Tuesday, February 20, 2007

Design job opportunities

The Society for News Design, SND, is an international organization made of editors, designers, graphic artists, publishers, illustrators, photographers, and even advertising artists and Web site designers.

SND holds annual news design workshops, exhibitions, and they also hold competitions.

The SND Web site is a great place to find news design job postings (internships are also searchable), and design training tools.

Start your search with the SND now!

Monday, February 19, 2007

Audio production

Much like other newspapers, The Daily Evergreen at WSU has its own design strategies.

This audio production features opinions and strategies on newspaper design from staff members of The Daily Evergreen.

Check this link out and learn how The Daily Evergreen looks at bias in design, headline strategies, Web design and industry standards.

Tuesday, February 13, 2007

Fun with Photoshop

Many Photoshop users alter photographs to be made into abstract images, or even jokes. This site holds Photoshop contests, and users can enter and vote on the winning entries.

Click on the "contests" tab in the upper right-hand corner, then scroll down to find contests that have already ended to get some great creative ideas for ways to play with Photoshop.

Basic Photoshop Skills

Whether you have access to Adobe Photoshop regularly or not, having skills in this photo editing program is a great knowledge base to apply with your design skills.

Many times a good design can turn into a great design with just a simple illustration or graphic element, both of which can be created using Adobe Photoshop.

There are many Web sites that offer Photoshop tutorials, such as www.good-tutorials.com. Here you can search for photoshop tutorials, and, if necessary, be redirected to different sites that offer what you need. I have found some tutorials that are quite useful to make graphics and editing photos in the past. If you have no prior experience with Photoshop, read through these tutorials in order from first to last, as these skills build upon each other.

Setting up your workspace.
Beginners should start with this tutorial. This site literally explains ALL of the basics of how to set up, and customize your Photoshop, from the time you start the program. It goes through what each tool does, and the uses for different types of windows.

Layers.
Learning how to use the layers pallet is vital to navigating through Photoshop. This tutorial explains the basics, and also some information about selections tools.

Levels.
Using levels can improve the quality of a photo, or help you reach a desired color effect. This tutorial explains the basic terminology of the different options in levels such as exposures, tones and histogram.

Document sizing.
This site is actually a video demonstration of some resizing and document size tips.

Thursday, February 8, 2007

Stencils: Trendy Design

Visual marketing design can be more trendy than New York Fashion Week.

The same way clothes go in and out of style, so do design trends.

Recently, advertisers and businesses have steered towards using more of a modern, sleek design, as seen in ads for Apple Inc.'s iPod.

These print and television ads depict the outline of a person shaded in all black, with a white iPod in their hand. Many ads have followed this trend by featuring solid color logos with slick lines.

Because of the iPod's success in their advertising and marketing endeavors, design in the media has changed, making Apple Inc. a design trend setter.

This new sleek design is similar to the art of stenciling.

There are many artists who work with stencils only. Artists combine Photoshop skills with photos or original drawings, and create multiple-layer stencils to create art that is easy to duplicate.

Many Web sites show how to stencil, though www.stencilrevolution.com is by far the best. They offer tutorials to learn how to use Photoshop to create stencils, a gallery filled of users recent works, and even advanced tips.

Check out some of these great links, and see for yourself the art that inspired the newest trends in main-stream design.

Wednesday, February 7, 2007

Microsoft redesigns the iPod

I heard through the grapevine about a video on YouTube.com that shows how Microsoft would redesign the iPod packaging to fit their own marketed design style.

The video was later confirmed by Microsoft spokesman Tom Pilla that it is indeed legitimate.

Microsoft's packaging team created the video to "humorously highlight the challenges we have faced packaging and to educate marketers here about the pitfalls of packaging/branding," Pilla said in an e-mail interview with boingboing.com.

This video is great at showing the differences between design functions for separate business identities.

Enjoy.

Designing for a small paper

While college students majoring with an emphasis in journalism dream of working at a large metropolitan newspaper straight out of college, most students will land jobs at smaller, more community based papers before making it to the big time.

These smaller newspapers have a different audiences and in many cases they have less resources available that can make design a difficult task to accomplish.

I recently found a great collection of design tips for small newspapers at newspagedesigner.com that the site's creators compiled.