Illustrator Tutorial: Halftone Gradients
Even in Photoshop the process for making halftones can be tedious, but at least in Illustrator the process can be automated. What’s more, the halftone’s can be fully editable and still remain in vector format. In this tutorial we will show you how we created a halftone gradient process that you can use easily whenever you want.
1. Start with a new document in Illustrator.
2. Go to View and make sure you Show the grid and check the Snap to Grid option as well.
3. Zoom into an area where you can see a clear part of your grid. Grab your Ellipse Tool and draw a circle that starts at the intersection of the grid and extends to the next grid line:
How to Create an Invitational Postcard Design
A special event is great way to share new products with your customers and invitational postcards are a great way to invite the masses. However, not everyone who receives an invitation will attend your event. This makes the design of the postcard of great importance. Here are a few tips to reference when planning and printing a postcard.
1. Associate the new product with your company
The key to sticking with customers who may see your card but not attend the event is to clearly display your promotional items along with your easily recognizable logo and name. The best way to do this is for both to be on the face of the postcard, i.e. an image of your product display with the company name immediately below, above, left, or right. If your product is not easily photographed, a headline announcing the product along with your logo/name may be a more desirable option. Keep the design as simple as possible to lessen distractions. Remember, your final design should immediately associate your product with your business even at a glance. Format this section as large as you can so that people get the message even if they aren’t paying attention. This is the most important aspect of an invitational postcard printing.
8 Useful Printing Tutorials
Here are some tutorials you can use if you’re one of those folks who enjoy sending out jobs for printing. This list includes basic desktop publishing tutorials and some simple effects for more interesting photos you can use when printing brochures or sending out catalog printing projects.
Landscape Photo Manipulation
A detailed tut on how to merge two photos to create one fluid landscape.
Dreamy, Dramatic Photo Effects
If you want to make a photo pop, this is the way to do it. Using a Gaussian Blur, you slightly smudge part of a photo to make it dream-like. Note that this works best on photos with only two or three dominant colors.
Tips on Using Guides in InDesign
This video by Jeff Witchel at Layers magazine shows some popular and useful tips for working with guides. No matter what you’re printing, you need to follow guides for a clean design and to make sure no part of your design gets the old chopping block.
Brochure Printing in Microsoft Publisher
Straight-forward, simple brochure creation from Microsoft. Good tut for the beginning designer. Includes layout and printing tips.
Illustrator Basics – Using the Pen Tool
A good reason exists as to why the Pen Tool is the Grandfather of all the tools in Illustrator: with the Pen Tool alone, just about anything can be created. But that darn little tool can cause a LOT of headache for people that have had previous experience with Photoshop. This tutorial walks you through the most basic use of the Pen Tool so you can get on your way to the more important tools available to you.
