Keith Martin

Line ‘em up: the secret to designing with grids

by Keith Martin on 6 August 2010 in Design for Print
Keith Martin

Page layout is chiefly about how objects on a page interact with each other, which is why grids play such a vital role is design. Here’s how they work… Page design is seen as a bit of a black art by so many people. It’s true that it isn’t a doddle, but there are certain [...]

Read more →

Placeholder text: from lazy dogs to suspicious squirrels

by Keith Martin on 23 July 2010 in Design for Print
Keith Martin

When you need to see how a typeface works, you use dummy copy. But there’s more to life than lorem ipsum, as pangrams can be fun, too. If you need to fill a text box with words, but you don’t have final approved copy or you just want to see how different type settings look, [...]

Read more →

Flying the flag for effective branding

by Keith Martin on 28 June 2010 in Design for Print

In an age where we are surrounded by company logos and brand names, it’s easy to forget their importance at both the corporate and national level. Graphic identity is one of the concepts that designers juggle as part of their daily work; using them, misusing them and sometimes creating them from scratch – although that’s [...]

Read more →

Keep your projects on the straight and narrow

by Keith Martin on 18 June 2010 in Design for Print

Designers aren’t known for their project management skills, but they’re vital if you’re to finish a commission on time and on budget. Graphic design is about creative problem solving. That’s a simple statement, but it’s what sets graphic design apart from fine art, and it’s what makes it actually more of a craft than ‘art’. [...]

Read more →

Paper sizes – get to know your A, B, C

by Keith Martin on 28 May 2010 in Design for Print

‘As easy as A, B, C’ can’t really be said of paper sizing conventions. Never, fear, though, as we explain the intricacies of the various standards. Paper size is something to which we don’t give that much thought, most of the time at least. If you have a printer, chances are it’s an A4 model. [...]

Read more →

Picking your way through the colour settings minefield

by Keith Martin on 18 May 2010 in Design for Print

Tackling colour settings, profiles and calibration can leave even experienced designers quaking with fear, so here’s what you need to know… I find that RGB vs CMYK, colour profiles and picking the right settings is a constant source of confusion for designers. This isn’t surprising; it’s a murky subject and there’s a lot of misinformation [...]

Read more →

← Previous Entries

Next Entries →

>