Tips, Tricks & Hints
Every good designer and web developer has a few tricks up their sleeve. For that matter, so does every good writer, project manager, UI architect and…well, you get the point. All of us here have been doing what we do for a while, and we’ve learned lots along the way.
Rather than keep it all to ourselves, we want to share it with you. We figure we’re not the only ones who have to tackle photoshop or any of the other tools we use during the day, so if you read something here that saves you time down the road then we’re happy.
Check out the posts below. And if you’ve got a better solution than what we know, drop us a neighborly comment so we can all share in your skills. That’s what it’s all about.
Adobe Illustrator Math Bug
One great thing in Adobe Illustrator is the ability to duplicate and move an object - then repeat that action as many times as you need. This is a handy tip, but also a "be aware of a problem".
I love a lot of Adobe products, Photoshop and Illustrator are cutting-edge software that no Designer can do without. However, there is a bug in…
Workshop: “Beyond Blah Blah” at EdUI
David Poteet will be teaching the full-day version of Beyond Blah Blah: Creating Great Content for the Web at EdUI on September 21st. In this workshop we take lessons we've learned and the best tips from our favorite experts to teach you how to:
- Figure out what content people want in the first place. Learn how to use Mental Models, KJ sessions, Carewords surveys, search logs and more to uncover top audience goals, then organize and prioritize your content.
- Use words that smell like…
Workshop: Web Design Without Politics
I gave a presentation at Eduweb in Chicago in July 2009 titled "Web Design Without Politics." I showed 6 techniques we've learned or developed to help a group of people from across an institution plan their website together in a short period of time. And not fight about it later.
I'll be teaching it again in September at EdUI in Charlottesville, VA.
Photomerge in Adobe Bridge CS4
Everyone has seen those awesome multi-freeze frame photos of athletes doing their high-speed moves like this one of Dave Watson. Dave pulled off a stunt during the Tour de France, in the Alp d'Huez stage. He waited for the peloton to round the corner in the mountains and proceeded to literally jump over them. The good news is that he wasn’t arrested and thrown into jail. The bad news is that he didn’t land it.
I’ve always thought that the process to make a photo like this was long and…
Combining multiple steps using single photoshop layers
Streamlining any process in Photoshop and simplifying the quantity of layers can really speed up your project. Here are two simple steps that I use every day and always find myself teaching to design interns and junior designers.
Duplicating an object within a single layer
Say you have a bulleted list or navigation column that needs a graphic…
Usability Testing Hack – “Digital” Paper Prototyping
Sometimes the best ideas are born out of last minute necessity. We had an experience recently that led to a great new technique for conducting paper prototypes without the paper. It gives us many of the advantages of paper prototyping but it can even be done remotely.
