Design Tips & Propaganda – Ha-Yes!

Design Tip du Semaine #6:How to use InDesign

jimadmin — Tue, 26 Jul 2011 04:45:04 +0000

I don’t know how. So leave me alone.

After decades of using Quark Xpress, I find myself alone, the last survivor of the nuclear holocaust of the Page Layout Wars. Are there ever victors in nuclear war? No. Well, except World War II; we seem to have planted a flag or two and 700 McDonald’s in Japan at the end of that foray. And Adobe seems to have come out smelling like a Pantone 032 Red rose after this Armageddon, too.

But I like to look at this like a love story, albeit one between a thug and a bitch. It’s the Romeo and Juliet story of the graphic arts. The flashy-but-difficult-to-understand Adobe Illustrator is looking to expand his kingdom, and who should come along but the lovely Quark. Oh, she does so many things so well. When she dances, she Steps and Repeats. Glyphs adorn her like typograhic jewels. Even when all she provides is Runaround, it all seems worth it. She’s known to treat all those who worship her powers with scorn, but she’s the only woman on earth, so what can you do?

Illustrator, whose logo is Boticelli’s Venus, but has tired of her, wastes no time wooing Quark: he simply takes her, absorbing her genetic knowlege, and nine months later, gives birth to their bastard child, InDesign, with no thought at all about how he’s not the one with the womb in this metaphor.

So now, I’m forced to waltz with Miss Indy for some projects. She has so many of her mother’s features to complement her father’s palettes, but still I struggle up this learning curve with dull pitons. I will remain true to you, Quark, but you must allow me this little fling with your illegitimate daughter, and I promise I’ll use a latex keyboard cover.

Design Tip du Semaine #5:Pixel Envy

jimadmin — Tue, 26 Jul 2011 04:40:47 +0000

Let’s clear the air about pixels. An unfortunate rumor has it that they are mined by miniature slaves, and that “pixel” is short for “PIXiE Labor.” Nothing can be further from the truth. Pixies make notoriously bad slaves, as they always escape, taking with them important belongings of their overseers, like shoelaces and tomatoes. Because of this, monitor scientists find it a far more effective use of their cruelty dollar to simply catch pixies and grind them into the pigment best expressed by their racial profile.

But now we’re seeing the long-term effects of pixie overfishing. The largest pixies caught today are only half the size they were two years ago, red pixies being the most scarce. “Green” designers are becoming, literally, just that as they try to limit the use of red in their designs. Yellow is frowned upon as well, as it comes from the combination of red and green pixels. True fact!

But contrary to the beliefs of Lovers of Largely Mythical Beings, the answer lies not in expanding our use of renewable color sources like the sun, or recycling old photographs. The answer is:kill smarter! Even PETA encourages the heavy use of blue in your layouts, as blue pixies breed like the filthy vermin they are, smell bad, use words like “smurfy,” and found suspect organizations like the Blue Man Group and Blue Dog Democrats. Designers using LOTS of blue in their work actually open up possibilities for the election of real Democrats, and by eliminating hip, blue shows, increase the odds of seeing more revivals of Grease.

Design Tip du Semaine #4: The Designing Client

jimadmin — Tue, 26 Jul 2011 04:39:36 +0000

All clients would like some say in the piece that you are working on–the piece they will be paying big bucks to print. It’s fair enough to let them have their little say, in the same way that it’s kind to not tell your child that no, you will never be as big or as clever as me. Nor will you ever get to have sex with Mommy. Some, however, would like to have too great a hand in the process, moving things around, changing colors and making everything bigger. The “make everything bigger” urge most likely comes from their deep-seated belief that they will never be as big or as clever as me, combined with, you know, that Mommy thing.

There are ways to handle this that are completely gratifying and do not involve stashing loosely-bound ravenous wolverines in their bathroom.

Say, for example, that you’re designing a brochure for a high-end product like, oh, I don’t know, perhaps touring theatrical productions. What you’re selling is season subscriptions, and to do that you need to sell the shows, and to help with that, you promote the name of the series they’re familiar with, and a headline that says something like: “Buy season tickets frequently! Buy them all!” The bottom priority would be the venue’s logo, photographer credits and a tiny recap of what went on your cereal this morning.

The problem arises when the manager of the venue in a fictional Idaho city that rhymes with “noisy” insists that his logo must be the largest thing on the page. To save you the trouble of having to think, he instructs you to put the series logo at the bottom (after reducing the size considerably), as well as the headline. Since it’s now at the bottom, the headline may now be called an “assline.”

The best way to handle this is to start with realizing that The Customer Is Not Always Right, But You Usually Are. Free yourself from the tyranny of pleasing the client, in favor of allowing yourself to actually sell their product. Taking the client in a firm half-nelson, use a kind, but echoey God The Father Voice of Ultimate Authority to explain the principles of design you learned in kindergarten. They will, ironically, begin to see the figurative light just as the real light seems to go blotchy, as the pressure on their carotid artery causes them to grow faint.

If, however, you have to deal with the situation through a third party who would just rather make the stupid changes to keep the peace, the game will take on a more urgent tone. Women often believe that peace is the best thing, even though war gives such a full-body feeling of immediate gratification. In this case, use the wolverines.

Design Tip du Semaine #3: Don’t Stick to the Script

jimadmin — Tue, 26 Jul 2011 04:37:38 +0000

This is part of an ongoing series to help people be better designers, but not better than me. The column’s name may have to change again, due to the surprising number of non-French-speaking people who think “semaine” means “semen.” I assure you, this would be a very different column if that were the case. “Semaine” means “week,” as in, “You can’t have children because your semaine is too week.”

Today we must talk about using script typefaces. You know you use them, sometimes when you’re not even designing a wedding invitation. And it’s okay; you’ll be forgiven, if not by me, then by God, who’s really really good at that sort of thing, except for when He chooses to go with genocide instead. No matter how much I disapprove of your typographical choices, I will never choose human extinction. Count on that!

You will assuredly not be forgiven by anyone, however, if you go too far with your use of script type, like the greedy dwarves who delved too deep in Moria. These typesetters unearth the unholiest Balrog of typography when they jam down the caps lock key and pound out important headlines—in all-capitals script. This is as much an abomination as are golden doodles and those weird weiner-German shepherds that should only be owned by British royalty as a public acknowledgment of their own inbreeding.

Be wise. Be safe. The lower case is your friend. Fiery pits are not, and that is where all-caps freaks end up, foundering in lava with the people who write their emails in Zapf Chancery.

Design Tip du Semaine #2: A Pause for Apostrophes

jimadmin — Tue, 26 Jul 2011 04:11:59 +0000

This is part of an ongoing series to help people be better designers, but not better than me. Collect all two!

This started out as “Tip du Jour,” but if I posted these daily, all my knowledge would be exhausted in 20 days. So I found a different French word, so it still sounds classy.

When creating art for a logo, signage, tattoo, etc., where the client wants a random apostrophe to make its hideous presence felt on a word of plural, yet not possessive, nature, know that the situation is not hopeless. If, for example, the project is a sign advertising “Crab’s for Rent,”point out the similarity between the misplaced punctuation and a deadly ninja throwing scimitar.

As you hand the offending thing to the now-curious client for inspection, loudly exclaim, “Shark! Shark!” A lifetime of training will kick in, as your patron, without even thinking, expertly sends the apostrophe into the eye of the nearest vertebrate. You may now proceed to spell correctly, with the complete blessing of your just-glad-to-have-survived, mostly-literate, new best friend.

Design Tip du Jour #1: Forecast: Whiteout

jimadmin — Tue, 26 Jul 2011 04:10:26 +0000

This is the first of an ongoing series to help people be better designers, but not better than me. Collect them all!

When making typographical errors in your word processing documents, you should avoid painting type correction fluid directly onto the monitor screen. Most popular brands of white-out use the chemical Aryan-12. Not only is it considered toxic and stupid, but it causes consternation among the other pixels. Some artists mix a concoction of 2 parts bleach to 1 part water and vermouth, which is then airbrushed onto the screen. But since nearly all “airbrushing” these days is done in Photoshop, and I haven’t yet had any luck getting the mixture into the computer without creating an urgent need for office evacuation, I WOULD NOT RECOMMEND THIS METHOD.

The best solution seems to be creating a whispering campaign to make your “mistake” an acceptable new addition to our great language.