DTG News and Else
DT&G:   Vol. 16, Number 6,   June, 2006   ~   The eZine for Design, Typography, & Graphics   (since 1990)  

JUNE Web SURF... & ELSE

I'm happy to send the newsletter directly to your email, if you'd like. Some 50-thousand other people actually prefer it in email! Just ask!

TABLE OF CONTENTS

SURF's UP.. on the web

Graduation is behind us, school is out, and so the summer begins. It's time for a little rest and relaxation... and SURFING!
      To get you going, we've surfed our submissions and entries of reader sites to find these cool sites to share with you.
      We will continue throughout June, so if you find really COOL sites in your surfing, just pass them along and we'll share them with DTG readers

Cool Sites for June Surfing:

Don't miss these: * TijuanaFlats.com... HOT'cha! * The Seventh Sense * Big Happy Fun House * Chill In The Ville * Norma Jean Markus * minimal and you're not going to believe the Virtual Body Jam -- and many others sent in by readers... Let's Go Surfing

June Photoshop (SURF) Madness

Doing the Curl * Tattoos in Photoshop * Boardwalk Movie Star * Five Tips for Optimizing GIFs * Web Hands-On Training * What is Depth of Field * Photoshop's Shadow/Highlight tool * Brick Wall Tutorial * question of the month * PTPerspective Photoshop Plugin * Warning Dialogs * Free Stuff and much more... in Photoshop Madness

Web Critique: First United Methodist Church

Beth Rogers is back with us to share one of her thoughtful web site critiques. This time we travel to Richmond Indiana to find a nice web site for a change... join us for this critique

Web Critique: Looking for Visuals at Visual Orange

Bernard Peh takes a look at the www.visualorange.net web site -- while having a common corporate look, the striking words "Visual Orange" lead us to believe we would be seeing lots of visuals. See if you agree with Bernard's summation of The Visual Orange

Photoshop: Common Drop Shadow Mistakes

20-year photo retouching veteran Glenn Honiball joins us to point out the most common drop shadow techniques and how to deal with them. As we've said for years... nothing spoils a Photoshop retouch project more than Common Drop Shadow Mistakes

Desktop Publishing: Newsletter Design Mistakes

The Dean of Desktop Publishing, Roger C. Parker is back to help make your newsletters attention-getting, attractive, and easy to read... this is Part 2 of the extensive article we started last month. If you do newsletters, you need to avoid these Common Design Mistakes

Photoshop Fame: Photoshop Cook-Off Contest

Fire up Adobe Photoshop This Summer and Get Cooking -- you could just win some fabulous prizes and be recognized by true Photoshop greats like Katrin Eismann, Deke McClelland, Bert Monroy, John Beardsworth, and a dozen others who will be judging. Best yet, your work will be presented at the PhotoPlus Expo in New York in November -- and maybe show up in an upcoming O'Reilly Photoshop Cook Book.Get the complete details...

JULY: Digital Photography:

Our theme for JULY is digital photography, and we're inviting you to show us your best shot! Whether it's commercial photography, vacation shots, or just fooling around, we know you've created some great visuals. Here's your chance to show them off and get a little much-deserved recognition in the process. Photos submitted will be in the gallery show at www.Photo-Folio.com. Send your photo info and captions and we'll contact you:

Mail Bag: Megapixels vs. DPI, PPI

While next month is all about digital photography, I had to pass along this answer I wrote to the reader asked:
      > I am confused! - I have an 8 megapixel Canon Powershot Pro 1 The photos are great. But when sending to a magazine, they said they needed a minimum of 300dpi, and mine came out at about half that!
* So I wrote this basic explanation

Mail Bag: Kudos from the 'other' America

Of course we love getting your compliments -- who doesn't? But when they come from far away places, they're even more special; like this reader from Bogota Colombia South America... who writes:
      I like very much your site. As a teacher, I found your tutorials, very handy and interesting that help me program my classes here in Colombia. Thanks a lot! Sincerely I.G., ACE, InDesing CS2, Illustrator Cs, Photoshop CS, Macromedia FlashMX Designer.

Mail Bag: Lightning Brain StoryParker

Kris Coppieters from New Zealand sends a tip on a free Plug-In for InDesign called "Lightning Brain StoryParker" -- how could I resist with a name like that! This plug-in helps a designer manage cluttered pages. It adds a number of context menus (right-click or control-click) to various page items and every page item can be temporarily 'parked'
* Lightning Brain StoryParker

The Life and Deaths of the Printed Word

William J. Sonn traces the seismic societal shifts which followed each dramatic drop in the cost of written knowledge. What do current technological advances and "free information" via the Internet hold for the future? This is must reading for anyone involved in printing, typesetting or graphic design... Paradigms Lost

Business: Post Card Marketing

Martha Retallick, "The Passionate Postcarder" is back with her latest tool box with ROI calculators, and market costing tracking -- for high-powered marketing... Post Card Marketing eBook + Tools.

Field Trip: "The Artist's Channel"

Visit this television channel on your computer via the internet with more than 100 hours of art instruction like drawing, watercolor, oils, acrylics, pastels, colored pencils, printmaking and a number of other areas. Get instruction from top artists like Janet Walsh, Eric Wiegardt, Ellen Fountain, Johnnie Liliedahl and others on the "The Artist's Channel".

News & Else:

* QuarkXPress 7 arrives: better design, faster production, and more efficient collaboration
* Tips: A Pile of CDs, now what? Archiving files has become a real problem.
* Resource: OS X Font Conspiracy: Why don't my fonts work???
* Should you build your own web site? Free or Pay?
* Search Engine Optimization for the Rest of Us, with Nowshade Kabir
* Red-eye detection and reduction gets a patent
* A Small Business Approach To Computer Downtime
* Turn Typos to Gold: Rachel Phillips shares a new slant on eBay
* Goowy! David Wegley reviews this "web home away from home"
* Rich-featured hierarchical trees make web design so much better
* and more, and more...

Kudos to Derrick Pedranti, and Wesley E. Warren

We welcome these two friends into the design center -- thanking them for their generous contributions.
Derrick operates the Creative Concepts Design Studio, and
Wesley is the genius behind FreelanceDesigners.com ...
Both, admirable participants that are helping bring all this great (free) content to your doorstep! If you'd like to get on board, here's how
* If you'd like to get on board, here's how

July, August and Summertime Design

Above, I've already noted our JULY: Digital Photography theme. Take this opportunity to share your Photos with DTG readers. During the summer, through August you'll probably see items appearing on a scattered schedule. I'm gearing up for another trip to Africa, and some other unusual activities, so our publication schedule will not be quite as rigid as usual. We do have some great stuff lined up for JULY though, including working with the good old red, white and blue.

Don't forget, we'll continue adding your favorite web sites and surfing experiences for another big surf in July. So don't hesitate to post yours at http://www.graphic-design.com/contact2.html.

We wish you happy surfing ... and good times during June -- enjoy the show.

And, as for this month, well, you've already wasted a perfectly good hour reading the DTG newsletter. Hopefully all is not wasted and you've gained at least one helpful tidbit of info.

Thanks for reading...

Fred Showker
Editor / Publisher, DT&G Magazine

Parting words for Mother's Day...

  "The God to whom little boys say their prayers
    has a face very like
      their mother's."
          - James M. Barrie

PS: if you've made it this far, the Loading Dock address for JUNE will be set to "surf" for very obvious reasons. Just add the word "surf" after the last slash in www.graphic-design.com/

WHO IS Fred Showker?

Participate in your Design Center

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