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Does anyone know of a relatively simple way of creating the 'text going off into the distance' effect using either InDesign or photoshop? You know, like at the start of Star Wars?
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I've got the text in a text box in Photoshop, but for some reason the 'Perspective' tool is greyed out. Does anyone have any idea why that might be?
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quote:Originally posted by Tilde: I was going to say, you need to rasterise the type first, as I don't think you can do it to actual text.
Yes, that's what I did. If you want, I can talk you through it. If you're serious about becoming a designer for a living it might be useful for me to help you learn how to do these things.
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quote:Originally posted by Tilde: I was going to say, you need to rasterise the type first, as I don't think you can do it to actual text.
Actually re-reading this, you've got it wrong. If you do it this way, you lose the crispness of the text. You have to turn the text into a shape, apply the effects and then rasterise it.
Like I say I'm happy to show you how to do this - help you achieve professional looking results.
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In all seriousness, I did once consider posting up some of the design stuff I do for work so that the 'proper' designers could tell me where I could improve in the future. Then I thought people would either ignore it, or just use it as en excuse to kick the shit out of me for something that I hadn't ever done before, or - worse - just ignore it. So I didn't bother.
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posted
This is the kind of thing I do; some adverts for consumer magazine, some flyers for the trade. I know this stuff can be smartened up, I'm just never quite sure of what basic principles I can apply to make it look less 'in-house'.
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I've had a look at your files and think overall they're actually not bad, especially considering you are not a graphic designer. To be honest I've seen worse from actual graphic designers in the past.
I think you've got some of the right ideas.
I think it's pretty hard to explain exactly what makes a good design but I'm going to have a go at giving you some pointers which hopefully may help.
With regard to fonts - I see you've matched up your fonts to the covers of the books - this is good. With the caveat that if the book design is shit with a shit font, you're going to struggle to make it work right from the start.
1. Generally less fonts = more nicer design. Limit your designs to one or two fonts and just use a couple of different weights to change emphasis.
2. Limit your colours, again less is more here - sample a couple of colours from the main image
3. Body text looks more elegant when it's 10pt.
4. Background images - you have to ask yourself is it adding anything to the overall look. Sometimes an overpowering background image makes things look a bit cheap. I think generally background images should be something that makes the main image stand out more.
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I've had a quick go at redoing one of the pages you sent over. To show you what I might do. I chose the front page of The Unit flyer.
Here's yours My thoughts on it were: • background too overpowering - also didn't like the use of two seperate images as bg. • Main font ugly - although I can see it's matched to the cover • Do you need the title as it's on the book? • Available Match 2010 seems much to large • overall look is very busy and crammed.
Here's mine Link
I may have made this a bit too horrorish, but what I thought was:
• Use the quote to catch peoples attention 1st. • book cover looks a bit boring flat - make it into a 3d packshot (I would have dropped the spine on here too) • make background more subtle • Body copy to 10 pt • choose nicer font (Avant Garde) • sample colours from book for text • Leave some "white space" around quote, image and text (stops everything looking so crammed in, bit more relaxing to look at) • add a few creepy details to background (photoshop grunge brushes)
I hope that helps a bit - If you really want to learn more you're best off reading some books on graphic design. Grids, composition, use of colour etc, or do what most designers do, find something you really like and rip it off.
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posted
That's very useful - thank you for taking the time to look at those. Yes, I have a bad habit of using overpowering background images. I think it's similar to the way that when people first start to write copy they use too many words.
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And dump the bit about, "...continuing in the tradition of The Handmaid's Tale," or else I definitely won't be reading it. What a load of shite that was.
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I liked the handmaid's tale. But moreover it's directed at the trade, so you're not trying to persuade people to read it so much as you're trying to persuade them it's worth stocking. So you might say "will appeal to readers of the DaVinci code" because you're trying to persuade someone the book will sell, not that it's worth reading.
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