I recently had to find a landscaper for my home, and doing so reminded me how much typography affects buying decisions, whether we realize it consciously or not.

I first called the landscaper whose Yellow Pages ad had the cleanest and most modern typography. I also called one with a much more dated and sloppy ad. Both ads stood out to me more than the rest, and both were for landscapers right near my town (so you know I didn’t base my calls on type alone). I had in my head before any of them came for an estimate that the first would probably be out of my price range, and that the second might be cheaper, but more traditional in style. Maybe it’s coincidence, but guess which one called me back first, was more professional, was more in line with my tastes, and… was much more expensive. (more…)

You asked your legal, copyright and trademark questions, and Jean has answered! All questions are taken from comments posted on the original ‘Ask Jean’ post. We invite you to ask more questions.

Hi Jean!

I run a Creative Services department in a large corporation. I am creating a brochure for a tradeshow. In this brochure is a 30 year timeline showing events in the industry, company milestones and cultural fads. As part of this timeline I wanted to include images of specific products including a Rubick’s Cube, a Viewmaster, Etch-a-sketch and an iPod or iPhone. I have not seen stock photography of these objects. I was going to have a photo shoot so I have original photography we own.

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Create graphic artwork to raise awareness - it’s a perfect way to declare your support! As each day goes by the problems facing the earth become more and more apparent, its abundantly clear that many things must change.

Throughout history, graphic design has proved itself as one of the best means to instigate a change in society and communicate a call to action. Here’s your chance to raise awareness on the environmental issues affecting our delicate planet.

Your graphic design entry should provoke a positive change in the many things that are compromising our biosphere.

Deadline: September 1, 2007

Details:

I take most taglines with a grain of salt, but when MOO says “We love to print” I think they really mean it.

The MOO website, moo.com, is as fun as the products they print.]

Many designers have a love/hate relationship with printing. Print materials can look so amazing, and are so essential to promotion, but can be a real challenge to put together. Isn’t it time you had a little more fun with your print work? (more…)

Flash designers and Flash developers are often the same person. Why? It’s mainly because Flash has proven such a popular success and because it breathes interactive life into lightweight, great looking artwork—or, looking at it from the other side, that it spiffs up programming projects so well from a visual standpoint. The platform really serves as a blend of the disciplines of design and development, and, in light of this tendency, Jen deHaan (Adobe documentation doyenne, among other talents) has dubbed this special hybrid a Flash “deseloper,” which gives deselopers the world over an apt title. This is useful, for sure; however, the advent of Flash CS3 makes things a bit more interesting. (more…)

You asked your legal, copyright and trademark questions, and Jean has answered! All questions are taken from comments posted on the original ‘Ask Jean’ post. We invite you to ask more questions.

Hi Jean,

Great site! If you design a stationary system for a client and take your files to the printer, and the client in turn pays the printer for the work but does not pay your bill (the designer) in full, do you have a right to refuse to let the printer reprint any of the work until you get paid in full?

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Jean Perwin

Jean Perwin is a Miami based attorney who specializes in Intellectual Property Law, Entertainment and General Corporate Law. She is most recently a recurring author for Notes on Design, and has a just launched a new series of informational posts to answer all your burning trademark/copyright questions. For those unfamiliar with the genius of Jean, we asked her ten questions ranging from the widest-held copyright hooey to the reason she likes working with people like you. (more…)

How many times have you started a web page design from a Photoshop PSD mockup? Or needed to revise an image in Photoshop after it was part of your web layout? Dreamweaver CS3’s integration with Photoshop makes these common tasks much quicker.

Start off by opening a page in Dreamweaver and opening an image in Photoshop, even a layered PSD (note that all of these techniques work in Fireworks too—it’s your choice!). Make a rectangular marquee selection of the part of the image you want to bring into your web page. Don’t worry if it’s not the size, format, or optimization level you ultimately want, just press Command-C (Ctrl-C on a PC) to copy it (or go to Edit > Copy Merged if the file is layered).

Now, position your cursor in your Dreamweaver document, right where you want the image to go—a div container, a table cell, whatever you like—and paste (Command/Ctrl-V).

Copying from Photoshop and pasting to Dreamweaver brings you to the Image Preview dialog.
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You asked your legal, copyright and trademark questions, and Jean has answered! All questions are taken from comments posted on the original ‘Ask Jean’ post. We invite you to ask more questions.

Hi Jean,

As I’m designing corporate training classes I often have topics where it would be instructive to show brief excerpts from movies.

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I spend over 75% of my workday in Flash, and it’s time I really do enjoy. If I’m not coding up a custom MP3 player, I’m designing character models for an interactive mascot or working out the navigation for a corporate slideshow. Heck, I even do video work in Flash, often using the main timeline and manual tweens to export animation for use in title sequences and interstitials that don’t end up anywhere near the Web. With each new release, Flash keeps getting better; but as much as I value the authoring environment, I’m quick to grant it doesn’t do everything I need.

Over the years, I’ve gathered a handful of free 3rd party tools that I use so often, I find myself shocked when reaching for them on a friend’s computer and—poof!—they’re not there. (more…)