Being both a graphic designer and business owner, I have a love hate relationship with Microsoft Excel. Having an uncontrollable need to make things look clean, organized and professional in my layouts often leads me to clash with Excel. Being a business owner as well, it is essential that I use Excel for a variety of reports and spreadsheets. Today however, I stumbled across a few tips that help Excel users customize their layouts (among other useful tips) that helped bridge that gap within me between design and business. (more…)

Data Matrix Solutions, Inc. (DMS) is a professional services firm offering business, financial, scientific, and engineering solutions to a variety of governmental agencies. As part of a larger re-branding contract agreement with Riddle Brothers Web Design and Development, LLC, I was tasked with the redesign of their current logo. (more…)

While most of the work we do at Riddle Brothers is relegated to electronic medium, there is a good portion of our work that is devoted to print media. Even though the World Wide Web seems to double its size daily, there is still an absolute place for printed materials within a marketing plan for all businesses.

My first entry in this series shares presentation points I received at a recent conference by Brenda Foster and Domencia Genovese of GCF Marketing Communications for Education. During this presentation, Brenda and Domencia investigated how printed and Web-based materials can work hand-in-hand to help successfully market higher education institutions (and businesses as well).

(more…)

Roughstock Studios has posted an excellent article on five very common design myths. If you are a designer, I can guarantee you have encountered one or more of these myths as one point. 

You can read their blog entry here:

http://www.roughstockstudios.com/2007/09/killing-off-five-design-myths.html 

Hopefully it will give you some good ammunition to use if you are faced with a rather stubborn client. 

The article is © 2007 Jessica Sand, www.roughstockstudios.com

There are a ton of keystroke shortcuts out there for Photoshop that can make your work flow so much quicker if you master them. Techlicious.tv has posted a great list of 53 tips and shortcuts for Photoshop. Memorize a few of these and you will shave off a few seconds here and there of unnecessary pointing and clicking.

Full link: 

http://www.techlicious.tv/2007/10/53-ultimate-tips-for-better.html

As a designer, I love the quick tip. During my lunch breaks or morning coffee I will sometimes scour the internet in search of tips to make the work I do more efficient and quicker. These include keyboard shortcuts and little nuggets of information related to the popular applications I use on a daily basis.

Today’s tip is how to draw or drag an object in a straight line using Adobe InDesign CS3.

You would have thought this would have been more obvious in Adobe InDesign, but it is not. Quark Express featured a handy “straight line tool” (Figure 1) that allowed you to draw straight lines horizontally and vertically. When I switched over to Adobe InDesign a few years back, I noticed they did not have an equal tool. Therefore I found myself drawing a line using the line tool, and manually adjusting the location of the beginning and end points of the line to ensure that it was perfectly straight. What a pain!

However the other day, I discovered a nice time saving trick to drawing straight lines. With the line tool selected using Adobe InDesign (Figure 2), simply hold down the SHIFT key when drawing the line. That’s it! This method will let you draw straight horizontal, vertical and 45 degree angled lines. What a time saver on my part.

Drag an Object in a Straight Line 

However . . . there’s more! Let’s say you have an object on your InDesign document that you want to quickly copy and place directly below it. The long way would be to copy the object, paste it below, and then use the align buttons to align both horizontally or vertically.

An easier method is using the SHIFT key again. With your object selected, press and hold the OPTION key. With the OPTION key still pressed, press and hold the SHIFT key (Figure 3). You can then drag a copy of your object so that it is vertically, horizontally or diagonally aligned with your selected object. Another great time saver! (Figure 4)

I have a rule as a graphic designer. I am happy to design any publication for any type of client for whatever reason. I am flexible on color scheme, image usage and design treatment. Basically there is nothing I won’t work with a client on if there is a problem. However, I will absolutely never re-type text for any type of design.  Here’s why….

Complete Electronic Text 

A client is supposed to provide the designer with electronic text as finalized as possible. Sure, there is bound to be a grammatical mistake or two, but the text for the most part should be finalized and complete. However there are many times I am given text by a client or writer that has no heading, no sub-heads or no call to action. I have made it my policy to always request additional text from the client. If they provide me the text, I can simply copy and paste it into any layout or design program of my choosing.

A Real-World Example 

I learn from my mistakes, and I didn’t always apply the copy and paste methodology. One job that I was the lead designer for was a cover page for a schedule of classes. The client did not provide me with any heading to use for the cover page, so I simply typed in their business’ name into the Photoshop template: Workforce Professionals (this name is fictional for the purpose of this blog)

However there was one problem. I left out the “K”! The cover page read “Worforce Professionals” and was proofed by myself, the project coordinator, the client and others. Each of us missed this glaring error. It wasn’t until the entire schedule was on press at the printing vendor when our customer service representative called and informed me he had noticed the error. 

Lessons Learned

While dozens of eyes missed this error, it could have been prevented if I had requested text from the client in which I could have simply copied and pasted into the Photoshop file. Even if the error would have still been present, it would have alleviate the blame from myself as the designer.

Therefore copy and paste text…never re-type. Make it part of your designer’s bible.