but the covers of books can be designed by graphic designers. You want to call attention to the book. The spine is very important in designing because that is how the book will display usually on a self so the text must be readable. The next important piece is the actual cover itself. I know I sometimes pick books by the cover, even though the book information may not entice me at all. It is amazing how visual people are. A cover is what brings people into the book as well of course the introduction which in my opinion is the breaker.
The thing a graphic designer needs to know when they begin designing is if they want a picture of the author, the size of the inside flaps, how big the spine is going to be, as well spelling and any other important typographical information that they are going to need to include.
So the next time you pick up a book based on the cover, think good job graphic designer you did your job well.
Written By: Kim Woods