November 2014 – ImageBlog

November 6, 2014

Adobe Shape CC: Create Vector Artwork with your Mobile Phone’s Camera

If you’re a business owner, you know that great creative sells. Whether it’s banners, business cards or an eBlast for an event, you want the presentation to be top-notch. But, getting great artwork can be expensive and time consuming. With seemingly limitless amounts of apps being released daily, Adobe is hitting the app industry hard with their new Adobe Shape CC. Even without the entire Creative Cloud suite of tools, anyone can catch and share inspiration for designs in a vector format right from a mobile phone.

What It Does

Marketed with the tagline, “Where ideas take shape,” the app allows users to choose a shape they like and want to use in their design. All they have to do is take a picture of the shape with their iPhone, and the app turns the shape into vectors, or editable, resizable graphics. Extremely user friendly, you aim your phone’s camera at the object you want to capture, adjust the view, then use your finger to swipe away any detailing or lines that you do not want the photo to capture. This means that whatever you take a picture of can be morphed into a graphic shape that you can edit. It is like having Illustrator’s Live Trace feature available at all times from your phone!

Now on Mobile Devices

For those who have used Adobe applications on a desktop or laptop, the new app brings many of those familiar features and functions to the palm of your hand. If you find a shape you want, you can instantly capture it on your iPhone, save it and edit it with literally a few swipes. The app also allows users to import existing photos from your iOS camera roll and save to Adobe’s Creative Cloud.

By saving the image, Adobe turns your picture into a vector, and you can easily edit on your computer, tablet, smartphone or any device that allows you to plug in your Adobe ID. Additionally, you can save your images to Creative Cloud Libraries so you can work on your project at home, at the office or on the go. With the cloud library, you also can work on your project in Shape’s sister apps such as Adobe Brush, Color, Draw and – best of all – Illustrator.

How Businesses Can Use It

This gives users as well as businesses a way to create and edit an intricate shape without actually having to draw one. For those without creative help, the app can serve as your artist. For those who do have a creative team developing their artwork, Adobe Shape CC is great for inspiration and tight-deadline projects. By making any shape editable, designers can go in and manipulate the shape without spending time drawing it from scratch. Not only does this save time, it gives employees who would not normally be able to come up with a creative concept, a chance to flex their artistic muscle without picking up a pencil.

Call us at 828.684.4512 for any of your marketing needs. As a printer, we understand communication and design. Your printer should be able to provide you with the latest information, inspiration, technical advice, and innovative ideas for communicating your message through print, design and typography, signage, apparel, variable data printing and direct mail, integrated marketing and environmentally responsible printing. If they can’t, you have the wrong printer! The best advice, always, is to ASK YOUR PRINTER!

ImageSmith is now partnered with Extreme Awards & Engraving – our in-house partner providing custom engraved trophies and awards for employee recognition programs, sporting events, and promotional needs. With our new sister company, we will be sharing space, resources and expertise in a collaboration designed to further provide you with one place to meet all of your marketing needs… Under One Roof! Visit them online at www.extremeae.com or call direct at 828.684.4538.

Call us at 828.684.4512. ImageSmith is a full-service print and marketing provider located in Arden, North Carolina. Contact us at ImageSmith for quotes on all your print and marketing projects, and more useful tips on how to create custom, effective, high impact marketing solutions.

November 6, 2014

Cool Idea: Put Your Logo on a Custom Printed Bandana

The classic bandana with a paisley pattern seems to never go out of style. We love these custom printed bandanas that incorporate the customer logo seamlessly into that classic design. They are lightweight woven cotton with screen printing in white and come in the whole rainbow of colors you would expect.

The pet bandana version is also pretty awesome – a triangular shape makes it easier to tie around your best friend’s neck. They come in different sizes to fit the tiniest dogs or cats or some king-size buddies. The entire imprint area can be designed with your repeating logo or with some other shape or design of your choice.

You’ll need a version of your logo that works reversed out in all white with no screens. In our large bandana sample here, we used the logo at a larger size in the center, and then in four smaller imprint areas on each of the four corners. When folded, you’ll always see one of the logos. You might want to include a tagline or web address as well if the imprint area works better with that information.

Developing your logo in different variants is important for multichannel marketing. Never settle for one “FINAL” version of your logo from your designer with the idea that it can multitask for every need. Develop different “flavors” of your logo that will be versatile enough to work in full color, single color with screens, spot color and at different sizes from tiny to billboard size, offset to online . The standard full color logo that looks just perfect on your letterhead may not be the version that works for embroidery on uniforms, screenprinting, promotional products, black and white forms, single color designs, or wide format prints. For versatility of use, it’s also great to have your logo designed in a “Tall” (portrait) and “Wide” (landscape) version. Think about it: what might look good on a round coaster might look pretty tiny if you decide to print it on the side of a pencil!

Call us at 828.684.4512 to order your bandanas, or for any marketing needs. As a printer, we understand communication and design. Your printer should be able to provide you with the latest information, inspiration, technical advice, and innovative ideas for communicating your message through print, design and typography, signage, apparel, variable data printing and direct mail, integrated marketing and environmentally responsible printing. If they can’t, you have the wrong printer! The best advice, always, is to ASK YOUR PRINTER!

ImageSmith is now partnered with Extreme Awards & Engraving – our in-house partner providing custom engraved trophies and awards for employee recognition programs, sporting events, and promotional needs. With our new sister company, we will be sharing space, resources and expertise in a collaboration designed to further provide you with one place to meet all of your marketing needs… Under One Roof! Visit them online at www.extremeae.com or call direct at 828.684.4538.

Call us at 828.684.4512. ImageSmith is a full-service print and marketing provider located in Arden, North Carolina. Contact us at ImageSmith for quotes on all your print and marketing projects, and more useful tips on how to create custom, effective, high impact marketing solutions.

November 4, 2014

New Respect for Doodling: Problem-Solving and Logo Design

It starts on paper.

Doodling is often for designers a free form beginning to the exploration and creation of great ideas. While many exciting digital devices with intuitive interfaces are built to spur your creative process, nothing quite lives up in the beginning to the ease and freedom of doodling on paper. Sketching or doodling are the first steps of tracing out into reality the designs still forming in your imagination. Paper gives you permission to make mistakes, to create something odd or terrible or just maybe ingenious. It nurtures the “sketchy” nature of new ideas that are only partially formed, shadowy connections and inspirations that only begin to take on real shape in a quick sketch or design on paper.

Writing – or more precisely copywriting – takes place onscreen today. Mistakes are quickly edited and blocks of text can easily be moved around and reconnected as ideas evolve and take shape. The keyboard has sped up the creative process for wordsmiths. But to begin a visual idea, pencil or pen on paper still seem to be the tools of choice.

In the creation of a logo or any design concept, doodling is thinking. How do you represent a company’s core values, mission, standards, range of expertise in a compelling way? Sketching becomes a visual expression of real-time problem-solving – an essential part of the creative process. The shapes and ideas liberally sketched out on paper will be edited and developed on screen as the process continues. But in the initial stage, feel the freedom to draw, connect and reject. Wrong turns and attempted ideas all litter the page as you continue to draw, but still inform the overall process.

Alma Hoffman has a wonderful essay on this in an article called “I Draw Pictures All Day” on Smashing Magazine. She points out that all artists, writers and creatives should carry a sketchpad. You may also want to check out Sunni Brown’s book “The Doodle Revolution” about using the habit of doodling to improve creativity and focus.

With that in mind, we at ImageSmith gave custom embossed Moleskine® notebooks as gifts last holiday season. You never know when an idea will arise or you will find some tidbit of vital information to remember. No wifi needed. And now Moleskine has a notebook with a “Livescribe” app that instantly brings your sketched and notes to your computer screen and can convert writing to text. The paper itself has a dot pattern embedded in it which is read by the pen as you write. Moleskine understands the intersection of analog and digital.

Leonardo da Vinci sketch of a perpetual motion machine.

No surprise, doodling itself has risen to a high art form in the hands of many talented designers and artists. Check out this gallery for some inspiring examples: 48 Examples of Doodle Art. You might also find enlightening the random doodles of some creative greats at these sites: Doodles of Famous Authors like Plath, Nabokov and Kafka and Six Famous Notebook Users like Hemingway and Picasso.

They’ve also found doodling can help combat stress – another plus with those looming deadlines, right?

About the logo at the top of this article: ImageSmith is now partnered with Extreme Awards & Engraving – our in-house partner providing custom engraved trophies and awards for employee recognition programs, sporting events, and promotional needs. With our new sister company, we will be sharing space, resources and expertise in a collaboration designed to further provide you with one place to meet all of your marketing needs… Under One Roof! Visit them online at www.extremeae.com or call direct at 828.684.4538.

Strive to buy your print locally! A community printer will understand communication and design, with a special emphasis on your local market. They should be able to provide you with the latest information, inspiration, technical advice, and innovative ideas for communicating your message through print, design and typography, signage, apparel, variable data printing and direct mail, integrated marketing and environmentally responsible printing. If they can’t, you have the wrong printer! The best advice, always, is to ASK YOUR PRINTER!

Call us at 828.684.4512. ImageSmith is a full-service print and marketing provider located in Arden, North Carolina. Contact us at ImageSmith for quotes on all your print and marketing projects, and more useful tips on how to create custom, effective, high impact marketing solutions.