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[layzie1989]

well this thread is going slow so time for some designer jokes

http://i.imgur.com/mMaWbSH.jpg

Motherfucker, my mouse at work always skips when I lift it up, leaving whatever I was trying to place perfectly out to place. Completely infuriating

edit: i just realized he's freaking out because it's skipping a pixel. I hate that as well.

 

[Buckethead]

No guides and rules?

Hmm

 

[cbox]

I hate to be a debbie downer but pixel grid and snapping are your friends

 

[Angelus Errare]

I hate to be a debbie downer but pixel grid and snapping are your friends

pretty sure pixel grid is on in that animated jpeg.

 

[cbox]

pretty sure pixel grid is on in that animated jpeg.

Those are guides

 

[Fantomex]

Whenever an exact pixel isn't reached, most of the time you just gotta zoom in and the problem is solved. Or just use the information panels to put in some exact coordinates. It's a pain though.

 

[cbox]

As long as you have snapping and the pixel grid on, it's really not an issue...

Learning how to properly set up photoshop should be in every designers notebook. It eases a lot of the pains of every day work, especially lining up elements and creating perfect anti-aliased shapes.

 

[MrGerbils]

ok... well obviously all art isn't done with vector tools, so why would this Tshirt printer only accept .eps and .ai? What If I wanted to hand draw something and put it on the shirt, but maybe mix it with vector stuff?

and in my original post I meant I "use PS and OWN AI."

anyways here's a sign for work... I designed it for an 11x14 sign holder, but I might spread it out a little and just print to 11x17 and tape it onto the holder from behind. I made this in PS... would there be any advantage to doing something like this w/ Illustrator??

I dunno if I should color the books in at the bottom or leave as is...

Here's a few quick notes:

And just because I know you wanna crucify me right now for how shitty those notes were added in PS, here's a quick AI mockup inspired by your basic layout and design, just given a little more room to breathe. I don't think this is the be all end all, or a finishing point (you could start with this basic layout and begin to add as much or as little decorative flourish from here as you'd wish), or even think it's very amazing at all. I just thought it might be useful for you to see another person's take on the subject.

I hope you understand I mean these critiques with the best intentions, and hope you keep up the good work. Super rad that you're working at a book store too. That sounds perfect for a designer.


As for your question as to why a print shop might request a t-shirt design as an AI or EPS file (EPS is just another type of open source sorta vector file, any vector program can output or open it).. My guess would be that this t-shirt printer is using a silk screen process, which is usually done with a limited set of colors, each color getting its own plate.

You can see the basic process in this crappy internet jpg:

So as you can see, the screen is a completely binary process: either it's letting ink through, or it is not. There's no room for gradients, grunge effects, transparency, etc. That is probably why they want flat color vector files. So they can separate out each color and make a screen of it. They also want to make the screen with a very high resolution file, which of course a vector file is basically unlimited resolution, so they can have nice crisp separation of colors.

That said, even with simple 2 color screen printing, you can still simulate shading through effects like half-tone patterns, and you can make an overall gradient with the ink you lay down:

And, as with most things in this world, there's probably a lot more I don't know about the process, and as such probably some even cooler techniques that I don't even know about! But, from my limited experience making t-shirts, that's what I have encountered, and I'm willing to guess that's why this shop made that request of you.


Cheers.

 

[Flex187ad]

Hey guys, seeking some career advice.

I have been interning at a design studio for a couple of months now and a couple weeks back they talked briefly about my future with the company, but it was quite vague... Along the lines of one of the other graphic designers moving into a dual project management/designer position which would open up a designer spot. I sent the creative director an email about my interest in the position and he said we could discuss it next week.

I brought it up with him last week and he said I will be having a chat with the main graphic designer, and I also brought it up with him and he said "things have quieted down a bit, but we will talk about it later" and here I stand now.

So that was last week and I'm in the office today. Any advice on how to go about this? Should I bring it up again? As far as I know they are happy with my output and I have produced some good work for them, I have shown up on time and stayed back to help when they have needed it.

So, any tips guys?

 

[Flek]

Here's a few quick notes:

wow thats some really great feedback you gave him. Really nice!

I know this thread is somewhat dead but if we could give out more feedback the way you just did that would be awesome :O

 

[MrGerbils]

wow thats some really great feedback you gave him. Really nice!

I know this thread is somewhat dead but if we could give out more feedback the way you just did that would be awesome :O

Haha thanks, although I thought I had personally killed the thread. It'd be nice if somewhere on the web there was a community of skilled designers critiquing each other and younger folks as well, not unlike conceptart.org is for illustration, but I've never seen it really.

Hey guys, seeking some career advice.

I have been interning at a design studio for a couple of months now and a couple weeks back they talked briefly about my future with the company, but it was quite vague... Along the lines of one of the other graphic designers moving into a dual project management/designer position which would open up a designer spot. I sent the creative director an email about my interest in the position and he said we could discuss it next week.

I brought it up with him last week and he said I will be having a chat with the main graphic designer, and I also brought it up with him and he said "things have quieted down a bit, but we will talk about it later" and here I stand now.

So that was last week and I'm in the office today. Any advice on how to go about this? Should I bring it up again? As far as I know they are happy with my output and I have produced some good work for them, I have shown up on time and stayed back to help when they have needed it.

So, any tips guys?

Would need some more info to comment fully. Are you an unpaid intern (which is illegal in the US if you're actually working on deliverables, btw)? If you're paid, how much different is the pay for a designer vs what you're making now? How many designers are at the shop?

My personal opinion is to never intern for anywhere more than 3 months.. but there can always be exceptions.

In general with any job though, you should always be direct about where you want to go. If they said they're open to talking with you about it, I don't see anything weird about bringing it up once a week until they actually give you some answers.

Don't let them drag you along as an intern forever though. If after 3 months of good work they're not interested in moving you up, move on to another company, even if it means starting as a newbie intern again and resetting that timer.. ideally though you could use your new portfolio pieces to work as a junior designer at the next shop. It's always easier to increase your title/position while moving between shops than it is to advance at one. That place that hired you as an intern will most likely always see you as an intern somewhere in the back of their mind, even if you've moved up a bit.

 

[Ultimatum]

Haha thanks, although I thought I had personally killed the thread. It'd be nice if somewhere on the web there was a community of skilled designers critiquing each other and younger folks as well, not unlike conceptart.org is for illustration, but I've never seen it really.

Great feedback earlier. I've seen forums like conceptart for graphic design, but as soon as they grow beyond being a small community it goes to crap and people stop giving feedback (kind of like websites like dribbble).

 

[phillipgessert]

Here's my most recent book design, had a blast with it: http://www.behance.net/gallery/No-Shirt-No-Shoes-No-Service/11202193

 

[Futureman]

I signed up for Adobe CC and really, for my purposes, I don't find it much different at all from CS5.

I'm going to cancel CC most likely before the first month (full refund). Still will do some more testing.

 

[Futureman]

Here's my most recent book design, had a blast with it: http://www.behance.net/gallery/No-Shirt-No-Shoes-No-Service/11202193

very cool. I run a book printing machine at work and I'm starting to get into cover design.

 

[Angelus Errare]

Here's my most recent book design, had a blast with it: http://www.behance.net/gallery/No-Shirt-No-Shoes-No-Service/11202193

Love your PAH design!

 

[General_Zod]

Just thought i'd ask if any has any advice on what software to get to help with this i'm looking at adobe digital publishing suite. (I use indesign for 90% of my work)

Can any one chip in their 2 cent on what they use or experience with digital publishing.

 

[phillipgessert]

Just thought i'd ask if any has any advice on what software to get to help with this i'm looking at adobe digital publishing suite. (I use indesign for 90% of my work)

Can any one chip in their 2 cent on what they use or experience with digital publishing.

Are you looking to get into ebooks? Lately I export my InDesign files as ePub, then clean it up like crazy using Sigil. A better method for me would probably be to bring the source MSS into Sigil directly, but with late-stage edits and the like I haven't yet bent my workflow around that way.

Anyway, point is, I'd take a look at Sigil. I'm not familiar with any paid apps (Adobe or otherwise) that are particularly strong at this, but I could be way wrong. If you discover something awesome, I hope you'll post it—because this is one area that I'm kind of aware I'm not working super efficiently.

 

[General_Zod]

Are you looking to get into ebooks? Lately I export my InDesign files as ePub, then clean it up like crazy using Sigil. A better method for me would probably be to bring the source MSS into Sigil directly, but with late-stage edits and the like I haven't yet bent my workflow around that way.

Anyway, point is, I'd take a look at Sigil. I'm not familiar with any paid apps (Adobe or otherwise) that are particularly strong at this, but I could be way wrong. If you discover something awesome, I hope you'll post it—because this is one area that I'm kind of aware I'm not working super efficiently.

Thanks, i'm looking to do it for magazines really, I got the template from Mag+ but to publish via them seems to cost an arm and a leg. So its not really an option.

I've never done any digital publishing, i'm just trying to offer something better than they currently use which is a pdf flip book, so its pretty dated in terms of giving an online version.

If i do find anything that i think may be handy i will happily share

 

[Futureman]

I want to make a large, high quality animated GIF of some photos I took. I guess dimensions will be around 1000x667.

I have Adobe CC and know HTML and CSS well enough, what would be the most efficient way to go about this? Fireworks? I'd probably prefer PS if possible since I'm so familiar.

 

[MrGerbils]

I want to make a large, high quality animated GIF of some photos I took. I guess dimensions will be around 1000x667.

I have Adobe CC and know HTML and CSS well enough, what would be the most efficient way to go about this? Fireworks? I'd probably prefer PS if possible since I'm so familiar.

I only have CS6, so this process may have changed a bit, but it's super easy to do in PS. What you wanna do is load each of your images in to a different layer in the same .psd document, then go to Window > Timeline. Then, in that window twirl down the arrow and choose to create a frame animation.

In that same window panel, click the little new frame icon (it's the same looking folded paper icon as new layer). Do this for as many frames of animation as you want. Then click on the first frame, and only turn on the 1st layer in your document. Go to the second frame and turn on the 2nd layer in your document, etc etc. In that same timeline window you can also choose how many times it loops, or loop it forever), and you can click the play button to preview the animation.

Once it looks right, go to File > Save for web, and set it up to save as a gif. What's nice here is that you can preview the quality and it will tell you the file size. That high res of a gif will likely take a while to download and to play, so try to optimize all the other settings.

If that is all looking correct, click the save button in the save for web dialogue box, and it'll save out somewhere.

Hopefully that was clear enough and works for ya!

 

[Futureman]

Sounds like what I'm looking for. Thanks MrGerbils.

and from what I'm been seeing, CC is basically CS6 so I'm guessing I'll be fine.

I'll post what I created later today.

 

[Futureman]

Thanks again Gerb.

Pretty crazy how PS can edit video now!

here's the GIF I produced:
http://www.gregburgh.com/foto/caity.gif

 

[MrGerbils]

Great glad to see it worked out. There's definitely a lot of fun to be had gif making. Now you can join the GAF gif Army.

 

[User 73706]

Mini-bumping because I need help on a logo.

It's not complete yet but it's meant to get the point across as to what I'm trying to do - biggest letters (P and R) are a little stylized and remain at the edges, while the remainder of "project" and "chamber" use a simpler font. There are some additions to the vanilla font - I used Illustrator's "delete anchor point" tool to add the accents on the J, C's and turned the A into a little metronome-looking thing, and vertically centered the middle horizontal line in the two E's. "Live" uses Tall Films Expanded and is meant to be smallest and separate the two words. I lucked out in that the "WORDwordWORD" format ended up having an even spread of letters, but I'm not sure how to stylize the P and R while maintaining proper symmetry with the rest of the logo.

Just for some context, Project Livechamber is a vaporware arena FPS I'm working on but I'd rather the logo stay minimalist than pepper it with bullet holes or crosshairs or anything. It takes a bit of inspiration from the original Alien logo from the title drop in the first film.

 

[phillipgessert]

Mini-bumping because I need help on a logo.

It's not complete yet but it's meant to get the point across as to what I'm trying to do - biggest letters (P and R) are a little stylized and remain at the edges, while the remainder of "project" and "chamber" use a simpler font. There are some additions to the vanilla font - I used Illustrator's "delete anchor point" tool to add the accents on the J, C's and turned the A into a little metronome-looking thing, and vertically centered the middle horizontal line in the two E's. "Live" uses Tall Films Expanded and is meant to be smallest and separate the two words. I lucked out in that the "WORDwordWORD" format ended up having an even spread of letters, but I'm not sure how to stylize the P and R while maintaining proper symmetry with the rest of the logo.

Just for some context, Project Livechamber is a vaporware arena FPS I'm working on but I'd rather the logo stay minimalist than pepper it with bullet holes or crosshairs or anything. It takes a bit of inspiration from the original Alien logo from the title drop in the first film.

The bowls in the large letters are so airy that they almost appear to have a different weight than the rest of the words they're attached to. This, plus 'live' siting above the baseline, kinda makes the whole thing jumble a bit when you take it in at a glance.

I doubt you'd ever print this, but FYI if you did, 'live' will probably choke out. And this bit is a little subjective, but it feels like the emphasis on certain words is off—I'd probably emphasize 'live chamber' rather than 'project' and 'chamber'. I feel like it'd benefit from being split to two lines.

 

[User 73706]

The bowls in the large letters are so airy that they almost appear to have a different weight than the rest of the words they're attached to. This, plus 'live' siting above the baseline, kinda makes the whole thing jumble a bit when you take it in at a glance.

I doubt you'd ever print this, but FYI if you did, 'live' will probably choke out. And this bit is a little subjective, but it feels like the emphasis on certain words is off—I'd probably emphasize 'live chamber' rather than 'project' and 'chamber'. I feel like it'd benefit from being split to two lines.

The font for the large letters was just placeholder until I could find a proper way to stylize them. It'd be more for digital than prints, but yeah, I'd have to keep that in mind if I ever went physical media with the logo. Anyways, how's this?

 

[phillipgessert]

The font for the large letters was just placeholder until I could find a proper way to stylize them. It'd be more for digital than prints, but yeah, I'd have to keep that in mind if I ever went physical media with the logo. Anyways, how's this?

I think that's an improvement from a word emphasis standpoint, but 'project' feels larger than 'live chamber'. You may want to try using two weights of one face, rather than two weights and two faces, these two feel kinda clashy. But I am nitpicking.

 

[Buckethead]

Maybe stack them if you're going two faces. I dunna. Jussa suggession.

Also manual edit thatt "A".

 

[kodecraft]

Thanks again Gerb.

Pretty crazy how PS can edit video now!

here's the GIF I produced:
http://www.gregburgh.com/foto/caity.gif

Awesome.

 

[phillipgessert]

Thanks again Gerb.

Pretty crazy how PS can edit video now!

here's the GIF I produced:
http://www.gregburgh.com/foto/caity.gif

I dig your style, man. Very cool.

 

[8byte]

Hey guys, I'm not professional, or by any means talented, and I'm looking for some design advice. I'm making a "logo" for my site, Awful Gamer, and I can't really come up with any halfway decent ideas. This is the best I can muster:

Any advice, tips, ideas, etc...will be GREATLY appreciated. Thanks, everyone!

So this is my "new" logo. Any pointers or thoughts?

 

[Devolution]

What does TV line up with? It just looks like it's floating there.

 

[8byte]

What does TV line up with? It just looks like it's floating there.

It doesn't line up with anything. Any ideas or recommendations are GREATLY appreciated! I didn't really know how to fit it in, so I just put it in line with the text (bottom line).

 

[The One Who Knocks]

I'm not sure if this is the right place to post this as I've not seen any other thread for it but I really need help from somebody more experienced with Solidworks than I am. I'm trying to figure out someway to extrude a sketch through a spherical object so that none of the extrude enters the spherical object. I've a .gif below showing my issue (and hopefully it provides greater clarity to the problem) but you'll have to forgive me as I'm on a laptop and do not have access to the actual file (so it's merely a very quick sketch and I cannot quickly change the positioning of the object as I'm using a touchpad and not a mouse):

(I've briefly selected the problematic area, after failing to quickly maneuver to the best vantage point, to make it clear that the extrude is passing through the cap in case it is still unclear as to what I'm referring to)

Some things that I've tried doing:
Lofted Boss/Base - Selecting the current sketch and a mirrored sketch and cycling through the various objects has all resulted in failure.
Sweeping Boss/Base (with a path along the exterior of the curve as viewed from a plan view), and Rotating Boss/Base around a centreline - The issue with these is that I cannot get it so that only the back surface of the extrude curves and nothing else. The entire object curves along the path but, as this serves as a hinge and needs a straight pipe going from one side to the other, this is a major problem.
Extruding as shown and then sketching a curve that overlaps with the inner offset - The issue here is that it enters the offset (if that isn't clear, there's a five millimeter distance between the exterior surface and the interior surface, if I sketch along the interior surface and cut that, it still passes through the exterior surface).

I need the feature tree list to be as short as possible so while I could probably accomplish it with an array of extrude cuts, I'm trying to use as few features as possible to accomplish what I need.

I would be extremely grateful for any help on this matter as, no matter what I do, I simply cannot get it to work (I am also not hugely experienced with Solidworks and searching for how to do this has, thus far, been a futile effort) and time is a major constraint so I cannot afford to leave this unresolved for much longer.

EDIT: If required I can post a picture of what I'm trying to model.

 

[Duuke]

So this is my "new" logo. Any pointers or thoughts?

Honestly I liked the idea behind your first logo better. I kinda got bored and decided to critic your current design and then did a little walk through behind my thought process. Please don't think I'm being mean or arrogant. I just want to give some constructive criticism

Notes on you current design -

So I thought I'd do an example, which in no way is me telling you how to fix it. It's just my interpretation if I were to go about making a logo about an awful gamer. I decided to base the design off of your original idea. These were the basic iterations I went through:

I started with your original logo of a controller. I'm assuming your an awful gamer because video games, so something relevant like a controller is the most immediate thing that comes to my mind. I started trying to use the font I used for AG as the buttons. That looked like shit so I made custom buttons. I tried to keep the same bevel for the entire controller, and I simplified the angles in the third pass to keep this simple.

I wanted the entire logo to be cohesive, so I gave everything a beveled corner. I searched for a condensed and chunky font with rounded corners. I found a free font called Cubana and I modified it. You can see I adjusted the kerning, made the segments for the A and G align, shortened the G so it was the same height as the A, and took out the angle of the G to simplify the lines.

I tried to keep what I thought was essential about your logos. Abbreviated to AG, and a two toned system. I decided to frame everything, which gave me the chance to have a "two-toned" system without having two colors. Just inverting the controller graphic. The result is this;

You can see the spacing and placement is more grid-like. If I had more time, I would shorten the bottom of the A and G so that it is perfectly symmetrical with the top portions of the letters;

Once the shape is close to what I want, and I'm sure it's legible as a black-on-white and white-on-black logo at different sizes, I have fun with colors:

Already I can see that the logo needs more spacing between the frame and the letters so everything "breathes" more easily/makes it more legible at smaller sizes.

I can see parts of your thought process and you're off to a great start. What makes a good logo is so objective depending on tastes and what information you think is important to convey. So I may be way off on my criticism.

 

[Vigilant Walrus]

Guys I need some help.

I'm trying to make a color template for a cms design.

Basically I need some ideas to what colors I can use for fonts against any sort of background.


I'm leaning towards a look with a black bezel around the font but it looks very comic book like. Do you guys have any places where I can find inspiration?

 

[cbox]

When working with grids, you can't change the width of certain elements - it goes against what grid structure is. All items need to be the same width, with smaller sections being the same ratio, but sized down. To add, I'd move AG to the right and the controller to the left. Nice choice on the Cubano font, albeit a bit too rounded for my liking.

 

[Futureman]

Mr Gerbils, I totally missed your post above where you helped me on my book poster. Thanks!

 

[MrGerbils]

Mr Gerbils, I totally missed your post above where you helped me on my book poster. Thanks!

For sure, cheers!

 

[dangrib]

Hi guys. I recently relaunched my gaming apparel store Versus Mode. You can find it at www.versusmode.co. Would love to know what you all think!

 

[MrGerbils]

Hi guys. I recently relaunched my gaming apparel store Versus Mode. You can find it at www.versusmode.co. Would love to know what you all think!

I think it's both illegal and immoral to sell products for profit based on licenses that you don't have the rights to.

I realize these are your own drawings of the licensed characters, but you can't just draw your own mickey mouse and sell it for personal profit.


Additionally, they all just look like you brought photos in to illustrator and poorly traced them with a basically default thickness line tool. You're not really re-imagining the characters in any way to make them your own. They're t-shirts of tracings of photos/screen caps that you're trying to sell to me as "minimalist" but I would really just call lazy.

So to sum up: illegal, immoral, and lazy.. and also $26 plus shipping for a shirt is a bit much. A nicely made original T on a site like threadless, or an officially branded T on think geek is normally about $20 or less.


Some quick overlays I did to see if they are just tracings:

yep.

 

[SystemBug]

Hey guys, I'm working on a personal poster at the moment based on the joker.

I also created a batman one which looks similar to this one (trying to keep it the same theme)

inspired by olly moss - love his work!

 

[xxracerxx]

Figured it out with some jquery.

 

[MrGerbils]

Hey guys, I'm working on a personal poster at the moment based on the joker.

I also created a batman one which looks similar to this one (trying to keep it the same theme)



inspired by olly moss - love his work!

These are fun. Batman is definitely great, and Joker is clearly going in the right direction.

 

[Kikarian]

Hey guys, I'm working on a personal poster at the moment based on the joker.

I also created a batman one which looks similar to this one (trying to keep it the same theme)



inspired by olly moss - love his work!

I like the consistency in both. They're definitely relatable.

Great work!

 

[Buckethead]

Speaking of Batman, I recently completed this video to teach myself After Effects.



There's a good deal of graphic design involved. About 300 layers between all of my comps.
I probably should have stuck with the simplistic look below but I couldn't help myself.

Check it out, ya'll.

 

[SystemBug]

Client wants a front page to look and function like an instagram homepage but be able to control which images fade in and out on the tile board. Any wordpress themes out there that have this? I could build my own but she is trying to keep costs to a minimum.

I tried looking around theme forest and this is the best I could find . http://themeforest.net/item/nadia-r....seg_1=solid_search_item&WT.z_author=chrisbit

Speaking of Batman, I recently completed this video to teach myself After Effects.

Good stuff! the bit with the newspaper was great! I have worked with after effects before and I know how painful it can be

 

[Kikarian]

Speaking of Batman, I recently completed this video to teach myself After Effects.



There's a good deal of graphic design involved. About 300 layers between all of my comps.
I probably should have stuck with the simplistic look below but I couldn't help myself.

Check it out, ya'll.

Nice imagery and composition. Love the style you went with.

Nice work!

 

[Vigilant Walrus]

I met a dude I know at training.


He asked me if I wanted to do a bit of graphics work for him. He is the co-owner of a company that sells CMS solutions to movie studios.


I've been helping him out 5-15 hours a week for over a month. He asked me some weeks ago what they could do for me - and I admitted that I was a complete rookie and wanted to use the stuff as a portfolio he said sure, and that he would also give a letter of reccomendation.



The thing is, that now I am doing more tasks, more ad hoc jobs and the likes, and I am now part of the team as an inturn. He asked me how much I am available from now on and I said between 10-20 hours a week.


The thing is, being a newbie, being an inturn will I ever be entitled to get a pay? It has never gotten up. It was made clear from the getgo that he took a chance on giving me a shot.
A previous designer before me was fired for not being "creative" enough.

I have confidence in my artistic skills, but I know no coding, have no formal education, so I feel like a chicken shit for asking to be compensated for my work.



Am I an entitled douche for thinking this??