Proposition 4

Now that it is successfully concluded, here is an I.D. design I did for a local Special Tax initiative.

Word count in InDesign CS3

While working on an annual report, we wanted to blockout copy for the copywriter so he knew how much to write. We put in greek text as a placeholder and fit the copy into the layout. Then used the info feature to count the words in each story. As usual, I went to Google for a quick working explanation and found this helpful link, Word count in InDesign CS3.

Watch that wireless

What do I have to do with homeomorphism and face recognition? Not a lot really. But it came spitting out of my wireless printer last night. Spooky. I believe that one of my neighbors accidentally found my wireless printer on their printer que and hit the button to "print" without looking. That means my printer has a range of more than fifty yards. Impressive. The only relevance this has to do with graphic design is that we print a lot and should be aware of flukes in this wireless environment. Ta ta. (By the way, I use "ta ta" as a signoff or saying "good bye" but when I looked it up it said it was a greeting.)

Some logo samples

The Emily files

Emily, my post-graduate graphic design student, is working for me. She did a series of ads for the Teton County Fair and several for a ballot issue campaign that goes along with the 2010 primaries. I will post some samples when the panic mode is off.

Update

Wow, two comments that weren't family. Emily is now a Graphic Design Graduate and living with us in Jackson prior to moving to Seattle.

I'm still designing and rather busy. Doing a free-lance gig too. Helping my tenant and printshop friend stay in business so she can keep paying rent. That's not the only reason. She does great work and I think she is an asset to the local design community.

More later.

Annual Report Crash

Something happened that I have never experienced before—an indesign document got damaged and started crashing the entire application. Every time I tried to execute a command, set type, add or delete something, the document crashed, taking InDesign with it. This was a large document with sections and thus would be difficult to rebuild. Also, I did not have a comp with all the latest changes.

Luckily, I was able to open the document and drag all the content into a new duplicate document. I feel very fortunate to have that much access to the damaged document. So far, the dupe is working fine.

Anyone else have crash/fix stories they would like to share?

InDesign tricks

I would be lost without the internet. I was trying to print an annual report comp out paginated, so I could simply stitch it together just as it would be printed at the printer. several sources pointed me n the right direction to accomplish what I wanted to do.

Under the "File" menu, at the bottom is a "Print Booklet" command. Check it out if you are trying to make a comp or create booklets for a project.

A trick for making your page numbers appear on top of your page layout elements is to create a new layer and copy and paste the auto page number on your master page into the top layer. After that they will appear on top of screened backgrounds, bleed photos or other page elements that occupy the same space as the page number.

It pays to spend some time field testing InDesign to see what features you can incorporate into your workflow. Keyboard shortcuts are another set of tools for making your projects go more smoothly as you maneuver your layouts.