Creativebits Blog
Working with clipping paths in Adobe InDesign
Adapted from Adobe InDesign CS4 Bible (Wiley Publishing)
By Galen Gruman
A clipping path is essentially a shape that acts like a cutout mask—anything inside the shape displays and anything outside does not. It’s a very handy way of displaying just the pieces of a graphic that you want to display, such as masking out extraneous background or focusing on a specific portion of a larger image. Clipping paths are also frequently used to control text wrap around graphics.
InDesign can work with clipping paths that are already part of an imported TIFF, JPEG, Photoshop EPS or Photoshop image, or with clipping paths you create in InDesign. And no matter the source of the clipping path, InDesign lets you modify it.
Creative use of typography in advertising
Typography can be a powerful tool to convey a message. Check out hundreds of great examples from around the world below.
Add tabs to Finder
When tabs finally found their way into Web browsers some years ago, people immediately fell in love with them. In fact, most people wonder how someone could live without them. With Apple’s love for a minimalist interface, you have to wonder why we still don’t have them on the desktop. Whatever the reason, we’ve been left to wait for a third-party solution.
Check out Total Finder: http://totalfinder.binaryage.com/
Logorama
Logorama is an Oscar winning movie about a police chasing an armed criminal in a version of Los Angeles comprised entirely of corporate logos.
You can watch the full movie here or on YouTube here (broken into 2 parts).
HTML Ipsum
We all use lorem ipsum copy for our print layouts. What about webdesign? HTML Ipsum is a simple site offering similar lorem ipsum texts with html markup which will help you create pages to test css styling.
Use copy & paste in Calculator
In OS X there is no cursor in the calculator.app and the calculator dashboard widget, therefore it is not possible to select the numbers appearing on their screens. Yet this doesn't mean you can't paste in a number from your clipboard or copy the results of your calculation to the clipboard.
Just use the Apple(Command)-C or Apple-V keyboard shortcuts as if the screen was selected. Not very intuitive but it works.
For quick calculations you can also use Spotlight or if you're in an Adobe app you can do math right within some of the input fields.
Rule 1: Thou Shalt Make a Logo That is Instantly Readable
Adapted from No Rules Logos: Radical design solutions that break the rules (RotoVision)
By John Stones
Convention has it that one of a logo's first tasks is to be immediately accessible and readable; it shouldn't daunt the viewer at first sight. The logos that follow, however, make demands on their viewers and require deciphering.
Change the horrid blue Exposé outer-glow
If you don't the default blue outer-glow in Exposé you can easily hack to make it look more appealing.
Go to the folder System/Libary/CoreServices. Locate the Dock application. Ctrl-Click it and select Show Package Contents. Within that navigate to the Contents/Resources folder. Here you will find two png files: expose-window-selection-small.png and expose-window-selection-big.png You can overwrite these to create a new look.
See attached files for a neat white outline.
Thanks for the tip propono!
Lesson 3: Understanding the Drupal file structure
It's important to understand the basics of how the directories and files are structured on your Drupal site.
When you install Drupal with the Acquia installer from Lesson 1 or using the files from Drupal.org you will have a default file structure either on your local machine or on your server. If Drupal is installed on your local machine you will find it here:
YourUser/acquia-drupal-site/acquia-drupal/...
This is the root of your website. Everything we discuss from here onward will be within this folder.
Add your blog to Google Buzz
You can manually associate your site with your account by adding this piece of code to your html code's header part. Just replace profilename with your Google profile name. Usually takes a few days for Google to pick-up the information.
Great Examples Of Negative Space In Logo Design
There are literally millions of logos in this world, which makes it even harder for companies to stand out from the rest. Some designers try to tackle this problem by using the negative space in their logos. They are able to link this negative space to the brand so it becomes an important aspect of the corporate identity. In this case, the negative space of the logo forms some kind of ‘hidden message’. In this article you’ll find 25 beautiful examples of the creative use of negative space in logo design.
Google Buzz
You can join the fun here: http://www.google.com/buzz
So far it looks interesting. As soon as you join you will the buzzes [cringe] of several friends. You can comment and the conversation begins.
It's great that you get notified in your inbox about new comments. As if we didn't receive enough emails already.
It badly needs two way communication between Twitter and FB. So far it can only pull messages from one Twitter account only.
What do you think about it?
Extinction or Adaptation?
DTP may have made designers’ lives easier, but it also set us up for the ripple effect.
First to go (in my time) were the phototypesetters.
Next the film strippers and darkroom camera operators.
Next...us?
After us, the printers? Is Kindle just the tip of the iceberg?
We need to learn how to adapt in this new work environment. And we need to learn how to PDQ.
Lesson 2: Basics settings on your Drupal site
In this lesson you will learn how to set the basics up on your new Drupal site.
All settings for your Drupal site can be set within the Administer menu that can be accessed from the menu in the left. When you click Administer you will get a large menu with many options. These menu points are broken down to 5 parts:
- Content Management - Manage your site's content.
- User Management - Manage your site's users, groups and access to site features.
- Reports - View reports from system logs and other status information.
- Site building - Control how your site looks and feels.
- Site configuration - Adjust basic site configuration options.
Introducing StockLogos.com
When I design logos for clients I present many options. By the time I come up with the ideas, sketch them out on paper and then design them on the screen I get attached to them. As a friend of mine once said your logos become your kids. We want to see them grow, become successful and famous. When the client asks me which logo among the presented I like most I feel as if I'm asked which child of mine I like the most. I can't decide, I love them all.
Yet, if I'm lucky client chooses only one from the many. The rest of the kids don't get any love, they are tossed away as if they weren't good enough to represent a business, not fit enough for the world. This is unfair. These abandoned ideas deserve better.
Introducing StockLogos.com
When I design logos for clients I present many options. By the time I come up with the ideas, sketch them out on paper and then design them on the screen I get attached to them. As a friend of mine once said your logos become your kids. We want to see them grow, become successful and famous. When the client asks me which logo among the presented I like most I feel as if I'm asked which child of mine I like the most. I can't decide, I love them all.
Yet, if I'm lucky client chooses only one from the many. The rest of the kids don't get any love, they are tossed away as if they weren't good enough to represent a business, not fit enough for the world. This is unfair. These abandoned ideas deserve better.
Paragraph break vs Line break in OSX
If you're having troubles with text jumbled together when copy pasting documents the issue is most likely caused by incorrect use of line breaks and paragraph breaks. This is usually a problem with MS Word documents.
To fix such documents, open them in Pages before copying. Select Edit/ Find/ Find.../ Advanced. From the drop down options select Line break for Find and Paragraph break for Replace. Once you complete the replace operation you copy the text and it will work correctly.
Lesson 1: Installing Drupal on your computer
I'm starting a course with a lesson a week for non-programmers who wish to learn Drupal. Here is the first lesson.
Before we start with your first lesson, let me give you a very short background about running Drupal.
Drupal is a content management system designed to run on a web server which is accessible through the internet to anyone interested. To run your Drupal site you will need a hosting provider which can run your website for you. There are many to choose from. One of the biggest and cheapest ones that offer easy Drupal installation is Dreamhost.