Friday, June 27, 2008

Arial or Helvetica and games friday

All designers know Helvetica and when to use it, then came the knock-off computer font Arial along with the pc- do it yourself "designer" and Arial appears on every word document and flyer.

Can you see the difference? Test yourself at:

http://iliveonyourvisits.com/helvetica/

Want to know more about Helvetica and Arial then go to:

http://www.ms-studio.com/articles.html

And then of course you can read about the Helvetica film:
http://www.helveticafilm.com/

Then try the ultimate typeface game, (but not on the bosses time)
http://fontgame.ilovetypography.com/

Now get back to work ; D

Wednesday, June 4, 2008

illustrator swatches

Here are some handy key command shortcuts in Illustrator.

Changing the colour mode of swatches
Want to change the colour mode of your swatch? Click twice on the swatch in the swatch palet to open up the swatch options or via the flyout menu swatch options. Press the shift key and click in the colour of the swatch palet (under the word colour mode) and with each click illustrator will show you the swatch values in different modes and change the swatch to the chosen mode. It also works for pantone colours although I would not use this method for print, best is to refer to the pantone swatch books.

Want change the swatch to the complimentary color. Use the method above but this time hold down the command key

To invert the swatch
open the swatch options palet and click in the colour or the swatch while holding down the Command and Shift keys

Changing the colour of objects
If you want to invert the colour, change it to it's greyscale equivalent or the complmentary colour of an object.
Select the object and press and hold the same key combinations as above but this time click on the colour ramp (spectrum) at the bottom of your colour palette.


To add a colour to your swatch palette.
Select the object in your document with the colour you want to make a swatch of and then click on the new swatch tab at the bottom of your colour palet. To make it a spot colour do the same while pressing down the command key.