Marketing Design  

Marketing design is the fastest moving area of visual design today. This paper is a high-level discussion about how to analyze the needs of your customer, maintain a consistent image across all pieces; and remain flexible, innovative, and positive throughout a cycle of constant change.

Creed, Lisa. STC Proceedings (1995). Design>Graphic Design>Marketing

Mastering Image Exposure Corrections in Photoshop

It's very important to always do your exposure corrections in Photoshop first, before any other corrections or effects. If you don’t, you’ll find that correcting exposure is extremely hard (if not impossible) to do.

Milburn, Ken. Graphics.com (2005). Design>Graphic Design>Prepress>Color

A Matter of Perspective

When working with technical illustrations, you must consider perspective. The following article will provide you with some useful information on working with both parallel and true perspective.

ITEDO Software (2002). Articles>Graphic Design>Technical Illustration>Isometric

Medical Tables, Graphics and Photographs: How They Work    

An examination of a random sample of four medical journals--The Lancet, The New England Journal of Medicine, The Journal of the American Medical Association, and The Journal of Laboratory and Clinical Medicine--reveals that one-fifth of the space of articles in medical science is devoted to an average of three tables and three flow charts, graphs, or photographs. Given these figures, the absence of discussion of visuals in the literature on medical communication may seem puzzling. But the puzzle is easily solved: our basic education gives us a coherent vocabulary for talking about prose, but no coherent vocabulary for talking about tables and visuals. Once we have this vocabulary in hand, we make another step in the direction of an explanation of the nature of communication in the medical sciences. We may note that understanding the meaning of a medical article is not just a consequence of understanding its texts; it is a consequence of understanding all its meaningful components working together--verbal, tabular, visual.

Gross, Alan G. Journal of Technical Writing and Communication (2007). Articles>Graphic Design>Technical Illustration>Biomedical

Merge Layers Loses Effects

When merging a layer with the layer below John lost all of the effects applied to that upper layer. Answer: Don't merge?

Photoshop 911 (2004). Design>Graphic Design>Software>Adobe Photoshop

Multi-Colored Glow

By using Layer Styles, this effect can be created in two simple steps. Scott Kelby shows you how to look like a professional at a beginner's level.

Kelby, Scott. Mac Design Magazine (2003). Design>Graphic Design>Software>Adobe Photoshop

Mutant Education

Up goes that hand and out pops that dreaded can-opener of a question: 'Why aren't we learning programming in this class?' A litany of responses begins to unfold in my now Prozac-pleading brain: Because it's not graphic design; because it's too specialized; because graphic designers won't be doing it or shouldn't be doing it because they'll end up as hacks if they do it and the profession will go to hell; or because it's another program - maybe even a department-unto itself. I'm feeling queasy. It used to be so simple, so clear: We knew what graphic design was and what it wasn't.

Sandhaus, Louise. AIGA (2004). Articles>Education>Graphic Design

My Brain's Not Like Yours: Individual Differences in Visual Processing Styles  

The principles of graphic design 'work' for viewers for several reasons. One reason is that well-designed graphics perform significant information-processing functions for viewers. This workshop looks at individual differences in several dimensions of information-processing style (including visual/haptic,field independent/dependent, high/low detail analysis, high/low visual distractibility, and leveling/sharpening in visual memory). It then examines the ability of graphic designs to 'supplant' processing skills for viewers by either captializing on viewer strengths or compensating for their weaknesses.

Ausburn, Floyd B. and Lynna J. Ausburn. STC Proceedings (1995). Articles>Graphic Design>Visual>Cognitive Psychology

National Association of Photoshop Professionals

The National Association of Photoshop Professionals (NAPP) is a trade association and resource for Adobe® Photoshop® education, training, and news.

NAPP. Organizations>Graphic Design>Software>Adobe Photoshop

National Pride, Global Capital: A Social Semiotic Analysis of Transnational Visual Branding in the Airline Industry    

In this article we examine 561 different airline tailfin designs as a visual genre, revealing how the global-local binary may be managed and realized semiotically. Our analysis is organized into three strands: (a) a descriptive analysis identifies the strikingly restricted visual lexicon and dominant corporate aesthetic established by tailfin design; (b) an interpretive analysis considers the communicative strategies at play and the meaning potentials which underpin different visual resources; (c) a critical analysis links these decisions of design and branding to the political and cultural economies of globalism and the airline industry. Specifically, we show how airlines are able to service national identity concerns through the use of highly localized visual meanings while also appealing to the meaning systems of the international market in their pursuit of symbolic and economic capital. One key semiotic resource is the balancing of cultural symbolism and perceptual iconicity in the form of abstracted stylizations of kinetic effects. Although positioned unfairly in the global semioscape, airlines may resist straightforward cultural homogenization by strategically reworking existing design structures and exploiting possibly universal semiotic meaning potentials.

Thurlow, Crispin. Visual Communication (2007). Design>Graphic Design>Visual Rhetoric

Natural Selections: Colors Found in Nature and Interface Design

The web is awash with sterile design solutions. IBM, Dell, Microsoft, and countless others are virtually indistinguishable from each other. Though one might say this makes browsing easier by virtue of a standardized interface, in reality such sites create mundane experiences for their users and fail to make a positive connection with their audience.

Wroblewski, Luke. Boxes and Arrows (2003). Design>Web Design>Graphic Design>Color

New Pix in Town  

An overview of the new - and explosively growing - world of royalty-free photographs.

Soberanis, Pat. Adobe Magazine (1996). Design>Graphic Design>Photography

Newsletter Make-over Clinic

One of the most frequent problem areas I encounter in the publishing field is when editors, writers and, yes even business people are expected to turn out a good newsletter. If my car isn't running right, I take it to the mechanic. I don't expect the car wash to fix the motor any more than I expect the mechanic to give it a wash and wax. Rare are the instances where the writer or editor is also a good designer and/or typographer. Yet they're almost always restricted by the software they use, the availability of good clip art or images, and the time to think about the details. I'm going to restrict myself to just the initial visual and organizational points in this critique. We could spend days talking about minutiae and the array of options involved in a full scale makeover. What I'll do is share some quick and easy areas where a simple fix will make a big difference.

Showker, Fred. Design, Typography and Graphics (2002). Design>Document Design>Graphic Design>Newsletters

Newspaper Design as Cultural Change    

his article describes the (re-)design of newspapers and magazines as a process of cultural change which goes beyond designing a publication's layout, typography and use of colour, and includes designing the processes and structures of its production.

de Vries, James. Visual Communication (2008). Articles>Graphic Design>Publishing>Visual Rhetoric

Nixlog

The infographics weblog is a running collection of links to infographics found on the web through my own research and the submissions of many individuals.

Nixlog. Resources>Graphic Design>Technical Illustration>Blogs

A Non-Photorealistic Lighting Model For Automatic Technical Illustration  

Phong-shaded 3D imagery does not provide geometric information of the same richness as human-drawn technical illustrations. A non-photorealistic lighting model is presented that attempts to narrow this gap. The model is based on practice in traditional technical illustration, where the lighting model uses both luminance and changes in hue to indicate surface orientation, reserving extreme lights and darks for edge lines and highlights. The lighting model allows shading to occur only in mid-tones so that edge lines and highlights remain visually prominent. In addition, we show how this lighting model is modified when portraying models of metal objects. These illustration methods give a clearer picture of shape, structure, and material composition than traditional computer graphics methods.

Gooch, Amy, Bruce Gooch, Peter Shirley and Elaine Cohen. University of Utah (1998). Design>Graphic Design>Technical Illustration

On Digital Photography

In my forays into digital photography in the last four years, I've encountered a number of issues and learned a lot about making pictures sans film. With any new technology, one is forced to deal with both the same old issues and arguments, and also, brand new ones that have never before been considered. Rather than make any attempt at cohesiveness, below are some various points and lessons I've learned.

Voss, Stephen. Digital Web Magazine (2002). Design>Graphic Design>Online

Optimizing Photoshop Files for Web Design

In this series of articles, we will cover a wide range of topics related to setting up Photoshop files for web design.

Photoshop Today (2000). Design>Graphic Design>Web Design>Adobe Photoshop

The Order of Order

One of the functions of design is to bring order to the world. But how to decide what the categories are that constitute order?

Crisp, Denise Gonzales. AIGA (2005). Design>Graphic Design

A Path to Success: Interview with Patrick Jordan

In addition to providing clients with top quality design work, it is also important to help them think strategically. It adds a great deal of value for your clients when you help them to understand more about their users and their markets and about what the implications of this are for their designs.

Lisney, Eleanor. uiGarden (2005). Careers>Consulting>Graphic Design

Patterns

U ovom jednostavnom tutorialu naučiće∫ kako da pomocu photoshopa napravi∫ jedan ovakav efekat na nekoj fotografiji.

Emir, Isovic. Superemir (2000). (Bosnian-Croatian) Design>Graphic Design>Software>Adobe Photoshop

The Perfect Splash

In the days of working with film products, creating images with splashing water was an incredible challenge. Today, digital capture provides a control we never had before. Just shoot the splashing water over several images and combine the best parts into one—in Photoshop CS, of course.

DiVitale, Jim. Layers Magazine (2005). Design>Graphic Design>Image Editing>Adobe Photoshop

Perspective Illustrations in CorelDraw  

There is space for non-specialist technical communicators to provide attractive and relevant artwork.

Info Action (2000). Design>Graphic Design>Technical Illustration

Perspective Models in Technical Illustration

Various perspective models are used in technical illustration. Each of these models offers specific advantages. In the following section, you will learn background information on these models and learn their proper application.

ITEDO Software (2002). Design>Graphic Design>Technical Illustration

Photo Reflection Effect

With Apple's release of iWeb -- an amazing web site building tool -- I've been getting a steady stream of emails wanting to know how to recreate the nifty photo reflection effect which appears at the top of iWeb pages and in the slide shows (here's a sample). Adding such a reflection is a super easy way to add depth and a bit of sophistication to your photographs.

Snider, Lesa. Planet Photoshop (2006). Design>Graphic Design>Image Editing>Adobe Photoshop