The Web Curmudgeon

The Postcard Exercise For GDP 111

2012-03-19T09:49:00.000-07:00

The postcard template is here.

How to cheat with the chicken and skunk

2012-03-11T21:50:00.001-07:00

The long and the short of all this is that by ungrouping and outlining all of your elements, you can then see what you are doing. And you won't leave any stray colors behind.

The Folding Card Exercise For GDP 111

2012-03-10T11:17:00.002-08:00

The template for this exercise is here.

One thing in particular occurred to me as I went over this exercise. The axe handle is not set up to bleed, even though this is a trimmed card. What makes that particularly vexing is that the handle is cropped off at the left side in the PSD.

The question, then, is what if this were for real?

You don't want to set yourself up for a you-are-the-professional-you-should-have-known situation. Never mind that the client signed off on the art. It looks wrong, and you did it.

So I distorted the handle by enlarging the canvas size, and then selecting the left side of the handle with the quick-select tool. I converted this to a vector, tweaked that, changed that back to a selection, and then did a layer via copy. I then fooled with it in Free Transform, and then the Liquify Filter, to elongate it.

The result looks pretty good to me.

But.

What looks good on a cheap monitor might be a glaring defect in print, or on a better monitor. So if you do something like this, be very conservative and careful.

Another approach to this problem would be to call the client and point out the problem. Of course, then he would answer with something like, "Come on now, quit bothering me with such stupid details. Aren't you just trying to impress me with how technically proficient you are? La-de-da."

GDP 111 Firefighter Exercises

2012-02-29T10:24:00.005-08:00

The lecture video covering these exercises is here.

The exercise files from the Ryder book are here.

The template for the raffle ticket is here.

The template for the poster is here.

The folding card exercise is here.

A Good Source for Free Images on the Web

2012-02-28T14:00:00.008-08:00

Here is a good source for free raster and vector images on the Web. Be careful to check the licensing on these images before using them.

SEE ALSO:

Photo Pin, a search engine for free stock photos.
Subtle Patterns. high quality, good-looking patterns.

GDP 111, Chapter 6

2012-02-28T12:04:00.000-08:00

The Bank Card support materials are here. The squiggle stuff is here.

Chapter 5 Exercises

2012-02-25T21:20:00.003-08:00

The family History exercise is here.
The beachball exercise is here.
The Drum & Bugle exercise is here.
The exercises from the CD in the book are here.

Chapter Four Exercises

2012-02-23T14:58:00.001-08:00

The Teacups exercise is here The Monster exercise is here.

Students occasionally lose their CDs containing the exercises. The files for chapters one through four are located here.

GDP 110 and 111 Lecture Videos

2012-02-13T16:05:00.028-08:00

The GDP 110 lecture from April 23, 2012 is here.

The GDP 111 lecture from April 16, 2012 is here.

The GDP 110 lecture from April 11, 2012 is here.

The GDP 111 lecture from April 9, 2012 is here.

The GDP 110 lecture from April 4, 2012 is here.

The GDP 111 lecture from April 4, 2012 is here.

The GDP 111 lecture from April 2, 2012 is here.

The GDP 110 lecture from March 21, 2012 is here.

The GDP 110 lecture from March 19, 2012 is here.

The GDP 111 lecture from March 19, 2012 is here.

The GDP 110 lecture from March 14, 2012 is here.

The GDP 111 lecture from March 14, 2012 is here.

The GDP 110 lecture from March 7, 2012 is here.

The GDP 111 lecture from March 7, 2012 is here.

The GDP 110 lecture from March 5, 2012 is here.

The GDP 110 lecture from February 29, 2012 is here.

The GDP 111 lecture from February 29, 2102 is here.

The GDP 110 lecture from February 27, 2102 is here.

The GDP 111 lecture from February 27, 2012 is here.

The GDP 110 lecture from February 22, 2012 is here.

The GDP 111lecture on tabs and tables is here.

The lecture on the "Teacups" exercise is here.

A tutorial on doing the "Expert" exercise is here.

The lecture for GDP 111 February 15 is here.

The lecture for GDP 111 February 13 is here.

The lecture for GDP 110 February 13 is here.

The lecture for GDP 110 February 8 is here.

The lecture for GDP 111Monday, January 30 is here.

The lecture for GDP 110 February 1 is here.

The lecture for GDP 110 January 31 is here.

Never Re-Type Text

2012-02-13T15:55:00.001-08:00

Don't ever make a keyboard entry of text that is accessible from somewhere else. PDF documents, for instance, almost always contain the raw text from which styled and formatted display text is generated. Usually, you can use the type tool in Adobe Reader to select the raw text, which you can then copy and paste into your working document.

If you cannot select text from a PDF, it may be contained within an image. Another possibility is that the program displaying the text may not have a text-selection tool. Acrobat Reader has such a tool.

If the text is contained within an image, you can use an online OCR program to extract the text. In this case, however, you must take care to inspect the text for anomalies that may occur where characters have been misinterpreted.

See also:

The Adobe Acrobat 9 manual help entry for copying text from a PDF.
Free Online OCR.

GDP 111, The Desserts Menu, and The Expert

2012-02-12T21:17:00.000-08:00

The Desserts entry is here. The Expert entry is here.

GDP 111, Reedy Exercise

2012-02-11T15:07:00.001-08:00

The old posting for the Reedy exercise is here.

GDP 111, Anna's Exercise

2012-02-11T14:08:00.000-08:00

This one is totally insidious. Well, maybe not that bad. But it is tricky. Here is the template for this exercise. The file provided in the book is on the bottom and middle layers, and the finished piece from the student handout is on the top layer. The finished example piece on the top layer is at 50% transparency. You will be working on the middle layer, where the text is located.

If you're new to layout software, you may not be familiar with kerning and letter-spacing. In order to get this exercise to look like the example, that's what you must use. Here's a PDF that I made to demonstrate this.

In this example, I have completed the exercise for the first part, which is in the upper lefthand part of the page. As you can see, my text and the example almost perfectly line up, whereas the rest of the text is offset. I did not get my text to line up horizontally by stopping with the directions. Rather, I used the tracking dialog as shown in the screenshot below. I used the up/down arrows to adjust the spacing.

The black bar before the number six shows the selection of the space before. The value in the box above the red arrow is the value necessary to adjust the position of the word "Saturday" away from the number. I included the space when I sized the number. Had I selected the space when I sized the word "Saturday," I would have needed a different value, as the space would have been much smaller size.

See also:

The Adobe manual on kerning and tracking.

Using The Pen Tool

2012-01-24T12:51:00.000-08:00

Here is a link to the old tutorial on the pen tool exercise for GDP 110. This video covers that pesky "S" shape.

See Also:

This article on creating a logo in Illustrator to get a good idea of practical uses for the program.
This video on using the pen tool.
This tutorial on compound paths.

Using SVG Images

2011-11-06T08:54:00.000-08:00

Clipart, logos, and letterforms in Scalable Vector Format can usually be imported into Illustrator, basically functioning the same way as AI files. Sometimes Illustrator will not recognize a particular SVG file for what could be a number of reasons, usually because of versioning issues. As time goes on and standards settle into place, this sort of problem should diminish.

Illustrator can also export to SVG format. This file format is primarily used on the Web. SVG is a text-based format derived from XML, interpreted by browser software to render an image. The XML literally describes the image to the interpreter. Another example of this sort of format is Postscript, which uses text and language to describe a page to be printed onto paper.

Because SVG is vector-based, it is resolution-independent. This means that images will not degrade at any screen size or magnification.

In searching for SVG clipart using Google, type in your search term this way: image: recycle logo svg. Then select "Images" from the context bar at the left of the page. Often, an image will be rendered in a raster format such as PNG. However, such raster images sometimes link to SVG versions. Not all browsers support SVG, although all so-called modern browsers do.

The "flower" logo shown above/left is a JPG rendering of the W3C logo for SVG. I originally obtained the SVG version of this logo from Wikipedia, creating the JPG version from that. JPG files contain text and binary data, meaning that they could, in theory, also be made to contain a hidden text-based vector version of the image being rendered. This is really only of academic interest to people with no lives. Speaking of which, the image here depicted does, in fact, have embedded text reading, "This is text hidden in a JPG file." If you open the file in a text editor, you will find that text at the end of line #1.

Embedding hidden text this way is a form of "steganography," but that is completely different subject.

The Postcard Exercise for GDP111

2011-10-11T22:51:00.000-07:00

The template for the postcard exercise is here.

A lot of students botch this exercise badly. You don't have to. Download the template and pay attention to the instructions/specifications. Then either place a PDF of your output onto the student layer of the template, or, if you haven't started yet, use the already set up layout to construct your card.

This exercise is to create a postcard for mass mailing. Chances are that you and most of the people that you know professionally will never use this skill. Junk mail is rapidly migrating to SPAM, and soon will become obsolete.

On the other hand, something about learning this process will imbue your soul with a kind of graphical awareness that will serve to enhance your creative dexterity. Or something.

The Squiggle Exercise for GDP111

2011-09-25T14:04:00.000-07:00

The finished template for the Squiggle exercise is here.

When you place this PDF over your own work, be sure to transparentize the layer down to about 67% to see your own work. By far the hardest part of this exercise is making the squiggle weave in and out of the shapes.

Long-story-short on the squiggle line: If you make your stroke 9pt, and click the attributes boxes the way they are done in the instructions, then when you use the scissors tool to cut the segments, they will snap into the same shape as those shown in the instructions. When you first select the wavy line, the periods of the waves will look wrong. Just ignore that and proceed. Then it will be a simple matter of using the arrange dialog to position the segments in front of and behind the shapes.

The "Lost Road" Exercise for GDP111

2011-09-25T13:30:00.000-07:00

The "Lost Road" template is here.

This template was created in Indesign according to the document setup instructions. The background image was placed onto the bottom layer, and the PDF from the instructions was then placed onto a layer above that, and then nudged into place. This is why you can see the drop shadow in the crop area.

And, BTW, disregard the border that shows at the finished edges. That also is from the PDF in the instructions.

Because this poster has a texture printed onto the background, you must necessarily export it with printer's marks and document bleed settings turned on.

Another hint: If the instructions do not include the text, you can extract the text from the PDF, usually just by copying and pasting. You should never ever ever re-type something that has been typed by someone else already. To do so is completely Medieval.

Chapter 6, The Bank Card for GDP111

2011-09-24T21:37:00.001-07:00

An old tutorial from 2009 on the bank card is here.

This tutorial contains a PDF, an Indesign file, and a step-by-step video. The video is a bit rambling, but the guy making it is actually doing the finished exercise.

Talk about spoon feeding.

o7 Raffle template for GDP111

2011-09-24T20:09:00.000-07:00

The template for the raffle tickets is here.

In the past, students have had more trouble with this exercise than any other.

After studying the instructions, pay close attention to the template. Notice, for instance, the perf line crop marks, and how none of the crop lines actually extend into the image area. Also. be sure to put the crops in registration color. The template may or may not have them displayed as such. But you will be graded down if you don't.

Note also that the fold line does not extend across the page, It must be in the bleed area, and not touch the image area. The instructions are misleading on this point, as they show a dotted line running across the page.

Ask questions as you go through this exercise.

And do not hand in something that looks different from the template.

Chapter 7 Firefighter Poster

2011-09-24T19:52:00.000-07:00

The finished template for the poster is here.

In this exercise, if you follow the instructions carefully, you should be OK. Be sure to bleed the axe handle off of the page.

Place the downloaded PDF over your own work. Line up the crop marks with the bleed and page. Then go to Options>Effects>Transparency, and drag the slider down to 67% opacity.

In this case, the elements may not line up exactly, as you will be making the piece from scratch. Your body copy, however should match exactly.

Be sure when exporting to show all printer's marks and to use document bleed settings.

The Beach Ball exercise for GDP111

2011-09-18T17:48:00.000-07:00

The beach Ball exercise is here.

The Family History Exercise for GDP111

2011-09-18T16:22:00.001-07:00

The template for the Family History exercise is here.

Vicky goes over the construction of this exercise in the lecture for February 22, 2012, here. Go to 1:01:20 on the timeline.

I did this exercise myself once. I put the PDF onto the second layer, with the text book's version on the top layer. You can compare the two. Mine is slightly off. I don't recall why. However it is well within the tolerance allowed for a piece of this nature. So, you can get an idea of how far off you can be.

The Lincoln Exercise For GDP111

2011-09-15T11:10:00.000-07:00

The finished template for the"Lincoln" exercise is here.

The text that accompanies your work files is contained within a .DOC file. If you can't open this file, upload it to Google Docs. Then copy and paste the text.

This template hasn't been transparentized. So, go to Object>Effects>Transparency, and run it down to about 65%.

The Anna Sanchez Exercise For GDP111

2011-09-15T10:33:00.000-07:00

The "Anna Sanchez" exercise finished template is here.

A couple of hints: Give your a page a bleed of about a quarter inch. This is where your fold lines should be. No part of the dashed line should extend onto the actual finished document. And it should be in registration color. You will have points deducted for putting them in black.

If the instructions are unclear, phrase a question in plain English about the problem and Google it. You will be surprised how many times doing this for such problems will yield explanations in the first return.

The text within the yellow bars got mangled when I extracted the piece from the student handout. So, you're on your own there.