Top 5 Graphic Design Lessons from 2014

Happy New Year everyone! May 2015 be the year you take one more step towards achieving your dreams and create new art! Here is just a few lessons from this last year. Starting off with number five and counting down throughout January!

5.The Importance of Vectors (And Creative Cloud)

Vector images are where math and art collide. Rather than using individual pixels, vectors use mathematical formulas to calculate paths of various colors to create an image. The bonus to working with vector software to design is the ease of scaling an image. When an image is a raster image (pixel based image) it is difficult to enlarge the photo without stretching the pixels too much. Last fall, I purchased a subscription to Adobe Creative Cloud and it was one of the best decisions I have made for designing. Illustrations made with vectors can be shrunk down as small as needed or scaled to massive sizes. The picture of the corgi shows that when scaled for detail, vector illustrations can preserve the details far better than an image made with pixels.

What are the main uses for a raster image then?

• Photos
• Larger images
• Photoshop

What are the main uses for vector images?

• Logos and other graphic design
• Scale-friendly images
• Illustrator

Over this past semester, I've worked with Adobe Illustrator (see my last blog post about one of my pieces here) and the versatility is amazing. Illustrator and Photoshop really work hand in hand when you want to incorporate raster images with vector elements. Although, Illustrator displays vectors, on the web vectors must be converted to raster format.

If you have any questions or want to share your vector art, just comment! Tune in next week to see what is next!

Image Sources:
http://www.psprint.com/resources/difference-between-raster-vector/

http://www.psprint.com/resources/wp-content/uploads/difference-between-raster-and-vector.jpg

First Free Desktop Background - Fist

What is a mix of photography, awesome editing, and procrastination? The free image in this this post! This week I was inspired by something I heard at a seminar to create this image. I believe it was my pastor who said, "Never quit on a bad day". To view the full size and download the background you can use this link. This is my first free desktop background to ever create and I want to share it with all my readers. It is 1200 x 1600 and will probably fit most screens. If you just play around with the settings, you should be able to get it centered just right.

It took me about 80 tries to get the right photo of my fist. Yes, that is my own hand, which made it quite difficult to take the picture. What is more, I used my right hand for the picture. After struggling to get my left hand to take the picture correctly, I recommend finding a hand model for anyone interested in doing their own photography with hands.

Pictured left is the base for the background. Editing the photo took quite a lot of trial and error. I used Photoshop for the majority of the editing and Picasa for the final touch ups. The background seen in the picture is my sister's black blanket, which meant that background inherently had wrinkles and a cloth texture. Using the magic wand in Photoshop, I removed the background completely and refilled it with black. Next, I added a new layer and filled it with red. On the same layer, I changed the layer setting to difference. Then, I added a paper texture to the image. Lastly, I fixed the lighting and added in some grungy effects. The font was an easy choice but getting the size right was tricky, due to the number of words on each line. Overall, I'd say the whole thing took maybe around three to four hours.

Hope you guys like the background! Share it with your friends!

P.S. - Just wanted to let you all know that my blog has been viewed on 3 of the 7 continents! Thank you all so much for taking time from your day to read my blog!

Free Phone Background - Love in the Air

Lately, I have been experimenting with creating clouds in Photoshop and here is the product! It is a vertical phone background and it will work for iPhones. Today, I am going to share how I made this background. Although I usually just post the backgrounds for everyone to share, today I feel like writing a more lengthy post.

To create the appropriate blue hue for the sky, I started with a light blue and a slightly darker blue. Not too different because the difference would have been obvious. The background is a gradient of the two different blues. I wanted it to be the same hue of a Texas sunny day.

For the clouds, while they appear white, they are actually a lighter version of the sky blue. It is close to white but not quite. All clouds are pretty unique so I tried to make each cloud as unique as I could. Except for the cloud hearts above the, "I"s in the words, "is" and, "air" because I wanted those to match.

Lastly, I added the words on top of the picture. This time, they started out white. To get the cloudy color on the words, I faded the words until they looked as desired. Placing the words was a bit more challenging because it was difficult to read the words when they were placed on top of the clouds. I also wanted to keep in mind the iPhone tool bar at the bottom of the screen. If placed too low, the words cannot be read. To finish the picture, I added my logo and faded it a bit to ensure it doesn't distract from the whole picture.

The inspiration from this picture actually comes from all the engagements, weddings, and babies that have been happening in the lives of my friends and family. (Well, no babies in my family... yet.) Seeing all my friends and family grow up, move out, and start families of their own has made me think that there must be something in the air.

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1 Corinthians 13:4-7 "4 Love is patient and kind. Love is not jealous or boastful or proud 5 or rude. It does not demand its own way. It is not irritable, and it keeps no record of being wronged. 6 It does not rejoice about injustice but rejoices whenever the truth wins out. 7 Love never gives up, never loses faith, is always hopeful, and endures through every circumstance."