Design Something Every Day 23/365

I read Ben Gremillion’s great article “Exploring PhotoShop’s Angle Gradient Tool” on webdesignerdepot.com. It inspired this little design, with a little help from a stock Jelly Fish from photoxpress.com.

Adobe PhotoShop (really) Quick Tips

Adobe PhotoShop Really Quick Tip Here’s a handy little keyboard shortcut I learned from Deke McClelland, master of all things digital imaging. This little tip is pretty handy when you want to experiment with layer blending modes on the fly.

As long as you have don’t have the brush, healing, gradient, blurring or dodge/burn tools active you can use a keyboard short cut to cycle forwards and backwards through the layer blend modes. The short cut is (for both Mac & PC):

shift + + (plus key) or shift + – (minus key)

If you had any of the other tools active, the same keyboard shortcut cycles through the active tool’s blending mode, which can be pretty handy too.

Twitter Weekly Updates for 2010-07-25

• Get a healthy dose of nostalgia: Telling Stories: Norman Rockwell from the Collections of Lucas and Spielberg http://goo.gl/0unz #
• A nice collection to get your #retro juices flowing | Photographs of General Motors Cars and Trucks, 1902-1938 http://goo.gl/souQ #
• First a death now a Disney World monorail pilot suffers electric shock, the monorail is the most dangerous ride in Disney http://goo.gl/wX5y # Read more >>

Even More InDesign (really) Quick Tips

Following up on my last quick tip, I thought I’d share how to increase or decrease the size of text within a text box by selecting the box and using a keyboard shortcut to do the heavy lifting.

The recipe to accomplish this little keyboard trickery is simple. First select the box containing the text with the either the selection tool or direct selection tool, it doesn’t matter for this short-cut. Then decrease the size of the text in the box down by 1 point in by hitting:

CMD + OPT + comma (MAC)
CTRL + ALT + comma (PC)

To increase the size of the text by 1 point hit:

CMD + OPT + period (MAC)
CTRL + ALT + period (PC)

If that’s not enough you can also add shift to the mix and speed things up. To decrease the size of the text in 5 points increments, select the box using either selection tool and then hit:

CMD + OPT + shift + comma (MAC)
CTRL + ALT + Shift + comma (PC)

To increase the size of the text in 5 points increments, select the box using either selection tool and then hit:

CMD + OPT + shift + period (MAC)
CTRL + ALT + Shift + period (PC)

Bonus Tip 2:The amount of increase or decrease in font size is determined in the preferences, and what’s great about that is that you can change this to better suit your work flow.

The way it works is what ever value is set in the Size/Leading field is how much the size increases or decreases when you use the keyboard short cut, when you add shift to the mix it increases or decreases it five times what the value is. For example, the default is 1 point, so every time you use the keyboard short cut the text increases or decreases 1 point, when you add shift then it goes up or down 5 points. I personally set mine to .5 points, so when I add shift to the short cut the fonts increases at 2.5 points per click. Similarly, if you would have had 2 points then adding shift would make the increase 10 points and so on. But, I feel having a lower default keyboard increment gives me greater control and nuance over my work and is especially helpful when working with text in flyers and brochures.

To change the default go to Edit>Preferences>Units & Increments or simply use the short cut CMD + K (MAC) or CTRL + K (PC) and select Units & Increments. Please note this will also become your default for leading as well.

Bonus Tip 3: This short cut also works when you have some text highlighted. This short cut will increase what ever text you have selected, leaving the other text at the same size.

Updated Survivor Swatches for the Adobe Creative Suite

It is almost August and I realize that I haven’t updated my Free Survivor Tribal Swatch Palettes since the conclusion of last season! Yikes I’ll probably get voted off the island for that omission.

The past season was fantastic! Full of drama, double crosses, scheming and titanic struggles between the forces of good and evil. That may be laying it on a bit thick, though Russell might just be evil. Obviously the show is contrived, but what narrative isn’t? Survivor, like most works of, dare I say it, art are really vehicles to explore larger themes. Even if shows like this  aren’t intended to be revelatory, we can still find some meaning or food for thought in every product of culture, well maybe not Carrot Top.

After all, the producers of the show have commented that Survivor is meant to strip people from their comfortable and familiar life and force them through stress (hunger, discomfort and paranoia) to reveal their inner nature. So it is not much of a stretch to add greater meaning to Survivor. True, the shows first and foremost role is to be entertainment and it is easy to over analyze these things, but if one watches as much Survivor as I have, you will  (besides becoming slightly brain damaged) discover that the show is a microcosm of human emotions set on a smaller stage. An emotional petri dish where the 7 deadly sins are revealed one at a time in the microscope of television and the angels of our better nature stoop under the blazing tropical sun.

A deadly sin that that permeates the show is wrath, notably in the form of revenge. The structure of the show forces a group of strangers to bond together for security and comfort, all the while realizing that they will eventually have to betray one another at some level to win. Betrayal is a sucking wound that is difficult to close, it is no accident that Dante placed betrayers at the lowest level of his inferno. Betrayal leads to feelings of revenge, the form this usually takes in Survivor is a wince-inducing haranguing at the final Tribal Council, where the betrayed confront their betrayers and a winner is decided. Watching these speeches makes me think of something that Homer said in the Iliad:

It (revenge) is sweeter far than flowing honey.”
- Homer, the Iliad Book 18.

The best example of the sweet flowing schadenfreude in Survivor is most eloquently exemplified by the famous “Rats and Snakes” speech from Sue Hawk. She was betrayed by one time ally Kelly and she lets both of the finalists have it. It is an amazing piece of oratory, maybe not up to Pericles’ standards, but a pretty impressive bit of invective nonetheless. Watch it for your self and see.

More InDesign (really) Quick Tips

When I used to use Quark on a regular basis I loved the keyboard command that allowed you to scale art placed inside a bounding box while keeping the bounding box the same size, it was very handy for production work. It took a while but I finally found the keyboard short cut in InDesign and thought I’d share.

Increase the size of a graphic without changing the size of the bounding box.

Click on the box containing an image that you want to scale with the direct selection tool (the arrow with the white head), then follow these steps.

Scale the image size down in 1% increments by hitting:
CMD + comma (MAC) or CTRL + comma (PC)
Scale the image up in 1% increments by hitting:
CMD + period (MAC) or CTRL + period (PC)

If you want to scale at a larger percentage click on the box containing an image that you want to scale with the direct selection tool (the arrow with the white head), then:

Scale the image size down in 5% increments by hitting:
CMD + OPT + comma (MAC) or CTRL + ALT + comma (PC)
Scale the image size up in 5% increments by hitting:
CMD + OPT + period (MAC) or CTRL + ALT + period (PC)
Note this doesn’t work on text only graphics.

Increase the size of a box or frame but not the content

Similarly, if you want to increase the size of the bounding box or frame (this works with any kind of frame, text or graphic) but NOT the content follow these steps.

Click on the box you want to scale with the selection tool (the arrow with the black head), then:

Scale the box size down in 1% increments by hitting:
CMD + comma (MAC) or CTRL + comma (PC)
Scale the box size up in 1% increments by hitting:
CMD + period (MAC) or CTRL + period (PC)

If you want to scale at a larger percentage, click on the box you want to scale with the selection tool (the arrow with the black head), then:

Scale the box size down in 5% increments by hitting:
CMD + OPT + comma (MAC) or CTRL + ALT + comma (PC)
Scale the box size up in 5% increments by hitting:
CMD + OPT + period (MAC) or CTRL + ALT + period (PC)

Hopefully that was helpful, do you have any good InDesign tips to share?

Design Somethign Every Day 22/365

A silly doodle of mine combined with an even sillier show in Las Vegas! Donny & Marie, again? $255 per ticket… seriously?

Twitter Weekly Updates for 2010-07-18

• Vectips Weekly Vector Inspiration #78 | Vectips http://goo.gl/N4PD #
• 40 Clean, Fresh and Amazing Free WordPress Themes | Graphic Design Bay http://goo.gl/xVPh #
• Fun little tutorial. RT @vectortuts: How to Create a Still Life in the Style of Primitive Art http://enva.to/91zasP # Read more >>

Design Something Every Day 21/365

It has been a while since I’ve posted something from my Design Something Every Day project, so I thought I’d bring it back. This is a fake CD cover using the Random CD Cover Game protocol. For this one the random band title turned out to be “Warren High School”, the random album title was “be is the purpose in life.” I like that it’s very beatnik. The photo is High School Girl from the superb photographer Ru Kazu.

Twitter Weekly Updates for 2010-07-11

• 52 Beautiful Typography Designs for Inspiration – Web Design Blog – DesignM.ag http://goo.gl/OEbH #
• Yummy! 40 Tasty Restaurant Websites to Inspire You | Inspiration http://goo.gl/1uKg #
• If you like retro art and cold-war ephemera check out The Atomic Testing Museum in Las Vegas http://www.atomictestingmuseum.org/ #
• Read more >>