Design for Web - Studio Workshop

The aim of a website is to:

• Inform
• Persuade
• Contact
• Entertain
• Promote

It should have Usability and Functionality

"In design, usability is the study of the ease with which people can employ a particular tool or other human-made object in order to achieve a particular goal. ..."

Functionality: The quality of being suited to serve a purpose well; practicality

These are the pages that i would include on my website, other pages that were suggested were: FAQ's, Testimonials, Blog and Shop.

These are some design ideas for a potential website, the feedback mainly was that the sheet was confusing because I hadn't specified that these were individual ideas and not some crazy sequence of one website! I'll make that clearer next time. Some feedback thought that having a transparent brand over work would work well as it would intrigue the viewer into wanting to see the revealed image. The idea of an interactive home page received good feedback but it would need a lot of work to not be annoying and confusing, also this complexity is not feasible with my current web design knowledge of 0%, but has potential for something that I could look into in the future.

InDesign Workshop

Perfect bound: single sheets bound together,
For anything other there needs to be a multiple of 4 pages.

THe standard view of pages in Illustrator are known as 'Printer Spreads'

How to work out printer spreads:

Draw this table and zig zag through page numbers as shown until halfway through total number of pages then turn back around.

All page pairs should add up to one more than the total number of pages.

If you double click A-Master and edit it, it will apply it to every other page in the document, this will be useful for keeping text boxes and image placement consistent throughout document.

use CMD-Shift-Click to unlock text boxes

In the master page you can automatically insert page numbers throughout the document by inserting a marker:

If you want automatic numbering to start a few pages in - like a novel- you can choose which page is the start page in Numbering and section options in the pages drop down

When coming to print the publication go Print Booklet instead of Print

Always check print blank pages before printing, if printing double sided make sure that page position is centred so both sides line up:

click double sided before printing as well in the final print dialog box.

Printing as a Post Script file allows you to print up to any size

InDesign Workshop

8x Problems

1. Missing link to image

Solution: relink to original file

2.  Image is big and has been scaled down in InDesign

Solution: resize image in Photoshop and resave and relink

3. This image has been saved in RGB and cannot be printed this colour

Solution: reopen in photoshop and save as CMYK, adjust saturation to make it printable

4.One of the colour swatches is RGB

Solution: Double click swatch and change colour mode to CMYK

5.First page colour doesn't extend all the way to the bleed line

Solution: Scale the yellow box to the edge of the bleed marker

6. Too much ink is going to be applied on text

Solution: Use black ink instead of registration

7. Too many colours in swatch palette that aren't being used

Solution: Delete all swatches that aren't being used

8.  Image is only 72 DPI

Solution: Need to contact client to get a higher resolution of the image.

Package:

File>Package

THis gives you information of errors with the document and what needs to be changed before printing

InDesign Workshop

Before printing a finished document alk to the printer about:

• Paper stock
• Spot colour reference systems
• Bleed

Bleed is for making sure colour runs right to the edge of the page, slug is for crop marks, colour test etc.

Document Setup:

Red is bleed area, blue is slug area

All colour needs to be contained in a frame, use swatches as you would in illustrator. Before bringing into inDesign convert all files to CMYK with 300dpi resolution and images need to be the actual size that they are going to be printed- save files as PSD or Tiff. If bringing in from illustrator save as Ai or you can just copy and paste from Ai to Id.

When you place a Psd file all swatches associated with that file are brought aswell:

Illustrator files appear as low quality in Indesign but they will print as they are in Ai. If you copy and paste straight from Ai images appear exactly how they will print.

If you select the image with the grabber hand you can change the colour of the black for any colour if the image is a greyscale tiff file.

make sure Layers is ticked- this preserves transparency

Splitting an image into CMYK

Go print > Output to select which colour layers you want to print.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trap_(printing)

Photoshop Workshop 10/10/12

Colour Modes

RGB appears a lot brighter and more vibrant than what the actual printed piece will look like, the first part of this tutorial looks at ways of  seeing on screen a more accurate representation of what the printout will look like.

Using the Gamut warning you can make adjustments so that what is on screen is what will be printed by altering saturation etc...

Using Proof Colours (Cmd+Y) changes the document to CMYK so you can tell how the printed version will look

To start off with an empty swatch palette, to save having to delete each one one by one, you can go to the menu and 'replace swatches' and find a previously saved palette with only one black swatch

Lab Colour Mode

That little box indicates that this is a web safe colour, meaning that it will be accurately reproducible on the web

• Always convert image to CMYK in photoshop before taking into inDesign

Image>Mode>Duotone

As well as choosing what colour inks you want to use you can use the curves button to alter how much colour is applied to the different parts of the original greyscale, the x axis represents the tone of the original greyscale and the y axis represents the amount of colour that will be added to that area.

example:

Lots of colour in the dark parts of the original

Lots of colour in the light part of the original greyscale

Channels

The channels panel allows you to switch off one of the colours that are in the selected colour mode.

You can use selection tools to apply spot colours to specific parts of the picture

Software Workshop-Design For Print (9/10/12)

Colour

CMYK also known as '4-colour' & 'process colours', they work subtractively.

Creating a new swatch:

Mise en place: (pronounced , literally "putting in place") is a French phrase defined by the Culinary Institute of America as "everything in place", as in set up. It is used in professional kitchens to refer to organizing and arranging the ingredients 

Use 'add used colours to add all colours in the workspace to the swatch panel:

To create tints of one of your swatches go to menu>swatch options and tick the Global box, then when you return to the colour slider you will be able to create tints of that colour.

Using the Global link creates a link between the swatch and the artwork so if you edit the swatch it automatically effects every the swatch colour has been used on the workspace, it also changes any tints you may have taken from the swatch. This will be helpful in creating work that is consistent.

Another Colour mode that is used in commercial print is 'Spot Colours'

A Spot Colour is a ready mixed ink that makes up that colour, it is not made of a mixture of CMYK.

The advantage of spot colours is that it is cheaper as you are only using one ink rather than a combination of four. Spot Colours also ensure consistency. Big brands use spot colours so that the colours they use are exactly the same wherever they have been printed, if CMYK was used it would only take +/- 1% of any colour to make the whole print batch inconsistent with the desired colour.

Pantone is a spot colour reference system.

Opening Pantone swatch Libraries:

You can create tints of the Pantone that is still only using one ink, therefore much cheaper:

To save the swatches to transfer to new documents go to menu>save swatch library as AI (adobe illustrator)

You can then open this library the same way as you open the pantone book library, just go to 'user defined'.

'Save swatch library as ASE' stands for Adobe Swatch Exchange which allows you to import the swatches into all Adobe Programmes

In InDesign just go to Load swatches and find where you saved them and they will open up in Indesign.