can some designers help me out please?

[Anonymous]

i'm going to make a poster for a show that we are to be playing in the new year. i've never done it before, but having had access to this site since pretty much before it went live, i've seen some ideas that i like, some that i don't like, and some that i love.

i'm not so much worried about the artwork, i'm pretty sure i can handle that end of it, but what i'm wondering is this:

if you were to use a graphics program to add text to hand drawn pieces, what would you use? i have pretty much any PC tool available to me, but i'm wondering what would be the recommended tool to help me with layout and fonts...

thanks.

[Nolen Strals]

I recommend Illustrator or QuarkXpress.

A lot of people might tell you to use photoshop, but the problem I have with photoshop is the edges dont' print out crisp ../they kind of have a fuzzy edge to them, which won't happen with Illustrator, etc.

scan and save your image at medium high-res (300 dpi or so) and save it as a bitmap or Tiff file....clean it up in Photoshop if you have to.

In Illustrator, "place" or copy and paste the
image from Photoshop. Add the text from there.

personally, I'd do the lettering by hand, esp. if it's hand-done artwork, but that's just a personal style/preference.

good luck!

[drowningcreek]

Mmmmm...that's a great question. I've been using graphics software since '88 and have done layout and seps out of every major program out there.

I tend to use photshop, painter and freehand to do all my work after the intial illustration is done.

Text layout and effects (twisting bending etc) is more easlity done in a vector based program like freehand or illustrator. I then take that text into photoshop working full size at 300 dpi.

You can assemble projects in Quark, but I would use photoshop or freehand/illustrator to do the main bulk of the designwork.

I have heard many people say that they get a little sawtoothing (fuzzy edges) when they convert thier seps to bitmaps, but I don't really have that problem. What sawtoothing that does appear (and it' very minimal) usually is not noticeable when it is finally screenprinted. On 4C process offset jobs I do everything out of photoshop and painter.

The only reason I recommend photoshop, is it is my personal preference. You can do what complete posters in any of those programs. I just find that my tricks for trapping out the colors are more easily done in photoshop. I then take the seps into freehand for imaging, additional small type and tweaking.

Good luck in first poster and if I can help in any way feel free to write. I love to see people get involved in doing posters. It's an addiction...

Jeff Wood
Drowning Creek Studio
jeff@drowningcreek.com

[sweet_jesus]

i'm no designer but i'd suggest using paintshop pro 6. its the only design program i've ever touched and if i can do it, you can do it. just remember to put "antialias" when yr doin yr text thats about all i can tell you. i don't know what it means but it keeps the text smooth. was that your question? i cant remember. rock and roll.

[sweet_jesus]

what are you drawing? why don't you just draw in the text?

[Anonymous]

thanks to all who answered

i'll probably still be trying to do the poster, but our band can't play the show now. bummer.

trying to come up with a cool design starting in: 5...4...3...2...1....*

[Anonymous]

most of these replies would work, my preference is illustrator, but it's better yer not playing the gig. There are a probably a few hundred more problems you'll run into before you make even a black and white yer happy with. Just pretend like you still have the gig, and start practicing with different methods. The guy I'm staying with right now uses all kinds of clipping paths and crap to vectorize the whole piece, which comes out super clean. Or you can get a program like adobe streamline, and when you scane yer drawing, it can convert it to vectors. It keeps the final print looking more cohesive. I know my friend (I don't wan't to mention his name, you all hate him) is putting his newest site up next week, and it has an entire section of vectorized art, fonts, layout methods, all downloadable for free, and aimed straight at newbies. Long live rawk.

[MaximumFluoride]

I also use streamline to vectorize my line art. It works killer once you figure out how to work the settings. I usualy bring it back into Photoshop and lay out the whole psoter in P-shop. I just feel more comfortable working in P-shop. P-shop 6 has pretty good text tools now. It is much more like illustrator.

[Speed]

he's right, if you've got photoshop 6, the text will pop like corn when you print it out. It looks almost too good sometimes.

[bucky_haight]

Anti-aliasing is cool;it smooths out your text,eliminating the jagged pixilated look you see when your fonts are mondo huge;the thing I hate about it is that sometimes it makes things TOO smooth:using a font called "ransom",yer type-A-1-A "pistols" punk font,I discovered that I couldn't colour it properly:selecting the text only picked certain areas,so I had to use the text w/o anti-aliasing to colour it.
Also,if you resize,your text gets weird;I noticed this using dropshadows,also:there's the shadow but there's an anti-shadow as an artifact of resizing;it looks keen but it bitches things up if all you want is a dropshadow....

I hope I remembered my password properly:I donwanna type this all over again!

PS:hay Speed!glad to know you're not dead or sommat like that!