When designing websites in the past, I’ve tended to be very logical and practical, especially if I get stuck with something. I make logical choices for positioning, colour and layout. This is really quite an important way to think to create functional, user-friendly websites. However, to create something a bit more special and visually appealing you need add something else to the design. I believe this to be the personal and emotional input that a designer imbues into the work they do.

Without actually thinking about it I think most designers make emotional choices, whether it’s colour, styles or shapes. These help create a site that fits the brand and the intended purpose. Understanding what these emotional cues are will not only make it easier to make the correct decisions when creating a new design, but also allow us to be able to explain to the client exactly why the design should look as it does. This should help us communicate better with the client, and end up with a design that everyone is happy with.

When I started out as a designer I found the idea of creating a brand identity to be a mystical and exciting thing. Putting shapes and words together to create something with it’s own personality, to encompass what a company was about, was quite appealing, but as I developed my skills in both print and web design I discovered that it was something I tended to struggle with, and then just neglect. Then, as I found my interests lay more towards web design, with it’s wonderful mix of problem solving, creative design and programming, I just never quite got around to getting any better at it.

So, around ten years later the idea of creating a brand for myself didn’t even cross my mind. When creating this site, I just naturally created a little ident that I was rather fond of, instead of spending hours thinking of what I wanted my logo to say to other people. Hence, I was rather surprised, and flattered, when David Pache contacted me to ask if he could include my website brand in part 3 of his 100 Brands of Interest.

This has gotten me thinking about my original love for brand identity and how I’ve never quite felt comfortable around it. I believe the time is now to re-examine it. I’ve enjoyed developing my illustration skills, and thanks to iStock’s new product, Logos : Logos come to istock, I have a great new avenue to help me rediscover my lost interest in logo design.

I’ll let you know how I get on!

I was helping out a friend who is almost completely new to design, and discovered that there is very few tutorials explaining the very basics of Illustrator and how to use the tools. The variety of panels and menus can be quite confusing to a beginner and there is very few guides out there to ease a new user to the program. If you’ve not had any training it can be a struggle to teach yourself in the beginning, so here is a simple beginners guide to using Illustrator that I wrote for my friend.

The basic anatomy

The workspace

1. Artboard – This is the main page area that you are drawing on
2. Tool bar – Where all your main creation and editing tools are. This is shown in front of the artboard as a floating panel or attached to the side of the artboard
3. Panels – Where you control and change your shapes. These can be shown attached to the side of the artboard with icons to denote the panel, or they can sit over the artboard.
4. Top menu – This is the usual type of top menu that includes ‘File’, ‘Edit’ etc. This is where you’ll find all tools and options in the menu list format

Tool Bar

Panels

The tool bar

This bar contains the main tools you’ll use.  If you can’t see the tool bar on the artboard then use the top menu to find it.

Window > Tools

There are a few different types of tools in the tool menu, so here is a quick run down of them.

Selection

1. Selection tool - Select an object or grouped objects on the artboard
2. Group selection and Direct selection tools – This lets you select a single object (Group) or a single point/line (Direct). This is useful if you want to edit an object that is part of a group, or edit the shape of an item
3. Magic wand – This lets you select objects with a similar fill colour/pattern
4. Lasso tool - Also a selection tool, just draw a shape and it will select everything within the shape

Object creation (Drawing and typing)

1. Pen tool – This selection of tools let you draw out a shape point by point then edit it. Clicking once and releasing creates a point. If you click and drag you can create a curve.
2. Type tool – Write text with one click, or create a paragraph shape by dragging, then click on this to write text within this text box
3. Line tool – Allows you to draw different types of lines, such as straight, arcs, spirals and grids
4. Shape tools – Draw different types of shapes
5. Paint brush tool – This creates a stroked line using a brush (This can be found in the Stroke and Brush panels)
6. Pencil tool – You can freehand draw a shape or line. If a shape is selected you can also go over the same line again to adjust its shape

Reshaping

1. Rotate tool – Select and object before you select this tool, then you can either double click to enter a rotation, click once on the artboard to the the rotation registration point, or click and drag to rotate the object
2. Scale tool – The scale tool works in a similar way to the rotate tool, but with changing the scale of an object
3. Warp tool – Drag across an objects to change it’s shape
4. Free transform tool -This tool lets you scale and rotate an object using the bounding box handles. These are the little squares shown on the object when it is selected. To maintain the proportions of the object, hold down ‘SHIFT’ while you drag. Holding ‘ALT’ will let you transform the object from the center point rather than a corner.

Additional tools (Painting, graphs and more)

1. Symbol tools – This tool lets you spray paint and edit symbols on the artboard from the symbol library (Symbols can be found in the Symbol panel)
2. Graph tools – This tool lets you create a variety of types of graph. You can select a size and enter the graph details.
3. Mesh tool – You can create and edit mesh lines on an existing shape. Click to create a mesh point then you can adjust the shape and fill.
4. Gradient tool – If you have a shape with a gradient fill (i.e. by using the Gradient panel), then this lets you drag across the shape to change the gradient.
5. Eyedropper tool – If you have one item selected and click on another item it will copy the colour/styles over to your first item.
6. Blend – You can blend two items together. Select either an anchor point or in the middle of each item and the blend tool will blend these together.
7. Live paint tool – Lets you fill in sections of shapes on the artboard. A shape with a hole or different sections in the middle is called a ‘Compound path’
8. Live paint selection – Selects the shape you want to fill

Artboard

1. Crop area – You can select what area of the file you would like to export  (i.e. File >  ‘Save for web’). Double-click to select the options, or you can click and drag.
2. Erase – This tool lets you erase sections of your selected item.
3. Drag – Drags your view of the  artboard
4. Zoom – Click to zoom incrementally, or click and drag the area you want to zoom to.

Colour

1. Colour selections – You can double click on the fill square or outline square to change these colours of the selected shape. You can also click the arrows to switch them. If the colour is white with a red line through it, this means that there is no colour.

There can be little arrows on the bottom corners of a tool. This denote that if you hold the mouse down there is a choice of tools.With some tools, such as the line and shape tools, you can click once and you will be able to type in options for the object, rather than just clicking and dragging on the artboard. Also, for some tools you can also double click to change the tool options.

The panels

These panels I normally have on the right of my screen. If you can’t see them use the top menu:

Window > #Panel Name#

The panels are grouped together with each other and can be selected with tabs. There is also a little arrow on the right that will give you more menu options.

I’ll order these in the approximate order I have them in on the screen

1. Colour – RGB for web stuff and CMYK for print. This lets you drag the arrows to create a colour, or double click for the colour picker
2. Swatches – These are saved colours. You can drag the colour square to the swatches panel to keep it. If you double click on this you can give it a name, change it, or set it as a global colour. Making a colour swatch a global colour will let give you a colour slider for the swatch when selected and you can change the tint.
3. Brushes – These adjust your stroke lines and can be used in conjuction with strokes around the shape and the paintbrush.
4. Symbols – These are little symbols you can re-use again – You can also create your own by dragging them into the symbol panel.
5. Stroke – This lets you set the outline of the shape. You can change different options for your stroke in this panel.
6. Gradient – You can change gradient colours by dragging them on the gradient bar from the swatch panel, you can also drag these little colour squares and change the angle and location options
7. Appearance – This allows you to change the order of the fills, strokes and effects (Shown in the Effects top menu item). You can also add strokes and fills using the arrow option to the right i.e. to create double lines etc.
8. Layers – This allows you to have different shapes on different layers, you can view, hide or lock these as well as change the order
9. Transform – This lets you change the position and size of the shape you have selected. You can also change the angle or skew it. The little link icon on the right after the W and H, lets you either keep the shape in proportion if on or just change one dimension if off.
10. Align – This lets you align shapes against each other, i.e. centre them all together
11. Pathfinder – Use this to cut out or join shapes. Select all the shapes you want to change, then click on one of the pathfinder icons.
12. Character – Basic text options such as font, font size and leading
13. Paragraph – Further text options if you have created text within a paragraph shape

The top menu

1. File – This has your usual, ‘New’, ‘Open’, ‘Save’ and ‘Print’ type options
2. Edit – Basic edit controls such as copy and paste, as well as preferences and settings
3. Object – Controls the shapes on the screen. Some of the basic object controls are:
   • Transform – Changes the shape using ‘Move’, ‘Rotate’, ‘Reflect’, ‘Scale’, ‘Shear’ etc.
   • Arrange – Changes the order of the shapes on the screen. This will change the order only within the selected layer
   • Group – group selected items together
   • Lock – Lets you lock an item so you can’t select it – you can ‘Unlock all’ from here if you want to select them againExpand – This lets you expand text to outlines, and expand compound shapes, effects and fills
   • Rasterize – Creates a flat bitmap image from the object(s) you have selected
4. Type – This is for controlling and editing the text/fonts
5. Select – Lets you select specific items, such as if they have the same fill colour
6. Filter -This menu lets you distort vectors, as well as having a filter menu that can be applied to bitmaps – I suggest you stick to Photoshop for these though.
7. Effects – This menu lets you add effects to items such as Drop shadows and rounded corners as well as other fancy effects. You can find anything you’ve added in the Appearance panel mentioned before. These can be edited or deleted.
8. View – Viewing selections for the artboard, as well as options such as ‘Ruler’ and ‘Guides’
9. Window – Where you find all your panels/tools if you can’t find

Now, getting started…

Hopefully the above has given you a bit of help with how Illustrator is put together, and although it’s not a completely comprehensive guide I know I’ve learned a few things writing this that I hadn’t know before. So, now you’ll need to learn about to actually use Illustrator, for how here is a few useful places to visit.

Useful beginner tutorials/articles

Create an envelope icon – Lovely tutorial to start on
How to create a cute Hippo character
Getting started with Illustrator
Use Adobe Illustrator to create a clean website layout

Resources

Vectortuts+ – Great place for Illustrator tutorials

Smashing Magazine -  find useful tutorials and articles

Blog.Spoon Graphics – 50 Illustrator Tutorials Every Designer Should See

I do. I love gradients and rounded corners, but it’s turning into a sick, sick addiction. Every site I design now is full of gradients and highlights and little rounded corners…but it’s got to stop.

I’m now in the habit of, once I’ve finished designing a page, removing all the rounded corners to decide whether they actually benefit the design or not. However, my gradients and highlights are still a problem. I need to expand my design skills. So, I’m determined that the next site I design will have NO GRADIENTS…just to see if I can actually do it. I’m already a step towards it; the latest illustration that I’m working has no gradients in it at all….um….yet.

I’m building a Flash microsite at the moment with the consideration that it should end up being a re-useable template, as there may be additional microsites in the future. So best way for me to do it is to create classes that control the functionality of the site.

So far I have a main page structure set out. This includes one FLA file that imports a navigation class. This class creates the menu and controls the navigation between pages. I’ve even managed to get SWFAddress working. This lets the user click back and forward on their browser through the Flash site.

I’ve also created a separate class for all of the content pages. This ensures that the actionscript for each page doesn’t interfere with the others. Next steps are really to code the specific pages, add the content and reskin it to fit the design.

I know I’ll have quite a few challenges, and the timescales I have to work on it are really tight, but I’m looking forward to seeing this project through to the end.

When I’m designing a website I normally stick to Arial in most cases, and quite often Georgia if it’s something a bit less businessey (yes, I know that’s not a real word), but I have now discovered my new favourite web safe font.

Look, here it is, Trebuchet MS. I’m finding it very pretty, and rather less formal, so excellent for less corporate sites.

My main problem now is going to be not using it for everything.

It is always really important when starting a project to get under the skin of the product or brand that the design is going to be for. Mostly, this involves getting a lot of information from the client about their brand and product, as well as researching them, and their competitors online, but sometimes you get to do great stuff, like go shopping.

So, on Thursday, for the new project I’m working on, myself and another couple of girls took a trip around the high street stores in Glasgow researching our client’s product and their competitors. Phew, what hard work! But, anyway, apart from a nice day walking around Glasgow, we managed to get really valuable insights about the product, customers and the perception of the brand. It’s now going to be so much easier to create a design that will make the client happy, as well as their current and potential customers.

Well, I’m now rather impressed with myself as iStockphoto have accepted a few of my illustrations. Something I’m going to hopefully be added to reasonaly regularly.

Check me out

I’m trying to decide if I believe in the concept of ‘Creative people’.

It’s something I hear all the time at work. Creative people are meant to be a different breed, man. Free spirits, livin’ in chaos, expressing theirselves, yeh!

Now, I love being creative. I love a variety of creative pursuits, from designing to drawing to painting to crafts, but is this something you develop in yourself, rather than something you are innately born with? I’m not denying that there are some amazingly talented people out there, creative geniuses, perhaps, but the rest of us? I mean, I’m a very logical person, very practical. Being creative is something I’ve learned to do better. I know what web design layouts work, what colours look right together, but this is from experience rather than instinct.

I believe that all of us have the ability to be creative, there are just some of us who spend more time developing it. So, pick up a pencil, start sketching or something, then you can call yourself a ‘creative person’ too.

It’s been a long time since I’ve designed an email, so before I start here are a few basic things that I should consider.

Designing the email

• Who’s it for: While designing the email you should keep in mind who the target audience is. The email should be relevant and interesting to the reader, otherwise it will often be considered to be spam.
• What do you want them to do: You should also think about what you want the reader to do once they have read the email, basically, what is the call to action. This should be simple for the user to find, so keep irrelevant copy and links to a minimum.
• The layout: It’s very important that the reader immediately recognising who the email is from, so keeping the logo to the top left is a good idea. Also consider that the email will be viewed in different browsers and applications and may also be initially viewed in a preview pane. This means you should try to get the message across to the reader without taking up too much space. Think about how the content is set out. Titles should be short and informative, any images should be relevant to the content and try to be as concise as possible. Also minimise fonts, colours and images as these can make the email confusing and difficult for the reader to scan quickly. And finally, make sure the call to action is prominent in the email, so the reader can easily understand what the email wants them to do next.

Writing the copy

• The subject line: The subject line is the motivation for the reader to actually read the email, so it’s very important to get this right. You should briefly describe the emails’ content, and add something attention grabbing. It’s also a good idea to add a call to action whenever possible
• Personalise: If you have a name associated with the email address it’s a good idea to use this in the email. It will help confirm that the email is not spam, and also make the reader think the email is more relevant to them, hence making it more likely to be read.
• Talk to the reader: Copywriting is a skill all on it’s own, but quite often it will also be one of the designer’s tasks so it’s worth thinking about carefully. Try to think of the email as a conversation, rather than dry information and keep it simple and concise so the reader doesn’t have to read through lots of text to find out what the email is about.

Building the email

• Click, click, click: Make sure any images and relevant text are clickable; you want to give the reader as many opportunities as possible to click on the email.
• Important links: There are a some additional links that should be on every email. Having an unsubscribe link is essential. It will reassure the reader and is also a legal requriement. Another good practice is to add a link to a web version in case the reader has problems viewing the email.
• Compatibility and stuff: Finally, remember all browsers and applications have different rules for displaying backgrounds and images, so your email may not be viewed exactly how you want it to be. This means you should try to build the email as simply as possible, you should never use background images and all styles and colours have to be applied in the HTML rather than with external CSS.

So…

I’m sure there are many more issues to be considered when creating an effective email, so perhaps try a few of these resources too.

20 Tips for Good Web Copy

Email Guidelines

Good HTML Newsletter Design