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.

 Resolution

Working in the wrong resolution can be disastrous in terms of your final outcome, as well. What your design will be printed on plays a key role in helping you decide upon the right resolution. Most printers print at 300 dpi (which stands for dots per inch in terms of the translation from pixels to dots on a page). When in doubt, just make sure you work big – you can always scale down later if need be.

Rich black

Maybe your design involces a lot of black? Well in CMYK, you would assume that to produce a true black, it would be K=100, right? Wrong. Using this value will result in a dark grey, but not a rich black, which is what you’d be aiming for in order to get the best results. You’re better off using:

C=90 M=60 Y=30 K=100

This will mean that all colours in the gamut are used to some extent, and mixed to create a more… ‘black’ black. However, be warned, using rich black on smaller text or features will render them indistinguishable, so don’t fall into that trap!

Now you shouldn’t be making any of the basic mistakes during you’re creative process. Hope this helps!

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…

.fla : This is the extension for a source file which can only be opened/read by Flash. This is how an animation/game/etc will be saved until you are finished and ready to publish it.

.swf : This is the extension of the file that is created after you publish your finished work so that it can be embedded on the web and viewed by other applications.

Action Script: Flash’s unique programming language

Frame rate: FPS (or ‘frames per second’) is the rate at which your animation plays. Flash’s standard FPS is set to 12. The faster you’re frame rate is, the more fluid and smooth your animation will appear, however, too fast a frame rate will have the opposite of the desired effect.

Frames: The time line is made of these, and the order in which they are arranged in Flash will be the order in which they will be displayed in your animation.

Keyframe: A keyframe is a frame in which you change something in your animation. Motion tweens automatically fill in the frames between key frames to produce a fluid result.

Layers: These help you organise all the art in your animation and work much the same as layers do in any other graphics program. It’s best to think of them as transparent sheets set on top of each other.

Library: This is where imported files (such as sound files, video clips), movie clips and other symbols are stored within your Flash document.

Stage: This is effectively your canvas, and where you are going to place all your graphical content. Size and background colour canbe changed using the ‘Property inspector’ button.

Symbols: A graphic, movie clip or button that you can create which will automatically be added to your library. This allows you to reuse it throughout your document.

Timeline: Located at the very top, the timeline enables you to control your documents content by use of frames.

Tweening: Tweened animation often runs a lot smoother, and is an easy way to produce changes over a set period of time, whilst reducing the file size, as well because Flash only stores the values for the keyframes for this process. You are able to define size, rotation and position using tweening. There are two types: shape, and motion tweening. Shape tweening obviously deals with morphing the shape of an object over a set time period, and motion tweening, with the movement of objects.

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.