Print

Last-Second Valentine Gifts

Creative professionals are often expected to come up with thoughtful, unusual, handmade, heartfelt gifts for their valentines. Hopefully you've been too busy with work for all that. These last-second gifts may save your reputation.

Construct a Color Wheel in Photoshop

The color wheel is a simple yet powerful tool for understanding how colors work and how colors relate to each other. It can also be a gorgeous graphic you can use in print and Web design projects.

Scanning Around With Gene: Best in the West Graphics, 1970

When advertising people judge their own, the results are always interesting. The 27th Annual Portfolio of the Art Directors Club of Los Angeles, published in 1970, revealed four trends of the time.

Cutting-Edge Conference for Print and Digital Publishing

Whether you're looking for the latest tips on publishing to tablets and ebooks, want details on the upcoming Adobe Creative Suite 6, or just need tips to optimize your print workflow, PEPCON is the place. The conference takes place in San Francisco on May 14-16.

Best of the Blogs: Old School and New Skills

Don't have time to keep up with design and photography blogs? Keep calm and read on. In this blog round-up you'll find the most popular fonts of 2011, an amazing type book from 1912, a Herb Lubalin video from the 1980s, and a Photoshop cooking demonstration from 2007. Plus, there are plenty of Photoshop how-tos, digital photography tips, and design ideas.

Scanning Around With Gene: Colorful Produce Crate Labels

For almost 70 years, fruit and vegetable growers used colorful labels to distinguish their brands and show off their point of origin.

Create a Table of Contents in InDesign

Don't create a table of contents (TOC) by hand! Let InDesign's automatic TOC feature generate it for you. The big bonus (besides no human errors): If your document changes, one click updates the entire TOC!

They're Fond of Design

Three university students in graphic design have created a zine. It's a print creation, but now you can view it online, too.

Creativeprose: Wacky Web Site of the Week Archive

Because we all need a little weirdness in our lives.

Make Text Look Like Chrome

Using nothing more than a gradient swatch in InDesign, you can change text from a flat and boring object to a shiny metallic material that reflects the surfaces around it.

Is Apple's eBook Tool Right for Graphic Designers?

Apple's new eBook creation software, called iBooks Author, is free and available for download now. Apple says that it's as easy to use as a word processor. But will it have the controls you need as a graphic designer?

Scanning Around With Gene: More on Children’s Safety

A follow-up to last week’s entry with more dramatically tragic (and sometimes unintentionally funny) scenarios intended to scare kids safe.

This Dress Code Will Inspire You

Whatever your personal style, watch this video about the design agency Dress Code and be inspired by the founders' positive, wide-open take on what's possible for today's creatives.

Free For All: Stock Photos, Social Media Profiles, and Calendar Templates

It’s 2012, the year the world is supposed to end. Let’s mark the occasion with fiery explosions, templates for Twitter and Facebook profiles, and - for the more optimistic among you - calendar templates.

When Is a Dragon a Delightful Design?

Louis Fishauf has designed two stamps for Canada Post that usher in the Year of the Dragon with a roar.

Lights, Camera, Action, and InDesign!

While you may not think of InDesign as a video tool, you’ve actually been able to place video into InDesign since CS2. Here's what you need to know to place video in InDesign and output the results to PDFs, SWFs, ePUBS, and iPad apps.

Scanning Around With Gene: A Visit to the Sunshine State

Florida’s climate makes for very "sunny" promotional images. Don some shades and enjoy this vintage tourist literature, 1939 to 1963, from the Sunshine State.

Align and Space Objects with InDesign's Smart Guides

Everyone who has InDesign CS4 or CS5 can benefit from Smart Guides, which automatically pop up as you drag out or move objects on the page. Learn how to use them to align two or more objects to the page and to each other. You'll also be able to space objects equally, rotate them equally, and more. It's smart to use Smart Guides!

Scanning Around With Gene: Winter Wonderland

Of all the seasons, winter is the most dramatic, and through the eyes of children one of the most fun. Here's a 1948 look at the season, courtesy of an educational guide for kids.

Plumb the Depths of Your InDesign Layout

When an InDesign page gets complicated, knowing the tricks for selecting overlapping and/or grouped objects will save you time and frustration.