So I wanted to have at least one entry in this blog explaining why I felt it was time to have a graphic and web design blog for my web site. For starters I continuously meet with people that ask me how I started out in the field of graphic and web design. I often find myself repeating stories and experiences with various projects. I thought this would be a great place for people to read about my work. A very common question I get is… “so are you the print or web guy”. Well I’m proud to say after eight years , I’m a senior graphic designer, that means I handle both web and print mediums. I try to make things as interesting as possible when it comes to both types of work. When it comes to web work, I try to inject a design aspect that gives the viewer a visually pleasant experience. And yes that sometimes means I’ll throw in some animation, nothing too crazy but I want it to be fun for everyone coming to the web site. As far as my print work goes. I was very fortunate to work with a company that spent tons of money on advertising. Being part of the marketing department as a senior designer gave me the chance to work with some largely distributed magazines including titles under Conde’ Naste Publications. I find getting that lucky break is about being in the right place at the right time as cliche as that sounds it’s very true. I happened to be going on job interviews back then and a few weeks later had been offered a senior designer position with a jewelry company. Before then I had been working in production and graphic design roles in Manhattan. The bottom line for myself is that I enjoy this line of work. When I wake up in the morning I look forward to the projects and challenges I’ll be facing. This is a field that is evolving everyday along with the technology out there, and I’m pleased to be a part of it. Hope that explains a little bit behind my work and why I wanted to create this blog. You can visit my web site at www.designsbyjonathan.com to view more of my projects.
Well as I mentioned a few months ago I would deliver an air application. Now this is only a basic example of how to use the air export option in Flash CS4. All that being said I hope you guys enjoy the video. Don’t forget you can find AdobEasyTips on Twitter!
Since I haven’t put up a post in a while I figured I would put some info on the Tmobile G1. I just purchased it a little over a week ago and it’s amazing. Now I know theirs some issues with battery life and all that kind of stuff but I’m happy with the buy. Also next month video recording and touch keyboard is coming to the phone through Android. We aren’t that far from seeing Flash on the operating system also. Adobe did a demo at their last convention displaying Flash content on the phone. Apparently Apple still wants to be stubborn or hasn’t invited Adobe over for dinner. Regardless I’m glad that Google is working with Adobe on various projects. Papervision 3d is another Google/Adobe project. Adobe and Google joining forces, theirs no limit! If you want to hear updates about the G1 check out my twitter page, I’m following the latest news.
Well this is my tutorial explaining how to publish video to your web site. Using progressive programming via Flash your output will be html and swf. As I explain in the guide you will have to upload an flv file to your web site, I used Dreamweaver CS4 to do this. So check out this helpful video!
Along with the launching of my YouTube channel AdobEasy Tips I’ve decided to set up a blog as well. I will still come on here to post updates about projects and other topics regarding software. The AdobEasy Tips blog will be dedicated to the Adobe Creaitve Suite guides and tutorials I’m creating. Once again the tutorials will be for the most recent version of the Creative Suite, right now I’m using CS4. If you have any questions regarding previous versions of the software feel free to post your questions or email at info@designsbyjonathan.com, I’ll try to get back to them as soon as I can!
Here I explain how to create a flash picture gallery in Adobe Bridge CS4 utilizing flash,html,xml,and javascript. I also uploaded the picture gallery live online via Dreameaver.
I wanted to announce I just launched my new YouTube channel called AdobEasyTips. The channel will be dedicated to giving advice, tutorials, and guides on the Adobe Creative Suite; along with some great information on graphic and web design topics. Come check it out, would love to hear everyone’s thoughts!
Well It’s just about that time for another shopping bag post. From the visitor stats it looks like people are highly interested in what it takes to design a shopping bag. Their can be many challenges involved when it comes right down to it. That being said, once you know the in’s and out’s involved you’ll be on your way to success. For starters finding yourself a printer at a reasonable price is a good way to begin. When I say printer I’m not talking about the one in your home. A print job like this will have to be done with the pro’s and if your looking to really print a lot of bags you want to deal with a company that does the printing in China. Printing in China for large print jobs is by far the most cost effective . I know from my experience you can either do the legwork yourself and find the printer or rely on a broker. Both are good options, but it all depends on your budget and time. If your in a rush you might want to find a print broker. Now as far as the layout and design goes. Once you have the printer you want to use, discuss the formats that are acceptable. Just like a regular printer they have different file formats that are acceptable to them. The reason why one printer may accept pdf’s or another will only take an eps file is because of the printer and computer they are using. If they don’t have the software to see the file before they go send it off to a rip they most likely will throw it back in your hands to convert to what they use. Measuring is key. It wouldn’t be the worst idea to at least take a shopping bag that is close to the size you would like and come up with some ideas. Measure the bag and once in the design software start building your mechanical. I know it sounds like I’m a salesman for Adobe but really Adobe Illustrator is the way to go for building mechanicals. Above is a small version of a shopping bag I designed. If you have any question’s regarding shopping bag design feel free to contact me at info@designsbyjonathan.com.
I haven’t really found that much use out of Adobe Bridge until recently when I was going through some of it’s capabilities. When you open Adobe Bridge you will see right away that you can easily access all of your resources both for print and web. For someone like myself that works with both this is really handy. Now for something really cool for us flash users. Remember the days of creating a picture gallery. Bridge delivers a pretty sleek and interesting picture gallery via flash,html, and xml. Let me explain. Once your in Bridge you can group files together into an export. I chose to export 5 images into one picture gallery. Within bridge you can upload these new files to your web site or you can do it outside of the program. I chose to do it manually for a few reasons. For starters you can edit the xml files further which I wanted to do to change the text, also I wanted to check out locally what was created. When everything is said and done this is what you end up with. Xml files, images folder,html document, and swf. The html doc. holds the swf just like you would export in flash for this. Now I was just doing quick run through and it took a few minutes. Now for further modifying and all that good stuff it’ll take longer but that gives you a basic idea of the simplicity. If you do create one of these and want to upload it to your web site don’t forget to change the default name of the html document. Bridge calls it index and for obvious reasons( this conflicts with many default home pages called “index”) you do not want to have another file called index, default or any other common home names like that . You can see my graphic design work at www.designsbyjonathan.com.
With the new release of CS4 by Adobe avid users of the software noticed a new piece of software called Adobe Air. I recently watched an hour video online(you can find this on youtube) which outlines the capabilities and purposes for Air. In a nutshell you the web developer are going to quickly become a software programmer utilizing your web experience. Now you may be thinking “why do I need another channel for web development “. Air does not want to overtake websites and as the two developers from Adobe explained, they want Air to be an extension to existing web sites out there. Imagine developing a widget that can open pdfs, flv’s, and any other format you want all in one app. These days are coming and Air is going to assist in that. For so many years you had to download all sorts of different apps for different file formats that were not common to everyone. I mean lets be real about it, if your a developer or designer that really loves Adobe products do you think your neighbor has a need to open an Indesign document, the answer is probably not. That being said, the capabilities with Air go far beyond just viewing documents. Aol released an air app that allows you to view different videos from various artists along with rating and creating play lists all being packaged as a desktop application. I myself am going to start development in the upcoming weeks on my first Air app and will launch it here. From what I heard your flash and html skills can do wonders in Air and will deliver a nice finished application. Air is a pleasant surprise from Adobe , one that I wasn’t expecting at all but am pretty interested in. Visit www.adobe.com to read more info and see examples of Air in action.
As everyone knows by now Adobe rolled out CS4. With Photoshop Adobe really made it convenient for laying out multiple images. This reminded me of the Mac option to split the windows which I’ve always been impressed with. On top of this, the software is paired with better video processing (if your computer can handle it). Basically meaning opening and transitioning through different projects will be a lot smoother than in the past. They added a tool called content aware scaling which in it’s simplest form can allow you to crop in an image’s main focal point while still including the key elements of the image. An example of this would be taking a landscape image to portrait. If you look around online you’ll see a lot of people testing this new feature out. I’ve played around with it, can’t say I’ll be using it that often unless I run into a project where I find it necessary. Moving along, I found the new feature for the clone stamp tool to be interesting. The new feature allows you to actually see what your cloning while your moving around to a new area of the image. The good with this obviously is that you will see the cloned area, the bad is that it interferes with your view of the area your retouching which I found annoying. Adobe made this feature optional so you can turn it on or off. At this point I honestly think the pro’s far outweigh the cons with Photoshop Cs4. There’s so much more you can do with the software, integration with all the programs, animation, more precise color information, the list just continues to grow. I’m a firm believer the software is as great as it is because Adobe accepts the criticisms of what it puts out and comes back with an even better product for it’s next release. I can’t wait to see what the future holds for this software, so far it’s been amazing. Feel free to visit my site online to see some of what I created with the Adobe Creative Suite at www.designsbyjonathan.com.
