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Four Secrets for Great Design

people use the look and feel of your visuals as their first indicator of trust. Are they gonna trust you toe hire you? Well, the problem with creating visuals for your company without any training is that it can be a frustrating, like this guy appear time consuming. So if you're sitting in front of your computer, you're not out shooting or what have you sticking to photographers here, Um, and it reflects poorly on your business. And so if we can teach you some very simple tips that you're gonna learn all through this class and they're really there really amazing they're not I'm not gonna do anything that you can't do. So that means that we're not gonna be drawing crazy complicated shapes with the pen tool in photo shot. We're gonna stick to the things that you can all do. OK, no matter your skill level, you're gonna be able to do these things, and I'm gonna teach you how to do them in a variety of software. Okay, so you don't have to have you don't have to use photo shop. You could use...

Photoshopped elements. Instead, you're even gonna learn how to deal logo in Microsoft Word as much as it pains me to say that. Okay, so anyway, so you don't want to be frustrated, And it could be very time consuming, and you want to be proud of your visual. So those are the kinds of things that you're gonna learn in this class. And when you get into frustration, you know, it can sometimes lead to violence. And that's bad. Okay, fat. Okay, so I want to teach you easy to implement principles that are going to improve your designs and so you can get more business. If you are a seasoned pro, a graphic designer, then you're gonna This will be a great refresher on some tried and true principles that just work. Okay, if you can't remember if driving past in art school, much less going into taken actual class, then you're gonna learn noodles and gobs of good, good things, okay? And the kinds of projects that we're gonna create work. So we're going to go over the theories. Okay, Then we're gonna put them into practice on several different practical promotional pieces that you would need for your own business. So we're going to cover business cards in great, great depth. We're going to cover creating advertisements for magazines as well as newspapers because there are some tips that you need to know to make sure that your graphics look good in newsprint case. A little bit of a different paper printing paper situation here. We're going to take a look at how to make posters. Okay, so we're gonna design some things that need to be big. People are gonna be seeing them from a distance. So different tips come into play on those types of things. We're gonna put together several different post cars that you could use for, Let's say, your first gallery showing if your photographer or if you're just doing some direct mail for a client, has a product that they want a sale. So there's some secrets for getting your message read in a direct mail kind of an unsolicited situation. I did a really fun presentation years ago for the folks at modern postcard out in San Diego. Big, big, big printing operation. They specialize in variable data printing. So that means you give them your artwork in your copy and your mailing list, or you purchase it from them and then they personalize the pieces. So I did a presentation out on how to design better visuals for them a few years ago. So I've got some good direct mail experience to share with you. I also taught an advanced Photoshopped course for graphic design online school called sessions dot et use international school fully accredited and everything. So the way that class worked was I wrote up six lectures, six principles and then I would have the students I started say kids, but they weren't all kids. I had the students give me their assignments and I would critique them every single one, and we would go back and forth 345 versions to kind of whip that design into place. So a lot of the secrets that I'm gonna be sharing with you this week came from that experience of my own. So you're gonna get some real good stuff in this class. So the 1st 4 secrets that we're gonna go over as much as I would load to take credit for them. Alas, I cannot. But that's alright because my friend Robin Williams wrote this book, the non designers design, but she wrote it back in 1994 I believe. And when I was in our school. So I majored in graphic design with a minor in information architecture and Web design from Art Institute of Dallas. OK, so when I was in design school, this really helped me a lot, and I still refer to it today. It's a very, very popular book. It's thin, so it's an easy read. Uh, it's put out by Peach Pit Press in Peach Pit has been kind enough to donate several copies of this that we're going to be given away. So do you take advantage of those contests because you can win all kinds of great stuff. So in this book, Robin put forth several tried and true principles that they're easy to memorize, and I'm gonna give you a little tip on memorizing them. But you'll have to wait till later in the afternoon to get that, or if you watch really closely in the video, you might know it already, but we're gonna define each principal and then put it into action on a business card. A couple of ads. I'm some plain old text, so you can really start to see how these principles can change the look of your visuals and you're just going to be shocked at how easy it is and they're gonna be easier. Memorize. You can absolutely do this. So let's not delay any longer and let's jump right in, shall we? So and if you'd like to purchase this book, if you don't happen to win in one of the prizes, I've made a tiny Uriel for you. So it's Lisa that I am. That's L e s a slash in d d book. So non designers design, but indeed E books. So that transport you straight Teoh Amazon. Or, as I like to call it, the great Amazon. We're buying our cat food from Amazon. It's crazy. Alright, secret numeral, you know, proximity. That is the first secret. What does proximity mean? It means you should group related items together. What this does is it gives you a visual indication of what information is related because people scan, they don't read every single piece of copy that you put in front of them. But we can't. We have too many things vying for our attention. So what we do is we scan, and if you chunk or group information together. If it's related, then that makes that scanning a whole lot easier. So let's take a look at this principle. Very simple. Packing list. Okay, so we can see from the list on the left. There is no kind of category at categorization. Everything has the same spacing. We have no visual indication what's related and once not meaning. We don't know how many things should come out of our closet or what should come out of our studio, right? Well, if we just grew to be related atoms together, you can think of it as putting them in the categories. You can see that on there, right? That list seems much more manageable, doesn't it? It's just adding the right kind of spacing. And we're also gonna take a look at how to add that spacing appropriately in several different pieces of software, one of the biggest mistakes that people make and most common when they're creating text. And that could be, you know, Texaco's in the book text. It goes in the magazine, or what have you is they'll use extra returns or carriage returns for spacing. Well, you don't have much control over that spacing. So what? You get into a situation where you have either too little or too much space. So we're gonna take a look at some formatting options in popular software that lets you be very precise about how much space? Because, as you can see here, I've got more space above gear. Then after years, so that lets us know at a very quick glance that everything that comes under gears close to it must be Gearan. Therefore, it's related. Okay, it gives you structure, visual structure. So let's take another look at an example. This is from the Table of Contents, one of my favorite magazines. It's called Real Simple, and it's just a great resource, but you can see from the table of contents. This principle of proximity is quite clearly illustrated. Here. You can see at a glance what's related. Okay, so it gives you visual structure. Also in the book you might have heard ever seen, um, you can see the rule of proximity into play here is well, if if those sub has didn't have more space above them and all of the information was jam packed together, it would be so dadgum overwhelming for you to look at that. You probably wouldn't read it, but the extra space. Not only does it give your eye a little bit of of a chance to rest, but it lets you visually see at a glance what's related and what's not. Here's a really great example of a newsletter design that my husband, Jay Nelson, he had a brick and mortar graphic design agency on Pearl Street in Boulder called Arts and Letters, and this was a design that he did for one of his clients. And it's really beautifully laid out a newsletter. But you can see at a glance nice space for your interest, and it's very clear what's related in what's not. And here's on example, from Jay's newsletter Design Tools Monthly, and you can see this is Page three. So it's where all the upcoming events are also a great resource for people who want to learn more about design has taken advantage of some of these events, but you can see how the date and the title and the place the location is closer together than there's more space above the other days. Okay, so the way he does that is, he uses a control called space before in space after and it's in every single program. It's in text at it. It's in Microsoft Word. It's in all kinds of pieces of software. You do. You have to hunt for it sometimes. But it is there, so we're gonna take a look at how to use that formatting. So this is a little brochure that I did for Apple. I love that. I actually got to design something for Apple that they use. I mean, who can say that, right? If you're not Jonathan, Ivy arrives. So I used to be on the user group advisory board for Apple, and that meant that we had a conference call every month and we consulted with Apple and we were in charge with their for their whole user group program globally. Okay, so we wanted to put together some promotional pieces to have at Macworld in to take to local computer stores, and you could actually download this from the apple side back then a few years back and use it as a promotional piece so you can see from the example on the left that all the Texas kind of jammed together, which makes it incredibly difficult to read. And it feels overwhelming. Another interesting psychological aspect of this is when if people if the text is hard read, people will transfer that feeling of difficulty to your content. It's a really interesting thing. So in other words, if you're looking at that brochure on the left and it's really hard to read, then you're gonna transfer that feeling of difficulty to the content. So the user group, you're not gonna want to read about this. Whatever this get involved, join an Apple user group because it's gonna feel like it's hard and you're gonna feel like you're not gonna enjoy. And that's all because of the way it looks. It's really amazing. So if we use just the rule of proximity that is putting more space between things that are not related in less space between things that are related, then instantly just with that one thing this brochure improves. Ah, whole bunch and it feels much more approachable and you feel like, oh, well, I can get involved. I could join me an Apple user group. Sure, I could do that, so it really makes a big difference. This next one is an ad situation. And I can't tell you how many little homemade ads I see that look exactly like this Copy on the lift, everything is centered, which is also a big typographic Nunu. We'll talk more about that later in the day when we get into typography. But if we just apply the rule of proximity, the ad gets a whole lot better and you can read it. And again, you don't feel like Oh, this is gonna be hard to g O. Or the whole thing is gonna be difficult because of the way it looks. So be sure to group related things together. Now let's take a business card design. Believe it or not, I used to be a Macintosh consultant, and this is one of my old business cars designed. The logo was designed by myself, and a good friend of mine named Felix lives down in Florida. And this is the quintessential kind of business card designed that you're going to get from any print shop. Should you be Bolden effort brave enough to have them design it for you. They always stick the logo smack dab in the middle and then they Sprinkle your information into the four corners. Now, the problem with that is how many times does your I stop when you're looking at this business card? No. So you go straight to the middle. Okay? That's where your eye goes, is That's the biggest thing that's drawing your attention. So you're I go straight to the middle, Then where does it go? Mangoes. Top lift. Okay. And then because my I tells my brain, Hey, there's information in the corner, Then I now have to check every other corner to see. Make sure I'm not missing anything. So my eye stops five times on this one business card. That's difficult. Okay, you may not understand why this business card is kind of hard to read, but that's why cause your eyes darting around naturally when we look at a piece, are I goes to the top lift it moves right and then down. And then if we're reading something that are, I will do just like a carriage return on an old typewriter will go back to the lift across and then down. That's just natural way that the human eye interprets this kind of information So when you force an eye to dart around on a page like this, you're making it really hard on your intended audience. And like we discussed earlier in the class, it impacts how much that person is gonna trust you or higher You. Okay, so this card is bad, real bad. But if we just do one thing and we apply well, technically tube and we apply the rule of proximity. Even if we center everything on that business card, which is another no no centering, it invokes a gosh. There's a reason it's used for wedding announcements and invitations. It invokes something that a folks of formal feeling that's, you know, useful for that kind of thing. And that's what you think of when you see center data is you think formal. You think elegant? You think classy. You think hoity toity. You think we're gonna dress up for this? You know, don't you centering on a business card like that? But if let's say this was for ah horny Tony Restaurant, then that might be appropriate to use centering. But even if we just center all of it, which is that but we space out the information that isn't directly related. So what I've done here is I've grouped my name, my title chief chick and my email address, because to me those are the three most important things on the card. So I group them together. The information down below is all about, you know, geographic location in that kind of thing. So if we do that one thing from the card improves, but it's going to keep getting better. The second secret is alignment and alignment helps you with your eyes. Sitting messages to your brain form a visual connection between the information that's on the page, whether it's at the top or at the bottom or what have you. It gives your eyes Ah, hard edge to follow. Robin's got a great quote in her book that states the strength of the edge. Our alignment is what gives strength to your whole layout. Okay, so if you've got a strong alignment, then your whole piece is gonna feel stronger and stronger and more cohesive and that kind of thing, So let's take a look at that in action. So we just looked at the card a moment ago when it was all centered. How much better Does this card look, if we just shove everything over to the right we talked about I flow just a moment ago. This card is so much easier to read because it lets your eyes do what they're going to do anyway. Enter the page, Top left, move right. And then down if you always If you did nothing but change your business card to match this, that you put your logo kind of large on the left and you write aligned your information and you spaced it out like I have here your business cards gonna improve 150% just by doing that one thing so it really makes a huge difference. Now it's worth noting that right aligning text is a little bit harder to read. Van left aligning text. So you need Teoh. Keep your right alignment to small blocks perfect for a business card. Or let's say an advertisement in the magazine. If you're gonna advertise your photo studio and you want a little local local magazine that you could get away with Reid outlining some of the information, Just don't write a line. A big old chunk of information you don't want to write a line paragraphs because it is hard to read. Okay, so that alignment gives your eyes nice. Hard is to follow. So they slide right down the right of that card, and you catch all the information you got. Nice, big white space that you've got breathing room. You don't feel overwhelmed. The information doesn't feel hard, and it just looks good. And so that person is gonna trust you more, whether you deserve that trust or not. Interesting how that works, Right? Okay, Now let's take a look at another example. This my friends, I'm sorry to say it was based on an actual ad that I saw in an actual printed publication, and it really did look sort of like the one at the top left, which is frightening. But nevertheless, if we apply to rules that we've learned so far, the theory a proximity as well as alignment, then you can see how much this little ad improves even if we don't do anything else. But these two things that improves a lot makes it much easier to read. It's worth noting also that the example at the top left see how the designers tried to be clever there. They've tried to make the text follow the shape of the object that's next to it. Don't do that. Just don't do that, okay? It's really hard to pull that off. It makes it very difficult to read, so there's really no alignment going on at all. In that ad at the top lift, we can't even say that it centered. The last two lines look sort of center, but the rest of it is trying Teoh wrap around the shape of that cat head. So if you're tempted to do that, just take a deep breath, know that you don't have Teoh and just don't just don't do it. Turn a mad cat into a happy cat today, you know. All right, now we're back to our other little advertisement. So we've applied proximity to right. We've spaced out the related chunks of information in here. We've made room for the title to be nice and big at the top. We've put the logo larger on the left again. That's following good I flow patterns cause you're gonna enter at the top. Lift, move right, and then down We've grouped the wear of the information together. The Colorado She Taco Association. There's not really a tofu road. I made that. But there could be if there is when it would be in Boulder. Absolutely. So So. We have group that wear of it together. We've also grouped the What of it together in the What is the, well, who's playing well. It's a Silicon Valley House rockers, which is a really band in there, based in California. If you ever get a chance to check them out, they're absolutely fantastic. Silicon Valley House rockers. They do indeed have a five piece foreign section there. Leave vocalist and guitarist isn't deep all Can't, which runs Macworld Expo in that cool, which is now I believed being called I World, I think. Yeah, in San Francisco, Interesting and down at the bottom. You've also got more information That's group together. It's all related food and drink. Appetizer served full, open bar. Yeah, and we have given it a nice, strong alignment so that your eye inside right down that page and then another little trick that we've implemented here is we want to make the ticket information in the you are. You are l stand out a little bit because people aren't going to show up to your party if they don't know how much it is or know where to go to buy tickets, they have toe have a ticket to get into your event. So that information is kind of important. So we've pulled it out of the larger chunk of info on the right, moved it over to the left because we had lots of space there. But we've given that a ride alignment in one of the writer alignment work on that because it's a small block of text. Okay, so this works really well. So our ad is improving as we go along. Here's another example of good alignment, and we're gonna take a look at creating this magazine ad tomorrow. This is completely fake. I made it. So we're gonna learn how to do that. This has several really good things going on. First of all, you've got a picture path, which is a wonderful secret to memorize. Okay, A picture path, if you know now that your eyes entering at the top, left moving right, and then down. What if I don't? With this path of pictures, I've done several different things here. I've caught your attention by using striking imagery. For one I've forced you to imagine yourself as one of these people, including people. Pictures is one of the best things that you can do to communicate with other people, Right? People respond to people. Faces respond to faces in advertising. Okay, so this is a picture Paso. Memorize that. Also, we're leading the viewer's eye straight to what we want to sell them. So you can't help. But look at that picture on the left. You move right. And then bam, there's that in order to reboot. Oh, my God. I have to get those boots right now. Penny, let's go to the store. I mean, really, that's what you're doing. So you're leading there. I write to the product. That product is big. Overlaps onto the picture a little bit, so that lets you feel like they're related. Okay, Kind of makes it all one piece. Then we've got a strong left alignment here. Going on as well. We didn't start at the far left. Why? Because I wanted to catch your eye with the photography first, So I let the photography take your I move you to the right, and then you see Oh, boot sale Dopamine begins to be released into the brain, making you very happy turning on all of your seeking tendency. So now you've got to get out there and seek the sale. Okay, so we've got a nice, strong left alignment boot sale and the Nordic A block and the this part of the very bottom where I tell you where the heck the sale is actually taking place. It's all left a line. And it works. Really, really well, now, another thing that we've done here at the bottom, if you see the phone number, it's right. Aligned with the edge of that, right? Most photo as well as the right edge of the product. Okay. And we're gonna be looking at a lot of this kind of stuff throughout the week, so it will begin to sink in, I promise you, Where do you find alignment controls? Will they look exactly the same in every piece of software that I've ever seen and I've got him circled here. This is text at it. A little fake coffee, fear and loathing in los it in East Texas, not to be confused with Las Vegas, not the same. So the alignment controls look like little bitty lines. And you can tell that Oh, that one button because the little the lines are left a line that's gonna give me left alignment and you've got center right and our center justification and then right, you don't really ever want to use justified Tex. And that means that the software is gonna force your text tohave be equal on the left as well as their right. And what that does is it puts nasty, nasty space in between words. Teoh fill out that space that we really don't want to do that. Newspapers used to do that a whole lot. They're kind of starting to move away from that because it's hard to read because your eye doesn't know what to do with all that extra space. Because we read by pattern recognition. We're not so much reading the words as we are the shape of the words and you throw in all that extra space Near brand goes what? So that's where you can find alignment controls, and at the end of the day, we are gonna be going into these various pieces of software so that you can see exactly where that stuff lives and be able to use it. Our third secret motoring right along here is thief theory of repetition, and this is one of my favorite favorite design principles of all repetition. And it's a real simple one. You need to pick one or more visual elements from your design and repeat it throughout the peace, no matter how long that pieces. What this does is it makes your design Fillmore cohesive. That makes everything feel like it's related to each other. So let's say you've got a several page Bush brochure or even a book. Bless you. Then you've got things that are gonna be the same throughout that item. Whatever it ISS, however long it is 900 pages. If it's, you know, my book over here, but you've got repeated elements, so it makes the whole thing feel solid, like it's cohesive and related. Okay, so what are you going to repeat? It could be anything. It could be a style of formatting style. It could be a color that's repeated throughout the piece. If you look in the missing manual, you'll see that green that's used on the cover is also used as the subhead color, so it makes it feel like it's related okay, by repeating elements you could repeat font to get repeat a graphical element. All kinds of things shapes. So let's take a look at that Apple brochure that I did again. Here. You'll notice that the headline in the subheds now have color. So what do we do? First we apply the rule of proximity, So we spaced out that elements a little bit. We gave it a nice, strong left alignment, and there are what we've done is we have stolen the teal color from the squares that I made at the bottom and use that as the headline and subhead color. So now the top half of the piece suddenly feels like it's related to the bottom half the peace. And that's simply because we repeated that color. And the whole reason that I used those blocks down at the bottom was because I only had seven photos and I couldn't figure out how to space small, and I couldn't get any more photos, so I thought, Well, what other square thing kind of put in there. Oh, color blocks sweet that work. So this by stealing the color from the bottom. Now the top part of the piece looks like it's related, and the brochure keeps getting better on the business card. We've repeated several different things here. What we've done is we have snatched the star that is forming our dot above the I and whiz, and we have enlarged it greatly, and we have lightened it in its opacity. You'll hear designers call that screening back. I screened it back. That's what that means. So you've placed something and you've dropped the opacity of it. So if you hear that, that's what it means. So I have screened back. The star, made it honking big and hung it off the page. I loved in that I love hanging things off the page like that. That's called a bleed, so you can think of it as your whatever that element is is bleeding off of the edge of the page. So that's really great truth. So we've repeated the star, so that makes the right side of the card feel like it's related to the left side of the card. But we have screened it back so much that it doesn't interfere with the legibility readability of our text over there. What else have we repeated here? We've stolen the blue from the second part of the logo there, and we've used it for what? I consider three important pieces of information on the card. Um, the first important piece of information is the Macintosh a bit over there, The little tagline underneath the logo. I want you to know that you can call me for PC Tech support because I'm not your meal to help you. So I wanted to make Macintosh stand out to be a little bit more clear about what it is that the service is offering. Then I have taken that blue, and I've applied it to my name because that's also an important piece of information. Who the heck are you as well as the URL? That's a subliminal message to say. Don't call me. Go to my website so you can help influence action by making certain pieces of information stand out. So if you don't want people to call, you want them to email you, then you could make your email address in the color or bold in some way that it stands out for emphasis alternately, If you'd rather people call you the email, you, then you would make that piece of information stand out and people will subconsciously respond to that. And you can get them to do what you want them to do. It's kind of nice. It's not manipulation for evil. It's manipulation for good. So our business card is getting better and better. Let's take a look at that pet clinic. Add that poor little pet clinic adds. So now what we've got is we've got our kitty a little bit larger on the left. There, we've applied proximity space things out. We've got a nice, strong left alignment and we've repeated a couple of things here. We have snatched the orange from the cat, okay, and we've added that color to the phone number. So for a situation like this, the phone number would be the most important piece of information because you're gonna call and make an appointment for your cat, right? We've also duplicated the cat art and we've screened back reduced opacity, probably to about 15%. If I had to give somewhere around 10 or 15% and we've hung most of the cat off of the edge of the page. But we've got that tail down there at the bottom, right? Okay, So repetition can be anything a fun, a color, a graphical element shapes. You just need to pick something and repeat it throughout your design. Here's our party flyer again. This getting better and better in it. They're probably pretty scared when we started out. That's ugly. So our logo still about the same size? We've got our proximity and I don't are alignment going on. So what have we repeated in this ad? Well, we've taken the dark blue from the piece of art that we used, and we've snatched that up, and we've apply that to the text. This is a big thing that people forget. Your text can be color If you're paying for color printing, why is your text black? You take should not be black. Try charcoal grey instead. It just adds a little bit more elegance to whatever that pieces. So if you're paying for color than use the color, okay, so if you're if you look back at your design and you say wow, That's a whole lot of black right there. Then challenge yourself to get rid of all the black. Even if you use very, very dark shades of colors dark blue, dark grey, even a dark orange in this case would have worked as well. So challenge yourself to incorporate color. If you're paying for it, you may as well use it, and it gives you a little bit more leeway on formatting because then you can start just by using the same color. Then you can use different tents or shades of it so you can drop the opacity and make it look a little bit different, but yet similar. So all kinds of things that you can do with color we're gonna talk a whole lot about color. I'm either later this afternoon or tomorrow. So I'm gonna teach you how to choose colors at work well together. And I'm gonna teach you some of the different emotions that colors convey. Just like your image and your father and your Texan. Everything sends a message or color sends a big message to you. And that message is different depending upon where your geographically located. Okay, so colors that mean a certain emotion in North American mean completely different things and European countries or Asian countries. So we'll talk a little bit about that. But here, back to repetition, we've snatched up the bloom, used it for a text, made her Alec a little bit more classy. And then we've stolen the yellow or kind of ah, brownish yellow for the Earl, which is important information. So I'm using color to make that stand out a little bit. But I'm also repeating a color that's in the artwork, so the bottom part of that ad feels related to the top. We've also taken this piece of art, and this was stock art. I believe this particular piece of stock car came from. I stopped photo, and one of the great things about downloading art like this illustrations is that you get the original file that the designer used to create it. So this was an actual adobe illustrator file. So once I downloaded, it was pop it open and illustrator and I stole the feathers and I repeated them. OK, so all I did was pop into the software on group that are, and I'll show you how to do that. And so I was able to copy and paste and add those other feathers, and I placed the feathers very specifically. Okay, first of all, there's three of them, and the power of three is incredible. Three. Is this one of the most amazing numbers? And I've got three feathers because odd numbers of things are always more visually pleasing than even numbers. If I had four little feathers on their, it wouldn't look as good as three, but five would look better than four. Okay, so always remember, try to incorporate odd numbers of things in your design, especially a graphical elements. We've got three feathers. I'm also leading your eye with him. I'm highlighting important pieces of information with those extra little feathers, such as the full open bar, which is arguably the most important piece of information. I'm just kidding. Not really fitting, So I have highlighted full, open bar. I've highlighted the special guest on keyboards Christopher Bring, which is actually one of the editors for Mackerel magazine and a very accomplished pianist. So I've highlighted a few things with our feathers, so repetition will improve your designs tenfold. Here's a little slide on I'm showing you how I groups that art. We'll go over it live. But I just wanted to give you a heads up if you're using illustrator and you know what? If you are, it's a great vector drawing program. So I downloaded this piece of art and I wanted to copy that feather. But the designer, the artist who made the art, was trying to help me not screw up his lovely piece of art. By grouping all the are into one object. So what he did was he selected all the little pads that he made, and he grouped it together using the object menu in illustrators. That means if you click anywhere inside that piece of our, then all of it gets selected and so you can't screw it up. But I wanted to mess with it. So what I had to do was ungroomed pit. So if you get in a situation like this, if you have a piece of vector illustration that you want to break apart or snatch things out of, and if you click it and the whole dadgum thing keeps selecting, don't screen just tried up to the object menu and choose a new group and that will break it apart. And then you can come back in with the direct selection tool, which is the arrow at the very top of the Illustrator Tools panel. And then you can click Teoh, select the elements that you want, and then it's just a copy paste into Photoshopped situation. If you were designing at and photo shop or in design. Okay, so to steal the color and this tip on there right here works in in design, it will shut your and phone shop. And so what I do is I use the eyedropper tool in every single piece of those software that I mentioned has an eyedropper tool. I believe the keyboard shortcut is I eye for eye dropper so you can grab that eyedropper and then click anywhere within the open document. And that will low that color as your foreground color swatch, which you can see down there at the bottom left or the bottom right of the screen. Here. I also circled them so you could see what I'm talking about, because it's hard to point to them on screen. You can see my screen s so that's how I snatched the color from that logo. And you're always gonna have color in your graphical elements, whether you're starting with a logo or whether you're starting with a piece of stock art like this or if you're starting with a photo. So that's a great way to repeat a color that already lives in some of the assets that you're gonna use for your piece. Is that using the eyedropper tool to snatch it? Okay, so that's another great will tip for you either. Would we repeat in this ad a couple of different things? This is also fake. I love making ads. That's fun. I entertain myself. So what we did here is we used a kind of a graphical trip called Big and Small so you can repeat the same artwork in the same piece in People won't really see immediately that it's repetitive. It'll just look really nice, and it makes the whole piece feel like it's related. So we repeated that same little flower pot little money tree there, and we made one really, really big, and we made one really, really small, so that's another great tip for you right there. We also repeated the green. Where did I get the Green Firm? The photo. So for this ad, I started with the photo. I knew the photo I wanted to use, and that's just the little pot with the money coming out. So I stole the green from the photo, repeated the photo. And so I used the green in the grow and actually used to different shades of green or a shade and a tent rather on growth. So I added a tiny little stroke on the outside of it from another green that I picked up from the money and then for the company name down at the bottom. I snatched the green as well to make it stand out a little bit more. So there's all kinds of ways that you can find elements to repeat in your designs and make them feel a little bit more cohesive. Come on, giggle. Come on. So this is another little fake website that, um, joyfully created for your pet steams. Proudly demoralizing your pit since 2008 is not aerial company. So in the Web design or the Web chapter of the Photoshopped book, I had to have a website that I could use a slice tool on and divvy up and teach on how to use Photoshopped to do mock ups for websites. That is not a Web design program. So I had to create something fake. And I found all these wonderful Chihuahuas and costumes. I just couldn't believe they're like millions of them on. I think these were from Istock Photo. So I had a ball using this. So what have we repeated here? Okay, so we've taken the pink from the photos we've used that for. Our tagline and taglines were really great. If you're business name or logo doesn't convey what the heck it is that you dio or want to Dior cell, then a tagline can can really help with that. Or it could just be something funny and silly that draws attention like this, but it's a great opportunity, Teoh, be a little bit more communicative and clear about what it is that your company does or your service does. So we've still in the pink from the photos. We've used it for the tagline. We've also used it for the navigation bar at the bottom. Right? So everything feels like it's related, then we've stolen the green from the logo and used it for the names of the different galleries that you can enter. Should you actually be able to click on this website and get somewhere you cannot. I did buy pets teams dot com, though, so for the first couple of years, my book was out. If he went to pet students dot com, it was a big hot major. Look. Page is free Funny. A lot of people went to that website and I laughed. I did. So what else have we repeated here? There's one more thing and anybody in the studio audience guess what it is. Anyone? Anybody? Absolutely. We repeated the rounded corners of the of the photos there so that we gave our photos around a corner in that super easy to do in photo shop if you just used the shape tools so the shape tools live kind of toward the bottom of the tools candle, and there is a rounded rectangular shape, and you can use that as a mask. And that's how I gave these photos rounded edges. And we did all that kind of fun stuff in Gosh, I know that's in the Photo shop. CS five intensive four day workshop. I know rounded rounded corners is in that one. So if you've got that, then you've got the technique. So we repeated it on the navigation bar. It's a little thing, but it really makes this Web design. If you can apply the word classy, Teoh, it makes it a lot classier. We're gonna go through one more secret than, like I said, We're going to stop and do a recap. Take some questions So the last secret is contrast, and this is a fun one. But I'll tell you, it's challenging. It is challenging and you really have to get out of your comfort zone to do this. So the rule is contrast. So if things are next to each other, if they're unrelated, you need to make them different and not just different, but really, really different. Okay, cause contrast is a great way to draw the eye to, you know, your piece. Contrast something really, really big. Next to something really, really small. Something really, really fit next to something really, really thin. Something big and cursive and flowy next to something that's rigid. Okay, A graphical element. Next to a whole lot of white space. So there's all kinds of ways to incorporate contrast in your design. It's great for catching somebody's attention on. You're going to see contrast in all kinds of as that's another great thing about this class is once we go through all these secrets, you're gonna they're just gonna be flying right at you. You're going to see them everywhere. You're going to see them in use on TV and television commercials. You're going to see them and use on every website. Oh, look how they repeated that. Oh, they're using condoms. Oh, look at that, Linemen O R wow, They really should have used some alignment. So you're gonna notice him. So let's take a look at contrast. And you need to be brave. This is really where you can get outside of your comfort zone with your contrast, and I'm gonna show you a couple of different examples on that. You know, this is our kitty clinic ad. Didn't it get ah whole lot better? That's the power of using something really honking big next to something small. Okay, so we we've actually got contrast in a couple different ways here so if you just forget the text, it's there. If we just look at the huge cat face, not only is the photo placed at an incredibly large size, but it's an incredible close up of something that you don't expect. OK, that's another secret for you is if you use imagery that's a bit unexpected. You can catch somebody's attention a lot faster than if this say were a shot. If this was this where a wide shot of a cat and you saw the whole cats body, it wouldn't be nearest striking as it is really, really close up, cause it's just unexpected. And you're kind of wondering, Oh my God, is it mad? What's going on here? The other contrast that we've got going on here is the huge headline next to the small body copy. That's another great way to capture attention and draw of yours. I small next to Big, been next to thick in this works wonders and typography as well. So I've captured your attention with the honking big cat face, and it's an extreme close up. Then I've gotten your attention with the headline in formatting as well as in content, because It's unexpected. You don't expect the headline to be the cat talking to you. So now you know what is going on here. I'm gonna read that copy because people scan. We talked about that earlier, so if you don't capture their attention, they're not gonna actually read the copy that you've so painstakingly crafted. Okay, so we've got a nice, strong left alignment. Now that text works really, really well left a line against that hard edge, right edge of the photos that works. Well, then we drop down. We've got our proximity going on. Something's air spaced out. And then at the bottom, we've got the logo and then the text. Next, the logo is left aligned as well, and it works really well together. Another example of the same ad. This is also very high contrast, Can you imagine? This is a full page newspaper spread that you've seen that I know you. You guys have seen that. It's a great technique that designers are using now to draw the eye. If you or your client has the money to pay for a full page ad, the white space, the sheer volume of it is so unexpected. that you cannot help but read the copy. Okay, so that's another great tip. I think you can see it on screen. They're kind of like, But I also have pop prints that start where At the very top left of the peace. Because that's where your eyes going to enter. You can't help it. You can't stop it. Then you go right and down. So I've led you kind of like a picture path like we did with the ski shots. I've led you with pa prints down to the copy that I want you to read. So we've got contrast with white space going on next to a small block of copy, and then we've got additional contrast with the headline again, Unexpected in the white space is unexpected too. So you've got that big, thick outline or headline rather next to that small copy at the bottom, right? So white space is a fabulous, fabulous design element. Don't let anybody tell you otherwise. Space is good. You need it again. If this page were just filled with with text and pictures and all kinds of things, it would subconsciously make you feel a little bit overwhelmed. You know this, you would start processing it in very strange ways. You might think that Oh, that that cat clinic is too far for you to drive. It's on the wrong side of town. There's all kinds of of thought processes that begin happening just from a visual feel of your piece back to our little adhere for our party. This one was challenging for me because I really had had to stare at it for a while to figure out how the heck am I gonna introduce contrast in this? I thought, well, I could, you know, expand my color palette and pick up different colors for my headline in my subheds. But I didn't really want to do that. And then it dawned on me that if I just put a big old block of color about in the text, I could then reverse the type, which is another designer term for white type. Okay, so reverse it. I reversed it from the standard dark to white, and it worked really, really well. And I was very pleased and to relate the left side to the right side, I made sure that the for the color starts kind of intersex, one of my feathers there to kind of make him feel related, and it really just makes the piece pop. And this would be something that I would be proud to put in a newspaper or a magazine, or so on and so forth. It looks much more professional than the one that we did earlier. Here's another example of high contrast, another little tip for you in this particular images. This is a Web ad. Okay, when you're designing for an ad in this kind of situation, you've got a teeny tiny, tiny, tiny amount of space to work with, and you just can't expect people to be able to read anything in it. So the best thing you can do if you're designing Web as is the use a really big picture. So right here we've got a really big picture of beer, and it works well because it's an extreme close up. So we've got contrast in image size and contrast in image content because the extreme close up and it just makes your mouth start watering, doesn't it? It really does. Yeah, so and then we've got text of the top in text at the bottom. Okay, so that's also a good example of the contrast implemented. This is also a great way to introduce contrast. Big against small. This is with the same finds exact same fun. But since the two sizes air so extremely different incorporates contrast and it draws your eye. Okay, so contrast can come in many different forms. Be brave. This is a brave designer. I mean, look how big glossary is in comparison, Teoh. A typographic the text there. It's huge. So be brave. Don't be afraid to get out of your comfort zone and make something humongous mixes something really, really small.