Category Archives: GraphicDesign

Black and white often provides focus

Skilled Workman Posted on by

Throughout my life as an artist/designer I have been struck with how black and white often provides focus. It’s  beautiful visual decision, but it tends to be more difficult than color. Elegance and simplicity are very hard to achieve without being stark and lifeless. The painting on the left is the first one I painted after I met Jesus in January, 1974. Being left-handed, it reads from right to left. The simple exuberance of leaving the chaos … Continue reading →

Leading-Trim destroying traditional typography

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Leading-Trim destroying traditional typography seems a strange way to start an article on typography. But for the sake of Web developers, who are commonly typographic illiterates, they are toying with changing the historic basis of paragraph spacing, and all line spacing. What set me off is an article I read this morning in Medium, a magazine with which I was unfamiliar. The head and subhead are: Leading-Trim: The Future of Digital Typesetting How an emerging CSS standard … Continue reading →

Almost time to go. Maranatha! 

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Almost time to go. Maranatha! I had a little fun with a spring-time t-shirt. Here’s a link. I’ll add the graphics below. Of course, it’s Zazzle so you can use the designs on anything. Front: Over the heart Back: covers the back I pray you have a blessed Passover/Easter feast. He is risen!!!

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Some free font design resources

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This is just a quick note about some free font design resources which provide good typographic knowledge. I’m mentioning this because a large portion of my readers don’t come out of a professional graphic design or typographic background. These things are often not known by authors whose background is mostly found in Office and free design apps. The longer you work in page layout, the more important fonts and font design become for many if not most … Continue reading →

New release: InDesign CC Book Production, putting books together

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With this final release, InDesign CC Book Production, Putting the book together, my video coursework for book production is complete. This course removes the difficulty and relives the complexity of producing excellent quality, professional books. This is a very practical course. There is a lot to learn, but none of it is very difficult. It is very complex though. It is the goal of the course to make the complexity easy to understand and relatively simple to execute. If you have … Continue reading →

InDesign CC 2017 whimpers in esoterically, under the radar

Skilled Workman Posted on by

Yes, I said that InDesign CC 2017 whimpers in under the radar. Version 12.0 has very little for me. Your usage may vary. But, this is all a normal part of the process as software matures. And, have no doubt, InDesign is matured—the best in the field. To restate things, InDesign can now do almost anything you need. It’s been that way for me since CC 2014. The result is that the engineering team adds features which apply to smaller … Continue reading →

Cover design: A wonderful crosshatching video for ink drawing…

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I found this today, going through my emails. It is beautiful and wonderful. About five minutes… Dan Nelson’s delightful Cross Hatching library teaching ink illustration Does this take a lot of time? Duh! Is it satisfying? Yes. How does it compare to knitting, embroidery, painting, and all the rest? It’s just another opportunity to learn to get in touch with the things which matter in your life. It can be cathartic therapy, all the way to gentle … Continue reading →

Studying poster design to help your covers

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CREATIVE PRO HAS AN EXCELLENT ARTICLE TODAY on poster design. I mention this because authors without the trained eye of the designer make embarrassing design mistakes because this knowledge is not part of their understanding. Self-publishers must train their eyes Books like Ellen’s shown above are a real help as you expand your knowledge beyond the narrow confines of writing and editing. What writers are normally not aware of is the constant visual input which is the … Continue reading →

A short note about ebook licensing for your fonts

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As a font designer, Monotype is the biggest and best. They have all the top sites: fonts.com, myfonts.com, itc.com, and several more. They are the sites used by the pros, primarily. At the least, the pros sell their fonts there also. These places are where my fonts are sold, in most cases. Ebook licensing is very new I have the entire Adobe library and several others, maybe 4000 fonts total. None of them are licensed for anything other … Continue reading →

Pictures on Kindle remains a crap shoot

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I don’t do this as often as I should (read other people’s books on self-publishing). It’s not because I don’t think they have good things to offer. Mainly it’s the result of a reasoning and a fact. First, I don’t want to accidentally plagiarize someone while writing. So, I tend to keep others’ writing out of the memory banks. Second, most non-fiction on book publishing is far too expensive for my little budget. But I picked up a copy … Continue reading →