my open door.net » Resources

Let Your Geek Flag Fly

opendoordesign — Wed, 21 Oct 2009 00:07:41 +0000

Sure, I admit it. I am a type geek and I don’t care who knows it. I get turned on by the angle of a nice italic, or the graceful curve of a well-drawn serif.

If you’re a geek too, or even a geek-in-training, you should Fonts.com and its great articles on typography. There are articles on geeky topics like small caps, arabesques, and discretionary ligatures. It’s run by Monotype Imaging, the brand that started with hot metal back in 1887.

Besides technical articles, you can find typefaces from many foundries organized by category or designer. There’s even a series of questions that will help you identify a font by sight.

CS4 Is In the Labs

opendoordesign — Mon, 31 Aug 2009 01:05:06 +0000

Things become obsolete. Adobe CS3, floppy disks, pleated pants, grunge type… so it goes. We’re upgrading our Adobe software at Pellissippi this semester to Creative Suite 4, so students might want to use video tutorials to get up to speed on the new features. I like these video tutorials, since I can watch them for free from any computer with an internet connection. I’ve been using CS4 over the summer, but I still learned a few things about Object Styles from Jeff Witchell’s InDesign tutorial. Layers Magazine focuses on technical skills for designers, and their web site is easy to navigate and find the most useful tutorials for you. (Photo by Sundesign on Stockxchng.)

Color Trends from Pantone

opendoordesign — Sat, 20 Sep 2008 15:00:35 +0000

Eric McNew sent a link to this video with the latest color trends from Pantone. As we discussed in Design I, Pantone is a color specifying system that began with commercial printing inks and has expanded into other areas. All Adobe design software includes Pantone color libraries that allow colors to be matched on screen and on press. Interested in trying out these new color combinations? Here’s a lo-tech approach: Freeze the video, do a screen grab, open it in Photoshop, and use the dropper and info palette to get the approximate CMYK recipe. Then click on Color Libraries to match it in the Pantone swatch book. Find the 3 or 4-digit code number and you’re good to go.

Learning to Love Leopard

opendoordesign — Tue, 26 Aug 2008 21:05:53 +0000

My Intro to Mac students are learning their way around Leopard, the latest version of Mac OSX. Actually, since it’s installed in the labs and not in our offices yet, I’m learning my way around it too. No need to fear! Apple has supplied a nice series of tutorials, beginning with Anatomy of a Mac. These online videos walk users through many of the features I’ll be discussing and demonstrating in class.

UPDATE: Since I posted this we’ve had huge problems in the lab with Leopard, and I’m now learning to hate it. Students can’t log onto their account. Print jobs stuck in the que and nobody can remove them them without an admin password. Servers drop off the network. Apparently Apple is promising a DNS patch, and lot’s of IT folks are getting a little testy.

Teela’s Portfolio

opendoordesign — Tue, 15 Jul 2008 18:06:29 +0000

I just got an e-mail from Teela, a former student who earned her Associates at Pellissipppi and is now getting her BFA at Watkins College of Art and Design in Nashville. She’s set up her portolio using Behance, and says:

Behance is a pretty cool network. Its similar to the Myspace setup but ya know, without myspace. Its free and a great way to get feedback and network with other creatives around the globe! Check it out.

Her work looks great, and I recognize a few projects from my courses. I like Behance’s portfolio, and it’s features are more robust than Carbonmade. Think of it as MySpace for designers without the messy layout and ugly backgrounds. I require all my Design I and Design II students to create an online portfolio as their final exam. I think this semester I’ll switch to Behance.

An Offer You Can’t Refuse

opendoordesign — Sun, 15 Jun 2008 23:19:32 +0000

I recently ran across the article “The Web’s Best Free Stuff” in PC World. And who doesn’t like free stuff? So here are my personal faves.

Think Free Online Fight Microsoft with an open source alternative. Use for spreadsheets, word processing, and slide presentations.
4Shared 5 GB of free storage, and you can file share by folder. Sounds like a great off-site back-up solution.
Bluestring Another free storage site with e-mailed link option. Great for blogging.
Phasr This site makes photo collage postcards based using flikr and your words and phrases. Sounds like fun.
Flypaper Use this site and the free software to make flash-based projects including resumes, presentations and more.
URL Snooper Grab YouTube movies with this free download.
MeeVee This is TV Guide on steroids, allowing customizable listings, lots of information about shows, and (ta-da!) links to actual video content.
WeFi Find WiFi hotspots and track down friends and enemies based on their WiFi usage. Fascinating yet creepy.
FreeMind Map out projects and ideas. Interesting, veerrry interesting…
Pidgin Use Pidgin to instant message anyone on any service.
Make Me Sustainable Calculate your personable carbon footprint.
Talkshoe Group voice chats for folks with similar interests. Sounds like Yahoo Groups with voice.
Scrybe A free note-taking and calendar application in beta testing. Nifty.
Lala.com Upload your personal music collection and play it though any browser on any computer.
Feedshow A free news reader for Foxfire that scrolls the news items in your feed across the bottom edge of your browser.

Carbonmade Portfolio

opendoordesign — Thu, 24 Apr 2008 00:23:23 +0000

As a final exam, my Digital Design I students are using Carbonmade to create free online portfolios. Users get 35 free images and 5 projects. Carbonmade is easy to use—just drag your project PDFs to Photoshop, rasterize them at 72 ppi on the trim line, and start uploading. I like it well enough to use it for my own portfolio. If you want a shorter URL, buy a domain from GoDaddy for $10 a year and point it at the Carbonmade site. Then you can fit your web address on business cards without having to go to 6-point type. Stay tuned for links to lots of student portfolios.

PORTFOLIOS: Amanda Dunaway, April Overholt, Ashlee Reed, Brenna Smith, Brock Litton, Craig Newman, Daniel Hallquist, David Mullinax, Elaine Frank, Gene Priest, Jason Smith, Krestin Churchwell, Megan Singleton, Stephanie Holden, Teresa Brooks,

Book Bar Codes

opendoordesign — Wed, 19 Mar 2008 19:19:33 +0000

My Design I and Typography students are working on a book design project. For them and for other book designers out there, here’s a great site that will generate book barcodes for you. Yes, it’s free.

Professional Practices Resources

opendoordesign — Sat, 15 Mar 2008 18:02:44 +0000

I posted last week about teaching a professional practices course. It turns we already have an MDT Professional Practices course that our students can take as an elective. My students should enroll in that course, since it covers some of the same issues we face as designers. For the rest of you out there, here are some links to great articles and books on this thang we call the graphic design business.

AIGA Articles
Design(ing) Network(ing)
Presenting your portfolio
Insights on writing your résumé
Design Business and Ethics
Position on spec work
What every business needs. And how.
The State of our Contracts

Books
Becoming a Graphic Designer: A Guide to Careers in Design, 2nd Edition
Designing a Digital Portfolio
AIGA Professional Practices in Graphic Design: American Institute of Graphic Arts

Ya Think?

opendoordesign — Mon, 10 Mar 2008 17:57:16 +0000

In a recent article from Jupiter Images’ online newsletter they interview Andre Andreev and Dan Covert about, among other things, the lack of good books describing the transition from design student to design professional. I agree. I’ve been thinking of teaching a special topics course next spring on professional practices where we could learn about pricing, ethics, networking, portfolios, freelance, and other Important Issues From The Real World. Any thoughts on this? Leave your comments below.