Introduction to Digital Painting

Believe it or not, Adobe Photoshop can be used for more than just photo editing and design. Yes, despite its name, Photoshop is one of the ever-expanding range of tools available for digital painters, illustrators, and just plain doodlers. These tools are allowing people incredible freedom to express themselves and create fun pictures. Imagine reliving your childhood days of drawing and scribbling, without ever having to worry about making a mess, or running out of supplies. Best of all, digital art is much more forgiving when you make mistakes. No other medium would let you erase 1000 times, without harming your canvas one bit. At the other end of the spectrum, Photoshop can be used to create professional, print-quality illustrations with great efficiency. Here's a general introduction to the world of digital painting.

Priest, Jeff. Design, Typography and Graphics (2002). Design>Graphic Design>Software>Adobe Photoshop

An Introduction to Illustration Software  

Follas describes the differences between various types of graphic editing software.

Follas, Brian J. Intercom (2001). Design>Graphic Design>Software

Introduction to Layers

This beginner's tutorial explains the concept of layers in Photoshop. Layers are a very powerful tool for image editing, and are a fundamental tool in Photoshop for creating complex images.

Elated (2002). Design>Graphic Design>Software>Adobe Photoshop

An Introduction to Visualisation

Visualising things makes them tangible and brings them into shareable form. Visualisation brings ideas to life and helps understanding. Visualisation techniques help elicit, communicate and analyse ideas and concepts.

Joe, Phillip. Design Council (2005). Articles>Graphic Design>Technical Illustration>Visual Rhetoric

IRTC Desktop Publishing and Graphics

This is a list of resources related to desktop publishing and graphics. I'm including things like icons and wallpaper in the graphics category.

Soltys, Keith. IRTC (2001). Design>Document Design>Graphic Design

Is Design Political?

Politics is commonly thought of as the activities of political organizations--from which the majority of designers (if not majority of people) feel disassociated. But there is a missed opportunity here: at base, politics is about values, and design is nothing if not a means of embodying values.

Winhall, Jennie. uiGarden (2006). Articles>Graphic Design>Cultural Theory>Politics

Is This Ethical? A Survey of Opinion on Principles and Practices of Document Design    

In a national survey, 500 technical communicators and 500 technical communication teachers were asked to assess the ethics of seven document design cases. According to the 455 respondents, manipulating typography and leading to fit more or less information on a page and using persuasive coloring or spacing are ethical practices, while the manipulation of pictorial illustrations and the distortion of graphics are unethical. Opinion on using typography to decrease readability is divided. In five of the seven cases, women are consistently more lenient or men consistently more strict in their answers: common practices, specifications, reader's responsibility, writer's responsibility, writer's intentions, consequences, judgments, principles, and insufficient information. The explanation most often given was consequences, indicating a 'goal-based' philosophy of ethics.

Dragga, Sam. Technical Communication Online (1996). Careers>TC>Document Design>Graphic Design

Is Your Designer Costing You Money?

The pitfalls of using a graphic designer that is not experienced can have financial and emotional consequences. Designers must understand what software program to use for the task at hand. A designer that is not experienced can cost the customer time, money and unnecessary stress.

Reichel, Gary. Design, Typography and Graphics (2004). Design>Project Management>Graphic Design

John Trevino's Layers of Meaning

Drawing on a period of instability and change in her personal life, artist John Trevino calls on Adobe Photoshop and Corel Painter to create a richly layer composition that evokes a transient state of being.

Trevino, John. Creative Pro (2004). Design>Graphic Design>Software>Adobe Photoshop

The Journal of Electronic Imaging  

The Journal publishes papers in all technology areas that make up the field of electronic imaging and are normally considered in the design, engineering, and application of an electronic imaging system. It was developed in response to the significant activity and projected growth in the field and is an outgrowth of the annual Electronic Imaging Science and Technology Symposium, jointly sponsored by IS&T and SPIE.

JIST. Journals>Graphic Design

The Journal of Imaging Science and Technology  

The Journal of Imaging Science and Technology provides the imaging community documentation of a broad range of research, development and applications in imaging. The selection of papers reflects the role of the Society for Imaging Science and Technology (IS&T) as a window on imaging, promoting communication and understanding across the boundaries of the many disciplines involved in modern imaging.

JIST. Journals>Graphic Design

JPEG Tutorial

This page presents a brief description of how JPEG compresses images. JPEG, unlike other formats like PPM, PGM, and GIF, is a lossy compression technique; this means visual information is lost permanently. The key to making JPEG work is choosing what data to throw away.

Society for Imaging Science and Technology, The. Articles>Graphic Design>Standards

Labeling in Illustrations

In technical illustrations, labeling is often needed to denominate specific parts. Here, it is important to remember certain details that can really make a difference. This is especially true if the file is to be converted at a later time.

ITEDO Software. Articles>Graphic Design>Technical Illustration

The Language of Color

Color motivates, excites, draws attention and provides emphasis.  It is one part of the coordinated effort to effectively communicate in information design. Color has long been thought to be only for embellishment or decoration. But if used intelligently, color can help give visual order to complex information. It can attract, enlighten and engage, and thus, add value.

Dowd, Tim. EServer (2001). Design>Graphic Design>Information Design

Learning to Love the Pixel: Exploring the Craft of Icon Design

Designing web-based enterprise software involves creating complex artifacts like architecture wireframes, object models, screen flows, and clickable prototypes in order to articulate aspects of the online experience for product stakeholders. But what does “craft” mean for interaction designers?

Gajendar, Uday. Boxes and Arrows (2003). Design>Graphic Design>Interaction Design

Less is More...

The numerous stylistic devices in Technical Illustration allow you to visualize technical coherences. An important, but very often underestimated, method in Technical Illustration is the omission of lines, which often helps to display the desired information more clearly.

ITEDO Software. Articles>Graphic Design>Technical Illustration>Isometric

Let Photoshop Do the Driving  

Photoshop's Actions feature is a powerful tool for automating repetitive tasks or even batch-processing files, and you'll work more effectively with it if you know exactly what Actions can and can't automate.

Dayton, Linnea and Jack Davis. Adobe Magazine (1997). Design>Graphic Design>Software>Adobe Photoshop

Limitations? What Limitations?

Web tools are in their infancy, but they are snowballing along at an increasingly faster rate. Now the tools are moving faster than the standards.         New browsers and browser versions are appearing all the time and boasting lots of new features.        We are publishing web pages in the full probability that many of the readers will not be seeing them as we intend. The same HTML document will look quite different in every web browser used to view it.         Some elements will be different in size and position, the colours might have changed, some will be absent completely! How can a designer who is concerned about his or her work cope with this pandemonium?

WPDFD. Design>Graphic Design

Literature Review: What is Visual Literacy?  

This paper takes a look at what is being said in various disciplines (technical writing, journalism, education, psychology, user interface design, and visual arts) in an attempt to answer the question 'What is visual literacy?' A corollory is 'How will I know when I have achieved it?' A working definition of visual literacy has many implications for how we train technical writers in order to meet the professional challenges of the future.

Couse, Mary M. STC Proceedings (1993). Articles>Graphic Design>Research>Visual Rhetoric

Logo Design

Logos are graphical shorthand that can represent a company or product, and communicate certain characteristics.

Hunt, Ben. Web Design From Scratch (2005). Design>Graphic Design>Web Design

Logo Primer

I want to explain why a logo should be produced in a vector program such as Illustrator or Freehand. (Vector art is LINE art -- the digital equivalent of art done in pen and ink.)

Stephens, Suz. Wise-Women (2004). Design>Graphic Design>Web Design

Logotypes

If you’ve ever gone looking 'behind the scenes' in your fonts, you might have stumbled upon a wonderful surprise: a logotype. Logotypes are usually small, commonly used words – such as the, for, and, of and to – that are designed as a unit. Like ligatures, logotypes are treated as a single character by your application (and are usually accessed with one keystroke or keystroke combination). Unlike ligatures, the letters within a logotype are not necessarily connected. In fact, the sky’s the limit when it comes to the design of these useful little words.

Strizver, Ilene. Upper and lowercase Magazine (2003). Design>Typography>Graphic Design

London Through Rose-Colored Graphics: Visual Rhetoric and Information Graphic Design in Charles Booth's Maps of London Poverty    

In this article, I examine a historical information graphic--Charles Booth's maps of London poverty (1889-1902)--to analyze the cultural basis of ideas of transparency and clarity in information graphics. I argue that Booth's maps derive their rhetorical power from contemporary visual culture as much as from their scientific authority. The visual rhetoric of the maps depended upon an ironic inversion of visual culture to make poverty seem a problem that could be addressed, rather than an insurmountable crisis. This visual rhetoric led directly to significant features of and concepts in western societies, including the poverty line and universal old-age pensions (social security).

Kimball, Miles A. Journal of Technical Writing and Communication (2006). Articles>Graphic Design>Visual Rhetoric>Geography

The London Underground Map: Imagining Modern Time and Space  

In one of his short essays in Mythologies, Barthes equated a new Citroën with the great Gothic cathedrals. He based this equivalence not on any physical resemblance, but on similarities he perceived at the moments of their production and consumption. Barthes saw each as 'the supreme creation of an era, conceived with passion by unknown artists, and consumed in image if not in usage by a whole population which appropriates them as a purely magical object.' I would like to consider the London Underground Map in the context of Barthes’s list of 'supreme creations,' and I would like to adopt his argument as the starting point of my observations.

Hadlaw, Janin. Design Issues (2003). Design>Information Design>Graphic Design