Design tip bits

What a time saver the Autocorrect function has become for someone like me who has never had a formal typing class. Although I do use more then 2 fingers, I doubt I am even half as fast as the worst typist, on sleeping pills. I never really used the Autocorrect function in InDesign until recently. I am translating an InDesign theory from Dutch into English and the word InDesign appears on just about every page. Someone suggested that I use the Autocorrect as a keyboard shortcut for the word InDesign. Here's how: 1. In the InDesign menu go to Preferences> Autocorrect. 2. Check the Enable Autocorrect button 3. Select your language and make sure your document is also set to the same language. 4. Click Add and fill in the fields and click OK When your list is done click OK. Instead of typing the word InDesign, I just type the letters zx (keys next to each other and I don't think the letter combination will appear in the English theory book) and InDesign changes that into the ...

I posted a blog earlier about text frames but there's more. To adjust a text Frame in InDesign 1. Select the Selection Tool (black arrow) 2. It will change into a double headed arrow when hovering over an anchor point. Double click the anchor point. Her are some examples of what happens. I haven't put them all on but I think you get the point. If you have too much white space, double clicking the anchor points will automatically adjust the frames to fit.

When printing was still being done using letterpresses there were two types of numerals available Tabular and Old style. Tabular The characters have the same width (occupying the same space). Tabular numerals are typically used to set material in which columns of characters must align vertically with one another. Old style numerals Numerals that do not align with one another as the tabular numerals do, but instead mainly occupy the x-height, with some numerals extending above the top of the x-height and some below the baseline. Old style was used for text and Tabular was used for price lists and forms etc. Along came DTP and we only had digital versions of fonts. Most of these typefaces only used tabular characters. This did not result in great looking design, the numbers were far too big and prominent on the page. Take a look at the following examples. You must admit that the second line looks a lot better. When InDesign was introduced, especially Open Type, classical typesetting c...

This weekend was the most beautiful Autumn Sunday and Rudi armed with our simple 4.0 megapixel Camera (Canon Powershot G3), took some photos of the fantastic colours. He used Photoshops Automate>Photomerge to stitch together a poster. (Can't remember how many pixels, but the image was 2 metres by 72 cm at 150ppi). You can also use Lightroom 2.0 but, Lightroom does need Photoshop's help. Select the photos, go to Photo-Menu>Edit in>Merge to Panorama in Photoshop. I asked him how many photos he had used and he started to count 1,2,3,4 … 21. I was really impressed. Told him to post it in his blog, upload the colours to Kuler, sell it to Ikea as a door poster etc. etc. etc. While he was working on his blog, he calls me over and shows me this. An unbelievable photo of Yosemite National Park by Gerard Maynard. He created a 17 gigapixel image using 2000 photos. (Ikea door poster? This could line the Chunnel [tunnel from UK to France]. But he did have to work on a 96,5 Gigabyt...

The Illustrator appearance panel I find one of the most essential panels which is often not used to it's advantage. I was asked to make a promotional flyer for our local Baseball team to recruit young players It needed to be done immediately so no time to go through the proper channels and get the scalable vector logo. You guessed it …Yes, I was given a JPEG. I used live trace in Illustrator and cleaned it up to make a usable logo. But, Live trace uses loads of compound paths, a white background a lot of excess baggage. I cleared all that clutter using the appearance panel. Here's how I did it. 1. Strip the logo down to just one shape. 2. Select the shape. Open the appearance panel. using the flyout menu choose Add New Stroke. The colour is the same as the logo, 3 pts and set to outside. 3. Add New Stroke again, this time set the stroke colour to white, 2 pts, and to outside. Play with the appropriate stroke sizes as long as the top stroke is smaller then the one(s) below. No...