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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If you’ve ever seen an animation or any kind of interactive content on the web (which, if you have internet access, is pretty much a given, let’s be honest), chances are it was made in Flash. Want to get started making your own and just haven’t got a clue where to start? Well, here’s a bunch of things you’ll probably need to know before you even think about beginning…

So, what exactly as Flash? To give it it’s full title, Adobe Flash is the program in which all these things can be made.

The latest version is CS4, which can be used to create, animations, games, and other web applications. Animations can either be produced frame by frame, by using the inbuilt timeline feature, or scripted using Action Script – Flash’s own unique programming language. Users can draw their desired content straight into the program with the brush or pen tool, or import images from file.

Objects can also be animated via ‘tweening’, which is less time consuming than frame by frame.

But as you might expect, there’s a lot of terminology unique to this software that can be bewildering unless you’re in the know. With that in mind, here’s a list of some of the most common ones to help you out…

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Seeing as how this is going to be my first (hopefully) educational/helpful post for Graphics Girl, I thought it only fitting that it be about a type of art I have a bit of a soft spot for: vectors! So, let’s start with the basics.

What exactly is a vector?

Vectors differ to other forms of graphics in a number of ways; whilst Bitmap images are stored as pixels, vectors are stored as lines via co-ordinates of starting and ending points. This means that not only do vector images take up less computer space, but they are also far easier to edit and scale than any other file type, mostly because scaling a vector does not result in pixellation or a reduction in quality. Vectors can be modified and tweaked with ease after their initial creation, whereas Bitmaps cannot. (The most common file extensions for vectors are .EPS and .SVG).

What type of art are vectors usually used for?

Images within vector art consist of numerous lines, points polygons and curves, and as such, are often synonymous with the cartoon-ish style,  which is often seen in comic strips. Depending on the attention to detail and patience of the artist in question, vector images can, alternatively, be incredibly realistic. It is also typically used for logos and signs due to it’s advantages in scaling. Research has shown that the brain sees and stores images similarly to how vector data is stored (ie: a series of points) as opposed to pixels, making vector images easier to remember – perhaps the reason as to why businesses generally favour the use of vectors over bitmaps for most of their graphics. A good example of an artist who uses vectors in both a stylized and semi-realistic manner is John Kelly.

 What kind of software is best for creating vectors?

Well, there’s a few. One of the most obvious being Photoshop (primarily speaking, the pen tool).  Adobe Illustrator is equally as good, and utilised more often than not for the creation of logos and logotypes and this is all very well and good if you can either afford it, or live with the guilt of obtaining them through less than legal means, but for those who can’t, Inkscape is basically the perfect solution. Open source, free to download, and does pretty much the same job, with a couple of handy little extras. Who doesn’t love free stuff?

 Getting started…

At some point over the next week I’ll produce a video tutorial which will cover the basics of how to navigate Inkscape (including layers and gradients), and create a simplistic vector portrait from scratch. Something not unsimilar to this, which was actually one of my first attempts at using Inkscape.