Wanna a Whole Lotta Label… I remember making my first nutritional facts label. I didn’t know where to start so I started in the kitchen. I picked out a similar food to see how someone else did it. I figured if a major food company was doing it like that, then I could too. It [...]
July 4, 2010
Get Your Design On! The secret to a successful long-term career as a freelance graphic or web designer has little to do with design itself – it’s how you handle your business. I’m not saying that your design skills don’t matter, they do, but if you don’t get your business end together, it won’t matter [...]
June 22, 2010
The Shocking But True Story of My Near Death Experience at the Hands of Google. Do No Evil? Yeah Right! I love Google maps. It’s one of the most useful and clever pieces of technology ever invented. It’s also, for the most part, very reliable in its choice of routes to your chosen destination. This [...]
June 15, 2010
Four Legitimate Reasons Why Your Designer May Not Want to Release a Layered Photoshop or Illustrator File…Plus One Illegitimate One. I hear this a lot. Designers don’t want to give the layered masters to their clients. Clients rightfully feel a little miffed about not getting something that they assumed they had paid for. There are [...]
May 9, 2010
Good-bye AI…Hello PDF For most of my career, when I started a new Illustrator project and went to save the file, I choose AI for the file type and only used EPS if there was a special request. However, now that Illustrator can save layered PDFs as editable Illustrator files I’ve made the switch to [...]
May 6, 2010
Packaging to Die(line) For… To a newbie, product packaging design requirements can seem rather mysterious if not overwhelming. Besides the package design itself, there are multiple issues involving FDA and USDA requirements as well as product and category specific government rules and regulations. For food items and consumables, nutritional panels and ingredient lists follow strict [...]
April 16, 2010
What is Good Design? Good Design is Design that Makes Your Client Money If you ask a designer what makes a good design they’ll rattle off a list of impressive sounding terms: good contrast, effective use of type, good use of white space, logical hierarchy and so on. Ask a client and they’ll tell you [...]
April 11, 2010
How I’ve Tricked Out My Work Station to Make Sure I Never Go on Disability Again I know what it’s like to wear a wrist brace for three years, to be in so much pain that I had to ice my hand after brushing my teeth, and to have my partner pay all the bills [...]
April 2, 2010
Nigerian 419 Scam Turns into Comical Lesson on How to Prepare a File for Print Sometimes opportunities just fall into your lap. In this case, a spammer using a classic Nigerian 419 scam ends up providing the perfect example of how NOT to prepare a design for professional printing. The first email arrives with a [...]
March 28, 2010
Beware of “Too Good to Be True”Link Exchanges with High PR Websites Once your website establishes a decent PR you’ll start to attract some very shady people. Among the worst are the fake Google PR scam artists. Besides being deceitful, they also put a black eye on the entire SEO industry, so I take it [...]
July 8, 2010