Hello all.
This post follows a really good article by Mark Boulton about good typography I read, and specifically, how to deal with bullet points. Below are 2 images he gives to demonstrate how bullet points should and should not look.
The problem here, as Mark Boulton points out, is that modern graphic software such as InDesign, is not set up to deal with bullets correctly. I have often been guilty of bad typography in this area in the past...when you are doing a project such as a credential brochure which needs to get out the door yesterday, it is really easy to just use InDesigns basic bullet settings in the style sheet bullet options. And in fact for a long time I was probably ignorant to the fact that indented bullets which made the text block start indented didnt look quite as good as when it all lined up. Anyway, having read the article, I experimented and thought - actually this looks MUCH better. Try it yourself, go on!
However the problem still remained that to acheive this in InDesign was not easy without doing each text column as a seperate text box or doing the bullets in different text boxes etc. What I wanted was to be able to flow all the text into one text box divided into columns which would still be the correct way to deal with hanging punctuation. Anyway, with much experimentation I think this is a good way to achieve good typography when dealing with bullet points in InDesign. It is still a work around and I am sure many of you have other ways which I would be delighted to hear about.
Firstly, before we start, this process of designing with a page divided into columns requires the bullets to be in the column gutter. For this reason it may be neseccary to have larger column gutters than usual. This tutorial will be made using paragraph styles. For more information on how to use paragraph styles check out here.
First step is to set up a column grid. In this case we will use a 4 column grid with a gutter width of 7mm. To do this go to Layout > margins and columns.
Next we will create the text box. Because it is not possible for bullet points to appear outside the text box, we must start the text box before the page grid, which then allows us to start the bullets before the grid and then indent all the text to align with the grid. So for this example we will start the text box at 3.5mm outside the margins. So, the text box starts at 6.5mm x value and will be a width of 197mm, which also brings it 3.5mm over the final column. Bring up your text frame options (object > text frame options) divide the text box into four columns with no gutter width. In order for the bullets to work, we will set up the gutter width manually.
For the purpose of this tutorial, I have placed in some dummy text, but obviously you would flow in the real rext. As you can see it is without much form at the moment. So lets add some!
The first thing we will do is style the body text to align with the grid. Bring up your paragraph pallette (window > type and tables > paragraph). Put the left indent at 3.5mm and the right indent at 3.5mm. I have also added some space after, based on the leading I have set the font in which in this case is 10pt. Basically what we have done here is build in a gutter width, but without using actual gutters. This will allow us to control what is actually appearing in the gutter of our column grid. If you had set these gutters up in the text box, you would not be able to access this space.
Now we will change this into a paragraph style so we can apply it easily to every other section of body text. To do this, highlight a bit of the body text and bring up your paragraph styles (window > type and tables > paragraph srtyles). Click on the arrow in the top corner and select new paragraph style, I have named mine body text. This will now create a paragraph style based on all the spacing we have placed on the styled body text. Now we can through and apply this to every section of body text, by highlighting or clicking within the paragraph and clicking on the new paragraph style. Now all our body text is styled. Your page should now look something like this. As you can see, the body text, now indented by 3.5mm on both sides has aligned it perfectly with our column grid with 7mm gutters. Now all we need to do is style the bullets.
We style the bullets in much the same way. First thing we need to do is make a tab to specify that after the bullet, the text will line up with the grid. Set the tab at 3.5mm. Now bring up the paragraph pallette again (window > type and tables > paragraph). We want a left indent of 3.5mm again, and also to put the first line spacing as -3.5mm as shown. This will align the bullet 3.5mm outside the column grid. I have also given some space after as previously. Now, make this into paragraph style again and apply it to the bullets throughout. Your page should now look something like this.
And thats it, doesnt it look nice and neat? Hope you enjoyed this tutorial and it was helpful. If anyone has a better way to get a similar effect, would love to hear about it! Also, what are your own opinions on how bullets should look?
Hello all. I always love authentic letterpress type type. You can always tell when this has been achieved and quite often it displays a lovely texturised quality. So today, im gonna try and show how an effect like this can be achieved using photoshop. This tutorial is being done in Adobe Creative Suite CS as this is all I have at home, but all the tools are pretty much in the same place in CS3 and 4 I think.
Step 1.
firstly create the type you would like to texturise. I have created this in illustrator and then copied it across to photoshop. You will need to use a font with a lot of weight to it. It is also good to use quite a classic font. A heavy serif font is quite nice. I have used helvetica neue condensed black. Anyway - plonk it into photoshop and we’re ready to go! Make the document greyscale colour mode as well by going Image>Mode>Greyscale. This just suits the purpose for what we are doing and you can always add colour later if desired.
Step 2.
OK so we have our plain black text in photoshop. Now we want to start roughing it up a bit. We are going to use a set readymade photoshop tutorial to begin with to add some roughness to the edges. Go to Filter > Artistic > Paint Daubs. Set the brus size at 3, the sharpness at 3, and the brush type at simple. As you can see this has just taken some of the perfection from around the edges.
Step 3.
We are now going to add some texture to the whole of the type, not just the edges. Firstly, create a new layer. Now go to filter > render > clouds. A grey kind of cloud effect should fill the screen as your top layer. This just offers us some different tones to start playing with.
Its still quite light though, so lets darken it up a bit. Go to image > adjust > brightness contrast. I have taken the brightness down to about 70 as I want wuite a strong black. Now lets add some grainy texture. Go to filter > noise > add noise. I have et my amount to 40 and kept the distribution set to 40. Press ok, and you will be able to see the cloudy effect now has a grainy dark quality to it. But…its still just filling the whole screen. On the layer palette, select the layer as screen and you will now see the effect is only visible over they type. Already we have a really nice textury stampy letter effect.
Step 4.
With me so far? good. Don’t worry there is nt too much more now. Lets flatten our image before we go any further. On the layer pallette, click on the options arrow in the top right hand corner and select flatten image. Now we simply have to add some finishing touches. At this stage I always like to darken the image again and add some more contrast to suit my taste. To do this simply select, image > adjust > brightness contrast again but you might not need to. Finally, it is time t just go over the edges a bit more. This I do by hand, using a textured brush on the eraser tool. Set it to about 90% opacity and carefully do over some of the edges to add a bit more texture. This is most effective on the corners. Be careful not to overdo it though as subtelty is the key here.
And thats all there is to it! You have a nice textury effect. You can now add colour to it, place it over images, invert it etc. It can sometimes be that little bit of detail you need. Below you can see the finished version and also a version where I have inverted it to white and overlayed it on an image. I hope you found this tutorial useful. Any questions or feedback, I would love to hear!
all the best and please leave a comment.
I think this is something that has caught the eye for a long time now, but increasingly in recent years. I have been experimenting with doing a doodle type style for a poster, and although it is not yet decided if it will go ahead yet, I still think its an awesome effect. Attached to this post are a number of examples I found on places like flickr and google and one great advert as well. When experimenting, I found they key is to be patient and have a little faith. It takes a while to take shape.
This was my effort, as you can probably tell its not finished yet, but I actually thought this was probably the best time to show it. When I started, and still on the right hand side, itdoesnt look grea, but stick with it and it starts to look ok. I think the great thing about this is that to an extent anyone can do this. All it takes is basic shapes and overworking the page with lots and lots of pen ink. I sketched it out with a pencil frst and then proceeded to colour.
Anyway, would love to hear your thoughts.
Below are some other really cool examples I found.
So we all know that album covers and record sleeves often present some of the most creative design or illustration around. Recently I was reading in Grafik. about the Keane Under the Iron Sea album design with illustrations by Sanna Annuka (http://www.sanna-annukka.com/portfolio/#) and found the whole process fascinating. So I decided to write a blog on album cover design.
But heres where I hit a stumbling block. What to choose as a showcase. There is some marvelous design out there and I would point viewers to agencies like non-format (http://www.non-format.com/) who specialise in this. However for the purpose of this article I will focus on The Beatles album covers. They have a fascinating variation which spans across a long and changing time period.
1. Revolver
There is little doubt that the Beatles were progressive with their music, and their album covers certainly mirrored this. Here on revolver we see a original mix of illustration and print by illustrator Klaus Voorman, himself a guitarist of some note.
Firstly a word on the illustration. The hand drawn feel and simplicity are truly refreshing. Klaus achieves a distinct likeness to four of the worlds most famous faces with such a simple use of line and shape. He also seems to capture the likeness of the characters. Lennons eyes and nose seem to shout out confidence where more innocent open eyes of George Harrison portray a more thoughtful demeanor. I also love simplicity of the black and white look of the album.
The album has a collage-y feel, with the combination of Robert Whitakers photography and the illustrations. This is a technique that is ever popular in todays design environment, but it is important to note that techniques would have been for more difficult and time consuming before our good old friend the Mac arrived. When done well it is spectacular and it is the black and white colouring throughout that presents it being over-crowded. The style of the placement of the photographs around the faces almost fits into the abstract art movement that was still evident in the 1960’s.
The name of the album itself also contains meaning with revolver a pun on a kind of hand gun (incidentally the first idea for a name was abracadabra…glad they went with revolver) as well as a reference to the revolving motion of a record on a turntable. So from a conception point of view it is also interesting.
Typographically the text of the word revolver fits in with the style of the whole cover. It is in a simple san serif font, thick and clear and still has that hand made feel somehow. Personally I love this cover. It is experimental and yet simple. It also fails to look dated which many album cover artwork fails to achieve.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Revolver_(album)
Sgt Peppers Loely Hearts Club Band
Probably the most famous of the beatles packaging, design and music-wise a multi award winner, this cover and record sleeve design was created by art director Robert Fraser (one of the biggest supporters of modern art in Britain), designed by Robert Blake and photographed by Peter Blake. It was made up by a clourful lifesize collage of cardboard cut-outs. Incidentally, this was favoured by an original painting pictured below.
The design very much contains pop art and psychedelic art movements, and opened up to a picture of the Beatles in dress on a bright yellow background. It was originally thought to contain a bag of ‘lonely hearts club goodies’ but this was rejected for cost implications.
Similar to the Rubber Soul cover, this has quite a hand made feel from the collage technique. The collage is made up of the Beatles’s heroes, and also contains a photograph of the band members from the early 60’s. All the characters overlook a grave with The Beatles written in flowers. The thought is that the early version of the mop topped band is dead and buried, to be replaced by a more meaningful one. The album name, is displayed on the drum is a psychedelic patterned style.
The album cover is surely one of the most famous ever and has an overcrowded feel to it. It is packed full of insignia and meanings, whilst being truly original. In a similar way to Revolver, it has stood the test of time. I think if no one had seen this design and it was released today, it would still be marvelled at.
The Beatles (more commonly known as The White Album)
I like this album, it has such a minimal look, and instead concentrates on subtle printing techniques to make it special. The music within was written and in most parts recorded unplugged and the cover design echoes this simplicity. It presented a deep contrast to its predecessor Sgt Peppers’s bright colours.
The record sleeve design was produced by renowned Pop artist Robert Whitaker, and plays on the minimalist art movement that was around at the time. The original design consisted on the bands name discreetly embossed just below the middle. It also contained a serial number to create, in Hamilton’s own words, “the ironic situation of a numbered edition of something like five million copies.” Later releases in the had the name printed in grey as opposed to embossed, but still maintained the simplistic approach. The original releases of the CD also contained serial numbers, which presented a uniqueness to every copy.
The inside of the sleeve involved photography by John Kelley, contained harshly lit and moody photographs of the band, as well as a large poster. Incidentally it was the first album of theirs to not have a photo of the 4 members on show on the front cover. Later cassette versions also contained gold foil printing on black tapes.
The typography is just as simple as the design with a simple execution using what I believe is Helvetica. In this case all the white space placed the emphasis solely on the type. Even with the embossing this would have made it quite impactful.
I think this sleeve really gives us a view of world of record sleeves rather than plastic CD cases. Not to take anything away CD cover design, but imagine how spectacular a music store would have been, containing hundreds of these large scale fold out covers.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Beatles_(album)
Yellow submarine
Yellow submarine was a release alongside the more successful animated film by Canadian-born animation producer George Dunning. Conceptually the album was based more or less solely on the film, so for the purpose of this blog I will write about this. The concept of the film was pretty abstract. It is set in Pepperland a music filled paradise under the sea. The story involves the 4 band members going on an epic and colourful journey, to save Pepperland and defeat the ‘blue meanies’ (a slang term for bad politicians or the police).
The cover artwork is influenced by the abstract and psychedelic art movements around in the 1960’s. The illustrations are colourful and rounded. The setting, in contrast to other animations of the time, such as Disney features, involved a more abstract environment that could not exhist in the real world. Other animators who worked on the movie are Paul Driessen, Cam Ford, Anne Jolliffe, Tony Cuthbert, Geoff Collins, Jim Hiltz, Ron Campbell and Hester Coblenz. It is very playful and experimental. I guess the style of the movie and album artwork mirrored that of McCartney songs, and in fact he also had a large input into the concept.
The style is thought to resemble acid trip, flower power style pop art. Typographically this is also the case. The font, which I think is Amelia (confirm anyone?) is the same. It is rounded and also double imaged, giving even more of a psychedelic feel. The grey space surrounding it, draws the line of site towards it, making the illustration an afterthought, and not overpowering.
I really like the illustration here, and again I think it is important to realise the context of the timing. It was not overly common that a pop band had such free conceptual ideas.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yellow_Submarine_(album)
Abbey Road
I thought I would write about this simply because of the iconic symbol it has become, but actually it was one of the more understated in terms of design and production. The concept was thought of and directed by Apple records creative, Kosh (couldn’t find a first name!). The image was taken by photographer Iain Macmillan, who was given only ten minutes to take the shot at 11.30 one morning.
The insignia in the album is meant to portray that of a funeral with the police car in the background a hurst. The clothes of the band are also thought to represent this. Harrison a grave digger, McCartneys lack of shoes indicate a corpse, Starkey an undertaker, and Lennons all white a priest. The design added to the conspiracy theory rumours that Paul McCartney was in fact dead.
Typographically the album name is on the rear, being written as you might expect as a road name would be on a wall. The song names are written just plainly toward the bottom left, and lack legibility. I guess the idea is to keep the emphasis solely on the image, but I actually think it looks a little dated and should be more considered. Though this album is my least favourite design wise, it has probably become the most iconic of them all.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abbey_Road_(album)
Well I hoped you enjoyed the post, please correct me if I have got anything wrong. So whats your favourite? anything to add to this? also please check out my other entries on www.freddesign.co.uk.
I am new to blogging and still finding my way so any feedback would be appreciated.
Having recently read about German graphic designer otl aiche and in build up to the London 2012 games, I have decided to do a post about the different designs for olympic posters. This is in fact not a very original subject, but in my research I did find that there was lots of pictures and not THAT much actual critique from a design point of view. So thats what im gonna try to offer hopefully. Obviously there has been a massive amount of designs over the years, so what follows is my top 5 favourite poster designs. Hope you enjoy.
1980 Moscow, USSR
This was a strange one for me, so I have decided to feature it as much over interest as design reasons. Moscow actually had the most featured events to any previous olympics the olympics with 203 in total. Also, the United States, followed by 60 further countries, boycotted in protest of the Soviet war with Afghanistan. In total there were over 250 types of posters with 18.75 million copies printed which is a massive amount. Unlike most olympics, there was actually not that much consistency throughout the different poster designs. Below are some examples of the different different posters and contrast in styles. As you can see, the illustration is very varied and whilst this makes for interesting viewing from our part, probably didnt make for building a consistent brand and identity for the Moscow Olympics across all media. Even the use of the logo/emblem is varied with some of the below skewing it directly out of shape - a big no no in any design theory, surely! Also, some of the artwork was thought to rip off that of the 1976 Olympics, with a redesign, which didnt change much, of the ever popular and influential pictograms of the 1976 Olympics (featured later in this post).
So for the purpose of this blog I have decided to talk about the main design which I actually really like. It was designed by Wladimir Arsentjev and consists of a flame type shape stemming from the olympic rings with a red star at the top of some the crisp lines. It has a simple flat colour quality, with such strong flat colour and use of shape giving it a clean, and almost retro and modern feel at the same time. I also love the gold and red together. It is a combination I would not have automatically considered, but the red stands out perfectly. And of course, the was the symbolic colour of the soviet union, so it is approriate too.
The poster also has a symetrical quality which reflects the olympic logo itself. I suppose this would be one of the challenges when working with a logo as well known as the olympic 5 rings. Where do you position it? This poster almost works solely around it which is definetely the right idea. In fact in terms of showing the rings in the best way, it could be considered one of the more effective poster designs.
Montreal 1976, Canada
The Montreal Games were designed by the Graphics and Design Directorate, and featured 2 sets. The first concentrated on the flag, mascot and stadium, and the second on the sports themselves. The mascot consisted of a beaver called 'Amik' wearing a ribbon of COJO colours. The stadium poster involved geometric drawings overlaying flat coloured stripes.
The second set of posters concentrated on the individual events and a photographic route was favoured with action based photography.
I really like the beaver. Its such a simple form with basic geometric shapes. Its also undeniably kinda cute! And the three stripes down the middle really emphasise the shape and add a stroke of positivity and contrast to the hard black shape.
I also love the logo. I suppose it is quite strange in a way as it is directly editing the classic olympic rings which is obviously contraversial. But the form is really elegant. George Huel was also keen on the minimal approach, 'Munich used two symbols, I wanted to work with one symbol, clean and simple'. The three curves sprouting up are actually meant to represent three things, a podium, a running track and also an M for Montreal. The podium definetely stands out the most for me, and although it doesnt really resemble an M much in my opinion as this has 2 points and not 3, I still kinda see it. But like I say, its still much more about the basic form for me.
1972 Munich, Germany
This is one of the most memorable and celebrated of designs from renound German graphic designer otl aiche. The idea and the brief in the Munich olympics, was to erase the memory of the last German held olympics in 1936, often dubbed the 'nazi games'. So the thought was for the design to contain a colour sequence that had no resemblance to anything 'agressive nationalism'. And indeed the posters did this, with colours almost illuminous and a cheerful feeling throughout. Missing is the hard black and red of the German National flag.
Personally I love this design, it is classic and elegant, but even now has a contemporary feel to it as well. The imagery, following the pallette is knocked out to a few simple colours, and the brightness combined with the photographs have such energy to them. The different colours and the variations within the posters, also give it a national feel, almost symbolic of flags themselves.
The logo itself is a kind of spiral symbol, again containing an optimism that is evident throughout. I also love the way they apply it, with beautifully crafted typography seperated with the thin lines. This cleaness and elegance in fact is evident throughout all the materials with a clean use of colour, simplicity and good typography. Essentially this clean approach is what everything comes down to for this set.
And the designs too were influential, with a new set of pictograms that have been used in sport ever since and have also influenced public signs on a broarder field. There were literally hundreds of these, and the way they boil the detail down to the simplist form is to be admired. To differentiate each must have been an enormous challenge whilst still keeping it recognisable to the native disciplines. Easy to see in fact why this has since become such a design classic.
Tokyo 1964, Japan
I have put this one in because of its lovely simple form and simplicity. This was designed by Prof. Cho Yong-je of Seoul National University in 1984 and it is probably the simplest of all designs, but also arguably the most noticable. Like some other posters it makes a big use of the olympic logo and leaves this unchanged. The whole poster seems to work round them, which is good designing right? It also has a real kind of japanese art quality, even though it is made using such simple text and shapes.
The other posters in the set, use dramatically lit photography with a hard contrast between the dark and light colours. The design on the original poster is carried through these posters too in the form of a bottom strip at the bottom. It maintains the boldness and simplicity that makes it so effective. All the posters were used using photoengraving, which highlighted the technology of the Japanese printig idustry and actually resulted in the whole project winning several awards including the prestigious Milan Design Award.
1968 Mexico
Throughout my research, I found lots of criticism for olympic posters altogether but especially for this one. However, despite that and although I can understand claim of illegibility and head aches through the hypnotic patterns, I have to say I really like this. Again it has a contemporary feel to it. Looking at it, it is imediately impactful with stark uses of colour applied well to the complex forms of repeating lines. The concept as well though is fascinating with the black and white lines taking influence from the famous patterns created by the Huichole Indians, an indigenous ethnic group of western central Mexico. The poster itself was a joint creation from Pedro Ramirez Vazquez (an architect), Eduardo Terrazas (President of the Organizing Committee of the Games) and an American, Lance Wyman (who also originally designed the Mexico 86 logo).
The logo itself links in with the olympic rings which looks pretty good. I suppose one criticism could be that it is not all that easy to see, but it is also almost central to the whole design and especially on the black and white ones, the colours help it stand out.
The colours generally are quite bright and positive with some more sombre ones as well. The imagery is dealt with in a similar way to some of the other olympic posters, with simplified tonal colour uses. Overall it is simple and works pretty well.
My favourite part though is definetely the logo. I love the circular ketter forms and the way it all feels linked.
After thought.
So there we have it...thats some thoughts and facts around various olympic posters. Hope you enjoyed. To end this post, I would like to say a bit about the London 2012 design. There is no official poster yet, but we have all seen the logo. I remember reading an article about the logo and finding it really interesting. Much of the idea of placing different images inside of the forms and the flexibility of this is really interesting. I also like some of the angles they have. I just think that overall the design looks really like an intro to a kids show. I definetely dont like the choice of font for London. It also looks like its a lowercase l. Most odd. My design colleague pointed me toward the logo by Daniel Eatock (http://www.eatock.com/projects/alt-02-olympic-2012-logo/) the other day, which I thought was fantastic. The simplicity of the form is great and the idea is a really simple one, but one not really noticed before. Looking at all the poster designs over the years, the ones that stick out for me are the more simple approaches. It is just my opinion, but I think that because the process requires you to combine a new style with the olympic rings, it requires a simplistic approach. Sometimes design is as much about restraint as creativity. Anyway - hope you enjoyed the post. Would love to hear your comments.
