DesignWell

On Saturday, February 9 at 11:30 am, I spoke at BarcampIndy 2008 on Graphic Web Design and Cascading Style Sheets. All presentations were broadcast on UStreamTV.

The premise of my presentation was to show an overview of the process between layout in Illustrator and PhotoShop to coding in HTML and CSS. I find that web design is often segmented between the coders and graphic designers. I propose that the best outcome can come from bridging that gap. I do this in my daily workplace and try to show tips and techniques for others to bridge that gap. The time slot was only a half hour, so I could not go into coding detail, but only point to tutorials via links. (more…)

Adobe Illustrator CS3 crashed every time I tried to print to a CD on my Epson Stylus Photo R220. I decided to re-install Adobe Illustrator CS3. I did an uninstall with the uninstaller found in /Applications/Utilites/Adobe Installers. I then tried to re-install Adobe Illustrator CS3 with the installation DVD. Twenty minutes into the installation, it said
“Please insert Adobe ExtendScript Toolkit 2 to continue installation” I googled the error and found this Adobe support page, Message “Please insert Adobe ExtendScript Toolkit 2 to continue installation” when you install, reinstall or repair a CS3 Suite or CS3 application (Mac OS) I could not find a “Add or Remove Adobe ExtendScript Toolkit 2 alias” in /Applications/Utilites/Adobe Installers, so I decided to re-install the whole suite!

One of my co-workers warned that I needed to completely remove CS3 preferences, plists, and all those other files that OS-X applications install but never remove!!! I finally found this Adobe Support page, Remove CS3 prerelease software (Creative Suite and individual applications). I figured that it would remove release software, too. I believe that it does, but be sure you know what you doing when you use it. This script runs from the terminal, so it mainly a UNIX shell script that deletes folders and files.

I am now back to Illustrator 13.0.0 instead of 13.0.2, but only after more than six hours of uninstalling and re-installing Adobe Creative Suite !

So you have a business card built in Illustrator and you want to center the text on the card. If you select the 3.5″ x 2″ box and the text box and click “Vertical Align Center” on the Align palette, Illustrator will move each object halfway towards the other object!

If you want only to move the text and not the 3.5″ x 2″ box, you will need to make the 3.5″ x 2″ box the “key object.” To do this, select both objects, then click the 3.5″ x 2″ box (not a Shift+click though). This will align all the other objects to the “key object” you just clicked.

–Stephen M. James
www.smjdesign.com

If you open up an Illustrator 10 file in Illustrator CS2, some gradients might be gray (de-saturated), but the colors on the ends of the gradient look fine.

Illustrator CS2 will not let you gradient a Pantone (Spot Color). This makes since in the printing world, but if you are using Illustrator to layout a webpage, it is annoying. The answer is to change the Pantone swatch that is used in the gradient to a process color within the Swatch palette.

–Stephen M. James
www.smjdesign.com

My Creative Director sent me this post from UnderConsideration. It’s about animationed logos. Now with so many sites incorporating flash and video, it’s something that can’t be ignored.

And?¢‚Ǩ¬¶ Logo Action!

As the author opens, he says he had no cable for a year. I can relate. Whenever I am around a television at a friend’s house I have to watch the commercials. I analyze the editing the video and the effects, especially any graphical compositing.

–Stephen M. James
www.smjdesign.com