Thirty-Six Point Gorilla

The naming of Free Fonts has never been dictated by a single convention. In the days of proprietary type, when type was made by the manufacturers of type-setting machines, there was some coherence amongst the names within a single library. Now that typefaces from many different periods and sources can be united upon the desktop, the list of typefaces used in even a single piece of contemporary design can make fairly extraordinary reading:

‘Abbess, Altoona, Acropolis, Dolmen Decorated, Egbert, Enlivan, Falstaff, Garage Gothic, Helvetica, Melody, Monster, Narly, Pinwheel, Phrastic, Siena’

Each of this spectacular roll call of typefaces was used by the Los Angeles Design Tutorials group ReVerb in a recent Stella Artois Campaign. The success of the best known amongst them, Helvetica, has often been credited to its name. Originally called Neue Haas-Grotesk by the Haas Foundry of Munchenstein, the Stempel Foundry of Frankfurt renamed the face in order to sell it to a non-German speaking market. Promoted with Alpine imagery and described as a sans serif that was ‘devoid of personality’, the name and the typeface gelled in a way that must be at least partly responsible for its early success and, more recently, its vilification by sections of the Design Training community. Other names within this extravagant list range from the adjectival, through the associative, to the just about impenetrable.

The 5 Jobs of your Logo Design’s Color Palette

Picking colors for your logo can be difficult. Just how do you go about choosing appropriate colors? Everyone has favorite colors, and many people also have colors they hate. But, whether or not you personally like a color actually has little to do with its appropriateness for your business's brand.

You should make your choices based on the colors that will best perform the color palette's jobs.

What are those jobs?

The color palette's jobs include:

• Telling your brand's story through color psychology
• Laying the color palette foundation for your Visual Vocabulary
• Giving your logo elements light and dark contrast
• Having enough colors to be interesting but not so many that printing's too expensive
• Complementing each other and creating visual appeal

Let's go into more detail on each of these jobs.

Telling your brand's story through color psychology: Colors all have different psychological meanings. And each color can have several meanings, depending on the context in which it is used. For example, red is a "hot" color that can also display urgency, signal "stop," and demonstrate love and passion. So, depending on the messages that are communicated by the other elements of your logo, such as the icon, Free Fonts and other colors, it may be possible to interpret the meaning of each color in the palette in different ways.

Laying the color foundation for your Visual Vocabulary: Many small businesses think they need to put every color they want to use on their marketing materials in the logo itself, and they wind up with a logo that looks like a crazy rainbow. In fact, you just need to include your main brand colors in your logo. Your main brand colors are usually the one, two or three that best represent your company. You can then augment your logo's color palette with additional colors from your Visual Vocabulary when you design your marketing materials to get more of a full-spectrum impact.

Giving your logo elements light and dark contrast: Your Logo Design Tutorials will be made up of several elements—the parts of the icon and your company name. Making sure that those elements have different color values, meaning that some colors are light and some are dark, will do a couple of things for you. First, it will give your logo a feeling of liveliness—and that will make the logo more eye-catching. Second, it will help to distinguish the different elements from one another—both by giving them more variation and different basic values. This has the added advantage of helping color blind viewers who see your logo to see it more clearly.

Having enough colors to be interesting but not so many that printing's too expensive:

Whether or not this is actually an issue for you depends on whether you're planning to print your materials on a traditional press or digitally. If you're printing on a traditional press, the printer will charge more for the job the more colors in your piece, so you want to use just two or three colors. (One color is often not enough to provide visual interest.) Using more than three colors in your logo often makes printing quite expensive. If you're printing digitally, then the number of colors shouldn't be as much of a concern, because digital printing uses a full range of colors.

Complementing each other and creating visual appeal You don't want to choose colors for your Logo Design that don't look good next to each other. If you've chosen colors based on their psychological meanings only, or if you've concentrated too much on level of contrast and overlooked whether or not they coordinate with each other, then you can wind up with clashing colors. Also, placing colors next to each other can change their visual appearance. For example, if you put aqua next to sky blue, then the aqua will look bluer. If you place the same aqua next to a green, then it will appear greener. So, choose colors that complement each other and that make each look more appealing.

If you keep these five jobs in mind, then you'll choose colors for your Logo Design that are appropriate for your business rather than being based on your personal likes or dislikes.

The Three-Part Harmony in Your Logo Design

This is the beginning of a classic, harmonized song. Sure, one person can sing this song, and it will sound just fine. But, if a group of three people sings it together, with one singing the low notes, another singing the mid-range, and the third singing the high part, as a chord, then the song takes on more richness and depth. It immediately becomes a more sophisticated sound through the element of harmony.

What does singing together have to do with your Logo Design?

Just as a harmonized song is made up of a set of three notes, every small business's logo should be made up of three pieces of art: the icon, the font, and the color palette.

These three pieces all work together, singing the same basic song, to tell your business's story. In your logo, each of them gives you an opportunity to build in meaning and symbolism.

And together they allow your logo to sing a richer song than if it had just one or two of the elements—for example, a text-only logo, without an icon, or a symbol-only logo without the text component.

If the different elements in your logo sing together, you'll have a logo that really drives your point home to your audience instead of being off-key and clashing.

A bit more about the notes these elements can sing for you

The first "note" is the icon—the picture in the Logo Design. The elements of your logo's icon will all be symbols that have visual meaning. There are both abstract symbols, like basic shapes and swooshes, and representational symbols, which look like something. For example, an abstract symbol of a circle can be used to symbolize trust or completeness or to highlight another foreground element. A representational symbol of a leaf can be used to represent nature, growth, health, or eco-friendliness. The icon you choose should not only be meaningful but also memorable and unique.

The second note is the font, or fonts, that your business name appears in. Each font has a different personality. There are businesslike fonts, fonts that look educational, fonts that are funny, and others that are clean and modern. Your font also has the added job of being legible, both at large sizes and when your logo is very small. You don't want viewers to struggle to make sense of your business name, so use a highly legible font that makes your name readable at a glance.

The third note is the color palette. Colors all have different psychological meanings. And each color can have several meanings, depending on context. For example, red is a "hot" color that can also show urgency, signal "stop," and express love and passion. So, depending on the types of messages communicated by the other elements in your logo, your color palette may be interpreted in different ways.

You just need to make sure that these three pieces of art in your logo sing together in harmony instead of being off-key.

How to make sure your logo will sing on key and not fall flat

• Make sure that the three pieces of art are all singing the same basic song. Figure out the basic message your brand needs to sing—and then create an icon, choose a font, and apply a color palette that all reinforce that message.
• Consider giving the three elements different notes to sing. Even if the three elements in your logo are singing the same song, they can sing different notes, like a chord. In other words, they can all communicate your message in a slightly different way.
• One element may stand out and take a solo with the other elements singing backup. One element may even be singing a different part of your message—another melody—which can make your logo more subtle and complex. Whether the elements in your logo have a solo or sing backup, your message will be determined by the complexity of your brand's story.
• None of these elements is meant to carry the entire song by itself. All the elements in your logo are meant to appear together. The logo icon won't appear by itself without the font or color, and the color palette won't stand on its own. So, keep in mind that they're all telling parts of your business's story, but none of them has to tell the entire story alone.

Design your logo with the notes these three elements are singing in mind and what those notes mean. If you make them work together and sing in harmony, your Logo Design Training will have more depth and sophistication than if they sing off-key.

Royalty Free Heavy Metal Free Sound Loops

Remember the electric surge of energy that went down your spine when Metallica or System of A Down blew off the speakers with their distorted guitar playing? Remember how the fans danced in the mosh pit and pursued head-banging in a crazed frenzy? To enthuse such zeal and attention in the audience is the dream of every person who is about to make a presentation of his project, real or online.

Music portals and web sites have become very popular among web surfers and people wishing to either listen to music online or buy albums over the net. Apart from this, heavy metal music loops are used in high-octane video projects, in constructing powerful web site intros as well as in various other projects such as PowerPoint presentations, etc. Usage of heavy metal music and heavy metal Free Sound fx, which is today one of the most recognized streams of music all over the world, is bound to turn heads and get attention from the audience, irrespective of the kind of project you pursue.

But how do you get your hands on authentic heavy metal music loops without emptying your pockets on licensing fees. Employing professional musicians or audio engineers to do the job is also expensive, and might not provide the standard of result you would have ideally wanted. Royalty free music portals have the answer. But the main issue with the stock music available at such free music portals is the lack of quality. Most sites, while compromising on the price, let the standard of sound effects and stock Photography go down in terms of quality. Moreover, most sites do not have an exhaustive reserve of stock audio clips or free music and sound fx.

Audio Micro, however, serves the requirements of users seeking heavy metal music loops and other sound effects with astute efficiency. We have our own team of professionally qualified stock musicians and audio engineers who take care of the fact that you are provided with authentic quality free music and music cues. Our stock music submissions are regularly scanned to provide only excellent production music tracks and Free Sound effects.

Our affordable range of prices makes sure that you get value for money on all deals regarding royalty free music requirements. This also helps save your precious time, as you can focus more on your project without worrying about the quality or source of music to be used in the project. And as our music pioneers have an excellent prowess over all streams of music, our heavy metal music loops and associated tracks and sound effects are of the optimum quality available on the net.

Popular with the new generation, heavy metal music loops and other similar royalty free music tracks and free audio clips will hold your project in good stead as far as success is concerned. And moreover, authentic music always makes an overall good impression on the audience. At Audio Micro, we give you a taste of what quality heavy metal music should Free Sound like thunderous!

Science of Typography Free Fonts

Despite heroic efforts to create a critical discourse for Design Tutorials, our field remains ruled, largely, by convention and intuition. Interested in alternative attitudes, I recently set out to examine the scientific literature on typography. From the late nineteenth century to the present, researchers from various fields—psychology, ergonomics, human computer interaction (HCI), and design—have tested typographic efficiency. This research, little known to practicing designers, takes a refreshingly rigorous—though often tedious and ultimately inconclusive—approach to how people respond to written words on page and screen.

What did I learn from slogging through hundreds of pages photocopied or downloaded from journals with titles like Behavior and Information Technology and International Journal of Man-Machine Studies? Both a little and a lot.

Each study isolates and tests certain variables (Free Fonts style, line length, screen size, etc.). Although rational and scientific, this process is also problematic, as typographic variables interact with each other—a pull on one part of the system has repercussions elsewhere. For example, in 1929 Donald G. Paterson and Miles A. Tinker published an analysis of type sizes—part of a series of studies they launched in pursuit of “the hygiene of reading.”1 Texts were set in 6-, 8-, 10-, 12-, and 14-point type. The study emphatically concluded that 10 points is the “optimum size” for efficient reading—a result relevant, however, only for texts set at a particular line length (80 mm), in a particular typeface (not disclosed).

Where To Find CS2 Photoshop Tutorials

So what can you do with CS2? For starters, a lot. Provided you know how. But if you think masking is what you do on Halloween or if you have no idea what interfaces are, you need help. Why not try learning CS2 Photoshop through tutorials? That's probably the best way to do it because you get to use the software at the same time. Here are some great resources to help you get started on your CS2 Photoshop tutorials:

Computer-Training-Software.com

Another site that offers resources for CS Photoshop Tutorials is this site. You'll find CD-ROMs and DVDs here, along with consumer reviews to help you decide on your purchase. There are also free CS2 tutorials you can use and the site even offers 3 free chapters of a popular training video for free. There are 20 you can use, enough to introduce the functions and features of CS2 Photoshop to you. The demo movies require a QuickTime player.

If you want to access several other CS2 Photoshop titles, click on the links to Advanced Artistry, Illustrator CS2, In Design Tutorials CS2 and Photoshop for Photographers.

Whether you're learning CS2 as a Logo Design, illustrator, digital artist or photographer, there are plenty of lessons you can use on this site. Most of the tutorials featured here are video tutorials and you have a choice: pick the free lessons or buy the video CDs from the site.

If you want to see the free tutorials first, click on the links and start your lesson. From the basics to the intermediate to the advanced, you'll find plenty to like about this site. The CS2 tutorials are easy to follow and you won't need other resources for the meantime.

On the other hand, if textual or online instructions aren't your thing, buy the CDs featured here. Dwayne Ferguson's Adobe Photoshop CS2 tutorial offers 148 lessons all grouped nicely in a 10-hour package. You can use the CD whether you're a PC or Mac user and the lessons are offered step-by-step. If you like, you can even skip some and go directly to the more advanced tutorials.

If your intention is to improve your photography skills, go to this site. You can log in as a member for free and access the CS2 Photoshop Tutorials online. Basic membership offers you CS2 for beginners, photographers and photo restoration. Looking for a career in fashion and entertainment? Try CS2 tutorials for the Creative Soul and CS2 Cosmetic Surgery. Everything here is designed to make you a proud and confident photo and image editing expert.

If you want to learn more at your own pace, check out the links to the CS2 Photoshop CD and DVD titles, books, manuals and other software. These are great supplemental sources to use when you're advancing in skill.

Design Training Want more than your basic CS2 Photoshop software? Go to this site. It features 'Total Training for Adobe Photoshop CS2' by Deke McClelland. The DVD package has three goodies to choose from: Advanced Adobe Photoshop CS2, Creative Suite 2 (CS2) Standard Bundle and Adobe Creative Suite 2 - from Design to Delivery.

McClelland is a Photoshop Hall of Famer and there are 21 hours of tutorials featured on the DVD. If you want to learn how people in the real world actually use CS2 Photoshop, this is the tutorial for you. The material also offers bonus stuff like lessons on Smart Objects and Vanishing Point, indispensable skills you'll need when you advance. Great tutorials for beginners and advanced learners.

Stock Photography - How To Make Use Of These Photo Archives

Stock Photography refers to photographs taken by groups of people that are licensed and grouped for selling. Every time a need for a photograph arises, instead of taking a new one, people resort to stock photography. People working for magazines, in advertising agencies, and as graphic artists often use public pictures in place of photographs taken by hired photographers for projects.

Stock photography is also known as photo archives, image banks or picture libraries. There is usually a small fee for purchasing usage rights to use these pictures. Very often, membership is provided to purchase certain groups of pictures.

Stock Photography saves a lot of money and time and is a terrific way of enhancing blogs, newsletters, company brochures, advertisements and more. It works out to be less expensive when compared to hiring a full time photographer and also saves time when searching for specific images. It is almost as easy as checking mail or using some search engine.

In some cases, full usage rights are available on purchase. In other cases, the rights are limited. Usually in such cases, the photographer requires that a definite percentage of the sales be given to him. Stock photograph agencies normally hold photographs in files to negotiate fees. Negotiations are much quicker with the internet.

The price of using a stock photo depends on where and for the duration for which the pictures are going to be used, whether the photographer wants royalties and also the number of people the picture will be seen by or distributed to. Prices can vary from as less as a dollar to two hundred dollars.

Pricing arrangements can vary. If a stock photograph is free of royalty, then the buyer can use it many times in many ways. On buying a royalty free picture, you can use it unlimitedly on a single payment. Also the agency selling you the picture, can sell it to other buyers too. On the other hand, a rights managed image will have a negotiated price for each usage.

Certain buyers might want to have exclusive rights over the image. Once an exclusive right has been bought, nobody else can use the image. Usually exclusive rights cost a lot of money, as the agency selling must make sure that they are getting a sufficient profit out of the deal. This is because in some cases, a photograph can make more profit if it stays in circulation than if someone purchases exclusive rights over it.

Certain stock photographers' work exclusively for agencies. A number of images are required for different categories. Sometimes the photographers work for different agencies and sell their photographs for a fee. This has proved to be a great business for many photographers.

Stock photography can be traced back to the 1920's. By 1980's it had become a specialty. Many galleries hold a number of photographs for purchase. By 2000, Stock Photography online became so huge that they came to be known as photo archives. Bigstock photo and istock photo offer many opportunities for using many pictures under a certain credit. Online photographs are usually less expensive than the ones sold hard copy.

www.redesignunits.com and www.yourdesignneeds.com have provisions for stock photographers to sell their photos. It is a terrific way of selling your pictures and making a profit. These websites also sell the pictures. You can find just about any picture you want in the Stock Photography sites.