February, 2004 | CreativePro Network

dot-font: Faux Fonts

dot-font was a collection of short articles written by editor and typographer John D. Barry (the former editor and publisher of the typographic journal U&lc) for CreativePro. If you’d like to read more from this series, click here. Eventually, John gathered a selection of these articles into two books, dot-font: Talking About Design and dot-font: Talking […]

Heavy Metal Madness: Waxing Nostalgic Over Paste-Up

In every profession people date themselves by the work practices or technology in place at the time they entered their chosen field. We say things like “but then, I was a surgeon before they invented anesthesia,” or “my first computer filled three rooms, and generated enough heat to power a small city.” In the rest […]

Web How-To: Making Your First Flash MX Project

This story is taken from “Macromedia Flash MX Bible.” To buy this book click here. Macromedia Flash is as pervasive in Web sites of the 2000s as PostScript was to print projects during the 1990s. According to Macromedia, 97 percent of all Web-using desktop computers have the Flash Player installed. If you design or produce […]

The Digital Dish: Best Practices for Page Layouts

No matter how many times you’ve done it, sending a page-layout file to a co-worker or a service bureau can be a palm-sweating experience. Your hand hovers above the “OK” button as you run down the list in your head: Is that image really supposed to be behind the text? Was that bold font intentional? […]

The Art of Business: Good News from Sundance

I recently had the pleasure of spending a week at the Sundance Film Festival in Park City, Utah. Great films, great food, great energy, and a great percentage of movies shot and edited digitally, or shot on film and then enhanced with “digital intermediate” technology. So I guess I shouldn’t have been surprised to run […]

Photoshop CS How-To: Placing Type on a Path

One of the most requested features has finally made it to Photoshop with the release of Photoshop CS. Now, just as in Adobe Illustrator, you can place type along any path. Both the type and the path remain fully editable. Photoshop has had the Type Warp feature since Photoshop 6, which enabled you to deform […]

Under the Desktop: When Good E-Mail Meets Bad

The arrival of the MyDoom worm last week disrupted the regular working of the worldwide Internet. At the same time, it must have knocked more than a few professional content creators off the map for a good while. This assertion isn’t mere conjecture: I was working with one of them, by the name of Mr. […]

Plug-Ins and XTensions: GoLive Flashers, InDesign Stitchers, Photoshop Adjusters, QuarkXPress Fixers

Each month Design Tools Monthly reviews some of the best plug-ins and XTensions on the market. Most of the mentioned products can be purchased through The PowerXChange. GoLive Flash Extensions for GoLive CS Adobe’s new Advanced SWF Authoring extension (free) for GoLive CS lets you embed and deliver Macromedia Flash (SWF) content and automatically route […]

iPhoto 4: Faster, Smarter Image Catalog for the Mac

Although digital cameras may make your imaging workflow much faster and cheaper, they also make it possible to generate incredible amounts of data. Organizing and managing a large library of photos requires a good image-cataloging application. And while iPhoto has long had one of the best interfaces of any Mac-based photo cataloger, its feature set […]