Print Design Tips

Design Basics

Using White Space
By incorporating white space into a layout you let text and graphics breathe. As a result your piece will be more meaningful to the reader.

Composing Balanced Images
Too often balance suggests blandness as if everything has to be perfectly aligned. But in photography balance is a key concept that adds drama and focus to an image.

Increasing Image Impact
Use the best, leave the rest. Whether the purpose of the photograph destined for your layout is to give journalistic visual support, set a scene or mood, advertise a service or product, or add interest to a layout, use some common sense when making the decision to use it. The first deciding factor should always be quality. If a picture is just plain awful, make a conscious decision whether or not to use it. Rejecting a photograph for use can be a challenge, though -- especially on a deadline or when a retake is out of the question. Unless your photograph is live proof of a rare event, deceased person, or irreproducible situation, take care in deciding whether it's really worthwhile to use.

Keep in mind the fact that your audience will automatically be drawn to the photographs in a page layout before they begin reading the text, so the photograph will always be the first scrutinized. If it lacks focus, is poorly lit, badly composed, carelessly scanned, is inappropriate, or utterly lacks interest, this will most certainly reflect on all other content -- regardless of how cleverly written the text is or how slick the document design is.

Be brutal when cropping. When it comes to making a photograph fit a design, you'll likely be faced with close examination of the photographic subject at hand. In most cases, you'll have the option of being able to eliminate large or small portions of a photo, either vertically (from the bottom and/or top of the picture), or horizontally (from the left and right sides). Cropping is best performed in the layout application used to create your document as opposed to before reaching the layout stage.

The best photographs to work with are always the ones where ample image information surrounds the subject matter. While you can always crop a picture, you can't add more visual information to it other than what's originally there.

Photo cropping takes something of a knack to perfect, especially when it comes to cropping portraits of people -- often referred to as headshots. Some journalistic styles give specific cropping points to use for portraits. Vertically, you may safely crop to a point just above the top of a person's skull with consideration to their hairstyle and below the knot of their necktie or collar lapels. The equivalent horizontal cropping should be to a point just beyond the left and right shoulders or ears with consideration given to the center point of the subject (such as the point between their eyes). Figure 1 shows a brutal crop that accurately identifies the individual -- and little else.

Layout Basics

Using Grids for Consistency
A grid serves as the skeleton of your layout, giving it structure, order, and balance. Programs such as Adobe PageMaker provide you with the tools to set up grids quickly and easily. But no matter which page-layout application you use, you'll find a use for grids.

Using Boxes and Sidebars Effectively
Boxes and bars are the simplest graphics you can add to a layout. But using them wisely takes some practice. In this article learn how to box yourself in.

Simplify Layout Tasks with Templates
Templates are a fast, easy, and efficient way to produce multiple page layouts in Adobe PageMaker 7.

Graphics Fundamentals: Distinguishing Photoshop Color Modes
Images come in many colors -- and color comes in many flavors. The RGB colors on your monitor are not the same as CMYK colors of your printer. To get the best results, you need to know which color mode to use when in Adobe Photoshop so your images look good.

Tips for better scanning
Scanning may seem mysterious, but it's not. An electronic eye moves back and forth on a bar and "scans" across the image shooting a light up at your image. The light bounces back into the 'eye' and records that pixel's relative color, brightness and hue. In theory it's a miraculous invention. (Thank you Andy Hertzfield.) In practice, if something can go wrong, it will.

Garbage in, garbage out
Make sure the scanner is clean

Digital Painting
Adobe Photoshop can be used for more than just photo editing and design. Yes, despite its name, Photoshop is one of the ever-expanding range of tools available for digital painters, illustrators, and just plain doodlers. These tools are allowing people incredible freedom to express themselves and create fun pictures. Imagine reliving your childhood days of drawing and scribbling, without ever having to worry about making a mess, or running out of supplies. Best of all, digital art is much more forgiving when you make mistakes. No other medium would let you erase 1000 times, without harming your canvas one bit. At the other end of the spectrum, Photoshop can be used to create professional, print-quality illustrations with great efficiency.

Resources

Adobe Illustrator : All-new Adobe® Illustrator® CS software is an essential tool for anyone who needs to express ideas visually in print, on the Web, and in any other medium. With powerful new 3D features, advanced typographical controls, smooth Adobe Portable Document Format (PDF) integration, enhanced printing options, and faster performance, this powerful upgrade from Illustrator 10 helps you explore your creative vision and efficiently publish your artwork anywhere.

http://www.adobe.com/products/illustrator/main.html

Adobe Pagemaker: Adobe® PageMaker® 7.0 software is the ideal page layout program for business, education, and small- and home-office professionals who want to create high-quality publications such as brochures and newsletters. Get started quickly with templates, graphics, and intuitive design tools; work productively across Adobe applications; and easily leverage existing content to create customized communications.

http://www.adobe.com/products/pagemaker/main.html

Quark Express:
http://www.quark.com/products/xpress/demos.html

Corel Draw:
http://www.corel.com/servlet/Satellite?pagename=Corel2/Home

Print Skills, Design Skills, Scaning Skills etc...
http://www.graphic-design.com/DTG/Graphics/index.html http://graphicdesign.about.com/library/weekly/aa011102a.htm