First Class
Creating a business card
First of all when I started to make my learning journal i found that with the new Spark there is a huge improvement of options and actually i could create my business card straight in Spark! I will definitely use the new brand feature and hope to get my brand finally and its nice that you can choose now for Spark projects the brand colors and fonts. And when creating a page or Post i can custumize anything. I loaed bought fonts with licence i like this font because of the a. I did spent more time discovering Spark Brand then creating the card. And when publishing with the brand i learnd what to change there.
I didn' t have a logo so made a quick type logo that is not final. The size of a busyness card in Israel is different for the US and European size. I used our size in order to print it later. I found that when i load to spark 300dpi Images they show up good quality and bigger size. I want a busyness card with 2 sites so i made a back site as well. This gazelles for me represent our desert and i meet them a lot when biking. Its a very Beautiful elegant and fast animal.
In Indesign i used most of the technics we learned in the classes and because i need my card in hebrew and english i did create a mirror look for the text and the logo. Its works well with rtl and ltr languages. I had some problems to get the illustrator file into Indesign and look like it looks in Illustrator and i found that for artwork i need to check OFF the antialising otherwise it will be renderd to soft when exporting to PDF and PNG. I used Icons from Graphic Burger i have mine in a bought collection but there is many free ones. I really enjoyed this project and i like Indesign and its options for font, layout and integrating Photoshop and Illustrator files and pathes. I can't load the print PDF here.
My Busynesscard (90mmX50mm)
Class 2 : Banner for Social Media
I did this course already two times and decided for this time to make a little step forwards to my brand. I don't like brand and logodesign so much and to do it for myself is even worth. This task was very hard for me not in Indesign but make my banner fit in real into social media. I don' t like facebook but in order to see if its work i opened a facebook page and adjusted my banner a lot i guess its still not final. I had to be much cleaner little content and not a lot inside. You can see the Banner here in facebook https://www.facebook.com/aravasamar/
Actually i created my homework for my Portfolio site , but there it was really hard to get it work i don't want to add all text in the image for Accessibility reasons. Then i can't really get the proportions in a way that all fits on the page. I decided to cut the text and leave only the line down to inform. The work in Indesign itself was easy and i did all in indesign also the image and Blend to black and white with effects and transperency, i used three layers the original image, a pattern and many blending overlays. I didn't want a gradient i wanted to look it in stripes. I placed the same image in the writing that i have for background. Here is the banner on my portfolio. https://susannetamir.myportfolio.com/
In the end i decided for the portfolio site to take the smooth stripes and for facebook the one with harder stripes. I learned in this lesson that there is adjustments to banners according to platforms like there is in websites for different devices.
Third class
I am a little behind but had to do for somebody a one page flyer and a brochure. So times are to busy and i checked with the client if i can use her flyer and brochure for this course homework. She agrees and it was the first time that something i learn just fits what i do. Most questions of this project i were answered in the life classes.
Most of the time i use Photoshop and Indesign together . i work with this organisation for several years as a designer for web and print so this course its not my brand any more but in a way a product of my brand. And i could really use what i learned in this course on life projects almost like teachers that may use it in the class.
Class 4
I keep continuing with a publication for the same organization a 20 page brochure for print. Again i could use a lot from this course and i added a lot from Photoshopwork as well. I really like the smooth integration of photoshop and Illustrator into Indesign. I did use a grid in the beginning but hat to break it all the time because some texts were to long others to short. And the brochure looked unordered using a strict grid. I tried to make an optical grid that shoes that it is one document. I struggled like always with justifying Text and still didn t find the 100 Percent good way. I used styles all over and in a long document its just a hinge time saver. Until this class i did not use a lot of object styles but they are really useful and i will use them a lot in future. I used typekit fonts
I cannot post a PDF here so i published online. Its a little disappointing that there is no possibility to embed the online document here, The PDF for Print i will load in the EDEX here in images and the link to publish online.
Class 5 Interactive hebrew font list
For this class i did an interactive Mood board for Hebrew fonts for children books. I did add links for resources and The Adobe rtl Help page. I added links of files to each font in order to be able to download it either from the site or straight. When publishing i face different issues for PDF and Publish online, In Publish online my added hyperlinks did not work so i changed all links to buttons that link to a site or a font file. this does work well on both but in publish online a button link to a file does not open i try different options and would be glad if someone knows to open the files like it works in the interactive PDF. Another issue i had was with buttons. The rollover always switched to show the text of the first button but opens the right link. I turned of rollover after i test it and added the right link also to the rollover the text still is the one of the first button in a list. May be its because i copied the buttons?
Here is my publish online document and you can see the issue when trying to open a font file that is not a google font. The mouse cursor shows there is a link but it won t open. The links to google fonts that are url and not files work well. On the PDF all works well. i wonder if there is a way to give the option to download a zipfolder.
Unfortunately i can t upload the PDF here so please see it from My Dropbox here. In order to use the links you need to download it into a PDF reader.
Final Reflexion
I do this course the third time i think and still learned a lot of new things. Its amazing how even inside this course each life class brings up something different and its like you get three classes. I like most the life classes the guest speakers and the possibilty to ask questions. This course specially was one of the best i did. I am using Indesign daily and learned so many new things. Indesign is a great App and i would like more advanced Courses about it and its integration with Photoshop and Illustrator.
I did not have much time to do the homework and did use some of my current projects that fits and this course even helped me to fix issues in this projects. It was funny that i had to do a one page Flyer when the flyerclass took place and a brochure when the multipage document class took place. The last interactive document i did mainly for myself for a project to layout childrenbooks in hebrew, Its the first time i use something i am working on usually i prefer to make the homework extra but times are really busy right now.
And Again thank you for another wonderful course, thanks to Sjaani Greg and Freddy to Lukas, Tom and James and all the great guest speakers. Adobe EDEX is the best!