Archives: March 2008
Thu Mar 27, 2008
A Fireworks Case Study: Recreating the PBS NOW Logo
You never really can tell when the design-inspiration bug might bite you. My eye catches all sorts of things as I go through the daily routine, and I'm frequently motivated by something I see on television. Perhaps it's an eye-catching effect that's found in a movie trailer, a regular commercial with some snappy graphics, or a logo for a television show.
A quick cruise around the dial a few weeks ago led me to admire the logo that is produced for the Public Broadcasting System here in the United States for their investigative series known simply as NOW. A quick visit to the NOW web site will reveal a design with rich colors and some outstanding uses of CSS techniques for displaying the section headers on the page. It's a beautifully designed site with an eye-catching logo that clearly brands the site as well as the show itself.
In my latest article at CommunityMX.com I approach a duplication of the NOW logo as a case study for designing with Adobe Fireworks. This first part of a two-part tutorial shows how to examine a design and break it into its logical parts, then setup a Fireworks document with layers that make it easier and faster to get the design done. From there you'll learn how to work with custom gradients, how to scale and convert text to paths, and a few other basic and advanced techniques for using Fireworks. A sample Fireworks PNG file is included as a free download with the my duplicated version of the logo.
This is a free article. Enjoy!
[0] comments (1941 views) | [0] Trackbacks [0] Pingbacks
Tue Mar 25, 2008
My Buddy Lee, The Internet Video Star
Well gosh, my good buddy, occasional work-wife, and terrific co-worker, Lee Kolbert, has become an Internet Video Star, thanks to AustinCast.com and their blog/Twitter/video coverage of South by Shouthwest.
Lee is such a genuine, bright, talented and fun person to work with that it's pretty cool to see her captured on video like this. She has a great description of how she mashed-up her twitter and delicious accounts as part of her work in creating personal learning networks, and she does a wonderful job of explaining it in this video interview.
Attagirl Lee! You rock!
Now when are we going to get you onto Palm Breeze Cafe'? Hmmmmmm?
[2] comments (2202 views) | [0] Trackbacks [0] Pingbacks