You are in: Featured courses, Part time courses, Web Design, WordPress Essentials, feature Written by Friends of Design: On August - 14 - 2009

WordPress Essential Skills

Convenient, instructor lead, foundational.

Course Name: WordPress Essential Skills
Level 2: Intermediate to Advanced
Prerequisite/s: Module 2 (HTML/CSS Essential Skills), Adobe Photoshop Essential Skills
Course Code: WPRESS-100E
Course Classification: Evening part time Web design / Module 3
Duration: 4 weeks
Times: Mon – Wed, 5:30pm to 8:30pm

Intro

Want to make web sites that connect ? Learn to build beautiful websites with commercial value and more powerful back-end features.

Description

If you are an aspiring web programmer who wants to enhance add commercial value to your already functional HTML & Flash sites – and thereby enhance the usability and professionalism of your web sites – then this is the course for you!
This 4 week evening course is not intended for absolute beginners. You will require Module 2 (XHTML/CSS Essentials) and Adobe Photoshop Essential Skills, or equivalent work experience, in order to manage with the content of this course.

You will cover popular topics in the field of advanced web programming such as an introduction to cutting-edge technologies like Server-based scripting in PHP, and how work with basic PHP using WordPress, editing and creating your won WordPress templates, using external sources to fill your website with content, such as XML and advanced HTML. Practical projects make this course a must!

Extra Info

Have you checked the general info on this type of course and when it is scheduled?

Enrolment form

Download enrolment form here or contact us to enrol.

Course Description

View the full course description here.

Enrolment form

Download enrolment form here or contact us to enrol.

Pricing also available for customised, on-site or group training.

You are in: Uncategorized Written by Friends of Design: On August - 12 - 2009

InDesign Tutorials Creating interactive PDF’s in InDesign

By Lauren Sharp

An interactive PDF is a novel way to showcase your portfolio or used as a marketing tool. It basically works like a mini website. Opening up in Acrobat the designer would want to prompt the viewer to interact with the PDF instead of just clicking to the next page. Follow our basic steps to create your own interactive PDF

1.Launch InDesign and create a new document. File > New > Document. Deselect facing pages and insert 4 under number of pages (or as many pages as you like). Customize the rest of the page presets to your needs.

2.Plan how you would like these pages to interact with each other. Maybe drawing out a flatplan will help you.

3.Once you have all the elements in place and your pages correctly laid out. Create interactivity between them, starting from page 1. Let’s make my About Us button link up to page 2 where all my About Us information is.Select the about us image icon.Object >Interactive > Convert to Button.

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4.We now need to create Behaviors for the button. Select the button CTRL Click (Mac) / Right Click (PC) navigate to Interactive > Button Options.Under general you can name your button and create a description. Ensure that the Visible option is selected. Then under Behaviors you can leave the default setting of event to Mouse Up, and in the behavior there is a drop down arrow, select Go To Next Page. Zoom can be left at the default which is Inherit zoom. Then Click the add icon and OK to finish up.

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5.Do the same for the Contact Us icon. Except in the Behaviors change it to Go To Last Page.

6.Now convert the What We Offer icon to a button. If you went into the button options you will find that it’s very limiting in the Behaviors, in so much as it doesn’t allow you to select which page you’d like to link it to. To get around this small problem we need to create a hyerlink. Remove button properties.Object > Interactive > Convert from Button

7.Window > Interactive > Hyperlinks. This opens up a panel that you can dock with all the other panels on the right of your screen. With your icon / image selected click on the create new Hyperlink icon

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8.A dialog box pops up and allow you to specify what page you would like your icon to link to. Select the page number and click OK when you are done.

9.The previous steps we have just covered will easily allow you to create the necessary buttons, links and icons for your PDF.

TIP: Once you have created a button for Go To Previous Page you can copy and paste it on another page and the properties will copy along with it. Or create it on the master page allowing it to be a fixed option on each page.

10.Once you have finished. It’s always good to test the results. Because InDesign doesn’t have the ability to Preview the document as an interactive PDF. You have to export the file as a PDF in order to see the results. Remember every change that you make in an InDesign document a new PDF needs to be made.

11.File > Adobe PDF Presets > High Quality Print or Smallest File Size. We are going to customize our PDF any way so it doesn’t matter which of those presets you select. Smallest File Size works well for email purposes.

12.Make sure in under Include in General you select Hyperlinks and Interactivity selected. Also select View After Exporting, this opens up the PDF in Acrobat for you. In compression you have power over how your images display. By selecting various compression options under image quality you can reduce the size of your PDF, but this also effects how pixelated the image will display. When you are happy with your settings, you can select SAVE Presets, and save this preset. This means you never have to worry about setting up these options again. Once you have saved your preset click Export.

13.Voila Adobe Acrobat launches for you and you are able to test out your PDF. If you plan to email the file you may need to check how big it is. Some-times these PDF’s can be really large in size especially if you have used High resolution artwork. Forward planning is always the key. Enjoy.

You are in: Uncategorized Written by Jason Ridout: On August - 12 - 2009

Create A Color Illustration For A T–shirt// November 08

By Lauren Sharp

Many designers get the itch to create at some point their own tee. Whether you plan to sell it at the local market or give it out as Christmas presents, it’s no doubt a fulfilling experience. If you are having it reproduced at a local print shop or screen-printer it’s important to have a design that is easily reproducible. In this tutorial we are going to look at making a color T-shirt design. It’s advisable to keep your colors to a minimum because printing costs can be very high. So look at 1, 2 and 3 color jobs at the most. Let’s get started:

01. You want to make sure that your illustration or image is no bigger than A4 and preferably no smaller depending on what you hope to achieve with the design you have created. Start with a sketch. It doesn’t have to be too detailed or accurate. After all, the rough, hand-drawn look often works a lot better.

02. Clean up your sketch by erasing all pencil lines and going over the drawing with a black fine-liner. Now scan this image in as Greyscale at 200 dpi. Save the image as a .tiff, as tiffs seem to give a better trace in Illustrator than jpegs do.

03. Launch Adobe Illustrator CS3 then File > New from Template > Templates > Inspiration > Band > T-shirt. You can now save this Untitled Document, delete the elements you don’t need and use this Template for your T-shirt.

04. File > Place > locate the image you scanned and place it. Apply a Live Trace and then either Expand the image to clean it up or choose Live Paint.

*Note: If you aren’t familiar with the Live Trace and Live Paint options please see my tutorial on Creating Wallpapers for your Cellphone in Illustrator.1

05. You need to decide on what colors you would like to use. Creating a Color Group and dragging your colors in there can often help you avoid incorrectly choosing a similar color and applying that hence creating a 3 or 4 color job by mistake. To create a new Color Group navigate to your swatches panel and look for an icon of a folder with a plus sign next to it (it’s at the bottom of the swatches panel).

06. I am also a big fan of using Global Colors so once you have selected the colors and placed them in your Color Group double click the swatch and make it a Global Color by changing it from Process to Spot. We use Spot because this job will run off 2 plates and not a process of 4 plates of color.

*Tip: A Global Color is really handy because if you need to change the color later on all you do is double click the swatch and change the CMYK values, this changes all instances of that color used throughout the document. A Spot color is automatically Global by default.

07. Once you have finished coloring your artwork. Make a copy and scale it down, positioning it on the T-shirt so you can get an idea of how it will look. When scaling an image to preserve strokes and effects you may have used, select the image and go to Object > Transform > Scale. Tick the Scale Strokes and Effects then click OK and scale it down to the size you need it at.

08. From this point onwards you need to contact your screen-printer or your local print shop that is doing the job for you, to find out what format they would like it in and any other particulars they require for the job. Be aware that most places won’t let you just print 1 or 2 tees they require you print a minimum of at least 20 of one design.

Happy designing and feel free to send us pics of your final tees, if we like them we will put the images up under this section. For our Friends of Design Tees we used Fitees, and found them to be very professional and good quality for money. They use screen-printing as there method of print and have some really great options for Knockout ink (which we used) and other special effect inks. The screen-printing is run by Toby and he can be contacted on 021 424 7225 • info@fittees.com • www.fittees.com

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You are in: Uncategorized Written by Jason Ridout: On August - 12 - 2009

Creating wallpapers for your cellphone in Illustrator// October 08

By Lauren Sharp

Moving away from the serious Illustrator features, there is one really neat trick. That is creating your own custom made wallpaper for your phone. Obviously having bluetooth on your computer and on your phone is definitely required. Most technology supports these features nowadays, but if your PC or Mac is a bit old you can always buy a bluetooth toggle that slots into your USB port. Let’s take look at our 10 step process for creating unique custom made designs for your phone:

1.Hand rendered artwork is always the way to go if possible. Get your fine liners out and get passionate. Make sure your lines are clean and you close all the gaps in your artwork (i.e if you draw a circle, close it properly, don’t end it just before where you started it). Try avoid using Tip-Ex to correct your mistakes. Rather leave the skew lines in, as these are easily fixed or deleted once you convert your drawing. Now scan your artwork in as Grayscale at 200 dpi.

2.Open Illustrator, and create a New Blank Document (Command N). When the dialog box opens up, under New Document Profile choose Mobile and Devices. To the right of the dialog box is an icon for Device Central. Click on that icon and Adobe Device Central opens up. To the left of the Device Central window is a list of phones. Select your make and the drop down arrow to locate your phone model. This is a great guide as it’s very visual so if Device Central doesn’t have your phone find a similar model. It still works.

3.Once the search is over and your phone model is located. There is a button labeled Create at the bottom right hand corner of the screen. Clicking this then opens up a new blank document window.

4.If you are new to Adobe or to Illustrator then it’s worth noting that the checker board pattern you are seeing in your document window indicates transparency. Because cellphones don’t support transparency, in this case the checker board pattern means it is white. So if you don’t want a white background be sure to just draw out a box over that area and fill it with another colour. The green line that forms a block is the size of your screen. So any artwork outside this area won’t show up on the screen of your phone.

5.Go to File > Place, locate your file and place it. We are then going to do a Live Trace on this image you have placed. I choose to reduce the image I have placed to fit neatly on my screen. I hover my cursor over the top left hand corner of the bounding box. I get a double arrowhead, holding down my Shift key I can reduce the image while scaling it proportionally and avoiding any distortion. After scaling it hit the Live Trace button. The option for Live Trace is available in the control panel along the top. Hit the button and instantly get a trace result. You can adjust your Threshold and Tracing Presets now.

6.Once you are happy with the results. You are given two options on the top right hand side of the control panel. You must either Expand it, turning the trace into paths. Or you need to turn it into a Live Paint group. Let’s first Expand it. So we can edit and delete any lines that need fixing. Click the Expand button. The Live Trace now expands to paths. These are grouped so go to Object > Ungroup. You will possibly need to Ungroup your image a few times. Then using the Direct Selection Tool (A) select paths and start editing them along with your pen tool. Delete any white bits you don’t need, and generally clean up your image.

(Tip: The white background of your paper can be deleted easily by just selecting it and hitting the delete key on your keyboard.)

7.When you are done fixing your images. Group them individually Object > Group (Command G). Apply a Live Trace to them individually. Otherwise they Trace as one unit and that makes it’s hard for you to move them around. Live Paint is now found in Object > Live Paint > Make. Before we start to paint, we should use gap detection. Object > Live Paint > Gap Options. You can go and select small gaps up to large gaps. This just closes any areas your pen may have missed by a millimeter. Using our Live Paint bucket (K) and Live Paint selection tool (Shift + L) you can start coloring in your image. When you are done resize it accordingly. Use the various tools available in Illustrator and begin to create more elements for your wallpaper.

8.When you’re finished and ready to export your image. Choose File > Save For Web & Devices. This is a useful option because you have more control over the format and compression of the image. You can view your wallpaper on an image of your phone just by clicking on the Device Central button at the bottom right of your screen. Options for adjusting the view and size can be found on the right of that dialog box.

9.When you are happy just minimize the Device Central screen and go back to the Dialog box for saving your image. You can toggle between the original and optimized views at the top left hand corner of your dialog box. But the real gem is to the right – offering different presets. I advise for this particular exercise choosing a medium/low jpeg from the presets. The Adobe default presets are usually perfect as is, so further adjustments aren’t necessary. When you’re done click Save. Choose a destination for your file. The desktop is always a good option as it’s fast and easily accessible.

10. The final step would be to locate your bluetooth central on your PC or Mac. As well as switching your Bluetooth option on for your phone. Pair the devices and send the file. Select Save as wallpaper, and you now have your very own custom made image.

Time Needed: 30 minutes (enough to fit it in during a lunch break)

Skills Required: Intermediate knowledge of the general computer environment and Illustrator.

Skills Gained: Live Trace Live Paint Expanding an image to pixels Using Device Central

You are in: InDesign Tutorials, Print, Tutorials Written by Friends of Design: On August - 11 - 2009