Posted on

Color, Balance and Emphasis: An Infographic on How Graphics Work

Any size business can take advantage of custom infographics to better communicate and attract interest. Any process or idea you would like to explain to potential customers can be illustrated with eye-catching graphics. Talk to your printer about creating your own custom infographics for your blog, website, signage or print collateral and you’ll get excited about the potential and creativity of illustrating your business.

Infographic on how Graphics work

This infographic was provided courtesy of Bigstock Photo.

 

Call us at 828.684.4512 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.

 

Posted on

The New Yorker at 90: The Art of Great Cover Art

It’s easy to love The New Yorker. Their editorials, criticism, opinion, reporting, poetry, and celebrated cartoons have consistently set a gold standard of excellence for publishing.  The venerable magazine is celebrating 90 years of groundbreaking, respected coverage of much more than the New York literary scene, and must be basking in the accolades from readers and critics. You know you’re pretty influential when bloggers take the time to praise and interpret the shape of just one letter in your masthead!

The New Yorker covers provide a master class in creative illustration and graphic design. Timely and often controversial cover art is a mainstay of the magazine as the New York Times notes the covers have taken a distinctive shift “from polite to provocative.” The editors seek out innovative artists who movingly capture the nation’s excitement, fear, contradictions or spirit in a graphic image that gets noticed, sells magazines and ultimately proves the enduring power of print.

Great graphic design brings order and meaning to a complex or hard-to-define subject – and The New Yorker covers excel at that. Wit and creativity are needed to illustrate a complex point of view or clash of points of view in a deceptively simple artwork. Some magazines rely on the excitement and buzz generated by a controversial cover image simply to get attention for attention’s sake – think Sports Illustrated’s swimsuit issue or the outlandish banner headlines of the tabloids. Conversely, The New Yorker covers do more than exploit an event’s moment in the mainstream spotlight – and they often make news in and of themselves.

Often a great cover image becomes indelibly linked in our minds to the events or topics they address. As the covers below prove, the creation of a great cover illustration also has a story behind the scenes that is equally interesting:

The New Yorker Covers
© The New Yorker

Sept. 24, 2001: read the story behind the uncredited cover commemorating the tragedy of 9/11.

Dec. 8, 2014: Bob Staake’s poignant illustration of the racial divisions in Ferguson, MO.

July 21, 2008: “The Politics of Fear” by Barry Blitt – one of the most satirically controversial covers in The New Yorker’s history.

 

The New Yorker Covers
© The New Yorker

July 8, 15, 2013: “Moment of Joy” by Jack Hunter, celebrating the defeat of the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA).

Jan. 19, 2015: “Solidarité” by Ana Juan, memorializing the massacre at the French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo.

Dec. 16, 2013: “Madiba” by Kadir Nelson, for the passing of Nelson Mandela.

 

To show the importance of cover art to the magazine’s essence, The New Yorker decided to print not one but 9 different covers – one for each decade – for it’s special anniversary double issue. Each image seeks to bring the iconic cartoon dandy Eustace Tilley who appeared on the first cover in 1925 into the 21st century. And in order to ensure they stay as relevant and dynamic in the next 90 years as they have in the past, the magazine just hired ad agency SS+K to steer and coax it’s brand progression.

 

 

 

Call us at 828.684.4512 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.
Posted on

PhotoShop Makes it Easy to Quickly Straighten a Scan or Photo

 

 

If you begin work with a raw photograph or scan, chances are the image will be off-kilter – maybe just a little bit crooked, maybe a lot. Here’s an easy fix to straighten your image that does not require guesswork of how many degrees or rotation are needed.
Photo in need of alignment

In the sample image above, the subjects appear to be walking up a slight hill, but our objective is to have them on level ground. Beginning with CS5, the PhotoShop tools got a whole lot smarter and you can now Straighten a photo with the click of a button. The Crop tool itself will allow you to manually rotate the image, just by clicking slightly outside the crop area and pulling the image in whatever direction you desire. To have PhotoShop straighten your photo exactly, just click the “Straighten” button in the Toolbar at the top. This accesses your Ruler tool to draw a line on your image that you want to use to make your image plumb. The new tools make what use to be a more difficult task very intuitive and easy.
The “old” way of doing this was to get the Ruler tool (its hidden away on the fly-out menu of the Eyedropper tool). Find a line or edge in your image that you want to be perfectly horizontal.  Click and drag out a line with the ruler tool that you want to be exactly 90° perpendicular to vertical. Choose Image – Rotate – Arbitrary. The exact amount of rotation needed (to the 100th of a degree!) will be entered into the “Arbitrary” amount box. Just hit enter and your image will rotate clockwise or counterclockwise as needed according to the line you drew.

Using the Ruler Tool in PhotoSHop
Find the “horizon” or edge you want to be perfectly horizontal in your image and drag the ruler tool across it.
Rotate Image in PhotoShop
Image – Rotate Image – Arbitrary
Rotate Image in PhotoShop
The exact amount needed is automatically filled in the Rotation Amount
Straightened Image before recropping
Image aligned with drawn line, before recropping.

Finished photo after alignment

After aligning, you will need to recrop the image to make it square again. But the girl walking her dog is now on level ground. If your image was a scan of a document or printed photograph, aligning with the edge of the original will bring the image plumb again.

Thanks to CS5 and beyond, you may never need this again!

 

 

 

 

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.
Posted on

Why We Started Double Spacing after Each Sentence, and Why Typography Says “STOP!”

 

"One day, we will not have to separate sentences with two spaces."

 

The first thing I was told years ago on my very first day of work in prepress was to forget the old rule from high school typing class about using two spaces between sentences. When you learned to type on a typewriter, that became second nature and it was a hard habit to break in the beginning. But I only recently learned the reason WHY two spaces are no longer used, thanks to an excellent history of the phenomenon by Farhad Manjoo over at Slate. He makes a convincing case for why today you should “never, ever do it.” Knowing the reason always beats the the standard justification of “because that’s how it’s done today.”

First, rules in typography really are rules! Of course there are exceptions where rules are broken for good reason, but “that’s how I was taught” is not one of them! The rules of typography were agreed upon over years and years of professional development of “best practices.” In the early days of typesetting – so they tell us – the rules had not been developed yet. Printed material might have one space between sentences, it might have four. What was a “space” anyway? The size certainly varied. But as time rolled on, typesetters standardized their work and one space became the rule. Enter the typewriter.

Monospace type examplesTypewriters revolutionized business communications, and also created the need for the now outdated 2-space rule. Typewriters before the 1970s were monospaced – each letter the same width as any of the other letters or characters, unlike the type you are reading right now. Typewriters had no kerning or tracking capabilities and the result was difficulty in distinguishing sentences from each other because of all the “loose” spacing between letters. Two spaces between sentences proved to be generally more pleasing to the eye and easier to read.

So that’s the reason. But we aren’t using typewriters anymore! Even the later typewriters employed proportional type, ending the need for any extra spaces. Two spaces make an unpleasant gap in blocks of type. In the prepress department, the first step to placing and laying out a customer’s text is to do a “Find – Replace” for two spaces.

If you are still dropping in those extra spaces between sentences, you are not only saying that you are most likely over 40 and learned to type on a typewriter, but that you don’t like change very much! It really isn’t that hard a habit to break. Some specific workplaces or disciplines still cling to the two-space rule… I’ve heard the legal world is one of those. If you earn your living in one of those fields, you have an excuse. Otherwise, if you choose to hang onto the old 2-space rule, just be aware that the visual text you are creating in your emails and documents is saying things about you which you may not intend!

…and one more unbreakable rule: no indenting paragraphs with FIVE SPACES! Still see that typewriter holdover from time to time as well.

 

 

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.
Posted on

Hard to Hide: Disabling an Overactive Welcome Screen in Illustrator CC 2014

Illustrator CC 2014 Welcome Screen

 

When the Welcome gets worn out…

With each new software upgrade, organizing your workspace and learning the new tools and interface changes can take a little time. Creative Cloud software generally launches by default a Welcome screen with helpful info on “What’s New” in the latest release. For the first few days, these are helpful; after that they begin to feel intrusive. With Illustrator CC 2014, the “Welcome” screen is pretty persistent in trying to keep on welcoming. The fix is a simple one – albeit not as simple as it could be!

InDesign Welcome screenIn previous version of Illustrator, the Welcome screen appeared with each launch, but the checkbox to hide the screen on future launches was always located at the bottom in plain view. With InDesign CC 2014, it is still there and easy to access. With PhotoShop CC 2014, there is no “Welcome” screen – it just lives under the Help menu and will take you to an Adobe webpage when chosen. But Illustrator expanded the Welcome screen for CC 2014, putting in four tabs to access different information. I wonder if Adobe is pushing a little harder to introduce PhotoShop and InDesign users to Illustrator?  The expanded screen can be useful, but it seems Adobe went a little further in trying to make you work to hide it.

Illustrator CC 2014 Welcome ScreenThe “Create” tab, which is the default screen on my installation and includes the easy access to open recent docs or new projects, does not include the box to hide the Welcome screen. I have no idea why. For some reason, only three of the four Welcome screen tabs have the check-able option to hide the window in the future. And, even on those three tabs, the bottom of the window is not visible until you scroll down to find the check box.

The Welcome screen info always lives under the Help menu, so if you find it annoying like I do, just click on any of the three tabs other than “Create” and scroll to the bottom of the window. There you can access the SLIGHTLY more elusive than normal “Don’t Show Welcome Screen Again” box.

How to hide the welcome screen in Illustrator

 

 

 

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.
Posted on

Designing Product Labels: Stick a Label on a Bottle with Illustrator and PhotoShop

 

Creating a wine label in Illustrator and Photoshop

OUR PROJECT: design a label and show it in use on the actual product. We need to create print-ready label files AND on-product demos for proofing those labels – a very common scenario for the designer. Moreover, our goal is also to end up with a usable set of files that are organized, fully editable and ready to be repurposed for any integrated marketing projects that lie ahead. What is the best approach for digitally sticking a label on a bottle?

We love Illustrator.  The ability of vector artwork to be edited, printed in spot colors, redefined for other purposes and resized to any dimension without loss of resolution or quality makes it a versatile winner for multipurpose projects. On the other hand, PhotoShop is essential for realistic product presentation. Amazing effects can take a vector label file from the design stage to a true retail appearance and on-product photo. Using both programs in a coordinated way will leave you with a flexible set of files that can be used for offset or digital printing, wide format product displays, realistic proofing and any other application you might need. When you return to prepare other labels, these files are invaluable time-savers.

The label design for this whiskey bottle began in Illustrator. The customer’s requirements were a matte finish paper with a die cut shape. The handiest solution was to create the label in Illustrator, then manipulate that file into PhotoShop for the proofing and on-product look. Here, all of the type and design elements were created as vectors in Illustrator, and assigned the PMS spot colors that would be needed for offset printing. This part of the job is essentially a typical design/print job.

Creating a wine label in IllustratorWhile working in Illustrator, it helps to be able to see your design on the actual bottle as you work. So, we placed the .tif image of the bottle on its own layer and locked it. An image of the paper was placed on another layer – just for reference – along with the outer shape of the label. We then made a clipping path of that shape on the paper layer so that with all layers turned on, the Illustrator file appeared like the finished label on the bottle – minus the PhotoShop effects. These two layers are not for print purposes – only to help you visualize the end product while designing. Play around with the design of the label until finished, turning off the “bottle” and “paper” layers as needed. From this file, we can generate any actual print files for production of the label.

Now – over in PhotoShop: we wanted to show the label on an actual bottle, both for proofing to the customer and to create imagery for use in several related projects (no special photoshoot necessary!) We start with the photo of the bottle itself. This image is much larger in size than the actual bottle, being a high resolution image suitable for wide format output. If you have worked in Illustrator at the actual label size, you will need to enlarge the vector design when you bring it into PhotoShop – no problem as vectors can be easily resized with no loss of quality. Copy the parts you want to use in Illustrator and paste into their new PhotoShop layers as Smart Objects. By working with Smart Objects in this way, you can double-click on your layer and the artwork will open in the native application (in this case, Illustrator) for editing. When done, click save and the art updates in your PhotoShop file. Learn more about how great Smart Objects are for design versatility here.

Tip: be sure and carefully name each layer you create. I often think I will remember which is which, only to wind up confused and searching through layers one by one to see what I have created. You can easily use dozens of layers in one simple project, so take the time to name them as you create them.

For certain effects to work in PhotoShop, you must rasterize the Smart Object layer before you can proceed. If you are unsure and want to do that safely, make a copy of your Smart Object layer and turn its visibility off – that’s your backup. Now rasterize the original layer and proceed. You can always trash that if the results aren’t right and turn back on the layer you saved. Here, we brought in vector pieces of the label in different groupings so as to be able to apply various lighting effects and filters on different parts, hopefully recreating the appearance of a realistic label. You can experiment with various layers to find which works best for your project. In this case, all the ink coverage (the red bar, the type, the logos) were kept together in order to use a light reflection effect on them that would simulate the ink on paper. Using Photoshop to create Wine LabelThe outer border required a different look, as it was set to print in metallic ink. We brought in a layer that looked like gold foil and a layer which held the label frame as a Smart Object. First we selected the pixels on the frame layer and turned its visibility off, switched over to the foil layer, selected the inverse and deleted. What was left is the shape of the frame, but filled with the reflective foil (see photo at right). As this is not a Smart Object layer, you can go ahead and apply bevel and emboss effects to make it stand out a little more from the rest of the matte label.

Save this heavily layered version of your project – it allows you to easily edit individual parts during proofing or for future applications. You could easily switch out the paper layer, substitute a silver background, entirely redesign the label, or even insert a new bottle and background. By starting off on the right foot, you can confidently edit and repurpose your designs with a minimum of wasted or repeated effort.

 

 

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.
Posted on

Auto Generate QR Codes with Data Merge in InDesign CC 2014

 

Generate QR Codes in InDesign Data Merge

The Data Merge function in InDesign is a powerful, versatile tool for integrated marketing. We use it for variable data printing to personalize individual pieces – text and images – and, if a direct mail piece, to address and barcode for delivery to the USPS. The latest enhancement to Data Merge is the ability to integrate automatically generated QR codes into the Data Merge workflow. The best part is InDesign does almost all the work.

As you may know, InDesign CC will automatically generate a QR code within a document.5 types of InDesign QR codes Choose Object – Generate QR Code. From the Content tab, you can choose which of 5 main classes of QR code information you want to create: Text, Website, Text Message, Email or Business Card/Contact Information. The Color tab will let you change the QR code from standard Black to one of your other Swatch colors. When you click OK, the code loads onto your cursor for placement (or if you already selected a placeholder box, it places itself on the page). It can be resized to any dimension needed and is a high fidelity graphic object – in other words, it behaves just like a vector piece of artwork.

To automatically generated MULTIPLE QR codes through a Data Merge, the key lies in correctly entering the data in your Data Source .csv or .txt file. You will need to create a column (in Excel for example) and – this is the important part – name the column beginning with a hashtag (for example, “#QRcodes“). Within that column you can mix and match any of the 5 types of codes, but the data entries must be in the following formats:

  • For plain text: simple, just enter the text you want to be encoded.
  • For an SMS Text Message: SMSTO:<Phone number>:<Message>  Example: SMSTO:8285551919:Call me!
  • For a Website Hyperlink: URL:<url>  Example: URL:http://www.imagesmith.com
  • For and Email Message: MATMSG:\nTo:<email address>\nSUB:<subject>;\nBODY:;;<body of email>  Example: MATMSG:\nTo:name@gmail.com\nSUB:Your Subject;\nBODY:;;bodyofemail
  • For Contact or Business Card Info: BEGIN:VCARD\nVERSION:2.1\nN:<last name>;<first name>\nFN:<full name>\nORG:<your workplace>\nTITLE:<job title>\nTEL;CELL:<cell number>\nTEL;WORK;VOICE:<voice number>\nADR;WORK:;;<address>;<city>;<state>;<zip>;<country>\nEMAIL;WORK;INTERNET:<email address>\nURL:<website url>\nEND:VCARD

Data Merge Panel in InDesignBack in InDesign, choose Select Data Source on the Data Merge panel options and then link the .txt or .csv file you created to this document. Draw a box as the placeholder for where you want the QR codes to print on your page. Now link that placeholder to the data by selecting it and then clicking the “qrcodes” field title in the Data Merge panel (the hashtag you put on that column in Excel will not show up in InDesign, but it does allow InDesign to recognize that data as QR code information). Your placeholder will then have a dashed border selection line around it, signifying it will create QR codes when merged.

Finally, merge your document either by choosing “Create Merged Document” (which will give you a multi-page InDesign document) or “Export to PDF” (which creates the finished multi-page PDF file). If your InDesign document is a 2-pager and you have an .txt or .csv file of 100 entries linked, you will create a 200 page PDF file.

One snag: I cannot figure out how to generate QR codes this way in any color other than black. While InDesign lets you choose a color for individual codes you create within the application, I have not been able to find out how to “colorize” the placeholder for the merge in order to generate multiple QR codes through Data Merge that are any color other than black. If you know, please tell us how. If not, then perhaps that ability will come in a future update.

 

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.
Posted on

What’s New in Illustrator CC 2014: Live Corners & Friendlier Pen and Pencil Tools

 

New features in Adobe Illustrator CC 2014

Illustrator CC 2014 brings graphic designers some cool new improvements to enhance the “drawing” experience of this vector program. I’ve always loved using Illustrator, although the disconnect between the feeling of drawing on paper vs. fashioning a vector shape onscreen can seem awkward. The new Illustrator perks: a more user-friendly Pen and Pencil tool and the new Live Shapes/Corners functionality give much more accessible controls to vector drawing and design. The best part of these new improvements? They are very intuitive. While an explanation or overview is helpful to know what has changed, the best way to understand them is to just get in there and create! The new tweaks will become second nature to a user with previous Illustrator experience in no time.

Live Corners – Inset Widget on Live Corners in Illustrator what a great enhancement for drawing and manipulating shapes! While this feature does nothing that was not possible in earlier versions of Illustrator, the sense of control is now much more integrated into the actual drawing process. Selecting any shape, or point on a shape, with the Direct Selection tool will reveal an on-art control point or “inset widget” at each of the corners. You can drag that widget to alter the shape of the corner. Double clicking the widget will open your dialog box for controls over the corner style (round, inverted round or chamfered), the corner radius dimension, and rounding that is Absolute or Relative. Option (or Alt) clicking will toggle between the three styles. Adobe offers some easy online video tutorials to cover all these features, but the process is so intuitive, just playing around with the new features is your best teacher. (BTW, I learned a new word with that “chamfered” corner feature.)

The Pencil Tool fly-out menu in IllustratorThe Pencil tool, in CC 2014, has advanced away from being more of a freestyle drawing tool often relegated to imprecise sketching and moved more toward a companion of the Pen tool. Double clicking the Pencil tool in the Tools palette will bring up its Options where you can set the fidelity of the line you are creating to the actual movement of your cursor. This is a great way to smooth curves when needed, or to create sketchy curves when that is point. Holding down your Option (or Alt) key will constrain the Pencil tool to a straight line; holding down the Command (or Ctrl) key will constrain it to horizontal, vertical or 45° angles. As you can see, this is very much like the Pen tool. The Pencil tool also toggles out to access the Smooth and the Path Erase tools. The Smooth tool is a handy way to touch up a path shape with which you aren’t quite happy. It subtracts excess points and contours to create a smoother shape. The Path Erase tool is your eraser, pure and simple – even stopping mid-segment to create a new end point.

The CC 2014 Pen tool sports some major enhancements as well. Pen Tool Path PreviewOne change you will notice right away is the Pen tool Path Preview. When drawing a shape, it is helpful to see exactly where the path will fall before dropping the point onto the document; this new tool previews that path for you with a colored preview line extending from the last point dropped to the position of the pen before you click in a new point.  Adobe also gave us advancements on the manipulation of anchor points: repair broken anchor point handles, draw uneven handles when needed, and other new ways to finesse closing the shape of a path without distorting your drawing. The Pen tool in Illustrator has always been one of those tools that really needs hands-on practice to understand. Often the description of what or how the tool works is longer and much more confusing than the actual process of using it. So dive in – the new features will become second nature as you use the tools and incorporate the new perks into your work routine.

Launching Illustrator CC 2014 will bring up a Welcome screen that does a great job in introducing everything you need to know: the tabs for New Features, Getting Started, and Tips & Techniques include video tutorials and links to the great online library of Adobe help documents. (You can always access this screen when needed by going to Help – Welcome in the menu bar.) Have fun making some great vectors.

 

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 environmental 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.