design-team August 2015

design-team@lists.fedoraproject.org

12 participants
29 discussions

Request to review the mockups for AskFedora Redesign
by Kalpani Anuradha 06 Nov '15

06 Nov '15

Hi all, I'm working on the project AskFedora UX/UI and functionality overhaul under GSoC this summer. I have created some mockups for the pages in AskFedota which can be viewed at my blog - http://anuradhanotes.blogspot.com/search/label/GSoC Also I have set up a repository in fedoradesign github where I have pushed my current work on the mockups - https://github.com/fedoradesign/Askbot-mockups I would like to have some feedback on these mockups and would like to know the improvements that I need to do further and whether there are any additional things that I need to include in the designs. The views of all of you would be very important to this project. Thank you -- Anuradha Welivita Undergraduate | Department of Computer Science and Engineering University of Moratuwa Sri Lanka

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more on dpi settings
by Andrew Walton 31 Aug '15

31 Aug '15

just to save any confusion, the "dots per inch" resolution that you're working with while building and editing your image can be considered a little like the zoom level when you're working with RGB. More dots per inch is very much like more pixels per inch, it means you're more zoomed out and looking at a smaller sharper image. This need not bear any relationship to the dpi setting when you screen your print ready files. Unless you're using default settings and letting the software figure it out itself. It's not unreasonable to work with 600 dpi images for a sharper resolution across the page, then apply a 133 dpi screen when you're finished. It actually helps the quality if the dpi setting of your image is not a factor of the dpi setting for your screen. So if you work at 399 dpi then use a 133 dpi screen you may as well just use the default settings. Going the other way can be a little tragic though. Cheers, Andrew.

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Wallpaper pictures
by Andrew Walton 27 Aug '15

27 Aug '15

Hi Design Team, as a thank you for the people in desktop@ being so understanding recently I thought I'd offer you some wildlife pictures that might be suitable for part of your standard desktop backgrounds set. The copies here are uncropped and only small sizes to give you a look, the originals are 3888 X 2592 pixels in raw format, you don't get those. If you seriously want any of them let me know and I'll make them what ever size you please in what ever format you prefer. (the sharpening and noise removal needs to be redone for different sizes and formats) The critters in order are: Red Collared Lorikeet Baby Red Backed Fairy Wren Blue Winged Kookaburra Whistling Kite Green Tree Frog Lemon Bellied Fly Catcher Galah Red Tailed Black Cockatoo Interesting note about the last one - in local langauges of the Arnhem region it is called a Gaggadju and is held sacred to the locals who call themselves The Gaggadju People. This was explained carefully to to the Europeans that they first met but in typical English fashion, by the time they got back to civilization the word had become Kakadu, the name of the national park. By the time they got back to England the word had become Cockatoo. I, Andrew Walton, retain ownership and full copy rights of these photographs. I have the original raw files and I have the camera and lens that shot them, and I'm the only person in the world that can show you where they were shot, they're mine. I, Andrew Walton, grant Fedora Team and anyone who uses Fedora operating systems the right to use these photographs for any non commercial purpose. If that needs rewording somehow or I need to fill out some special form just let me know. In the mean time you understand what I mean. Let me know. Andrew.

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wiki tutorials
by Andrew Walton 27 Aug '15

27 Aug '15

Hi Luya, I was just having a look at your tutorials, quite impressive, you've been busy. In your "use Scribus to convert" tutorial you mention that different programs have a different idea of how big an A4 page is. I have a "possible" reason for you. Some programs have a set default for how many dots per inch your image is supposed to be regardless of what you think. Other programs will pull that information from whatever printer is plugged into the computer at the time. This is where Windows never got a break in the print world, Windows machines all pull the dots per inch settings straight from the printer, and then you take the file to someone else who uses a different printer and all your sizes shift and the fonts drop out. With Macintosh files on Macintosh computers the dots per inch setting was a rock hard unbreakable rule and the fonts were always included in the file so it didn't matter if the printer didn't have your fonts, he would most certainly have them after opening your file. "Legally" he's obliged to delete them again after doing your job but you know how it is, sometimes you're too busy and forget. :) So between Mac computers your image was guaranteed to be exactly the same as you created it. Through the mid 90's until they talked to intel (iMac) this was the only thing that kept them in business. It's also another cheap trick I use to protect my original photos, I've set my dots per inch in the photos to 1800. This won't stop anyone that knows what they're doing but if the average mug tries to print any of my pictures a 10 megapixel photo comes out the size of a postage stamp. Cheers, Andrew.

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another quick thought
by Andrew Walton 25 Aug '15

25 Aug '15

For your wiki, that tutorial on sharpening I wrote is already in simple html, all you need to do is chuck a link to the wiki's stylesheet in the header and it should be there, I never even used any font commands except size=5 for the heading. Cheers, Andrew.

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wiki tutorials
by Andrew Walton 25 Aug '15

25 Aug '15

I have no idea on how much information or how in-depth you wish your tutorials to go. This attachment may go beyond the scope you wish to cover. My opinion is that the more information you can give people the better, but the more information you want to give the more difficult it becomes to put it into a coherent format, probably made a lot worse by the way I tend to ramble. Mostly, this is the information that gets left out of formal educational programs. It's the stuff that the printer knows but the graphic designer has to try and pick it up as they go along, usually only learning by expensive mistakes. One company I was Production Manager for had a large design house as a regular client and any time this design house put on a new designer that new designer would get sent to spend a couple of days with me to find out why I wanted their art done in particular ways. None of these kids were dumb, in fact most were highly intelligent and creative, but they'd never been taught the practical side of their art as it applies in the real world. Certainly where the print industry is concerned which can be a very strange world indeed. Yes, I used to get used for training the apprentices as well. If you really want to keep it short and sweet the best advice I can give is "Talk to the printer". Not a sales rep, talk to a real printer. The best ones all have rather impressive egos, necessary or the dumb machines will beat you, and most of them will be only too pleased to be able to show how much they know. (yeh, me too) Cheers, Andrew.

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another print design tip
by Andrew Walton 25 Aug '15

25 Aug '15

Spot colours with a "butt fit". If the coloured parts of your design overlap each other the overlap will be obvious and look ugly, but if your colours "butt fit" or meet with no overlap, paper stretch between prints means you'll often get a tiny white line between the colours. For some strange reason the human eye can spot that gap from metres away even if they haven't got their glasses on. The standard used commercially in this situation is to overlap your colours by 20 microns (0.02 mm), that's small enough that the human eye doesn't notice it but big enough that the printer has a little room to play and make it look good. Most printers really will try, by the way. It's a matter of professional pride, none of them want to admit to producing something that looks bad. "Those that can do, do do. Those that can't teach at TAFE." Another design tip: roughly 25% of caucasian males unknowingly suffer a genetic colour blindness and if you give them an image with red text on a dark background they can't read it. Cheers, Andrew.

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More on photography
by Andrew Walton 25 Aug '15

25 Aug '15

I created a quick and easy tutorial on my sharpening method, attached as a zip file. In html format I'm afraid, I tried using office to create a nice neat PDF but was defeated, I'm sure it wasn't that difficult to get the layout how you wanted it a few years ago. Maybe I'm getting old and losing it. On the plus side it is just simple html, very simple. Turns out I'm a little rusty with that too. I had created almost the same tutorial for an Australian photography forum many years ago but I don't have any of that stuff any more, had to redo it from scratch. Instructions for an advanced technique that a twelve year old could follow. Also a great introduction in to using the Gimp, which can be quite intimidating if you've never seen it before. It says on your wiki that you want more of this sort of stuff. Feel free to share it, use it, abuse it. If someone can turn it into a single page PDF without all the stupid page breaks it would probably be more practical, it's up to you. It's just a page of writing, surely we don't need a license for that? Cheers, Andrew.

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another little tip
by Andrew Walton 25 Aug '15

25 Aug '15

This is especially important when you're considering getting some printing done, although it applies to all aspects of life. It's called The Impossible Triangle. Quality Cheaply Quickly It's called The Impossible Triangle because you can not possibly have all three things, if you shop well and wisely you can have two of them. So if your client wants a quality job and he wants it fast it won't be cheap. If your client wants it cheap and wants it now it he can't be expecting quality. If you get your art to the printer early enough you can get good quality work done for a reasonable price.

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Another print design tip
by Andrew Walton 25 Aug '15

25 Aug '15

Sorry, now that I've started thinking about this stuff for the first time in 15 years more and more is coming back to me. A special separation trick for very dense images. ie: lots of ink on the paper. Most printers will lie and cheat in this particular situation, be warned. Your separation is called CMYK for a very special reason. Technically that is the order in which the printer has to put the colours down on the paper in order for the image to appear as the designer intended. So Cyan and Magenta go down first, then the Yellow. But the yellow ink is the slowest drying of all of them, and you're putting it down on paper that's already wet with 2 layers of ink. And then you have to try and get the black down without smearing over the top of that. If your boss insists on buying cheap rubbish inks it actually never dries at all. So the printer cheats, he does the print CMKY with the Yellow last. With very dense images it's actually impossible to do it any other way, the paper is still only paper. So if you have a particularly dense image you want mass produced talk to the printer before you do your separation. Don't talk to the sales rep, he usually has no clue. Talk to the actual offset printer tradesman that will be printing that job, let him decide if your separation needs to be CMYK or CMKY. It's also a good idea to talk to the actual printer about what papers to use, after all, he's the one that has to try and get the ink to dry and he knows what papers will give what jobs the best results. The sales rep is just trying to quietly drain your wallet and will repeat anything that the sales rep from the paper company said even if he knows it's not true. Some papers are so alkaline that we had to stack customers jobs carefully in the backs of every one's cars and reverse them all out in to the full sun for a few hours to try and get them to dry. And I'm talking Australia here, not them cold places like Europe and the US. Cheers, Andrew.

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design-team August 2015