Lena – Desktop Publishing

by Lena - December 15, 2013

Lena – Final Project

Well, I’m much happier with the second go. I particularly like the full panel photo on the left inside flap. The Polaroid effect I learned from this site: https://indesignsecrets.com/polaroid-pix.php — It’s a very neat and easy trick that I am sure I’ll use again.

Overall, I found this project to be really fun. 1) There was stuff I wanted to do and I knew how to do it! 2) It was different to create something for a real purpose. 3) Although I was creating this for a friend’s company, it was still tough to get timely responses from him and he wasn’t able to hunt down high resolution versions of some of the photos I wanted to use (that I found on the company website)… So I learned some real-world lessons of what it’s like to work with a client.

by Lena - December 11, 2013

Lena – Final Project in progress

For my final, I’m designing a brochure for my friend’s company Northern Alaska Packrafts. They sell and rent Alpacka Rafts for adventures in the backcountry. I am lucky because they already have a nice company logo and a lot of information and photos on the website. In fact, there’s too much information, and I find the brochure to be too text heavy so far.

I created a color palette on Adobe Kuler based on the two blue colors in the logo… but I found the pale background blue to be too blah, so I tried the alternating colors on p.1 (the outside of the brochure).

I downloaded a very basic brochure template, which only had fold outlines. I’ll probably have a look at some example brochures or other templates online to get away from my usual boring boxes. If anyone has any input (please don’t be shy about being critical!), I’m all ears.

by Lena - December 9, 2013December 9, 2013

Lena – Job 12 Book

This was a challenging assignment for me as well. I had some difficulty with the page numbering since my initial page numbers were created as two separate styles, and the book’s page numbering was one style. Once that was resolved, the synchronizing was pretty smooth.

One issue I had that I never figured out was how to make the text box the same size on all of the pages in the book. Although the instructions said to not have “Master Pages” checked when synchronizing, I even tried synchronizing with “Master Pages” checked, and it still did not work. I ended up manually shortening each page’s text box to be above the page numbering. Hmm, maybe I should have tried a text wrap on the footer.

Anyway, the book panel is indeed handy for creating a long document! I do not see myself using it right now since I do not create long documents, but it would be helpful for collaborating with others working on individual pieces. I was really impressed with how quickly everything synchronized (and how easy it was to synchronize multiple times). I love the Table of Contents creation in InDesign. So much better than Microsoft Word!

by Lena - December 2, 2013December 2, 2013

Lena – Job 11 Effects

This is a pretty neat trick to create very different combinations with one color. However, I don’t know if I’d be able to recreate any of these very easily, i.e. I’m not sure which blending mode I did to which shape in which order! 🙂

If I had to pick one, I think I like the last one best.

by Lena - November 28, 2013

Using the Eyedropper tool to copy formatting

The eyedropper tool can be used to copy stroke, fill, character, paragraph and object settings! The narrator does say that “if you need to apply a lot of formatting throughout a document, styles is a much better way to go”, but it’s still a neat quick-fix trick. Check it out (6:19 video):

https://tv.adobe.com/watch/learn-indesign-cc/using-the-eyedropper-tool-to-copy-formatting/

by Lena - November 19, 2013November 19, 2013

Lena – Job 10 tables

This took forever too, but hopefully the next time I do it it will go faster. I based my table style on the Turkey Research table.

by Lena - November 11, 2013

Lena – Job 9 Final

I used the Postcard A6 Postcard Portrait Single-Sided.indt template for this postcard.

by Lena - November 8, 2013

Lena – Job 9 Graphics

Well, this took me forever! I had a “peace hand” I wanted to add, but gave up on trying to make Omar’s hand bend upward. I had a few other issues too:

With several layers of clothes: shirt, suit, tie, I had to make each one a separate layer.
I couldn’t figure out a good way to draw several ‘polygons’ that all belonged to one polygon, so the shirt is 3 separate objects (shirt + two collar pieces) and the tie is 2 separate objects
I couldn’t figure out to match up anchor points between all of these different layers. In ArcGIS, you can snap points, maybe that’s possible in InDesign too?

by Lena - November 4, 2013

Lena – Midterm Poster

I’ve been managing this Historical Sea Ice Atlas project for almost 2 years, and it’s near completion. So, I decided to create a flyer we might be able to use to promote the sea ice atlas when it’s ready.

The header image is one that was created by a design consultant, and it will also be the header on the actual website. I had a difficult time matching the flyer to the header, getting all the text and logos on there, and matching up the different graphics… In the end I think the whole thing is too busy and a little ugly, but it’s a good starting point. 🙂

by Lena - October 16, 2013October 17, 2013

Lena – Job 6 color

OLD: NEW:

I’m fairly happy with this draft, but I think the color is blah, and overall the poster is a bit dark. Any suggestions? Also, I was super excited to find the dashed line “Japanese dots” for this (snowballs!), but I couldn’t decide whether to have the full dots or half dots as they are now – cut off because printing can’t bleed to the full edge. I actually sortof like them cut off.