Graphic Thoughts: Creating Great Backgrounds in A Snap

Recently, I had the chance to go with my in-laws to City Museum in St. Louis. What an amazing place to get lost in by crawling through inventively designed tunnels that go underground to many stories below the city streets. The most impressive thing to me was how the place was constructed—they used everyday items, such as metal storage bins, bottles, and gears (plus what looked like a million other items) to create elaborate mazes of artwork.

Gray, Lawrence. Event DV (2008). Articles>Graphic Design>Image Editing>Adobe Photoshop

Creating Perspective Shadows

Perspective—it’s one of the first things you learn about in any art class. The basic idea is that it’s the way your eye actually sees something, represented on a flat surface such as paper or a monitor. A simple example is drawing a group of objects: You represent an object in the distance by making it smaller, while making objects close to the viewer larger—make sense? In this tutorial, I’m going to show you how to create perspective shadows in Adobe Photoshop CS3. The result is dynamic, but the technique is a breeze!

Gray, Lawrence. Event DV (2008). Articles>Graphic Design>Image Editing>Technical Illustration

Good Designs Have Strong Contrast

Push contrast more than you might be naturally inclined. If you don’t, you end up with conflict. The next time you eat at a restaurant, look closely at the menu. A good menu has a high degree of contrast between sections.

Johnson, Tom H. I'd Rather Be Writing (2009). Articles>Document Design>Graphic Design

Text Extraction from Graphical Objects During XML Conversion

Materials that include ornamentation and complex design features have long been challenging to convert to XML, even by hand. The problem is two-fold: complex documents usually contain a variety of graphics, some of which may be simple ornamentation, with others actually fundamental to the subject matter. In addition, these graphics can consist of images overlaid either with text that is integral to the image content, or with actual body text. The analysis and extraction of such content into a meaningful order in the converted XML file is not currently possible via scripting conversion tools, and can be time-consuming and arduous to tag manually.

Germann, Ryan. IDEAlliance (2004). Articles>Information Design>Graphic Design>XML

So, You Want To Screen Capture, Huh?

Here's a quick tutorial about screen captures, thus the title. If you're not sure what a screen capture is, then think about the pages you've seen lately. Maybe some of them have had specific sections of the desktop or a program made into an image. It was almost as if they captured part of the screen as an image.

Burns, Joe. HTML Goodies (2004). Articles>Documentation>Graphic Design>Screen Captures

Why 2007 I.P.C.C. Report Lacked ‘Embers’

Several authors of the 2007 report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change on the projected effects of global warming now say they regret not pushing harder to include an updated diagram of climate risks in the report. The diagram, known as “burning embers,” is an updated version of one that was a central feature of the panel’s preceding climate report in 2001.

Revkin, Andrew C. New York Times, The (2009). Articles>Scientific Communication>Graphic Design>Visual Rhetoric

ANTI

ANTI Magazine aims to showcase outstanding visual content as an online magazine and also through future exhibitions all around the world. We are interested in showcasing all styles of visual media, including: illustration, graphic design, photography, drawing, painting, etc.

ANTI. Journals>Graphic Design>Case Studies

Four Ideas to Organize Your Technical Document Images and Screen Shots

Most technical writers would include at least a few images to illustrate a point, or screen shots that accompany the description of a certain step-by-step procedure, etc. Organizing such images can really become a problem, especially when you have dozens and hundreds of them. Finding, editing, and importing them can quickly become a logistical nightmare, especially when a technical writer is working under a deadline pressure. Here are four ideas to organize and name your images for higher productivity.

Akinci, Ugur. Technical Communication Center (2009). Articles>Graphic Design>Technical Illustration>Screen Captures

A Periodic Table of Visualization Methods

An interactive presentation of a variety of visualization techniques used by graphic designers, technical illustrators and document designers to convey information.

Lengler, Ralph and Martin J. Eppler. Visual Literacy (2009). Presentations>Graphic Design>Technical Illustration>Visual Rhetoric

Strategic Numbers: Discussing the Value of Design With Sara Beckman

We’re excited to bring Sara Beckman from the faculty at the Haas School of Business back into the Adaptive Path fold. We first worked with her in 2003 on our groundbreaking report, Leveraging Business Value: How ROI Changes User Experience.

Rutter, Kate. Adaptive Path (2009). Articles>Interviews>Graphic Design>Assessment

Photos for Interaction

Software companies and other parties involved begin to use the power of a distinct visual design to express both their brand identity and custom interactive design solutions to the users. While this implies a new freedom for designers working in the field of interactive software products, it strengthens the importance of visual design for the design of user interfaces. Designers working on concrete graphic solutions for a specific interface are breaking away from established standards defined by a software vendor. It is now the responsibility of those user interface designers to choose graphical elements wisely to make a product’s interaction principles visible and usable.

Guenther, Milan. Boxes and Arrows (2009). Design>Graphic Design>Photography>Interaction Design

Sixteen Usable CSS Graph and Bar Chart Tutorials and Techniques

Have you ever even tried to create your own CSS graph? If you have, you will know how hard it is. Using Flash is one way to go, but you just can’t beat a beautifully crafted CSS Graph. Have a look at these tutorials and techniques.

SpeckyBoy (2009). Design>Graphic Design>Visual Rhetoric>Charts and Graphs

Image Optimization Part 1: The Importance of Images

On average, 46.6% of the page weight for these popular sites consists of images, included either inline with tags or via CSS stylesheets. This is a massive percentage and it tells us one thing: There’s huge potential to improve the performance of websites if we can improve the way we handle the image payload. By focusing on images you can make a difference and delight your site visitors with a faster and more pleasant experience.

Stefanov, Stoyan. Yahoo (2008). Articles>Web Design>Graphic Design>Compression

How to Take Excellent Portrait Photos

Simply put, a portrait is a representation of a person.They usually focus on a person’s face, mood and expression. Traditionally portraits were sculptures or paintings however, in modern times, a photograph is the most recognized way of taking a portrait. In most cases, the subject looks straight at the camera in order to engage the viewer. In this article, we’ll be giving you simple techniques to help you take portraits and also self portraits, to make the very best of your photos.

Webdesigner Depot (2009). Design>Graphic Design>Photography

How to Make a Photoshop Montage

Anyone can cobble together a few photos and textures and create a humdrum montage. To elevate yours beyond this it takes a few simple tricks using Photoshop’s awesome array of tools. Do it right and the style has got dozens of applications from static navigation or graphics, through to animated banners and interactive collages. This tutorial explains how to create a great Photoshop montage in 19 steps, so let’s get started and have fun with it.

Webdesigner Depot (2009). Design>Graphic Design>Photography>Adobe Photoshop

Intro to Git for Web Designers

Unless you’re a one person web shop with no team to collaborate with, you’ve experienced the frustration that goes along with file sharing. No matter how hard you try, when multiple people are working on a single project without a version control system in place things get chaotic. In this article, I’ll give you a quick review of Git, an excellent version control system.

Webdesigner Depot (2009). Design>Content Management>Software>Graphic Design

Git Resources

Git, though remarkably handy and powerful, is also remarkably hard to use sometimes. Though you can learn the basics easily enough, it can be really tough to dig yourself out of certain corners if you don’t understand what’s going on under the covers. This page provides links to documents, how-tos, cheat sheets, tips, and tricks related to learning and using git.

37Signals (2009). Resources>Content Management>Graphic Design>Software

Fifty Monochromatic Website Designs

Color choice is a key element to the success of any design. It invokes an atmosphere and sets the mood. One method for using color is to use only shades of a color, which is known as a monochromatic color scheme.

Shelton, Michael. Webdesigner Depot (2009). Articles>Web Design>Graphic Design>Color

Making $10,000 a Pixel: Optimizing Thumbnail Images in Search Results

In search results, the old adage a picture is worth a thousand words rings true. When it comes to making your search results more efficient to use, more relevant, and more attractive, images reign supreme. There is simply nothing else on your search results pages that can come close to offering the same potential as thumbnail images for dramatically increasing your conversion rates and revenues.

Nudelman, Greg. UXmatters (2009). Articles>Web Design>Graphic Design>Search

Effective Alt Text

It is perfectly possible to diligently apply alt text to every image on a site and create a result that is completely useless. Unless the alt text effectively conveys the information the image displays, it will be ineffective.

Frontend Infocentre (2008). Articles>Web Design>Accessibility>Graphic Design

Trouble-Free Color Palettes: Transform

As the internet and television bring us instant information and access to millions of resources worldwide—some more trustworthy than others—separating fact from fiction requires a bit of skill ... and luck. Illustrator Lonnie Busch recognizes this conundrum, as depicted in his illustration below. Using a palette that combines warm, rich shades along with cooler highlights, Busch is able draw the viewer into the action.

Dynamic Graphics (2009). Design>Graphic Design>Visual Rhetoric>Color

In Which a Concept Model Makes Me Giddy

Concept models aren't for everyone. When I show fellow designers these artifacts, I sometimes get "You show that to clients?" Like any deliverable, there's a time and a place for concept models. If you're anything like me, however, you think visually. Even if your models don't see the light of day, a good model can help you get a better grip on the problem, or lay some groundwork for your designs.

Brown, Dan. User Interface Engineering (2009). Articles>Graphic Design>Technical Illustration>Sitemaps

Photoshop CS4 Help Guide  

The official Adobe Reference guide is available online and in PDF form. While not exactly a “quick” reference guide, it is essential for anyone who uses Photoshop professionally.

Adobe (2009). Books>Graphic Design>Software>Adobe Photoshop

Jim Coudal of Coudal Partners

Manufacturing, distribution, marketing, sales, customer contact – all of that is supremely manageable by a very small team. In the traditional model, you have this big corporation where the creative department is in the back, and they’re those wacky people with the Tabasco ties and chattering teeth in their cubicle, and everybody is a little afraid of them because they’re so “wild.” The rest of the company is the marketing, production, distribution, all of that. Well, our idea was that the little creative team could do everything.

Coudal, Jim. Design Glut (2009). Articles>Interviews>Graphic Design>Collaboration