Wednesday, March 9, 2011

What? No Followers?

Week 6 homework - trying to assemble the primary components of the assigned web project, and ready to tear some hair out.

Created a little logo - described in last post - now I can't use it because it's too weak visually to match any possible color scheme that would be appropriate to a business consulting site.

Did a nice rollover while Karl was talking two weeks ago - completely forgot how I did it, but it was different than using DW's Insert/Image Object/Rollover.

I could probably whip the basics of a site together pretty quickly, but it would be really lame. I'm not an artist, so my aesthetic sense is being challenged by my abilities. Should I just go with the mechanics and do a tinker-toy layout, or should I try for a professional look?

Tempting to steal a layout, strip it of content, and repopulate with the project text and appropriate images, but
THAT WOULD BE CHEATING!

Tempting, though.

Wednesday, March 2, 2011

I Am a Photoshop Idiot

I'm not a read-the-manual type (am I being redundant?). Pull the device out of its packing, or load up the software, and let 'er rip. When I have a question, I Google the issue and proceed.

Photoshop, though, whew! When you hit a wall in Photoshop, the fix always depends on learning the basics. It's like trying to design a new circuit without having learned Ohm's Law.

My current Web Design class project requires designing a logo. I wanted two words to intersect, one vertical, one horizontal, on a common letter, with some drop-shadow and other text features. I wanted it all in a diamond-shaped enclosure with a subtle color background. I finally gave up and used GIMP because it has preloaded logo styles. Then I created each letter as a separate file and tried to copy and paste into a Word doc. The copy command wouldn't work until I discovered "right-click/edit/copy visible". Then I laboriously pasted each letter into Word and fixed my alignment and used the Snipping Tool to create an image I could reopen in GIMP so I could add a background color. Since I don't know how to do that, I created a layer and had to use the damned paintbrush. With the right opacity, the result was passable (for a sixth-grader).

Holy crap!