Design Projects


There are so many different types of design projects that we're sure that we've missed a few. The point of this list is to help you understand some of the criteria we consider when we work on different types of projects. Of course most designers were instantly smitten with InDesign when it introduced such typographic nuances as optical margin alignment and support for OpenType extended characters. We'll discuss the typographic features in the Creative Suite applications in the "Breaking New Ground in Text and Typography" section of Chapter 6, "Type Magic."

Ads

Ads are single-page documents, yet most ad agencies use InDesign for ad production rather than Illustrator. There's nothing wrong with that. In fact, there are some special features in InDesign that make the easier application in which to create ads.

The first is InDesign's slug area. The slug area is an area, outside the final trim and bleed, which may or may not print. Ad agencies use the slug area to display information such as the client, product, production manager, art director, ad size, and magazine insertion information.

Another feature is the Layout Adjustment option, found under the Layout menu. This little-known tool makes it easy to change the dimensions of the document or margins and have the text and graphics automatically adjust to fit the new size. This is extremely useful when you discover that the account executive wants to change the ad to run in a different magazine that has a slightly larger or smaller trim size.

Finally, although it may seem that InDesign and Illustrator have identical typographic features, there are actually quite a few differences. InDesign has better text-wrap controls, tables, bullets, drop caps, and paragraph rules; and more controls over pasting text and how paragraph are broken across columns and pages. See Chapter 6, "Type Magic," for a complete discussion of the typographic features in each program.

CD/DVD Labels and Covers

Illustrator has the most tools for precision layout if you want to create a CD or DVD label layout on your own. And you'll need that precision; disc labels and covers require exceptional accuracy; your artwork can't be even slightly off measurements. Before you start work on CDs or DVDs, check with the print shop and production house and see if they have any templates you can use. If they don't supply you with a template, look for the ones in the Cool Extras folder in the Illustrator application folder.

InDesign also has some template files that you may be able to use, including templates for labels, tray cards, book sleeves, and booklets. We describe how to use templates with Bridge in "Working with InDesign Files" in Chapter 3, "View from the Bridge."

Brochures

As soon as you move into multipage documents, our choice is InDesign. Since brochures are rather simple, you may be tempted not to use master pages or styles. Don't give in to temptation! Even a lowly two- or three-page brochure can benefit from the structure of master pages and styles. This is especially true if you have to revise the brochure later on.

Movie Posters

Movie posters are very visual documents. And since the illustration is critical, you'll want to use Photoshop, and as many of its bells and whistles as possible. The small amount of text in the poster can easily be handled by the type features in Photoshop. We discuss how to use type in Photoshop in "Photoshop: Keeping Type As Vectors" in Chapter 6, "Type Magic."

Greeting Cards

How many pages are in a greeting card? Some people count two the front and back. Others count four, splitting the front and back at the fold. So where should you assemble the card?

It's a tossup between Illustrator and InDesign, with Illustrator ever so slightly ahead. We put Illustrator ahead because it has so many great drawing tools and special effects. This is especially important if you are creating the artwork for the greeting card as well as the text.

So how would you handle the multiple pages? Should you create two separate Illustrator documents: one for the front and another for the back? Not at all. You can put both sides of the card on the Illustrator artboard and use the Filter > Create > Crop Marks command to indicate where the pages should be trimmed.

But if you are simply placing artwork created by someone else, and you're adding just the text, you might as well go with InDesign. At least that way you can take advantage of the multiple pages.

Outdoor Posters

These are posters such as the ones you see at bus stops, train stations, and inside subway stations. We tend to think of these as simply rather large single-page ads. Therefore, you can use InDesign or Illustrator with equally good results.

The most important thing to remember about this type of artwork is not to worry about the quality of any photos or scanned artwork included in the poster. Most people assume, incorrectly, that they will need an insanely large image for the poster. But these outdoor posters usually have a fairly low-resolution line screen. So rather than the typical resolution of 300 ppi used for most print work, you can get away with an image of only 75 ppi. (For more information on resolution, see "Pixel Essentials" in Chapter 4, "Pixels and Raster File Formats.")

Book Covers

Ordinarily we suggest using either Illustrator or InDesign for book-cover design. However, there is an important consideration you need to be aware of before you start a book-cover project.

The size of a book cover changes depending on the width of the spine (the thickness of the book). If you have been given a book-cover project, you can start work on the overall design, but before you can finish the layout you need to know the spine width. This is not something the untrained designer can calculate alone.

You need to know the number of pages. Unfortunately, this number may not be available when you first work on the cover design. (The cover for this book was designed long before we had any idea what the final page count was going to be.) You may have a rough page count, but you will have to wait until the final layout for the exact page count.

Even if you do know the number of pages, don't try to estimate the spine width by yourself. The paper used for the interior pages can affect the width of the spine. High-bulk paper takes up more space than smooth paper. (High-bulk papers are often used to make books with a low number of pages appear thicker on the bookshelf.) The best way to find out the spine width is to ask the production department of the book publisher.

So how can you set up a cover design if you won't know the final spine width until the last minute? One way we've seen cover designers work is to use Illustrator. The entire cover is laid out flat on the Illustrator art board. The spine is set up as its own element in the middle of the design. When the final spine width is determined, this center element can be shifted to be thinner or thicker as needed.

Matchbooks and Promotional Items

No job is ever too small to require a well-planned design, not even a lowly matchbook. Matchbooks, along with all sorts of other promotional materials such as key chains, pens, magnets, and so on, should be created in Illustrator to take advantage of its precision tools and special effects.

However, you should check with the company that will be doing the printing as to the type of digital files they will accept. We've found that Illustrator files are far more popular than InDesign ones. Does that mean you're in trouble if you have used InDesign? Not at all! Just remember that PDF has become the almost universal (and most dependable) file format and that most companies are happy to accept them. So you can use InDesign to export the file as a PDF.

If you are creating artwork for special promotional items such as logos on cups, caps, t-shirts, and key rings, check with the promotion house for the production requirements. You might send a logo that uses halftones or colors that can't be printed on the promotional item. See the following section "Logos and Corporate Identity" for our suggestions on logo design.

Logos and Corporate Identity

"Illustrator! Illustrator! Illustrator!" (Sandee is jumping up and down.) "Logo design should be done in Illustrator!" While Sandee goes off to calm down, let's look at why she is so passionate about this subject.

Convert Logo Text to Outlines

What if you've created a logo that is primarily a type treatment? Should you keep the text editable? No! Convert the text to outlines. You really don't want print shops unable to print your logo because it uses a font that they don't own. And speaking of fonts in logos, don't forget to convert registered-trademark and trademark symbols into outlines too.


Logo artwork should be created in a vector-drawing program not a raster program such as Photoshop. There are several important reasons for this:

  • PostScript edges. As described in Chapter 5, "Getting to the Point of Vector Graphics," vector artwork has clean, crisp, PostScript edges. There are no fuzzy pixels that will give your logo a slightly blurry appearance. Logos should stand out on the page, not blur into the background.

  • Scalability. Again, as mentioned in Chapter 5, vector artwork can be scaled as much as you want with no change of appearance. This is incredibly important since you will probably have no idea how your logo may be used years and years into the future. Who knows? Perhaps your logo will be blown up so that it covers the entire four-story wall of the company's corporate headquarters. Perhaps it will be scaled down onto microchips. Only vector artwork gives you that flexibility.

  • Ease of Modifications. Usually, it's not easy to change the color or the exact shape of a raster illustration. Not so with vectors! It is much easier to pull a vector path or Bézier handle out just a tad (see Chapter 5) than to reshape the curve of raster artwork.

  • Spot Colors. Companies often want to print their logos using a spot, rather than a process, color. It's very difficult, if not impossible, to convert a Photoshop logo into a spot color. It's much easier using Illustrator.

How about using InDesign to create a logo? It's possible, but awkward. Illustrator gives you many more tools for working with vector artwork. Plus, you have more export and save options, making it easier to have your logo used by others.

Never one to avoid controversy, Sandee is troubled by some of the logo designs created by younger designers. Created in Photoshop, these designs use shadows, bevels, glows, and other raster effects. These effects have problems. Here, then, are Sandee's personal rules for creating corporate logos:

  • Not Color-Dependent. Yes, you can specify that the logo appears most of the time in color, but it should also be able to appear in black or white (for example, it might get printed in a newspaper or magazine). The Adobe logo is almost always printed in red, but there are times when it appears in a different color. For instance, it's printed in black on the first page of the product user guides.

  • No Halftones. Halftones are shades of gray. You create halftones as soon as you apply any of Photoshop's layer effects. You can certainly use these effects to great advantage in a logo the Volkswagen blue logo is an excellent example of one that uses a shadow but you still need to have (as does VW) a version without any halftone effect. How else would they be able to embroider it on a polo shirt or baseball cap?

  • Scalable to Multiple Sizes. A logo shouldn't be so complex that it can't be displayed at very small sizes. However, here's a nuance that many young designers don't realize. Your logo may need to be adjusted for use at different sizes. Corporate logos are often reworked when they appear at extremely small sizes. For instance, the NBC peacock logo is slightly different when it appears at really small sizes compared to when it is on a bus or outdoor ad. If you were to simply take the large logo and scale it down, the separations between the peacock feathers would fill up.

Of course you can enhance a logo in any other program. As long as the lawyers let you, you can shade it, put images in it, make it glow, or otherwise change the appearance of the logo. But the original logo design should be vector paths created in Illustrator!

Calendars

Every fall, for some strange reason, many people ask how to use InDesign to create calendars. There are two questions we see over and over.

The first question is how to rotate the pages of an InDesign document so that the spine is horizontal, not vertical. That's the orientation for most wall calendars. The answer is, InDesign doesn't have a setting to do this.

However, most calendars don't need to be laid out with a horizontal spine. Just set up your document so that each page of the calendar is a non-facing page (non-facing pages are those that aren't joined together at the spine) and then lay out each page as desired. Your print shop can impose the pages correctly for the calendar. The only time you might need to work with the calendar pages on the spine would be if the artwork from the top of the calendar bleeds across to the bottom. In that case you can rotate the pages 90 degrees.

The second question is how to have numbers automatically flow from one day to the next and then update the next year when the first of the month is on a different day. Again, there is no automatic feature that does this. However, you don't really have to reinvent the wheel just to do a calendar. Adobe Studio Exchange has loads of terrific calendar templates that are uploaded as freebies by other InDesign users. (For more on Adobe Studio Exchange, see the Appendix, "Creative Suite Resources.")

Packaging

One of the very first exercises Sandee learned in Illustrator was how to take flat package designs and transform them into isometric packaging. It was a lot of work and couldn't be easily automated. Today it is much easier, using the 3D features in Illustrator, to map artwork onto all sorts of three-dimensional shapes, including boxes, bottles, and cans. For instance, Figure 2-5 shows how a simple rectangle was extruded into a cube, and then artwork was mapped onto each side of the cube, creating a child's block.

Figure 2-5. An example of the 3D Extrude & Bevel controls together with art mapped onto the cube.


We know of some package designers who work in InDesign. But because InDesign doesn't have the ability to map the flat artwork into dimensional comps, we much prefer Illustrator.

Once you get into packaging, you will also need to deal with the various types of bar codes that are used to hold the pricing and other information about the item. You can buy bar codes from various web sites, or you can use software, such as the products from Azalea (www.azalea.com), to generate bar codes in-house. These bar codes can be saved as PDF or EPS files that can be dropped into the packaging layout.

Tip: Don't Scale the Bar code

Get the right size for the bar code area and then generate it at that exact size. Scaling the bar code up or down could make the code unreadable by the bar-code scanner.


Fashion Designs

The key to choosing the program for fashion designs is to think patterns. Both Illustrator and Photoshop give you the ability to define artwork as a repeating pattern and then fill areas with that pattern. However, Illustrator has the edge when it comes to how easy it is to define and apply patterns to artwork. This is especially true when it comes to making seamless patterns that repeat without any obvious place where the pattern repeats.

If you must work with patterns in Photoshop, that's fine. But you're most likely going to want to create the original pattern in Illustrator and then bring it over to Photoshop later on.



Real World(c) Adobe Creative Suite 2
Real World Adobe Creative Suite 2
ISBN: 0321334124
EAN: 2147483647
Year: N/A
Pages: 192

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