graphic design, freelancing, illustration, advertising, web design

If you have ever had to produce packaging visuals for a client you know you need them to look as realistic as possible. By having realistic visuals they’re are more liable to be able to sell their products into shops more easily and hence you hopefully get more work
I use Strata 3D to create my packaging and 3D visuals. The thing I like about Strata 3D is it is very user friendly and much more Mac like that a lot of 3D design programmes. I have also dabbled with Cinema 3D and Lightwave but the learning curve was just to steep and far too complex for my needs.

In Strata 3D you can draw a box and then use “box wrapper” which allows you to import a graphic into each face of a box. So you design your packaging in Quark or illustrator and create jpegs of the faces and upload them as textures in a box wrapper. Put some lighting on the box and a floor level, render it and you have realistic looking packaging visual.

You can also create animations and Quicktime VR where you create an animation which allows a user to more the box around to look at all side, it is not a feature I usually use but it can be done.

Strata 3D is great for box like structures and geometric shapes quickly, reat for POS and exhibition visuals. It can also be used to create organic shapes - meld is an easy way of doing this - basically you create shapes such as spheres or cylinders apply “meld” and they all sort of blob together. You can change settings so they become more or less blobby (sorry about the terminology its hard to describe). You can also extrude, lathe and pull meshes around. If you have never tried 3D give it a try

Below is an example of some characters I created using Strata 3D and Photoshop

Softpress Freeway

If you are a print designer (mac based) scared of coding who needs to produce a simple website Softpress Freeway could be the programme to use.

What I really like about the programme is that it is very similar to quark xpress - you have your graphic and text boxes that are all pretty self explanatory and you literally place your graphics and text on the page and resize them on the fly. Freeway does all the backend stuff - it decides what type of image the graphic should be and the quality - giff or jpeg, but you can overide these if you wish. You can use the programme without touching a table (unlike dreamweaver) unless you want to (this feature is included).

There is a new feature which now lets you design using CSS - again without coding which I am yet to try out. What is also useful is there are a large set of actions available (some free some commercial) to extend the program - including adding lightbox pop up effects, building in a CMS so your client could edit the text online etc etc.

The newest version of Freeway also links up with a shopping cart to make building simple ecommerce sites easier.

Once you have built your site within Freeway there is a publish and upload button, you enter your FTP name and password and it generates code and graphics which it uploads to your server.

While I want to learn to understand code more, Freeway is a useful programme for designers and non designers alike who want to be able to design sites easily without touching code. It is possible to build dynamic sites using freeway too, but this is not something I have explored.

I think if Freeway was available for PC as well I would have a much larger following, as it is so easy to use.

If like me you are an experienced designer for print check out Softpress Freeway and the support forum

This was a forum question I recently saw on a graphic design forum the graphic designer had a client had rejected his design and who was asking him to do something which he knew would look awful.

I think it is a dilema as graphic designers that we face quite often. I will always try to persuade the client away from their awful idea, sometimes I will do what they want but also present my preferred alternative. Sometimes they will go for your idea but in the end its them that is paying the bill so you have to grit your teeth, do what they want and move on. You can always keep the good options for your portfolio, that’s what I do anyway.

You know you have met the nightmare client when you go for a briefing and they have been using Word and cutting up photographs to show you what they want - I have been there a few times. After speaking to one potential client a couple of times (while I was employed for a company) I went to the briefing in the car with the sales guy and said to him that when we got there the client would have done exactly that (a brochure he had tried to design in word) - sure enough he had. In my opinion what they want is a Mac operator not a designer. Someone who can put together exactly what they want thats printready but does not mind not getting oo involved with design.

Its strange because I was talking to a friend who has a daughter who is an art director for a high profile ad agency in London and she had told him the best people to work for are big companies like Nike. They come to you because they know you are good at what you do - thats what they pay you for - so they are happy to leave you alone and let you do what you do best. If only some of those nightmare clients would think like that.