williams | silverpeakarts.ca

A very common but very costly mistake in a project’s lifeline occurs the moment the project leaves your hands and ends up in another’s… namely a service provider like a printer or film house. More »

January 7th, 2009 | Tags: collect, disc, Disk, FTP, instructions, PDF, printouts, ship | Category: graphic artist's resource, print production, tutorials | Comments (1)

There are lots of pre-made web buttons floating around out there you can grab whenever you need a “button” look. But when you have to create something specific, perhaps a little more realistic than the standard glassy button – or a little less symmetrical – then you have to roll up your sleeves and do it yourself.

Think of it this way… do you want the same buttons as everyone else or do you want to create unique graphics for yourself or your clients? Whatever the answer is there is no harm in knowing how they are built using Adobe Illustrator.

Finished Image

January 6th, 2009 | Tags: adobe, button, clipping mask, CMYK, coke sign, gradient, graphic artist, how to, illustrator, Outer Glow, print production, RGB, tips, transparency mask, tutorial | Category: graphic artist's resource, illustrator, tutorials | Leave a comment

You can use a displacement map to make a graphic follow every contour or corner of an underlying texture or shape, such as a flag or cloth. More »

May 20th, 2008 | Tags: adobe, channels, displacement map, fit logo to flag, how to, photoshop, RGB, tutorial, wavy, wrap texture | Category: graphic artist's resource, photoshop, tutorials | Comments (6)

Most production artists do not worry about trapping. Trapping is something best left to pre-press professionals, but there is an exception that I have found can be problematic if it is not addressed.

When setting up a die-cut piece, one of the most common errors that can occur is having the dieline knock out of all the pieces of film. More »

April 22nd, 2008 | Tags: attributes, dielines, film, illustrator, indesign, overprint, pre press, production, production tips, quark, trap information, trapping, xpress | Category: graphic artist's resource, print production, tutorials | Leave a comment

As an artist, I have often been appalled at the cavalier way people treat images found on the internet. I have been asked by clients and colleagues numerous times to just “find an image we can use on the internet” as they prefer not to pay a photographer or find a stock photo. Their attitude is “who’s gong to know?” Me for one – as I refuse to do it.

It could easily be one of my images, or yours. More »

April 8th, 2008 | Category: graphic artist's resource, industry notes, tutorials | Leave a comment