DTG News and Else
DT&G:   Vol. 16, Number 11,   November, 2006   ~   The eZine for Design, Typography, & Graphics   (since 1990)  

November: Let the holidays begin... & 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!

November... now is the time many people are feverishly putting together holiday promotions... this month we'll enjoy some idea-starters and cool resources for doing beautiful graphic arts for November and December.
Don't forget, the holiday issue continues in December, with pirzes for your favorite holiday design! Don't forget to register with your comments!

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Designing the Holidays

Many people are feverishly putting together holiday greetings and promotions... this month we'll enjoy some idea-starters and cool resources for doing beautiful graphic arts for November and December.

Don't forget, the holiday issue continues in December, with pirzes for your favorite holiday design! We'll also be opening the holiday downloads gallery one day soon, and you can click here to see our most popular holiday articles

Superb Holiday Ding-bats

Utilize fonts for quick, stylish icons, cartouches, and ornamentation all directly from the keyboard... and these handsome crafted ornaments fonts by the Lanston Foundry guarantee selection, quality of drawing, and even two-color matrixes in Holiday Ornaments Sets

Old-time Engraving Effect

You asked for it -- a plug-in filter for Photoshop that turns your picture into an ancient engraving, lithograph, pencil sketch, etc. Reader Svetlana Chernousova reviews this wonderful new plug-in from Alpha Plug-ins -- possibly one of the more useful filters you'll find, the Photoshop Engraver plugin

Gift Idea: Andy Warhol style portraits

In this 9-page, 50-image seminar tutorial, investigate the style of Andy Warhol. This is not just another online tutorial with four or five steps. Here, we'll attempt to inspire you to investigate Warhol's art methodology and then use Adobe Photoshop CS2 to simulate Warhol's famouse portrait style for your own projects... the perfect gift is a portrait using Photoshop in the Andy Warhol style

Making Art with Dingbats

With all the cool dingbat and picture fonts available, opportunities abound for quick and easy graphic illustrations. Design and publishing expert David Bergsland gives you a step-by-step look at making Art from Dingbats

Deke McClelland: fix color cast in Photoshop

Using photos in promotions? Taking photos at events and gatherings over the coming weeks? Chances are, you'll encounter the dreaded "color cast" problem. Thanks to Deke, now you'll know how to Fix Color Cast in Photoshop

Celedy Software CeledyDraw 2

Can professional Windows users in the design field exist without Adobe Illustrator? Maybe not... probably not. However, most other Windows users can indeed exist nicely without Adobe Illustrator -- here's a robust, alternative for just about anyone... CeledyDraw 2

Promote Your Graphic Design Business

Now is a good time to think about promoting your business... special guest, Shaun Crowley, marketing consultant and communications manager for a major UK publishing company launches this two-part article on promoting yourself... PART 1: How to frugally market your business

Going the Extra Mile in Design

Every wondered what it's like to hold a high-powered design position in the cosmetics and fashion industry? Enjoy this intreview by Industry expert and Sessions EDU instructor Laura Schwamb, and get a peek into the life of Lara Modjeski VP of Creative, Tom Ford Beauty

Creating textures and backgrounds

In this tips piece, the gurus at Spiral Graphics share their secrets at generating seamless textures. Even if you don't use Spiral's Genetica software, this information will prove important for anyone who makes textures... 5 Texture Tips: the key ingredients to great textures

& ELSE...

This month's &Else includes: Intellectual Property Rights at risk; B/W Styler for B/W conversion; iView MediaPro 3.1.2; Opendocument Template Competition; DVD Slideshows for Windows; Printools XT for Quark; PhotoProto ; DEVON; Macromedia Flash 8 Courses; Windows Server 2003 cluster; Writing; New Media... and more. The November newsletter for subscribers will be mailed after the 1st of Nov. &Else!

BEST FOR 2006

... and now it's time for you to help us find the BEST software, hardware, gizmos or books from 2006. Share your discoveries with DTG readers, and you'll be helping them, plus possibly winning a great prize for yourself... register to WIN

Mailbag: Photoshop Madness

No, there's nothing wrong with your system or browser... yes, we did indeed miss a month of madness. It was simply too busy with the Font Festival to get it out. However, it is nice to know that so many people actually missed it. We got tons of email from folks asking what went wrong. I'm working on the next issue right now -- soon it will appear in the Photoshop department

Mailbag: Australian Type Foundry

Wayne Thompson took the time to send out this tip on a new OpenType font family at a foundry we had never heard of in Australia. Take a look -- they've got some pretty nice faces... www.atf.com.au

Mailbag: Illustrator Tutorials

Don't know if anyone else noticed, but I've seen that Illustrator tutorials are about one for every ten-thousand Photoshop tutorials. Why? Illustrator is much more difficult -- and there are fewer tutorials to copy. (Note that most Photoshop tutorials you find online are copies or lifts from others. However, Eric Frierson dropped us an email to correct a broken link in our Illustrator links -- the University of Michigan has a good basic Illustrator PDF you can download: www.lib.umich.edu

Link Correction: Alphabet Book

Thanks to everyone who pointed out the link to the Alphabet Book PDF is broken. It's now fixed so you can download : alphabetbook.zip

Mailbag: Roger Parker Kudos

Our good friend Roger Parker wrote in to say how much he enjoyed the Fonts Festival in Sept. and Oct. He even posted a blurb on his blog -- which, by the way is a lot of fun. Check him out at: www.rogercparker.com

Welcome new friends and partners

This month we salute BigStockPhoto.com with their gorgeous royalty-free stock photos for as little as two-bucks! http://www.BigStockPhoto.com

We also welcome Peter Renton from rentons.com, you should check out their gift cards stickers for some great images you can use. http://rentons.com/default.asp
Thanks from all DTG readers for supporting the Design Center -- particularly those who have donated !

Site of the Month: Meet the Flash

Andrei Doubrovski sent this link and we found it a pretty good, ad-free, resource. They sell "flash" books with tutorials, and host an online, collection of flash tutorials

Logo Lettering Quiz

Unfortunately, no one passed the Logo Lettering quiz last month. One teacher did write in to ask if all 26 letters should be represented -- but our take is if you can't get 9 right, what would you do with 26??? Here's the contest page

Which side will you VOTE for?

If you listen to the drive-by media, it's fairly obvious that few have really considered the long-term consequences of the U.S. elections. Before going to the polls on Tuesday, you may want to put aside all of the bull-#### rhetoric from the political puffery of the drive-by media and have a little reality for a change. There are well-taken points on both sides of the issues. So, when you flip that switch on the ballot box, make darn sure you're ready to stand up and take responsibility for the outcome. No belly-aching later... www.defendamerica.mil

Share your thoughts...

So the holidays are upon us and you know the end of 2006 is drawing near. Please share your comments on any cool stuff you've discovered and learned during the year. Turnout was very poor for this month's discussion topic, so you'll notice there are no 'designer comments' in the Creative-networking area -- we're sorry to report. Remember that readers love to hear the comments, suggestions and discoveries of other readers.

Well, once again 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 the November Elections...

  "Those who deny freedom to others
    deserve it not for themselves."
        - Abraham Lincoln

  "You can only protect your liberties in this world
    by protecting the other man's freedom."
        - Clarence Darrow

PS: if you've made it this far, the Loading Dock address for November will be changed in the next few days to "holiday". Just add the word holiday after the last slash in www.graphic-design.com/ ... Sometime after the first of November

WHO IS Fred Showker?

&Else News, Reviews & Schmooze

  • Intellectual Property Rights at risk Intellectual Property Rights Remain Unprotected as Russia Seeks WTO Accession. International Anti-Piracy Caucus co-chairs urge caution on U.S.-Russia Agreement
  • B/W Styler for B/W conversion B/W Styler is a Photoshop plugin for B/W conversion, working with Photoshop, Paint Shop Pro, Photoshop Elements, Photo-Paint, Photo Plus, IrfanView and PhotoImpact. It supports 8bit and 16bit RGB images.
  • iView MediaPro 3.1.2 MediaPro now delivers significantly more robust performance, including clearer error reporting and improved memory handling for both Mac and Windows customers, as well as a number of minor feature enhancements.
  • Opendocument Template Competition Submit templates and clip art to arm the new Openoffice and win prizes, fame and fortune in the Openoffice.org Documentation Project Template and Clipart Competition.
  • DVD Slideshows for Windows Wondershare DVD Slideshow Builder 2.0 Released ... create slide show presentations using digital photos, video, music and transitions in Windows
  • Printools XT for QuarkXPress now Universal Binary Printools XT for QuarkXPress now Universal Binary - batch printing, preflighting, print renaming, PostScript, real-time previews and more for the Quark user
  • PhotoProto Transform Photoshop Artwork PhotoProto marks the first user interface design tool created specifically for designers who build interactive devices and custom GUIs.
  • DEVON Updates DEVONtechnologies updates all its commercial applications: the document and information managers DEVONthink Professional and Personal, the Internet research agent and alternative Web browser DEVONagent, and the intelligent notepad application DEVONnote.
  • Macromedia Flash 8 Courses TeachMeIT has released the introductory course on Macromedia Flash 8 Professional -- stay on the leading edge ... easily
  • Visualize Your Data Visualize Your Data with Chart ModelKit for .NET. Chart ModelKit for MS .NET Framework, a software component specially elaborated for constructing high fidelity charts and diagrams.
  • Configuring a Windows Server 2003 cluster This how-to article by Team uCertify gets you started on planning and setting up a Windows server cluster
  • Writing Software documentation The ideal software would be free of errors and so easy to use that everybody would be familiar with it the minute they start the application. However, this is not the case in real life. So it needs really good documentation
  • Impact of New Media on Publishing These up-to-date reports provide in-depth research on where the print and publishing industry is going with the new media. For serious publishing professionals only.

Previously: Quark XTensions in Universal Binary | 14.1 megapixel DSLR | Network Media Primer | About Photoshop Elements 5 | linkOptimizer for Adobe InDesign | Backup for Disaster Recovery | Weather for your site... | IM Across the Net? | SAFARI books online

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Participate in your Design Center

Lots of fun and information for all... don't forget, any community is only as good as the participation of its members. We invite your tips, tricks, comments, suggestions and camaraderie.