Design is fascinating. For instance, bigger pictures are read slower, and the more pictures you have in a banner, the faster it will read. Placement of space and
use of image is really important in design. I am new to the profession of design and I love it with a passion.
In a 2007 issue of Step Inside Design, Allan Haley (whose work I love) interviews Erik Spiekermann, a "tectonic arranger and letterform designer." I absolutely LOVE his
description of graphic design: "Like an architect, I work with prefabricated elements. My bricks are typefaces, my walls are pages, my windows are images, all things that are normally
made or defined by other people, I design a framework, a structure for elements as houses for words and images, like an architect would design a building for people to live in."
My favorite design magazines:
BEFORE AND AFTER DYNAMIC GRAPHICS STEP INSIDE DESIGN CRAPHOUND Design magazines I have NOT enjoyed, feeling they are too much photostock and font ads and not enough substance, include: HOW Magazine, CREATE Magazine and PRINT Magazine. I *do not*
recommend the last three.
Everywhere I go, it seems the industry standard for graphic manipulation is Adobe's PHOTOSHOP, and I have made a Photoshop Web Page,
as it deserves its own page. Another industry standard for Web Design is Adobe's Dreamweaver software. If you are a student at any college, you can get student licensing versions of
Adobe products. For instance, in January 2008, I got the entire Adobe Creative Suite CS3, which includes the most recent versions of Photoshop, InDesign, Dreamweaver, Flash, etc. for
$200 at my college's bookstore. Although I have built this website and all of my previous websites by hand with HTML, I am now learning Dreamweaver and am looking forward to building more interactive
and complete sites with Dreamweaver skills. It is worth learning Photoshop and Dreamweaver just to have a voice in this day and age on the internet without relying on others for
your own web presence.
Kirsten Anderberg. All rights reserved. For permission to reprint/publish, please contact Kirsten at kirstena@resist.ca.