James Dempsey’s illustration & design software tips and tricks blog The Creative Guy has been retired, and rising from the digital ashes is The Graphic Mac. Looks like all the previous GC content has been migrated the TGM. James mentions that the big reason for the big change was to switch from WordPress to Drupal so he could implement more community features like message boards and the like.
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by George Coghill -
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I stumbled across Design Float recently, can’t recall where. The title says it all: it’s a Digg.com type site for designers. For those of you not familiar with Digg (or Reddit), it’s a social news site, where content is submitted and then voted up or down by users. The idea is that only good content makes it to the top.
The site seems pretty new — you don’t see votes in the hundreds (or thousands) yet, as you do on Digg. I’ve already found a few cool resources on there, it’s definitely worth checking out.
by George Coghill -
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Pantone just released a brand new color matching system, touted as a “complement” to the PMS system they’ve used for 45 years. Once Adobe gives it the OK, PMS colors will be out the window. This has been in the works for about 4 years, so it predates the X-Rite buyout.
Supposedly the new numbering system is much more logical and expandable. It even comes with it’s own software now — even those who just opt for the standard fan books. Adobe hasn’t yet embraced the new system, but I can’t see why that won’t happen eventually.
Continue reading 'Pantone Announces New “Goe” Color Matching System'
by George Coghill -
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Illustrator extraordinaire Von Glitschka has a very cool podcast out that I just started listening to, The Illustrative Designer podcast. Each podcast is basically an interview by “the Vonster” (as he calls himself) with a chosen professional illustrator, cartoonist or designer. The most recent illustrator interview was with (the unimaginably prolific) cartoon illustrator & designer Bob Staake.
The “illustrative designer” moniker comes from Von’s idea that when asked to describe his work, he says he’s not a graphic designer that can draw, but rather an illustrator who can design. Hence, “illustrative designer”.
Continue reading 'Podcast review: The Illustrative Designer'
by George Coghill -
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It’s going to happen you you eventually — a client who doesn’t pay their bill. And unless the project was for a significant amount of money, the unfortunate truth is that many times it isn’t worth the cost of suing. The legal fees can very quickly outweigh the money you’ll get, and that’s the positive side!
Because of this, I make it a standard practice to ask for a 50% deposit for all work before starting a project. But this only covers you so far. I also do not transfer any high-resolution or vector art until the final balance is paid, but sometimes this doesn’t cover your butt — for example, the client may only want to use the art on their website, or may have no clue about proper printing resolutions and will go ahead an use the low-resolution JPEG preview images you’ve been sending them.
Continue reading 'Avoid Non-Paying Clients With Watermarks'
by George Coghill -
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Color matching wizards Pantone have been bought out by color management gizmo maker X-Rite (yeah, I never heard of them either). Seems they have been collaborating for some time now, with the Pantone Huey being one of their joint efforts. The Huey is a pretty cool, essential and affordable tool, so perhaps this is a good sign of things to come (see my review of the Pantone Huey monitor calibration tool).
Pantone swatch books are essential tools for any artist/designer working with color, but it’s good to see that the hardware side will no doubt be more aggressively pursued by this merger, since the new owners are hardware based. Such a huge part of the work of many artists and designers create these days is done on the computer monitor, and proper calibration for predictable print output is essential.
via Daring Fireball
by George Coghill -
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Creative Binge is a new online portfolio & social networking site for artists, illustrators, designers and all you other creative types. The talk of social networking for the community site sounds like a great idea.
The website has a clean and classy design and interface, and a very easy to use upload feature for adding your artwork to the free portfolio with your account.
Continue reading 'Creative Binge - New Free Portfolio & Social Networking Website for Creatives'
by George Coghill -
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Genopal is a color scheme generator software application I just stumbled across, and it’s pretty interesting.
Instead of the standard color wheels most color scheme generator/explorer software programs utilize, Genopal doesn’t give you the option of choosing a color model such as Complimentary, Triadic and such. Instead there are two sliders, one for Color Diversity and one for Lightness Diversity. There’s a “Generate” button which them cycles though color schemes as analagous or as wild as you set the sliders.
Continue reading 'Genopal Color Scheme Generator Software: Weird Name, Cool Tool'
by George Coghill -
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Primary, secondary, tertiary, complimentary, analagous, brightness, hue, value, saturation, tints, shades… do these words mean anything to you? They should.
A post by cartoonist Matt Glover points out ColorFAQ - very basic web guide to color theory. It got me poking around on the internet for some other sites with some more depth on the subject. Sometimes I forget how much I use color theory every single day, it’s just something that sometimes goes on autopilot and is an easy topic to forget to recommend to others.
Continue reading 'Color Theory Resources'
by George Coghill -
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I don’t know how legal all of this is, but since we’re talking cartooning here and we’d only be using these under the fair-use parody provisions in copyright law…
Brands of the World has free vector art downloads of just about every single product, brand or company logo you can think of. I checked out the logo of the Miller High Life Girl in the Moon, and the vector art is pretty good. It looks like there may have been some Illustrator Auto-Trace going on, but the quality is decent.
Continue reading 'Free Vector Logo & Brand Art - Brands Of The World'
by George Coghill -
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