Author: India

Measuring the marigolds

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Inchworm

Here’s another thing I looked up for the dozenth time that I thought you, too, might want not to have to look up. I use picas as the default unit in InDesign because I find them far more useful than inches when working with mostly type. But I wanted to tell someone how big an image needed to be, and I wanted to do it in inches, and math is hard!, soooo . . . I knew there was some way to get the units of measurement shown in the control palette to change on the fly, but I couldn’t remember the keyboard command.

The answer, per InDesign Secrets, is CMD+OPT+SHIFT+U on the Mac, or CTRL+ALT+SHIFT+U on Windows. Keep hitting that combo until the palette cycles through to the unit you want.

While trying to find this shortcut, I also came across a CreativePro article, one of whose tips I’d never seen before: InDesign How-To: Six Small Things, Six Big Results. The third, “Sneaky access to options,” was new to me and seems like it’d be useful.

Bonus non-InDesign discovery: Palette Generator: Automagically create a harmonious color palette from a photograph (via The Paper Pony).

Have you looked anything up lately? Do tell.

Photo: Inchworm on the rim of my cup… by seahorse_ / melanie; was licensed CC-by-nc 2.0 on 7/13/07, but the photographer has subsequently changed the license to copyright.

Hot or not: curvy, with a prominent tail?

India8 Comments

rock chick

This just in:

The Psychology of Fonts, commissioned by Lexmark Printers and written by psychologist Dr Aric Sigman explains how a typeface will significantly influence what the reader thinks about you.

Courier is seen as the choice of “sensible shoes” type of people or “anoraks” and curvy icons like Georgia or Shelly suggest a bit of a “rock chick” personality.

So that’s why I like Georgia: I’m a rock chick! Duuuude!!

The study found rectilinear fonts were more appealing to men, while the more round and curvy fonts with prominent tails were favourites with women.

Huh. I wouldn’t have thought it’d shake out in quite that way, but that shows you what I know about the sexes.

(Via Design Observer.)

Photo: erika’s licks by Lex in the City / Alexia; some rights reserved.

Zina Saunders draws (out) art directors

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Steven Heller by Zina Saunders

What I liked about art directing, was that I love working with people and I love pulling strings and love finding artists. And I always liked typography, even though I wasn’t a great typographer. See, an art director can do it all. You can be an editor, you can be a designer, you can be a mover, you can shake things around, you can do formats; I just like the entirety of the process. But as an art director I never really loved photography; I was always much more involved in illustration. I always preferred it.

Illustrator Zina Saunders, who for some time has been posting a series of illustrations of and interviews with other illustrators, has now started working on art directors. Steven Heller is the first.

See also Zina’s several other galleries, and her websites ZinaSaunders.com and Overlooked New York. My favorites: Profile of James, the Super and An Ethnic Treasure Bites the Dust.

Illustration detail copyright © 2007 Zina Saunders. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

Quantity & Quality

India9 Comments

Beer Advent Calendar

I was just reading Nomi Altabef’s report on the How conference was was struck by this sentence—

The first session we attended was a witty walk through the work process of famed book designer Chip Kidd, who is known for churning out almost one book cover a week in his post at Knopf publishing house.

Um, I don’t do covers, but is that volume unusual? Or is it just unusual for a designer of Chip Kidd’s seniority? Because I would have thought that a full-time book jacket designer would be required to do rather more than one book a week.

And anyway, I don’t think “churning out almost one book cover a week” is what Chip Kidd is known for. What he’s known for is the quality of many of those covers.

Photo: New Advent Calendar by crouchingbadger / Ben; some rights reserved.

The lazy days of summer

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Nextbook.org home page, July 2, 2007: Beach

I am so lazy that even though I knew for months that today’s story was in the works, and that the editors kind of wanted an illustration, I didn’t ever get around to commissioning one. Well, also, in my defense, (a) I rarely know what the podcasts are really about before they’re posted—the final edit wasn’t ready for today’s until after noon—and (b) there was talk of taking photographs of the kids who were in the podcast, and I thought I could do something with those. What we ended up with was headshots, though—I ran them inside the story, but they’re not very useful for the home page. Oh, well.

So all I knew was that it would be kind of a “What should kids read this summer?” piece. And I had a vague recollection of some beach scenes on Vanessa Davis’s awesome site, Spaniel Rage, so I dug around until I found the one I was thinking of. I’d been talking with Vanessa since March about various things: first, a three-page bat mitzvah comic from 2005 that we want to reprint, and next, a commissioned illustration for an essay. But neither of those pieces has yet been scheduled to run, whereas this one was urgent, so today some of her older work (this is from 2004) went up first. Go figure.

It’ll be on the home page only through tomorrow morning; then we’ll be posting a different summer reading piece (for grownups), with some of my usual brilliant Flickr-mining on the front. Why didn’t I use this drawing to illustrate that piece, which will be up for two days, over the holiday? Duh. Poor planning.

See you in Seattle?

India4 Comments

Elephant Super Car Wash

Anybody going to TypeCon?

Despite saying last year that “I probably won’t go again,” and despite adding a mental “and especially to the one in Seattle,”* I just registered for, oops, the conference in Seattle. Because I realized that the way things are shaking out, otherwise I’ll end up not taking any summer vacation, and that’s just sad.

So I’ll drag myself out there for a week, see some friends, and maybe visit Vancouver. But also, because I’m already committed to flying across the country, staying in a hotel, and taking days off from work, this year I will be attending two full days of workshops (including “Bezier Curves for Cowards”!!), which I think will make the whole expedition much more fun and worthwhile.

And you?

Photo: elephant car wash by Jason Brackins; some rights reserved.

  • Lived there for a year. Didn’t like it.

How do you find out about design-related stuff?

India7 Comments

Advice

Book designer B., soon moving to New York, wrote today to inquire,

  1. How do you find design jobs?
  2. How do you find out about groups to join for discussing design, books, etc., and for going with to conferences/seminars/talks?
  3. What are your favorite sites for knowing when design-related things are happening?

I get asked this first question every few months, and perhaps you do, too. My answer is always something along the lines of—

I also sometimes recommend that people contact the Lynne Palmer agency, which is a headhunter specifically for book publishing. I’ve never gotten a job through them, except through the power of Magical Thinking—whenever I contact them, I get offered a job by someone else—but I do know that they get cool listings that you will not find online.

For the second and third questions, I have no idea. I skim so many design blogs’ RSS feeds that if something worthwhile is going on, I assume I’ll get wind of it. But maybe I’ve been missing out on all the fun. Are you all going to events and not inviting me?

Please discuss. Tips on entering design communities in other locales also very welcome.

Photo: Advice by NineFingers / dustinotariumatron; some rights reserved.

Two things I looked up today

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Power Tool Drag Race

  1. How to remove all hyperlinks in a Word document:
    Select all, then hit shift-command-F9 on the Mac (or shift-control-F9 on Windows).
  2. Which fonts can be safely deleted in OS X:
    Download the document “Best Practices for Managing Fonts in Mac OS X” from Extensis.com.

These are both things I’ve had to look up a dozen times before. Perhaps you have, too.

Looked anything up lately? Share!

Photo: Power Tool Drag Races by Scott Beale / Laughing Squid; some rights reserved.