art direction for the magazine. we picked Baskerville and Frutiger as the typefaces. We decided that we wanted to devote our cover to the pink triangle as our salute to the community, what it has been through and what it is going through now. These are some pages inside the magazine:

Scrapbooking ideas are as numerous as the stars! However, sometimes we need to come down to earth and simplify our page layouts. What I mean by this is that usually when we are stumped when making a page layout it is because we think we have to create a masterpiece, and we don’t! There is great beauty in the simplicity of a layout. Here are a few scrapbooking ideas on keeping it simple:
*Enlarge your photo – we sometimes feel that we have to put something on every part of the page. When I get in this mind set, I enlarge my photo so that it takes up more room on the page. I don’t do this all of the time, but occasionally I love the look that a larger photo brings to the page layout.
*Make your journaling a beautiful element on your page – I have included a link below that gives many scrapbooking ideas on just what I mean by this. But let me explain a little further. Make your journaling block and then add cute embellishments to it (such as rub-ons, stickers, charms, etc.), or doodle around it, or use your rubber stamps to highlight the journaling block.

http://www.scrapbook.com/articles/doc/40975/152.html

*Group a number of photos together – try grouping several photos together in a collage form. This next link is to give you ideas on what I mean by a photo collage. There are numerous scrapbooking ideas concerning photo collages, so take a look and you will see just how simple and easy they are to create.

http://www.scrapbooksetc.com/quick-collage/one-page-quick-collage-layouts_ss1.html

I have given you three great scrapbooking ideas that will help you to simplify your page layouts and put the focus on what is most important – the photo and the journaling.

Photos from my 365+ project:

Been doing some good and some terrible designing. Mostly for classes -

Florez is releasing a full length album called Sweet Tea.
I designed a full layout for them this is just the front.

Had to design some promotional material for a hypothetical independent film theater for my final in my independent film class. Here’s a fake poster for a film festival.

Here’s some funny pictures of a banquet that some friends and I attended:

In other news, I’m getting some internship material together and applying. Got lots of goals, so we’ll see how this goes.

And, here it goes. I am obsessed with the magazine, Real Simple and have been for quite some time. Years ago, I picked it up when I was immediately drawn to its beautiful and clean look. The colors spoke to me, the simple type made me feel warm and cozy, and the content made me want to organize everything I own while simultaneously kicking back and learning “how to let go and enjoy life.” That’s the kind of headline you may read on the front. Or you might see something like, “10 Ways to Clean your Kitchen Sink,” “How to Unwind for the Weekend,” and “7 Looks that Will Never Go Out of Style.” I love the mix of tips, advice, and articles on how women are trying to enjoy their life more and stress less and the best ways to get there. In fact, the tagline is “Life Made Easier Every Day.”

Even as a teenager, I connected with this magazine and was constantly excited by the concept and the ideas for application. From a design perspective, I have always loved the clean layouts mixed with detail, white space, and creativity. It’s the kind of magazine that you open and actually get to take a deep breath, because it’s not overwhelming. You flip through the large format pages with ease, and because it’s not junked up with too much copy or crowded layouts, you actually want to read everything you can find (as it might be one of those things that stick in your mind for use later).

The site is a perfect complement to the magazine, as it exudes the same cleanliness but is an endless resource for how to make your life easier. Find a recipe, learn how to organize the closet that you thought was too small, and find 20 wedding gifts that the bride will never forget. It has it all, and it is completely user-friendly in the way that it is laid out.

The navigation on the site is even aesthetically pleasing and completely easy to use. I love the large drop downs and the simple imagery used.

I really enjoy grids and boxes in design. Both the magazine and site do a great job of carrying grid design and use it throughout for navigation and/or grouping of images.

Check out the fun variety of things that the site offers. Real Simple is always progressive in the way that it gives the reader what is relevant and upcoming. Here, you can get a Real Simple app, get a cookie of the day recipe, or view some videos on YouTube.

And of course, we can’t forget that Real Simple is connected socially. Because of the keen awareness the magazine possesses, it goes where the woman goes. You can find Real Simple on Twitter or Facebook, sending out tips, quotes, links, and information that might help make your day easier.

Real Simple on Facebook.

I could go on forever discussing the things this magazine does well. For now, I will end with some cool pieces of illustration from the magazine and from two different illustrators. They fill the magazine with different types of illustration in each issue, and I love the visual interest that it adds.

Real Simple, thanks for having so much dimension, connecting with the target on so many levels, and for filling your magazine with great content, beautiful design, strong photography, and a variety of illustration.

this morning, i saw someone reading something on an amazon kindle on the subway.

at first glance, it’s kind of cool looking from a gadgety perspective. and it must be nice to be able to carry multiple books with you at once. but after casually watching her click something in order to advance a ‘page’ and continue reading the bitmapped text, i kind of started to wrinkle my nose in disgust.

as a print designer, i will forever love and cherish the feeling of holding a designed and printed object in my hands. running my fingertips over the tactile quality of the paper. the tense feel of the binding holding the pages together. that extremely specific, poignant smell of a library book, and the crinkle that the clear plastic dust cover makes when you crack it open.

from a larger perspective, the amazon kindle also completely removes the designer from the book equation. gone are the carefully chosen typefaces with tiny serifs that are engineered to advance the eye smoothly from word to word. goodbye leading and kerning, the half title and title pages. au revoir to the colophon. the rich and colorful endpapers? later. and perhaps one of the most important elements [regardless of what that tired old adage says] a colorful, appropriate and eye-catching cover design is rendered obsolete.

something else that will fall by the wayside, and indeed has even fallen off the page[har] in modern times, is the page layout. this is something most people don’t really even notice, but when you open a book, and the text block has proper margins around it to rest your thumbs, and a nice amount of white space for the eye to rest, it’s a magical thing. in the middle ages, they used to use the golden section to carve out a beautiful page ratio; this is something i used to do religiously when i did page layout in college. the results were incredible.

in the interest of saving page count and trees, most novels today unfortunately use as much of the page real estate as possible. this usually creates a really poor reading experience because your thumbs cover up part of the words on the edges, and the lines are too long, making it difficult for your eye to find the next line down.

as you can see, there’s a lot of careful thought, concepts, designing, and even math that goes into a really beautiful, functional page layout & book design. all of this is ripped away from you when you tear the essence of a book out and digitize it.

the kindle is just another example of how our constant and tireless search for ease and convenience in every aspect of our lives ruins, well, a lot of things. i’m not sure how the kindle will affect the print industry in the long run, or if it will ever become a widespread replacement for printed books, but i’m slightly apprehensive. all i know is, i will always choose a book over some stupid gadget that might break one day, and i will happily lug my printed pages around with me on the subway, no matter how heavy or cumbersome.

below is a video by a book cover designer who smashes the shit out of a kindle, office space style. pretty awesome.

New photos from my PAD – #ML project.

Day Five.

Day Six.

Day Seven.

Day Eight.

Day Nine.

And a not-so-up-to-par page layout from my 364.
Couldn’t edit down the text any more so unfortunately it’s terribly text heavy.
Also had to use at least 3 photos and keep the tracking/leading as it is.
Killer restraints.

Lately I have been doing much thinking about what I’m most passionate about in life.  There are several things, don’t get me wrong, however, one thing that comes to mind is graphic design.

About four years ago I was asked to create what my boss referred to as a “desktop reminder card” for the service department at the company I was working for.  Basically what this is is a sign the customer service representatives can post on their computer monitor and then refer to when they’re on calls, ensuring they don’t miss anything with the customer.  I had never designed anything before and had very limited knowledge as to how basic software programs like Microsoft Word functioned.  I created this card, however, and the reaction from my boss was, “How cute!”  I wasn’t sure if I should take this as a compliment or not, but I did when she continued asking me to “design” things for her.

When I would start up the computer and open Microsoft Publisher, I had no clue what I was doing.  Oddly enough, it must have been something right.  I was having fun making things for the training department and other areas of the company and my boss was liking what I was doing.  This inspired me to research and learn more about graphic design.  Only a few years and several classes later, I mastered Microsoft Publisher, Powerpoint, Word, Excel, Adobe Captivate 2, 3 & 4, and begun the journey towards mastering the Adobe Creative Suite.

I say that I am passionate about graphic design because whatever I know about it, which I now realize is a lot, was all self-taught.  I never had a mentor or guide to help me learn.  I will now continue using everything I have learned and still learn today and master my skills even further.  Although I don’t want a full-time career in graphic design, I will always push myself to the next level.

Some recent work, featuring some particularly awesome photography from Adam Voorhes.

OK, you have your translated text. Because you used a professional translation agency, proper steps were followed for translation, editing, proofreading and quality-control. Now it’s time to place all this foreign-language content into a print layout. This can be a very error-prone phase of the process—all your final layouts should be reviewed by professional linguists!

This article highlights a few of the most common mistakes we see at ASIST Translations, when page-layout experts are unfamiliar with handling translated text.

Title Case
Title case (initial capitals on individual words) is customary in English for section headings, titles of articles, programs, etc. However, this doesn’t necessarily apply to other languages—Spanish, Portuguese and Italian, for example,  where sentence case is the norm. Even if the English original is in title case, don’t “fix” individual word caps in the translated version without consulting a professional linguist.

Punctuation
English conventions for punctuation don’t apply to other languages. Here are some common misunderstandings.

• Bullet lists. Punctuation in bullet lists can be fairly fluid in English. However, in many languages the conventions are different and a more structured approach is obligatory. For example, in Romance languages, one bullet list may have semi-colons after each item and a period on the last item—because each of these is treated as an alternate ending to a partial sentence that precedes the bullet list. Conversely, a different bullet list in the same document may have no final punctuation each list item, because they are fragments that aren’t grammatically linked to the surrounding text. In either case, they may differ from the format of the original English bullet list. Use the text provided by the translators, and if in doubt about differences from the English original, consult a professional linguist!
• Spacing. In French, colons (and usually semi-colons) are separated from the preceding words by a space (ideally, a non-breaking space, in word processing or layout programs). We frequently see French text get “fixed” during layout because this extra space looks like an error to English speakers.
• Numbers. The English use of commas and points to separate thousands and decimals in numbers is exactly the opposite of many languages. Most (but not all) European languages other than English use a point to separate thousands, millions, etc., and a comma as the decimal separator. (Note that Spanish text for Mexico, the USA, Puerto Rico and Panama is an exception to this rule.) That being said, the International System of Units (SI) standard also encourages using spaces (technically, thin spaces, 1/5 of an em wide) as the thousands separator, in order to avoid confusion.
• Quotation Marks. Style guides for the American English recommend placing quotation marks outside commas and periods. But that often doesn’t apply to other languages—don’t try to “fix” anything before consulting a linguist! Of course, languages like German or French also use completely different symbols for quotation marks—the well-known “chevron” style guillemet symbols in French, for example. (By the way, it is also best if the spaces inside French guillemets are non-breaking spaces.) Even so, for contemporary text in many of these languages it is also common to use the more international quotation marks, although dialog in works of fiction is a frequent exception.

Symbols
Some common typographical symbols in English are not acceptable in many other languages. When these form part of an artwork file, some redesign may be required. For example, the number sign (#) is not often used in other languages, and frequently gets substituted by an abbreviation for the word “number.” The ampersand is very uncommon in other languages, and gets replaced with their word for “and.” The “at sign” (@) does not automatically suggest an abbreviation for the word “at” in most languages, and its use is mostly limited to e-mail addresses.

Hyphenation and Line Breaks
If the page-layout program doesn’t have a hyphenation table for your target language, the post-layout proofreading process will be more cumbersome. If this feature is available, always make sure that the program you’re using properly indicates the language being formatted. As a general rule, it’s useful to know that Romance languages favor hyphenating prior to the initial consonant of the next syllable, for example. However, in languages like Chinese, where the words themselves are not separated by spaces, only a Chinese linguist can ensure that the line breaks in your final layout don’t create anything “funny” sounding.

One last note of caution: never retype translated text, no matter how brief! Cut and paste directly from the source translation document; you will avoid a lot of problems.
Another article in this blog provides more general tips for foreign-language layouts. Planning ahead for translated content always makes the process smoother.

ASIST Translation Services, Inc. is a full-service interpreting and translation agency located in Columbus, Ohio. We provide technical translation, interpreting, proofreading, studio voice recording and media production, localization of interactive and Web content, and specialized language services to clients around the world.

www.ASISTtranslations.com

I’m building a Facebook Fan Page for October Custom Publishing (my company), in order to try and get us out there a little more. On there you’ll be able to view almost every page of every magazine we’ve either published or been hired to create thus far. I’d really appreciate you becoming a fan, and I’m happy to return the favor! Take a look at the page here. Introduce yourself!

I ordered two Visual Aid books from Black Dog publishing. They’re chock full of fantastic infographics on a random and very wide variety of subjects, and perfect for stealing ideas from…I mean looking at for inspiration. They’ve also recently started selling posters of their infographics, so now I have to figure out how much I have left on my credit card, what I’ll tell my wife, and where I will hang them when my house is in foreclosure. Take a look at their site here.

Those are the Shan New Poster  for 2104 (2009).As this is a New Year festival ,I’ve made it Clean , Fresh ,Bright and wormly color .I use many kind of different layout but still keep it simple. Check it out.

Here is the New Year Ticket for Singapore Shan Family (Singapore) 2009.

]]> http://dpsworkshop.com/2009/10/10/generating-album-pages-with-visio-2/ Sat, 10 Oct 2009 13:00:25 +0000 fran adams http://dpsworkshop.com/2009/10/10/generating-album-pages-with-visio-2/

Ken Horner, Compulatelist

(continuation of the article Generating Album Pages with Visio Part 1)

Visio also creates files that a desktop search engine can index. So if I want to find the page with the Scott #200 layout I can just search for it. It makes life a lot easier now that I’ve got over 700 pages in the ‘Library’.

The Visio program itself is an engineering type drawing program more geared to diagrams than a paint or Photoshop alternative. As you can see in the layout below, it comes with the usual drawing grid and guidelines and the tool bars and menu items one expects to see in programs of this sort today.

Visio's Layout Grid.

Visio’s most unique feature is a set of literally hundreds of pre-defined drawing items organized into stencils. The ‘Basic Shapes’ stencil is view is shown. Using a stencil you can drag and drop a particular type of object onto your drawing and then adjust its size, color, line weight, and even add text.

The tabs along the bottom of the screen show the various pages inside the overall drawing file. In this case, the file is the collection of over 40 album pages covering 1900-29 issues. Being able to keep them all together and reorganize at will is very convenient.

The following image shows an album page without the stencil in view and expanded to 200% of printing size. Zooming in on objects and aligning them precisely is a key part of Visio’s appeal, as is its ability to embed pictures and other files generated outside the program.

Magnified Image in Visio.

The dotted line vertical in the right center of the page is an alignment guideline. Visio will let you automatically snap items to the grid itself or to the guideline. You can also glue items to a guideline, and they’ll move if the line moves.

For most of my work, the snap-to-grid method works well, as does Visio’s ability to line up a series of selected objects by clicking on each one and then selecting a shape tool for aligning them.

2224.(Yes, I’ve moved off count again, meaning that there are at least three duplicates down the stream there. Ah, well).

How do you know you’re hardcore prepress?

How do you tell the world that you’ll quit electronic layout when they pry your Mac from your cold, dead hands?

How does a hardcore designer represent?

With ink, of course:

Photo via The Font Feed. Copyright belongs to them.

Via Jurgen Siebert at The Font Feed:

Long time Adobe InDesign product manager Will Eisley is so dedicated to his job that it has gotten under his skin – quite literally. Will recently had his initials tattooed on his inner forearms, together with the regis­tration marks, crop marks, and colour and grayscale bars which are part of InDesign’s printing marks.

I think they’re beautiful, even though the color and grayscale bars happen inside the crop marks, which will cause trouble when his arms eventually do go to press, but that’s what you get when you don’t sign off on a press check, even I know that.

Find another better picture and what Will wants to have tattooed next at The Font Feed. Also a few snarky comments. My favorite:

The dude has his color bars inside his crop marks… He might be a quark user, or even worse.. corel..

Oh, snap!

Technorati Tags: InDesign, Adobe, Tattoos, Ink

I’d stop buying GOOD magazine a while back – partly out of an effort to spend less money (no ladies, I’m not independently wealthy, contrary to popular belief. Nor am I a Formula One race car driver, and I have never saved the earth from certain destruction) – and partly because it just wasn’t making me want to buy it. Anyway, I saw this issue and picked it up because of the cover. Despite the almost unreadable cover-lines up there in the top right corner, this cover made me want this magazine. Totally imaginative and different cover, obviously advertising content that’s slightly different from what they usually put out. Digging the 3-D set made from props used throughout the magazine – although I wonder why they didn’t make the ‘GOOD’ logo in the same way – or all the cover-lines for that matter. Regardless, very cool. I like the visibility of the white strip of information at the bottom of the cover, but think some the information in there could have been a little more interesting.

Inside, they’ve only got one page dedicated to contents. It’s basically a list broken into categories of the 100 (or so) subjects they’ve covered in this issue – they have a lot of content, so have gone with single line entries for each piece (something I wish here was more of this kind of restraint in the magazines I work on at the full-time job, instead of trying to print half of every article on the TOC).

A few pages in and you get to the ‘Quarterly Progress Report’, the purpose of which is to give you an update on what’s been going on with GOOD recently, and a preview of a lot of content you can find online. I like this idea, and the magazine devotes several pages to this, but I’m surprised that they didn’t make it more obvious in the design that you need to go online to read this stuff. I think because so much of the magazine – and in particular this issue – is filled with shorter, front of book style pieces – this whole section doesn’t really jump out as being something that’s meant to be a tool to drive you online…if anything it’s a little confusing and frustrating… frustrating because it seems that with just a few layout tweaks this whole section would become much more efficient. It’s not all teasing web-content, but the majority of it seems to be.

Like the page says, this section begins their ‘First Ever’ GOOD 100. The entire section is a collection of short, front of book length stories, short people profiles and info-graphics.

The card models used on the cover are scattered throughout the section in their appropriate stories. There is TONS to read here, and I can’t see anyone going through this from front to back… like i said earlier, the whole looks like front of book layout and content. It all looks great, in fact I think the only thing that detracts from the layout throughout is that there are very few ads in the magazine, and those that are in there tend to look a lot like the editorial pages, like the one below:

Even the spread ads are confusingly infused with the magazine’s message, like this one:

I think with the addition of a bunch of full-page, full-bleed, colorful ads throughout, the editorial pages would become stronger and more defined, and the consistency in the layout and editorial more of a defining characteristic than it currently is. Nice little touch on the back page folio here:

Also, I like that even thought they obviously spend a lot of time on their info-graphics (above), they’ll still run a straight graph every now and then, like below:

All in all, a good experience, and definitely an issue that I won’t mind revisiting several times. I’ve got to hand it to them: for a magazine that’s only 17 issues into its lifespan, it feels a lot more established and solid than some of the other crap you’ll find on newsstands right now. I’ll be waiting for the next issue now.