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.

Orange won

Re: "Will Orange Survive" the project is complete and orange indeed won out. The backgrounds of the directory signs are orange as well as the large letters identifying the building. WIll post photos soon—although it is snowy and nasty here right now and I am not inclined to go out and get pictures of anything.

Social Networking, et al

During my long, three-month absence, I took up Twitter and Facebook. While I think they are both huge time wasters, they provide a new dimension of communication at arm's length. Now with re-tweets I can share some of the creative sources I have found. Otherwise the only "Push" is to friends and relatives I don't get to see very much.

For instance, I connected with a classmate from design school who is on top of a lot of creative sources and organizations.

You are probably more up on Stumbleupon than I am but choosing graphic design as a topic led me to some useful sites. Some great Photoshop tutorials, an interesting typographic Flash® video and a photography site that reminded me of how much I don't know.

I met an author, yes, a real author with published novels and everything. He uses a little application called "Freedom" to keep him from wandering into the online wonderland while he is trying to write. Enforced discipline. All of this can eat up time and/or provide a series of counter themes when you are trying to come up with a creative solution.

In my stumbles, I found this list of classic web sites you should see.

Proud of my kid(s)

Not that I favor one over the other but to each their own. Emily Thompson, my daughter who is studying graphic design at MSU in Bozeman, MT has had two pieces submitted for Addy award consideration. I will be ecstatic if she wins but am just as happy she was recognized even this much.

Blogcatalog.com

For grins I searched Finegan Thompson and the number two item that came up in Google was my blog—as cataloged on this handy site.

I was skeptical about doing this but though, "Can't hurt" and now there I am. Better than Linkedin.