Alternative to

http://www.alternativeto.net
On this site you have a couple of options, if you have something specific you are looking for – type in the mainstream commercial design program ie. Dreamweaver and then it will give you a list of alternatives (both paid and free).

To narrow it down to just Free and Open source use the drop “Filter by License” menu. You can also filter by platform – Mac, PC or Linux.

With “Alternative to” you also have the option to browse through software by choosing your platform from the top menu and then choosing the type of software you are looking for.

Osalt

http://www.osalt.com

Here you can simply search for the commercial graphics software (eg. Photoshop) that you are trying to find an open source alternative to. When you have found it select it and underneath you will find a list of alternatives along with which platform they are available for Mac, Windows or Linux.

Have fun, but don’t forget the humble pencil!

When you are working on a logo design project:

1. First you will have taken a design brief

Read Why is a Design Brief so Important

2. Then done some research and started brainstorming

You can read a bit about doing some basic research in Logo Design Tutorial to Design a Charity Logo
See an example of brainstorming in one of the the previous Logo Design Tutorials

3. Sometimes a moodboard will help you find the right feel for a logo

You may find the odd project where you really struggle for ideas or to work out the right sort of “feel” for the logo. This is where moodboards can come in.

If you haven’t heard of moodboards before they are traditionally big boards (pieces of mountboard or card) which are filled with images, bits of type, perhaps colours and anything which you feel is in the direction of the type of design you are trying to achieve.

When I produce moodboards I generally get together any leaflets I have lying around, buy magazines which I feel fit with the type of market or niche I am designing for and rip out bits and pieces that I like and then paste them on to a big board. I might also include images, logos and type that I find online and print out. There is something about the act of getting away from the computer and really looking at other images that really helps to get you mind going again. Once the moodboard/s are complete you can then use them alongside your brainstorms to stimulate logo ideas. Perhaps you might really like the way a piece of typography works or a colour combination on some of the bits you have torn out.

If you are pushed for time (and I use this method too) you can always create digital moodboards or image collections. The simplest way is to simply collect together images you find on the web download them to a folder on your machine and then pull them all in to a program like iphoto so you can view them all at once (a bit like a moodboard). If you prefer you could alternatively drop the images into layout design software, or if you are using an iPhone or ipad use an app like the aptly named Moodboard.

Still stuck?

Try out some of these other creative exercises

See Also

Logo Design Tutorial 1
Logo Design Tutorial 2

Business dreams are fantastic; they can fire-up your enthusiasm and make the planning and work feel worthwhile. What’s even better than business dreams? Watching them become your reality.

Studies show that setting precise business goals makes business dreams a lot more likely to become real. That’s because the right goals keep your drive high, focus your mind, and get your creativity flowing.

1 “Begin with the end in mind” (Stephen R Covey, author & speaker)

What changes would you like in your design business? Examples could be “I want clients who really get my style” or “I want to earn an additional £800 a month”.

Note down your answers to the question — don’t analyse them, just let them flow out.

2 Highlight one answer that feels like it would have the biggest impact on your business at this moment

(There may be lots of things you want to do, that’s wonderful — remember you can always come back to this process as soon as your first goal is finished, or on-track.)

3 Make your goal do-able, but exciting

Don’t underestimate yourself with a half-hearted wish like “It would be nice to have one new client by March next year”; you have more talent than that in your little finger! Your goal should be something you’d go for when you’re on a high or having a good day — it should stretch you a little.

4 Get into the nitty-gritty

Make your goal specific, an example could be: “I want four new clients, giving me work totalling £600 per month, by 9am, eight weeks from today”.

Don’t be tempted into fuzzy phrases like “I need more clients”. Put actual dates & numbers in, even if it feels challenging. Dates & numbers will really increase the chances of your goal becoming reality. And remember: “Shoot for the moon. Even if you miss it you will land among the stars.” (Les Brown, speaker & author).

5 Finally, “Ink it, don’t think it” (Mark Victor Hansen, business coach & entrepreneur)

Write your goal down; perhaps turning it into a desktop background, design or collage. Whatever format you use, make sure you place it where you can see it every day in your work area.

For an extra boost, put a credit-card sized version in your purse or wallet. Studies show that, funny though it sounds, carrying your goal on you really increases the chances of it becoming reality.

I look forward to your achievements — do feel free to share your success stories with me.

I’m Mhairi Gordon-Preston and I help design business-owners & freelancers become more profitable and more fulfilled. Get monthly tips from me, plus a gift ecourse at SuitFreeBusinessHelpForDesignCompanies.com. I worked as a designer for 10 years, have run my own businesses for 10 years and am an Enterprise Champion in my local town, helping small businesses connect with each other

TV Production company RICOCHET are making a new 6 part series on traditional and contemporary crafts for a major broadcaster this summer. The series will feature episodes on six different types of craft; Greenwood, Thatching, Stonemasonry, Weaving, Stained Glass and Metal Work.
 
RICOCHET have enlisted some of the UK’s top Mastercraftsmen from a variety of disciplines who will each mentor 3 eager trainees on an intensive training course. If you’re interested and passionate about learning the traditional skills of the blacksmith, have a passion for wood or any of the other skills listed above then contact the Mastercrafts team at RICOCHET on 01273 224 800 or email mastercrafts@ricochet.co.uk

RICOCHET are the makers of factual and documentary programming for all the major broadcasters both in the UK and US. They have produced series such as “No Going Back”, “Supernanny” and “Born To Be Different”. More recent work includes the Bafta nominated ‘Blood, Sweat and T-Shirts’ for BBC3 and ‘The Real Swiss Family Robinson’ for BBC1.

There are loads of other photoshop tutorials out there if you need them too, take a look at Tutorialized which lists 9082 photoshop tutorials, that should keep you busy for a while .

Adobe also have their own video tutorials in all their products including photoshop at http://www.adobe.com/designcenter/video_workshop/

The majority of my work is for print, but also I occasionally create the look for websites as well. This will just be done to comp/mock up stage ready for someone else to code (though I am learning). What I have always found surprising is that when you hear of people creating web design mockups you usually hear them talk about Fireworks or Photoshop not Illustrator. I don’t know how to use Fireworks, I do use Photoshop but would never really think of it as a program for creating visuals in – for elements of a visual, yes, but not for planning, experimenting and designing visuals as a core program.

Whenever I have created web design mock ups I have always used illustrator, it’s quick and flexible allowing for rapid moving about of elements. If at the end you want to, you can export Illustrator to photoshop keeping all the layers intact. I was quite pleased to find a tutorial that leads you through the process of creating web design mock ups in illustrator and then how to use the image slices in you web designs. I had never realised Illustrator allowed you to create slices, name them and output them all for web. It then talks you through using these image slices to create a template in XHTML and CSS.

Take a look at this tutorial, its made for creating Drupal templates, but parts 1,2 and 3, on creating a mock up in illustrator and then slicing it up and then creating XHTML and CSS templates are useful for any web design.

I often receive emails with people asking me how they can teach themselves graphic design. Having taken the traditional college route I find it a difficult one to answer. I know from personal experience that what I learned at college was only a drop in the ocean (a starting point) and much of my current design experience has been gained from experimentation, friends and former colleagues.

There clearly are people out there who have taught themselves graphic design:

• Char from Essential Keystrokes taught herself to design and build websites
• Randa Clay, who began working in Direct Mail and Database Marketing before teaching herself graphic design
• Amanda Vlahakis, who took part in freelancer focus and said how she had taught herself graphic design.

I asked Amanda Vlahakis from http://www.trulyace.com how she taught herself graphic design

I can only talk about how I self taught because I should imagine each person learns differently if you know anything about the different learning styles that each person will respond better to. For myself self teaching involved mainly ‘doing’ – so mainly practising by myself and nothing else in the way of tutorials or online courses or anything else like that.

Obviously I’m still learning, as we all are, I don’t think it ever ends.

My Methods

So I essentially sat down with the software and just started attempting to create things and then I practised for hour upon hour, for years, until I got better. Each time I didn’t know how to do something that I felt I needed to learn and couldn’t figure out for myself through trial and error I would go to Google and search for a solution, so research was part of my self teaching.

This searching for solutions via a search engine tended in my case to revolve not around the design itself but the technical things one has to learn; for instance about printing methods, printing file requirements and so on….to ensure that what one has designed comes out right at the other end when printed and to learn how to layout a design for print for different types of print product.

Another part of my learning, specifically my illustrative learning, was to the study the technical ability of other illustrators. For instance if I wanted to achieve the appearance of ‘glossy lips’ for an illustrated fashion character I would stare at the work of top illustrators and see how each different illustrator achieves these sorts of effects and learn from them.

It’s always a good idea to look at other designers anyway (not just graphic designers but all sorts of designers), for creative inspiration and to avoid becoming stale, which is actually quite a hazard I find, anyway I digress…..

They say there are three types of learners:

1. Visual Learners, who learn through seeing. They need to see their tutors body language and facial expression to understand the topic, and may think in pictures and learn best from visual learning aids such as diagrams. Design tutorials with screen grabs would be perfect for this sort of learner I expect.
2. Auditory Learners, who learn through listening. This person will learn most effectively by listening to a lecturer for instance, or a mentor who verbalises the topic to them. They may struggle to injest information in written form until it is heard. For this type of learner, it might be worth seeking out tutorials that are auditory as well as visual, and podcasts.
3. Tactile/Kinesthetic Learners, I believe I am this type of learner, as I have always struggled to learn from listening to words (I tend to zone out within minutes and learn nothing) and although reading things I must learn isn’t too bad, it isn’t as ideal for me as actually ‘doing’ the task. I’ve always learned things much quicker and better if I physically do it. I have noticed this since I was about 16 (I’m nearly 35 now eek!)

It is said that this type of learner prefers the hands-on approach and may find it difficult to sit still for long periods become distracted by their need for activity. This is definitely true of me, I find it very difficult to relax for any period of time unless exhausted. But I must say that having your own business is ideal for tiring yourself out of an evening!

So I guess it’s a good idea to think about what of what sort of learner you are before you start, and expect to put in plenty of hours into practising no matter what type of learner you are. Never give up and no matter how rubbish you are to start (I was awful, not even joking here – really really awful), have complete faith that you can only get better and better if you just keep practising and never stop practising.

Max, a graphic design blog reader asked three questions about learning graphic design on my post about Open University

1) I am looking for a Graphic Design course online from some reputable institution which offers the course with a certificate and is least expensive and can be finished in shortest possible time.

I have yet to find anyone who has said they have taken an online graphic design course so I would love to have any blog readers input on his one. Are online Graphic Design Courses any good, I don’t mean learning programs like photoshop and Quark, but a real Graphic Design practical and aesthetics course. I tried a web design course with the Open University but was unimpressed by the course. W3 schools have free online lessons in HTML and CSS which lots of people swear by but this is purely for the coding side rather than design.

My suggestion for anyone teaching themselves graphic design would be to:

• Try working on some sample design briefs, as with anything hand on practice is the key to learning.
• Learn the basic programs used in the industry:For Print Design
  Quark or Indesign, Photoshop and Illustrator
  If you are interested in learning design for print make sure you know how to set a job up so it will print correctly when sent to the printers.

  For Web Design
  Photoshop
  Dreamweaver or a text editor
  Possibly flash
  There are also Open Source Web programs Available

2) A real good book/learning CDS or DVDS which is good to learn/ study Graphic Design and perhaps is used in in some leading universities as a course material.

Books

• Louisa over at Graphic Diction suggests Design Basics Index for learning general Graphic Design and Layout and Thinking with Type for typography.
• Jennifer from Laughing Lion Design recommendsThe Non-designer’s Design Book: Design and Typographic Principles for the Visual Novice
• For general design inspiration you can see my recommendations in the sidebar of this blog.
• I have found the books from sitepoint are excellent for learning web design, CSS and HTML. They are well laid out and easy to follow.
• Magazines are worth looking at too, the majority include tutorials Computer Arts, Net Magazine, Web Designer Magazine, Creative Review (inspiration rather than tutorials), Communication Arts recommended by Lauren from Creative Curio

DVDs

• For learning all your graphic design and web programs I know many people are big fans of http://www.lynda.com where you can subscribe for $25 month to watch all the tutorial videos on the site. You can buy the DVDs and some books too.

3) Web sites where one can-FREELY- read or study and download materials for Graphic Design.

• There are plenty of blogs on graphic design out there which contains tutorials and information to help you. David Airey compiled a lst of his top 50 design blogs
  
• http://www.creativecurio.com - Lauren has written a lot of post that would be worth reading by a newbie designer. Her category the basics include posts such as:
  Why Being Odd is Good: The Principle of Balance
  Create Some Space
  The Grid in Practice
• I Love Typography as the name suggests is a blog about typography and covers everything from the history of typography to font creation, well worth a read to increase your knowledge of type. Johno the blog owner also offers his typography book recommendations.
• Laughing Lion Design contains lots of photoshop tutorials. A recent post also shows how you can change a boring looking report cover into a more interesting design.
• Graphic design blog contains several posts which may help the new/learning designer:
  Sketches and Grids Speed up the Design Process explains how grids can be used to build up the basic structure of a page
  Inspiration for Design and Advertising gives an insight into how you can stimulate ideas and concepts for your design work.
  Design For Print Check List as mentioned above this post explains how to set up a design job to go to print.
• W3 Schools contain a wealth of freely available tutorials on XHTML CSS and web design
• Forum are a great way to get advice on graphic design. I wrote a post a while ago about getting help online which you may find useful.

Did you teach yourself Graphic Design? How did you do it?

I finally found an online web design course with the Open University and though I wasn’t interested in following it as a exam course I decided I would take the course and just skip the end written dissertation. The 12 week part time learn from home course promised that students would become confident users of HTML and CSS. I searched the web for reviews of the course and even asked in a couple of forums but could find no impartial information about the course.

It is now week six of the web design course and I have all but abandoned it. I had high expectations of this course but I am deeply disappointed. The majority of the course seems to be on a theoretical basis, in my opinion far too much. Take for example one lesson which teaches you that the size of images should be kept to a minimum for fast loading, now I agree this is something everyone should know but it then proceeds to tell you how to calculate loading time with a formula. To me some of these theoretical lessons would be fine if it was a one or two year course but not for a twelve week course. Another lesson asks you to work out how you would manage your team (who does what, programmers designers etc) to create your website – now if I had that team would I really be taking this course? The book that is provided is also not very easy to follow, I have far superior books from http://www.sitepoint.com

If you are a print based designer like myself looking to learn more CSS, HTML and web design I would give this course a miss. The people who might find this course useful are people who have a good understanding of CSS and HTML but want to fill in some theoretical gaps they may have missed. I am still trying to teach myself more about designing websites so will pass on any useful links I find.

Have you tried any online or local evening classes in web design, what did you think to them?

• What made you choose the Design College or University you went to?
• What did you like dislike about the course?
• Are there any specific design schools/universities you would recommend?
• What specific things/subjects would you look for in a design school/university?

I actually went back to my old college to look at the end of the year design show and was shocked by what seemed to be a lack of web design examples everything still seemed focussed on design for print when I would have thought this was a key area that should have been pushed. A lot of the students didn’t even appear to have online portfolios. I think if I was going to college now I would make sure that web and multimedia were a key part of the course as well as design for print.

http://www.allgraphicdesign.com has a series of links to articles about choosing a design school which you may find useful.

When you are designing a job that needs to be printed there are certain things that need to be remembered and checked.

FOR A FOUR COLOUR PROCESS PRINT JOB

1. Make sure all images are 300dpi at actual size and saved as a tiff or eps
Note: if you blow a raster (Photoshop) image up in your layout programme (Quark/Indesign) you are in effect lowering the image resolution. Vector (Illustrator) files are resolution independent, which means they can be blown up without image quality deterioration.

2. Make sure images are set to CMYK
Note: CMYK stands for cyan, magenta, yellow and black, the colours the printer will use to create the print. Small dots of these colours will make all the different colours in the printed document eg. small dots of yellow and cyan will look like green.

3. Allow Bleed on a document – usually 3mm unless otherwise stated
Note: Bleed is an amount of image/colour etc that reaches out past the trim lines. This allows for print movement and slight inaccuracies, so if the guillotine moves slightly you won’t have a white edge for instance where there should have been blue.

4. Convert illustrator eps text to outlines
Note: Before you send a job to print if you are using an illustrator eps with text within it convert the text to outline. This prevents any font issues from the embedded font. make sure you save yourself a copy of the files without the text turned to outline in case you ever need to amend it.

5. Check your document only contains only the 4 colours CMYK.
Note: Make sure if you do have any spot colours that they are specified to split into 4 colour process.

6. Add a percentage of a colour to large areas of solid black
Note: If you have a design that uses large areas of solid black it is a good idea to add a percentage of another of the process colours to it to give more density. For example if I am doing a job with a large area of black I would perhaps create a new colour called special black with 100% black and 50% cyan (make sure it is set to split to process colours). This is often known as a shiner. You do have to be careful using this technique if you are using small text on the black, as any slip in the colours could mean that your white out text, ends up cyan. If in doubt it’s best to take advice from your printer on this.

FOR A TWO COLOUR PRINT JOB

1. Make sure all images are 300dpi at actual size

2. Make sure images are set to duotones (or you can use monotones of one of the colours)
Note: If you are using duotones (images made up of two colours) make sure you have named your two colours the same in photoshop as you have in Quark or Indesign. Any slight differences will mean your document will output to more than one plate. For example if you have chosen pantone 144cvc as one of the colours in your duotone, but then choose pantone 144cv (no c at the end) you are in fact creating an extra plate.

3. Allow Bleed on a document – usually 3mm unless otherwise stated

4. Convert illustrator eps text to outlines
Note: As mentioned in point 2 also make sure you have named colours the same throughout your files.

5. Check your document only contains the 2 colours you need and they are set up as spot colours
Note: (you won’t be able to get rid of the CMYK colours but in Quark can remove the default RGB blue green and red)

USING CUTTER GUIDES

1. Create your cutter guide in illustrator and colour the stroke a SPOT colour, I usually name this Cutter. in illustrator specify in WINDOW – ATTRIBUTES overprint stroke (checkbox).

2. If you are pulling your cutter guide (as above) into quark – go into EDIT COLOURS – EDIT TRAP and set your cutter colour to overprint. This makes sure the cutter doesn’t interfere (knock out) with any of the print work below it.

TRAPPING

In general I leave quarks trapping to its defaults, except in the case of cutter guide as mentioned above or if I am working on a 2 colour job where I have text in one colour going over a pale tint of the other, when I will specify the text to overprint. Otherwise you get a spreading effect. If in doubt ask the printer to check the trapping for you.

MY PROCESS OF CHECKING DESIGN FOR PRINT
Whenever I am designing a document – unless I am just a concept stage I will ensure my images are all CMYK and 300 dpi and I have include 3mm bleed as I go along. Once I get the go ahead to send the artwork I will however do a final check. I use Quark so I will double check:

• I have include bleed wherever needed
• That all my colours are set to 4 colour process (for a 4 colour job) and I remove the default RGB Red Blue and Green colours in the Quark palette.
• Then I do a collect for output and open up all of my photoshop images to check they are CMYK and 300dpi and open up my illustrator images check them and convert any text to outlines
• If possible send a printout or PDF to the printer so the files can be checked against it. If you are using any spot colours make sure these are specified to the printer.

There are programs such as Flightcheck that will check your print is set up correctly – in terms of colour splits and images, but this is quite expensive.

If you are looking for more information on setting up design for print http://www.printernational.org has some good advice.

David Airey Graphic Design also has some good advice on on things you should consider before printing.

If there is are any suggestions or methods you use to check your design before it goes to print, please feel free to add them to the comments below.