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The cat’s in the bag
I was playing around with my cat last weekend and I couldn’t help but snag a couple more shopping bags for just this purpose. I laid the shopping bag down, set up my flashes and sure enough Mr. Morris walked right in š
Easy wordle fun!
Make your custom text cloud
Today I stumbled on a fun little site called wordle and the concept is simple. You just paste in a bunch of text and hit generate. After that you can choose a color scheme, pick a font and delete words you don’t like. If you don’t like what it makes you can hit randomize and change settings for an infinite number of possibilities. Below I pasted in a list from our degrees and certificates page and got the tag cloud below. I took was generated andĀ played around in photoshop with various inverse and overlay effects to make theĀ banner for one of our web pages. Check outĀ wordle and have some word fun!
Metal up your type
The purpose of design is to communicate a message and therefore I believe special effects should be used only if there is a reason to use them. This means it’s probably rare that you’ll need to create metal type but as a designer you should know the concept of how to do it even if you’ll only do it once in your career.
Above is an image of a banner I did for our college website to congratulate one of our star alumni who played in the Superbowl. To match the emblem for the Superbowl it called for some silver type.
In addition to that I needed to remind students it was time to submit their applications for graduation. Both were going to be shown on the same page so I thought the gold and silver would compliment each other and contribute to the overall message that each was trying to convey.
Below are the settings I used in Adobe Photoshop CS5 to get both the gold and silver effect. You’ll have to vary it a little depending on your type face and point size. This will just give you and idea so you know how to shape the metal to your specifications!
Silver type
Type something. It doesn’t really matter the color or the type but in the case above I used Trajan and black but you can use any color. Then click on the layer style effects at the bottom of the layers palette and apply the settings for the various blending options:
For Gold type just add a gradient overlay for the gold color:
The color I used here is #cfa51a and #fff6b8 for the light color
Tangerine Tango Sunrise?
Apparently every year Pantone (the world authority on color) picks a color. For 2012 it’s Tangerine Tango (Pantone 17-1463). You can download the color palette from their website.
I was a bit intrigued by the color choice for this year and realized they might be right. I have been leaning towards warm charged colors for a little while now. I wondered what would have happen if I did a little color overlay on a sunrise I recently took. Below is the that tangerine tango overlay and here is a link to the original.Ā It’s a subtle difference but see what you think!
Another daily post blog
Just announcing that I am starting up my daily image blog again that I did back in 2010. I was focusing on other things in 2011 but a daily post even if small really helps you when you look back on things.
I will have it separate from my main blog so I don’t muddy it up with my daily dribble. You can still see it though if you care to by looking at the RSS feed on the right.
Google web font plugin for Photoshop by WebINK
A little while back I posted about free web fonts from Google and how I used them in a small project.
I found a nifty free little plugin for plugin for Photoshop CS5 from WebINK that allows you design with Google web fonts right inside Photoshop CS5.
First create an account with WebINK and download their plugin. Once downloaded you’ll activate it through Window > Extensions > Extensis. You will have to sign into your account.
Once loaded you will get a list of all the premium WebINK fonts but you can switch and from the drop down menu to choose some of the free Google web fonts from the list. Google doesn’t have as big a variety as WebINK and you can’t get perhaps the exact font you want from google but now you have choices.
What helps is a visual picture of what they look like. To select you must not be in the edit mode of the type. Just select the layer with the type and choose the font. The plugin will treat all type on that layer with the font you choose. This really helps when designing to actually see what the font will look like. Below is a screen grab of just how easy it is to select.
