Having recently finished a design for Kieran from guywithaguitar.com (which you can see here, if you’re interested), I’ve just gone through all the trials and tribulations that designing for print entails – and believe me, there’s quite a few of them.

So, let’s say you’ve decided to design something for print. But whats the major pitfalls you need to avoid? Well, for starters:

RGB/CMYK

When you open a document to start designing in, you should always check that it’s in CMYK and not RGB. If you’re using Illustrator, by chosing the ‘open new print document’ option, you’ll automatically be set to CMYK. However, if you’re using Photoshop, make sure you’re new document is specifically set to CMYK like so:

What’s the difference?

RBG stands for ‘Red, Blue, Green’ and is basically a colour gamut which bases it’s production of colours on light levels. To put it simply, in RGB, colours are made by mixing different amounts of these (red, blue and green) to theoretically reproduce any colour of light, where a 100% mixture of all 3 results in white.

CMYK stands for Cyan, Yellow, Magenta, Key (Key being an older term for black) and works similarly to RBG, apart from the fact that it uses those 4 colours as opposed to red, blue and green.

CMYK is the gamut used for printing and by most modern printers. The reason why artists will design in CMYK is because there are some colours that can be produced in the RBG gamut that cannot be accurately reproduced in CMYK. Designing in RGB means that when it comes to print, the colours you originally planned on may come out a lot different than expected, and if you design in CMYK, this can be avoided.

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I’m currently working on the first Inkscape tutorial, but in the mean time, I thought I’d share a few more tips.

Contrary to what a surprising amount of people believe, no-one is born knowing how to draw. No-one is perfect, and we all have to work at it. Exceptionally hard. For those of you who I haven’t convinced just yet, I thought I’d provide a few examples of my first drawings as evidence. And by first, I do actually mean first. I’m clearly not the greatest living artist, but I like to think I’ve improved a little since 1994:

 Click if you actually want to see my ‘art’ from when I was 4 years old.

I have no idea. I’m assuming their dinosaurs. I went through a brief (read: extended) phase of wating to be a Stegosaurus when I was younger. I’m particularly liking how the one on the left seems refreshingly optimistic about his impending extinction. I also have a scan of my first ever portrait (I use the term loosely), and a scan of a card I made my Mom, featuring one three-legged giraffe, and another five-legged one. If anything else, at least I can congratulate myself on the fact that they balance each other out quite nicely.

So! If you’re looking to improve (which, naturally, I think most artists constantly are to some degree, unless they’re egotistical), here’s 5 straight forward ideas that should point you in the right direction.

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 I know I said I’d be posting the first video tutorial sometime this week, but I’ve been really busy with Interabang, and seeing as how I haven’t been able to install the necessary software just yet, I’ll be cracking on with something else that a lot of people have been asking me about in the mean time: logos and logotypes!

There’s a whole bunch of metaphorical pitfalls to stumble into when designing a logo, so here’s some things that you might find useful to know before you start the whole creative process. There’s also a couple of examples of my own work in this one, too!

The Golden Rules

The main difference between logos and logotypes is that logos are image-oriented, and logotypes are more likely, examples of stylised text.

Firstly, logos (and logotypes) are used for branding, whether for a band or a business, it’s key that the logo you produce is original, relevant and easily recognisable. Too much information and your logo will be crowded, and therefore redundant; less is more.

Similarly, colour schemes are significant. It’s generally best to try and stick to a limited palette wherever possible, especially with corperate logos. The last thing you want is for your logo to resemble an unprofessional explosion in a paint factory – it may help with identification, but for all the wrong reasons. Usually, the maximum number of colours in any given logo is 4. For an idea of which colours work best together, you can always consult a colour wheel before you start (opposite colours are complimentary).

Logos are also (obviously) fairly small, which means you have much less space in which to express your ideas effectively. Consider this carefully, because a logo is meant to act as a visual representation of the subject in question, which is striking, without being overcomplicated.

Just because your finished product will be relatively small, do not fall into the trap of working with small dimensions. The larger the dimensions you work with are, the easier it will be to add any necessary details and re-work if your client is not entirely satisfied with your initial efforts.

I recommend using vectors for logo/logotype work for the same reason – vectors take up less computer space than bitmaps. The best programmes for this are ones like Inkscape or Adobe Illustrator. So, now we’ve got the basics covered, let’s move onto some specifics…

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