Production Graphics with Wendy Peck at Webreference.com | 23

Awards

Wendy Peck is a working Web designer and writer living in NW Ontario, Canada. https://wpeck.com.

Production Graphics News and Notes

We've been playing pretty rough in the last couple of weeks. Now it is time to straighten up our act. This week's tutorial is lines, lines and more lines. Let There Be Lines.

You learned some techniques for adding texture and energy to your pages last week, now take a tour through some great examples with Graphic Greats: Rough It Up. New! Peek behind the scenes of Maxfunds.com development as we interview the designer of this retro-look site.

Interested in Flash? There is a fantastic conference taking place in San Francisco on March 27, 28, 29, 2000. FlashForward 2000 features well known presenters and is sponsored by some of the biggest companies in the Web Design world. See details.

It's time to get rough with your graphics. This week I have plenty of ways for you to mess up your text, your graphics and even your backgrounds. Rough It Up explores methods and ideas to add texture to Web graphics and life to your sites.

New additions to the links section (see the menu to the left). More PaintShop Pro, PhotoShop and Flash listings. Make sure you suggest your favorite site if it is not listed.

Do you pride yourself on creating small, but terrific pages. Check out the under 5k Web page contest. I'll bet those who lean toward the programming end of Web development are confident that an artist could never win. Anyone up to the design challenge?

Get ready for a tour through some great sites. Following up on the Text as Design theme from my latest tutorial, I have scouted out some great examples for you. See Graphic Greats: Text as Design.

Have you seen our own Andy King's article on optimizing Web graphics? If not ... GO! This is an update of an in-depth look at how graphics work, and the best methods for creating great graphics with small file sizes. Optimizing Web Graphics.

Latest tutorial! Why waste time searching for the perfect graphic, when the solution may be as close as your keyboard? In Text as Design, you will learn to use text in creative ways to add the artistic touches to your pages.

Graphic Greats Photo Edges: It just makes sense to follow a tutorial with some terrific examples. This week I have collected some inspiring ideas for making photos more than just pretty pictures.

Adobe PhotoShop 5.5 free! Can you write? Do you have Web development wisdom to share with other pros? Write an article for Webreference.com and if your submission is chosen for publication in the Webreference newsletter, you will receive Adobe PhotoShop 5.5. See details.

Need some quick tips to produce great photos for your site without blowing your time budget? This week's tutorial, Pro Photo Edges, provides tips and methods for both raster and vector programs.

Graphics Greats: What's on the Web. A collection of great ideas from the Web graphics world, like this look at simple but brilliant menu ideas.

And if you missed the tutorial Dingbats: Design Elements to Go, make sure you see it now.

Corel $1,000,000 contest: This is the 10th anniversary for this contest. Next judging period ends on March 31, 2000. What are you going to enter? Think of the exposure (OK, so the money would be great, too). See details.

Heads up on a new contest. Details are sketchy, but a new Webby Award has been created. "The SFMOMA Webby Prize for Excellence in Online Art will offer $50,000 to an artist or artists for a body of work whose primary focus is to be experienced online and that explores and expands the distinctive capacity of the online medium." Visit the SFMOMA site and bookmark it. Details will be posted soon. Call for entries opens February 21, 2000, and closes March 14, 2000.

We still have Dan Giordan's (PhotoShop guru) tutorials.

A bit about this column ...

Production Graphics is a column written with the professional graphic designer in mind. The goal is to keep you moving ahead, learning new techniques, but also to help you make a better living at your craft. Over the next few weeks, we will have tutorials, news, timesaving tips.

The direction for this spot is not set in stone. What do you want to learn? What problem keeps creeping up again and again in your graphics work? Let me know, and I will develop tutorials, find the answer, find the people with the answer, whatever it takes to make this a place where your questions are answered. Use the feedback form from the menu to let me know what you are thinking.