Monday, May 28, 2012

The Most Common Question a Graphic Designer Gets Asked at a Party

By
Next Day Flyers NextDayFlyers.com Print Marketing in 24 hours. In Today, Out Tomorrow! Order now.
Library RFID Systems www.fetechgroup.com.au Self Serve Check Out - Self Returns Book Sorters, Stock Take, Payments
Great Storyboard Artists www.a3studios.com Professional storyboards & concepts Huge variety of styles. Take a look
Expert Author Laurie P. McDonald
Everyone knows the old story about doctors always getting asked to diagnose aches and pains when they're at parties. Well, we graphic designers have something in common with the Dr. Welby's out there. We have a regularly received question of our own - "What's the best program to use to do our own design work in the office?"
Part of the digital revolution was the advent of easy access to graphic design programs. My husband saw it in the 1990s on a different front as a video producer when Avid digital editing systems started creeping into offices and taking video editing work out of the many edit suites across America. The "DIY" production world started with a bang back then, and it has been raging on ever since.
That's fine. In the end, talent always trumps tools, so as a freelance artist I was never too intimidated by the fact that everyone had access to graphic design programs. I don't blame anyone for trying to get the job done on their own, especially when it's something that really should be doable in the office or home.
It's just that I thought it was always a shame that people were spending so many hundreds of dollars on programs like Adobe Photoshop only to make a picture brighter or crop it when some great alternatives are out there for free....yes FREE!
Here's a tip on a program that has more than sufficient power to get the day-to-day graphic design needs done for the office without the intricacies (and expense) of some of the more high-powered programs on the market today. It's called PAINT.net.
According to Wikipedia:
Paint.NET originated as a computer science senior design project during spring 2004 at Washington State University. Version 1.0 consisted of 36,000 lines of code and was written in fifteen weeks. In contrast, version 3.35 has approximately 162,000 lines of code. The Paint.NET project continued over the summer and into the fall 2004 semester for both the version 1.1 and 2.0 releases.
Some of the more reliable reviews include lifehacker.com:
Paint.NET: When you need to crop, cut, or otherwise edit an image, Windows' built-in Paint isn't quite enough, while a full-fledged Photoshop or GIMP installation is probably too much. Paint.NET is just about perfect for the graphic design needs of a non-graphic-designer. This is an impressive tool for PC users that allows you to build and edit an image in layers with plenty of choices for creating and adjusting colors. And, did I mention that it's free?
Now, if you're not quite sure where to begin with this great program, Google the phrase -how do I use the paint.net program - and you get some pretty helpful tips, including some on YouTube.
If you're still not getting the results you need, you can always contact us at Laurie McDonald Design and we can talk about your project needs. Have fun!
Laurie McDonald Design provides expert graphic design for brochures, advertisements, corporate logos, publications, invitations and more. Have a design challenge? Bring it on! Based in Annapolis, Maryland, Laurie McDonald, freelance artist and designer, has clients throughout the United States.

No comments:

Post a Comment