Sunday 16 thru Saturday 22, 2011

This blog will have some history of my work in graphics and my intend to enhance my command of Adobe Illustrator. I believe Illustrator has always saved me professionally. I’ve never been even remotely close to being a “guru” but, honestly, Illustrator got me into the working world of corporate America. I’ve “played” with this application since the 80s. Now I don’t remember how or which Adobe Illustrator version/number I’ve actually used for “professional” work. When I was introduced to Illustrator, the MACs the company had, ran on 4 mgs of ram! I think now computers use DRAM, so, maybe, RAM doesn’t even exist anymore? OK, think of RAM as archaic RAM sticks, does that help? Dude, the new MACs will have flash drives, hard drives will be a thing of the past!


This blog’s background shows my attempts to create my business cards with Illustrator for print. I think I must have tried about 7–9 different angles. I’m not going to delve into specific details about the technique. But, the effect was performed with the simple use of the type, pen and blend tool. If you’d like details let me know and I’ll get them to you. I never had any of these business cards printed. Just couldn’t justify the expense—maybe, these really are hard times. Still, when I created a PDF portfolio, the concept served me well.


http://www.flickr.com/photos/55648749@N08/sets/


Much of my “professional” work was for print and very conservative. (If you take a good look at my portfolio, it does take on a rather “industrial” look.) So, I will also reflect a little on my experiences associated with Adobe InDesign, Photoshop and, maybe, Acrobat. Presently, I’m trying to get a genealogical book out but the author keeps adding pictures and editing the text. Patience and prozac really help. We’ve been working on this book for 3 years. We’ll talk?



Sunday, April 10, 2011

Typopgraphic Intentions

Don’t you wish you knew everything there is to know about typography? Typographic “Bibles” I’ve read and tried to memorize are the following:
• Robert Bringhurst — The Elements of Typographic Style
• Lewis Blackwell — 20th-Century Type
• Roger Fawcett-Tang — New Typographic Design
• Rob Carter, Ben Day and Philip Meggs — Typographic Design:
            Form Communication, Second Edition
• Allen Haley — Typographic Milestones
• Edward R. Tufte — The Visual Display of
            Quantitative Information
    These authors are typographic masters because of their in-depth study and research on the subject. From these books I know: { } are braces, [ ] are square brackets, < > are angle brackets, § is a section mark, ® is a register mark that is always superscript when used in text, & is an ampersand, SM is a service mark, etc. Now I must embarrassingly confess, I haven’t read and studied all books by Jan Tschichold — but I will do so, I promise.
    Contemporary Web Design requires typographic measurement based on the pixel. In August, 2009, SMASHING MAGAZINE presented the article Typographic Design Patterns and Best Practices by Michael Martin. This article covers 13 issues related to font usage in Web Design: popularity of serif & san-serif, usage of type size, interline spacing, characters per line length, etc. Also, it contains links to media now applying the digital typographic elements discussed — this is, after all, the Digital Age.
    I have produced work in measurements of picas and points, inches and hundredths of an inch, centimeters and millimeters and, now, in pixels. Michael Martin does emphasize the article is not a “scientific” study and should be referred to only as a rough guideline. In my opinion, this study suggests using too many characters per line length since, in print, if the line length is too long, readers loose the visual leap from one line to the next. No matter, read this article, it’s a “Digital Typographic Bible.”
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