Forget Ebay — Etsy is my online vice. Not only are there fabulous handmade things to buy, but I can get caught up there for hours following the “Hearts Me” links, which allow you to see the items that other people have marked as favorites.

This month, you can win a set of four peacock feather cards from the Blackbird Letterpress shop on Etsy. These cards feature a delicate peacock feather printed in blue ink on 100% cotton paper. The strands of the feather leave a lovely impression in the paper, creating a delicious texture that only letterpress printing can make.

Set of four 5 x 3.5’’ cards with coordinating blue envelopes.

Designed by Kathryn Hunter

Enter by leaving a comment below. If there’s something you love on Etsy, leave a link to it in your comment and I’ll enter you twice!

Contest ends on Monday, June 30th at 12 noon EST. Good luck!

I’m always on the lookout for inspiring design, and Web Creme delivers. I may not find all of the featured designs particularly noteworthy, but many of the linked sites have found their way into my “Inspiration” bookmarks folder. I especially like the color palette tool. Each design has a color scheme represented as tiny color blocks. To find other designs on the site using the same color, just click on one of the blocks. There’s no extra information on the site, and the streamlined presentation really highlights the design. Check it out.

I just totally messed up my computer, and I’m putting the blame squarely on Apple.

I use a MacBook Pro with Leopard 10.5.1 as my operating system. I bought this system in October 2007 after my previous Mac crashed and was unrecoverable (Ack! I still hate writing that). After hearing some mixed reviews of Leopard, I was a little apprehensive, but I’ve been really happy with it in general, and haven’t regretted the upgrade.

Until this week. (more…)

By Mary Gay Marchese

Note: This is the third in my series of guest posts. Mary Gay Marchese is the public relations director of Markzware. Marchese writes press releases, feature articles, presentations and reports as she networks with numerous media contacts for the printing, publishing and graphic arts industries. Mary Gay can be reached at pr@markzware.com. — Leslie

As a graphic designer, has this ever happened to you?

The scenario: You’ve sent your marketing masterpiece that you have meticulously designed to your printer. The deadline is tight, but you made it. Then the phone rings. It’s your printer calling to let you know they are having problems printing your piece. You are about ready to scream because the client is waiting to get this piece out to his customers.

What are some of the problems, you ask the printer. The response: You’ve sent low-resolution graphics, and have missing files and graphic items that have the wrong color space. What’s more, the job has missing or stylized fonts. “Ugh,” you say. “How come I didn’t know the file I created and designed was improperly prepared and has become a can of worms?

The reason is that the job that was created was not ‘designed’ correctly.

The word ‘design’ means more than making a product look pretty. Of course, a beautiful piece is very important. But possibly more significantly, is how the piece works and functions. The ‘design’s’ performance is the result of the designers objectives in terms of getting the reader to ‘think something’ and to ‘do something’.

To ensure the desired performance, it is imperative that the ‘mechanical design’ is accurate. Wikipedia’s definition of ‘design’ includes this statement: ‘… Designing normally requires a designer to consider the aesthetic, functional, and many other aspects of an object or a process, which usually requires considerable research, thought, modeling, interactive adjustment, and re-design…’

What preflighting software does is assist the ‘right brained’ designer, by providing a logical /mechanical software solution that does the left-brained work for him/her. Preflighting is a logical process. This process needs to be included within the overall design and construction of the piece to be printed. The end objective needs to be thought out well in advance. That is, that the piece will print as expected. Because, if this doesn’t happen, the entire design concept is worthless.

In the new era of digital design, graphic artists must think beyond aesthetics and accept some of the responsibility that prepress and printers once held. The idea of a quality control check, or preflight provides in macro terms the benefit of “lean” manufacturing for both designers and printers.

Preflighting for print and establishing an effective workflow also includes:
• identifying defective products
• eliminating overproduction
• excessive
• reducing work-in-process inventory
• avoiding over-processing
• stopping unnecessary movement of people and of products
• and waiting

Graphic artists of days gone by may have had it easier than their contemporary counterparts. Primarily, they could concentrate on the aesthetics of great content, allowing others—prepress and print production people, for example—to deal with the mechanics of producing it.

But the role of today’s graphic artist is a bit more complicated, thanks to the introduction of new electronic media and a shift of responsibilities. By and large, “prepress” has fallen by the wayside, leaving it up to creative professionals to be both designers and technicians, and to bridge the gap between design conception and final reproduction.

Clearly, a design’s destination (print, online, CD-ROM, and so forth) determines how a file should be created. A document bound for print will have different resolution, color-space, and trim-and-bleed requirements, for example, compared to content meant for the Web. Knowing the output intentions is important, but ensuring that digital files meet those specifications is equally as critical.

The bottom line is to follow the basic rules of print production, preflighting utility programs should be used to check designs. A systematic check of files before they go to a print vendor or are printed in-house is the best way to ensure error-free output.

One of the easiest ways to save is to pay close attention to prepress expenses. The costs of film, direct-to-plate or creating PDF files for print are enormous. And when there is a problem resulting in the job to be re-printed the costs add up, exponentially.

The printed word is a very reliable format for reaching potential audiences. Creating eye-catching flyers and marketing material has been greatly enhanced by digital technologies. Page layout programs, such as QuarkXPress and Adobe’s InDesign, have helped streamline the design and production process, which encompasses acquiring materials, designing the piece and checking the integrity of the file before final print.

Preflighting the design just takes moments. Those few seconds can save graphic professionals hours of misery fixing problems that will show up after film or plates are created. The financial savings in time and materials can be tremendous to marketers eager to get the message in the hands of potential new customers.

A note from Leslie: I firmly believe that one of the things that separates a design professional from an amateur with a copy of Adobe’s Creative Suite is the ability to send technically correct files to press. Markzware makes this a lot easier.

Just ask GDUSA magazine.

In their annual roundup of logo design trends I read the following:

Finally, it’s worth noting that there’s a reasonably reliable place to look every day for the very latest in logo design (in addition, to LogoLounge.com, that is): television promo graphics for any of the major “style” channels — Food Network, Discovery, HGTV, the Travel Channel, and more. Because they have the money and the ability to get work out there quickly, the channels tend to be progressive forecasters and trendsetters. And designers, just like the rest of the unwashed masses, are home on the couch, watching.

Can I get an amen? I’ve been saying this for years, and people often think I’m kidding. I firmly believe that in order to be a good graphic designer, you have to watch TV, read fashion and decor magazines and blogs, and shop in actual (versus online or virtual) stores. As I’ve said before, design influences design, whether it’s fashion design, interior design, type design, production design, or graphic design. To stay visually current, you have to know what’s going on in the world, and to stay on the cutting edge, you have to follow pop culture.

The GDUSA article is also worth checking out for their roundup of logo trends. I thought the trend-spotting was right on and well illustrated by the examples they gave. And once again, I agree completely when they say:

The key is to study the trends, then evolve forward — as far forward as you can leap — from them.

Once a trend is identified as such, it’s a good idea to keep it OUT of your repetiore. Nothing looks more dated more quickly than a logo that was “all the rage” when it was designed. See the widely reviled new Xerox logo, unveiled in January 2008 as an example. I predict a complete company rebranding within the next three years — not what you’re looking for with a new, expensive and time consuming logo redesign.