Luxury fonts were originally designed by Christian Schwartz and available via Orange Italic. I was excited, my family business is jewelry and these typefaces are intended for the upscale market. The type family names are Diamonds, Platinum and Gold, a cinch that I would want to use them. In 2006, House Industries purchased the rights to sell them (at least I think), and added a 3 text weights in the deal. Well, this is a partial review… (more…)

Over next couple of months there are going to be a series of changes. Some will be small changes, more writing, more downloads and hopefully more visitors and comments. Others will be larger, the design will change, as will the intent of the site, which is to say, it will become more of a Portfolio site with bloggy stuff in the cracks.

I will be adding content into areas like Illustration, Print publications, Photography, and Identity/Logography to name a few. Please note that is will be a testing ground and occasionally it will look like a military proving range with lots of blown up stuff where it shouldn’t be.

To get things started, I will be posting a download a week for the next few months. Starting with the Cherry…

This is a demonstration of the Gradient Mesh tool that I will be creating a Tutorial for. When you download take note of the simplicity of the cherry mesh, this is the cornerstone of a good mesh, it’s simplicity. Even the top of the stem is reasonably simple with only one middle mesh bezier. This started as 5 squares with simple color and I added detail where it was necessary. Many people add cross curves to the object until it is so complicated there is no way to simplify it.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 License.

I would like to take a moment, just one, and remove my “everybody play nice” hat and just lather up a Hot Steaming Mug of hate ( and hubris) over the current feelings about Apple.

I own an iPod, this is a matter for full disclosure, and I am a Graphic Designer. You haven’t heard of me. I design on a PC, windows based, with components from several manufacturers that I built…myself. I like Macs ok, I taught on them for several years and can find my way around them quite nicely. I don’t own a Mac, and I am not planning on switching, even though I really enjoy the John Hodgeman/Justin Whats-his-face ads very much.

I wanted to remind all of you Mac users, and lovers (it really is unnatural) that Apple Computer, Inc. was founded on the idea of a completely closed and proprietary system of hardware and software. Most other companies at the time were using open standards that were licensed from one company to another in order to further the total package, increase compatibility, and foster a real market-driven explosion of cheap and good hardware and usable software. It moved much faster than the Mac hardware because very few corp. were designing, building and selling hardware and it was all coming through Apple.

This is the fundamental reason that Macs have always been expensive, and had such a small market share. It is important to note the recent change to the Intel platform for Macintosh computers, because it reminds us that for years Apple reported the RISC processor ( powering its computers) was faster than its Wintel counterparts. This was not and is not true. To this day, even with Open Source software and now hardware becoming not just viable, but superior in some cases to closed systems, Apple still hold the mystique of the Different, the artist, designer, Rock Star.

What are you really buying? A closed system, with components that you have to buy from Apple, which is more expensive than the same thing that you would buy from Dell or HP or Newegg.com. Is it the software? Is the operating system that much better? Who cares, they took an Open Source operating system, made it pretty and now they sell it to you. I am not that big a fan of Windows really, but it is the Big Tent so-to-speak, with so many hardware and software options, so much modularity…it needs a bit more work to understand. But it is quite a bit more powerful, and more transparent to those who use it.

OK, rant over. I just needed to respond to all of those empty-headed dims who think that buying an Apple, an iPod, a Beetle and dark rectangular framed glasses makes them “different.” Be different, be creative on a PC.

Freebie time again. I found the blog, Brass Goggles, again the other night. I have quite a soft spot for all things steam punk, it suits my anachronistic nature. So in that spirit, I went to my library of brushes and found my cogs. I had developed a set of gears for a flash project that is still in development, and several hours of research is still necessary but this is an interim stage, that I would like to share.

In order to use these brushes, just open the file in illustrator and apply brushes to various circles and drawn lines. As illustrators brush engine doesn’t scale all that well, I recommend using trial and error to your settings. Feel free to pull out the pieces and edit them, just please don’t redistribute them without attribution.

Thanks, Mike.

Update: Hey folks, it seems there has been a few issues with how to set up the cogs. This is as much my fault as anyones, as I use my own technique instead of the official Adobe way of creating Brushes. Illustrator can be a bit snarky about bends and turnarounds, and as strange as it sounds, loading brushes backwards solves the problem in some cases. So here are some usage hints:

Start a new doc, creating a new ellipse to begin. I use arbitrary settings so that they can bite me in the ass after several screen caps.

Apply your brush to the ellipse. I choose the first one as I have experimented on it extensively as a proof-of-concept.

It is worth noting at this point that most of your questions start here. So this is where I didn’t provide enough info.

The fix is this: Use the brush options button to open the options dialog. This is where you can exert some power on the applied brush(make sure one is selected!).

Consequently, this dialog will appear:

Notice that it comes pre-scaled at 20% and I have the cursor over “Flip Across.” If the cog looks inside out, this is the setting you need to invert, ie. if it is flipped, unflip it. Notice my teeth are on the outside now.

Next, we need to make this cog solid, in order to use another brush inside it. So I will go ahead and create a .8″ ellipse inside it also.(It doesn’t need to be centered yet, I have intentionally offset it here to illustrate which piece is which.

Note the second is not much smaller, which is also to show how other brushes interact. Now we apply a brush to it, using Pattern Brush 22, which I like. It has a large center section and a bit of a curve to it.

Wow, that is really screwed up, but wait! You know how to fix it. That fun Brush Options dialog! I set mine to 30% initially with Flip Along Unchecked, and Flip Across Checked. Yielding this:

If you are unable to color your brushes, it maybe because of Hue Shift is not the option selected at the bottom.

Now it is up to you to make it nice. I did finally settle on 40% for my scale, and used the align palette to center the two original brushes and the new little white circle that I created. This is the final example:

If you are still having problems recreating the file, the above image is a link to download the source file.

Update no 2:Illustrator 8 Version

Good Luck!

What is the equivalent of open-source in visual design? After researching this a bit, I think I am prepared to at least hazard an answer.

There are 10 rules for open-source software, so lets apply them to a stand alone unit of design. I am using Open Office as an example, because I like it, and it is in need of some help. (more…)