The Ink Spot

Vincent

10:50 AM

@johnp that, oh so much

marcusdoesstuff

11:04 AM

Morning.

@Ryan I'm still doing 2 days at the gym but also do 1-2 days climbing. :)

@Ryan Never gonna catch your legs up though.

---
Does anyone have any great examples of really slick design work done with the text on the back labels of products?

I'm looking for minimal (but not basic) but sexy ways of showing boring information like selling points, directions for use, product hazards, etc.

go-meek

@marcusdoesstuff For what kind of audience? Hipsters, the 1%, women/men, etc.? And what product.

@joojaa haha "I need this stuff to work not to admire."

@marcusdoesstuff It's nice to use a pure bright color on black with white artwork but it might not fit what you need (media.creativebloq.futurecdn.net/sites/creativebloq.com/files/…)

marcusdoesstuff

Sorry I was just looking through my reference for good examples.

go-meek

It's alright! You'll probably get a few good suggestions when people will see you request. It's fun to help for other stuff than technical issues

marcusdoesstuff

11:23 AM

It's an industrial market rather than retail. We sell chemicals and want to show a feeling of quality, strength, trust and reliability.

These are some of the nice examples I've found before.

joojaa

12:34 PM

@go-meek Well its true, you also value clear noncluttered instructions from your printer. I presume. Clarity over art in this case.

Why dont spec sheets of today come prepackaged with the raw graph data. Eould make model fitting, so mich easier. Its not like you can not make links and attachments in pdf

Ryan

1:51 PM

hello people

Darth_Vader

@Ryan morning good sir

Ryan

@Darth_Vader how are you?

Darth_Vader

zombie like this morning.

stayed up too late working

how u?

joojaa

ho

Ryan

I'm feeling good. Have an idea for a little Instagram side project that I might be more inclined to do instead of Vincent's Hexagons

hi @joojaa how are you?

Zach Saucier

2:24 PM

Wow designers are so fast at editing photos

I'm in my GD UX class and some people are working on projects for other classes

so much done in such little time

it'd take me a day to do what they do in 10 minutes, haha

Ryan

what are they doing to the photos?

Darth_Vader

@JohnB howdy stranger how have you been?

how those peppers coming?

Zach Saucier

Took a picture of a mug from online, removed the logo, added the texture from the rest of the cup where the logo was, went online and got a custom font to put on it, removed the background for the font, then styled the text the way they wanted

Ryan

Ah that's a pretty basic task for designers. If you do it a few times you'd do it very fast too its just using the clone stamp for the most part. If they're good they may have displaced it as well but I doubt they took the time to do that

Not sure I understand the "removed the background for the font" part though. Why does the font have a background lol

Zach Saucier

they took a screen shot of the font bc they didn't want to buy it lol

marcusdoesstuff

2:32 PM

@ZachSaucier I've edited tens of thousands of photos. :P

Zach Saucier

I know

and for code stuff I'm sure I'm way faster than most of you

but it's still fascinating

marcusdoesstuff

@ZachSaucier That's the only reason I'm quick.

Oh god I wish I could code faster haha

or at all

Build me an web app that can interface with my database plz? :P

Zach Saucier

lol

marcusdoesstuff

I'll edit your holiday snaps? hah

Zach Saucier

haha

I can do photo/video editing okay

it's the image-content editing I am horrid at

Ryan

2:35 PM

I'm really concerned that DA01's answer has received so many upvotes on that tables question. I think it completely fails to explain any reason why and understates readability and only removing "extraneous" parts.

Zach Saucier

I feel like that's a consistent trend with DA - only answering part of the question

JohnB

@Darth_Vader mostly all turned into sauce now, I have a few left that I want to try and make a spicy mustard with

Darth_Vader

@JohnB nice. if you're going to do a mustard I would use it for a base for brisket

JohnB

that sounds good

Darth_Vader

since you have the heat use maybe brown sugar based dry rub

Ryan

2:45 PM

Interesting take on a chair / desk / workstation: nofilmschool.com/2015/10/…

I feel like as a concept its cool, like concept cars. But for actual usage and production not so much

JohnB

Ryan

lol

just happen to have that handy?

JohnB

I'd fall asleep in that, guaranteed

Darth_Vader

@Ryan um no.. Im working on a standup desk right now

marcusdoesstuff

@ryan as if we'd use it standing when the seat looks so comfortable!

Ryan

2:48 PM

my hands would go numb in minutes if I was ever in a position with the keyboard going up

JohnB

price tag guess? I'd say $10k minimum

Ryan

@Darth_Vader I like the standup part, and the sitting normal part. Its the reclined position with keyboard above me that baffles me

marcusdoesstuff

oh yeah that's not good for carpal tunnel

Ryan

It says like $4k

JohnB

that surprises me

Ryan

2:49 PM

$6k for the initials they're working on cheaper models at 5k and 4k

marcusdoesstuff

oh you just mean arms up? i'm thinking of when your hands are angled up compared to your forearms.

i need a chair but not at that price.

i'll get a £950 ultrawide 1440p first :P

Where does my workstation go?

Ryan

and then lets say you spend that money on this thing... where do you put it? And then you have to get up for anything in drawers / shelves because you have no other space

marcusdoesstuff

In an empty room.

Like in the photos... The only place it looks good. :P

Ryan

That's not true... it would look great in the dentist's office. Pretty sure they have similar already though!

Vincent

hey all

Zach Saucier

2:56 PM

@Vincent oh hai dare

Darth_Vader

@Vincent sup!

Vincent

doing lotsa work :) You?

Darth_Vader

building custom wp menus, so the same as you, lol

Ryan

hey since lots are on and I've not received much feedback on my meta question about migrations ---- what do you all think?

@JohnB @Darth_Vader @Vincent everyone else? @ZachSaucier @marcusdoesstuff

Darth_Vader

Im for it as long as the question isnt bad

Ryan

3:01 PM

-1

Q: How to delete all blank pages in acroabt professional

I have a long PDF with 800 pages including many blank pages(with not text no image). Is there any free way to detect and remove only blank page from the PDF?

pdf

I'm about to hammer that with the reason, "I'm closing this question because it has nothing to do with Design and is too poorly written to merit migration."

Vincent

I'm unsure. I once read a guideline somewhere, which came down to 'If you'd ask it of your local designer, leave it at GD.SE, if you'd ask it of the IT department, move it to SU'.

Zach Saucier

@Ryan do ittt

Ryan

People ask me IT questions all the time... people are strange. lol

@ZachSaucier did

Darth_Vader

@Ryan actually that isn't a terrible question..

and would merit an answer with PDF scripting

Vincent

So I'd say that the 'number of layers' Q is GDSE, while the screenshot thing and the character distance are squarely SU

Darth_Vader

3:04 PM

also I could possibly provide an answer

Zach Saucier

@Ryan (I'm cynical when it comes to CVing)

Ryan

@Darth_Vader you want to answer it on GDSE or you want to migrate it to SU and answer it there?

Darth_Vader

err.. borderline on it, i would like to know what they tried and if they are looking for a script solution or someone a free tool

Ryan

@ZachSaucier how can we improve so that you, and others, won't be. I don't think I've seen a single request for something to be migrated to SU since I became a mod and maybe only two or three times for something to be moved to UX

So things either get closed as tech support, answered despite being poor, or closed for lack of effort.

Zach Saucier

I don't think I can become un-cynical in regards to CVs :)

I expect a very high quality of both Qs and As

Ryan

3:09 PM

No, I mean why is it that you never Close Vote or Flag anything to be migrated?

Darth_Vader

left comment

Zach Saucier

TBH I haven't been on GD much in the past couple months

as you can likely tell from my inactivity in chat as well

Vincent

@Ryan it might also be a factor that lot sof users (myself included) don't exactly know what's on-topic on UX and SU

Darth_Vader

I just want more user activity.. is that too much to ask!

Vincent

well, quality user activity, you mean? ;)

JohnB

3:22 PM

@Ryan if the question is decent I usually migrate it to SU. But if it's garbage I hold off

joojaa

@Ryan fine been wasting time at the library today

Ryan

Its getting frustrating to me that the "Why" seems to be not only ignored by discouraged

joojaa

Why is not discouraged, its jsut easy to sidestep

Vincent

@Ryan I feel your pain.

Ryan

Feel that Why is pretty much taken as its a matter of opinion, that's why. Reminds me of my mom growing up, "Because I said so, thats why!"

Vincent

3:36 PM

I hate the terminology, but thinking outside of the box, asking yourself meta-questions is... hard.

I takes energy

JohnB

what Why are we talking about?

Ryan

@joojaa Like you commented and closed my question about hand-drawing markings on a more technical piece that its a matter of opinion. But that can be grounded in reasoning and rationality. There are strengths and weaknesses to both sides that can be looked at as designers. Instead you and others have voted to close vote it as primarily opinion based

joojaa

yeah well it was a bit too broad

Vincent

@JohnB asking 'Why' as opposed to asking 'How'

JohnB

ah

joojaa

3:39 PM

Edit it and ill ask for reopen You need a picture

Ryan

Meanwhile DA01 for example is getting tons of upvotes on his answer saying to remove lines because they're extraneous. I tried at least a little in my answer to explain when something is extraneous and my answer is largely ignored. I comment to DA01 that I feel like his answer is overly simplifying because it doens't explain when its extraneous and when its not, and he just says basically because its better to be simple

Vincent

table Q?

Ryan

@joojaa I had pictures, I removed them because then people (Amontpetit) were commenting on my 2 second diagrams instead of the more universal question

Vincent

^^ including this cat

Ryan

11

Q: Why should lines be avoided in tables?

I read some books about typography and design some years ago. They all recommended to avoid lines in tables, instead they recommended to make use of spacing. I found that reasonable and adhered henceforth to those rules. Recently I ran into many discussions with spreadsheet users, who doubted th...

layout tables reference-request

joojaa

3:41 PM

i think it could have beena good critique question tho

JohnB

I've mentioned it before, but if we want less design software support question then we're going to have to show lenience towards the subjective questions

I think it's okay for a question to be somewhat opinion based if answers can still be backed up with reason

Ryan

Exactly what I was typing

Its just a matter of explaining your opinion. Nobody designs without any reasoning and rationality behind it. You look at options and came up with some reason for picking one over the other. Thats what the answer could be

Darth_Vader

what I dont understand is we have a sea of adobe tech questions but alternative software like inkscape seem to get more votes for closure..

Ryan

If your only way of communicating is "Because I felt like it, that's why" then the issue is on you not the person trying to understand

Hey @FirstDraft good to see you

Vincent

@Darth_Vader that is weird indeed

First Draft

3:50 PM

Heyo

Darth_Vader

sup sup sup

Zach Saucier

ping me when you start plox

First Draft

@Darth_Vader I think it's b/c people hate a bad interface. I use Inkscape daily, but only for a few tools

Ryan

@DA. if you're interested in the weekly exercise I know you like an earlier ping

@FirstDraft I always liked its threshold property, made drawing much smoother

@go-meek @Vicki either of you interested in participating in the design exercise today?

Darth_Vader

@FirstDraft i think the saying you get what you pay for is fair??

First Draft

3:54 PM

Yeah, sure. But I think that there's a certain amount of contempt for Inkscape, and that translates into downvotes here

Ryan

I'm glancing at inkscape and I don't see that many downvotes

First Draft

Well, you'd have a better view of that than we. I've definitely seen a little bit of backlash to Inkscape among less pragmatic designers

Ryan

@FirstDraft if you click that tag you can see just as much as mods can. Well not sure if you have the rep to see upvotes/downvotes but you can see the total and none are really negative

First Draft

There's not much I can get out of that, but not really important

Ryan

Its time is anyone/everyone participating this week?

@JohnB @Johnp @joojaa @Darth_Vader @Vincent @ZachSaucier (your ping!)

JohnB

4:02 PM

I'm here

joojaa

no sorry

Or maybe

Vincent

I guess I will :)

Zach Saucier

@Ryan ty

mods see the flags that 10k people see in chat, right? I ask because my impression is that they notify mods

Ryan

I have an idea in mind but since we've got a good group today if anyone else wants to lead I'm happy to step back and let someone else do todays exercise.

JohnB

yes we see them

Zach Saucier

4:05 PM

COMIC SANS COMP

:D

Ryan

@ZachSaucier you want to lead it? you can

Zach Saucier

The task: make something using only comic sans typography. It can be scaled to any level, change color, or edited in any way but you can only use comic sans type

:D

Ryan

Ill tell you from my own experience (and your own criticism of it haha) that something a little more specific than "make something with comic sans" will get better results

First Draft

@ryan do you have something tighter than that?

Vincent

nooooooo :P

Ryan

4:07 PM

got anything in mind for us to make with it?

Zach Saucier

Ummm

I'm making an animation

Posters or illustrations would be interesting

Vincent

an anim in 20'? D:

Zach Saucier

I'm an anim pro :P

Ryan

Alright maybe I'll try to combine mine with Zach's

Vincent

figures :)

joojaa

4:08 PM

so we going to do animation with comic sans?

Fine by me

Ryan

You're tasked with designing a character based logo for a new mail service. They'd like it to have some kind of bird of prey cartoonish character and their name in comic sans

joojaa

Ok

Ryan

Let's see someone got a good name for this fake company?

joojaa

sansmail

Zach Saucier

awww

Ryan

4:11 PM

There it is. Logo with a cartoonish bird of prey and Sansmail in comic sans

Zach Saucier

my animation is void then :P

joojaa

You can animate the fbird of prey

Ryan

it can be an animated logo

Zach Saucier

not in 20 min :P

I'll try

Ryan

you're the expert :)

Zach Saucier

4:11 PM

only in what I know :P

Ryan

You're tasked with designing a character based logo for a new mail service called Sansmail. They'd like it to have some kind of bird of prey cartoonish character and their name in comic sans

time is starting

Zach Saucier

codepen.io/Zeaklous/pen/bVxveG?editors=110 this is along the lines of what I was wanting to make :P

Ryan

that's really cool

Vincent

cartoonish is not... my forté :P

joojaa

4:28 PM

My time is up i have to go so i present you with the crappiest logo ever:

@ZachSaucier your bird has a lazer

Zach Saucier

shhhh I'm working on it :P

JohnB

a fierce bird of prey using only comic sans glyphs

joojaa

Hahah

Vincent

wow! :D

JohnB

side note: I did not know Comic Sans had all these extra glyphs until now

4:32 PM

wincent has a bat

wow my text is really not centered haha

First Draft

Vincent

a bat with a beak?

JohnB

4:33 PM

nice guys!

Ryan

awww he's hatching :)

First Draft

I couldn't get past the blocking

Zach Saucier

I didn't get the sizing right :P

someone can take a gif of it codepen.io/Zeaklous/pen/bVxveG?editors=010

First Draft

... and that's why I don't associate my name with my account

Ryan

haha thats awesome zach

Vincent

4:34 PM

lol

Zach Saucier

@JohnB me neither

@Ryan piecing together other's work \o/

Vincent

@JohnB I didn't even know Comic Sans came in *.otf :P

Ryan

Nice job everyone. And thanks for the help in concept Zach!

Zach Saucier

lol

Ryan

Now if you'd excuse me I need to trademark SansMail quick :P

Vincent

4:35 PM

@ZachSaucier that text effect makes me want to either kill myself or check the quality of my LSD :P

Ryan

free labor! haha

Zach Saucier

@Vincent hahahaha, good

joojaa

working on it

Vincent

@joojaa yours spews fire! :D

thanks @Ryan and @Zach for the pitch :D

Ryan

and @joojaa for the company name :)

JohnB

4:38 PM

gif for Zach's: i.stack.imgur.com/JLaAB.gif

Zach Saucier

that animation for so long wrecked my chromebook's battery, haha

Zach's contribution

@JohnB ty!

joojaa's is better

no it has a bit of jump

gone

DA.

4:40 PM

"and their name in comic sans" My contribution would be: "uh, yea, I'm kinda booked right now so can't take on any logo projects at the moment. Thanks for asking, though!"

Ryan

I like JohnB's too. Goofy little guy

First Draft

welp, that's one for the nightmares. See yall next week

Vincent

waves

Zach Saucier

@FirstDraft hahaha

Vincent

@joojaa @Zach can I hide that behind a link? please?

JohnB

5:04 PM

first time playing Shadows over Camelot tonight @Vincent

Vincent

@JohnB ooh, nice! :D

if you're the traitor, go for the lake.

but not too obv

Darth_Vader

@Vincent you ever modify the wp-admin page

Vincent

nope

Darth_Vader

want the code?

Vincent

5:23 PM

If you have it lyiing around :)

Hehe, hilarious. We should all say 'no' to spec work as these people do:

adweek.com/adfreak/…

Ryan

bookmarked!

Darth_Vader

@Vincent tweeting that

Ryan

I need to visit San Francisco. Feel like I'm missing a big chunk of knowledge having never been

Darth_Vader

ha yet adweek promotes spec work: adweek.com/news/advertising-branding/…

Ryan

Maybe Los Angeles and San Diego too

Zach Saucier

5:36 PM

I'm surprised no one posted today's design challenge until now

Ryan

5:49 PM

by the time done running it I have work to do too lol

thanks for posting it

Ryan

8:16 PM

2

Q: When are typefaces considered conflicting with each other?

I have been reading a lot about font pairing lately, but I'm still missing to identify when fonts don't complement and contrast with each other, instead they clash. An example that I've read (http://webdesign.tutsplus.com/articles/a-beginners-guide-to-pairing-fonts--webdesign-5706) , was about co...

typefaces font-pairing

3 votes for opinion so far and two answers that do nothing to offer reasoning behind their decisions.

Ryan

8:35 PM

hi @BESW

BESW

[wave]

What's new?

Ryan

frustrated at this site at the moment

0

A: A Critique, a Dupe and a Tech Support walk into a bar

Its becoming increasingly frustrating that people complain about the lack of quality questions, say we're just tech support, say they want why, and then vote every why question closed as opinion. Is it a matter of opinion? Certainly what works best is a matter of opinion. But what doesn't work a...

anything new with you?

BESW

mm. Site culture is a tricky thing.

I'm struggling with colour design.

It's one of the areas my formal education skimped on, and I'm having trouble reinforcing it on my own.

Ryan

what are you trying to do with colours?

BESW

Right now I've got a logo project that the client wants to lighten up, but it still needs strong light/dark contrasts for the concept to work. And I'm designing a program cover that needs to use colour to differentiate (at least subtly) between seven different design elements.

Ryan

8:44 PM

sounds interesting at least. 7 is hard, hope its a white background

BESW

I've got basically free rein on this.

The original concept was a page of black text (very small and cramped) on a white background with seven icons that, instead of being solid shapes, are defined by changing the black text to another colour.

That proved difficult to make the icons visible, so I'm adding background tint for the icons.

The underlying idea is that the icons all represent very different ways of doing one thing, so a "unity in diversity" theme is required.

Ryan

Sounds appropriate

Not sure I entirely understand the "icons ... defined by changing the colour"

So the icons are just words in different colors? Or are they symbols?

BESW

here, this is an early test of the concept.

Ryan

ooooh nice

now I get it

Have you seen the shirt manufacturer Litographs before? Might help you get more ideas

BESW

Yeah, the trick is I need the text to be legible.

Which bumps the granularity of the design down into realms where icon detail isn't high enough for them to be easily recognisable.

Solution: tints of colour behind the text to reinforce the icon shape.

Problem: that's a lotta colours.

Ryan

9:01 PM

hmm, how legible? I mean I got my sister a Litograph poster and its legible, but nobody is going to really read it. I can't imagine trying to read yours either if that's essential

Without paragraph breaks and/or columns and such its just too difficult to follow I think

BESW

The subject of the conference this is artwork for is literacy (language arts conference, this year's theme is literacy across content areas). So while the text isn't something that needs to be comprehended, making it actually illegible would be thematically confusing.

Ryan

Then it seems fine to me. I just wouldn't put important information in there like dates, time or contact info

BESW

Oh, yeah. It's a text dump of two chapters of The Voyage of the Beagle.

Current layout rough:

Ryan

Looks good. Only thing sticking out to me is the S appears taller than the rest of University

I like that the book is at the center of the "arts and sciences"

BESW

Yeah, that's an artefact of rendering it quickly in Bridge preview mode for the screenshot.

Ryan

9:07 PM

ah yeah I's sometimes look strangely wide that way as well

BESW

I started this design with the simple goal of "no apples, no stacks of books." Because that's been the go-to visual for these conferences for a long time and I wasn't going to continue it.

Colour-wise, I'll probably start with the university colours--green, with gold and purple highlights--and work from there.

Ryan

For my own sake, I'm happy to hear the way you talk about your design. You have reason behind it. Sure some is still opinion but its all been grounded in rational decision making.

BESW

[grin]

I look at design as a form of communication. My first job is to work with the client to figure out what they're trying to say, and to whom, so that I can make a design which communicates that message to that audience in a way that's both effective and pleasing.

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