I scored my first design job when I was about 14 years old. A local T-shirt shop owner got tired of me hanging out at his place and taught me to cut color separations. Before long, I was handling layout for his customers and even doing design work on the side. I loved it. Little did I know then that I'd still be doing it, and still loving it nearly 30 years later.

I feel that I have a somewhat unique perspective on design, being that I learned good design and layout principles and techniques way before the age of desktop publishing. It used to take us weeks to do something that today takes a few hours. Still, some of the old camera tricks, color layering, overprinting and spot varnish techniques are still used in the work I do today, and it's always fun to get a "How in the hell did you do that..." from designers in the younger, post-digital-design camp. Yeah... That's old school, baby. :)

Here's a few tidbits that I'd like to pass along to those who may not remember Amberlith, Zip-A-Tone, Exacto knives, burnishers and airbrushes that actually clogged. Some technical, some practical, some just common sense.

Maybe old news to some, and maybe the writing has been on the wall for quite some time, but I remember a time when Freehand was the only illustration app available for the Mac. That is if you don't count MacDraw, which no one ever does, even way back in the day. When Freehand hit the streets, it was the most amazing thing any of us had ever seen.

I started using Freehand at version one and still use it to this day. So, to say when I got the notice from Macworld in my RSS reader this morning, it sort of choked me up a bit.

Sure... I know Illustrator well enough to switch, and fairly painlessly, but I find myself wanting to reflect a bit and properly mourn the loss of my friend, Freehand.

I'm sure we've all been in a situation where someone's waiting on a file, but for any number of reasons including large file size, email just isn't a viable solution. In this case, I usually just toss it on the server and email the expecting party a link where they can download the massive file. Simple enough, but if you're server is like mine, at any given time it's always at near-capacity. So, what to do (aside from actually cleaning out the server, of-course)?

Well, the good news is that there are several free, web-based services who offer to upload and deliver these large files in short order. And a few actually do so with out much hassle.

We've selected six of these services and compared them based on similar criteria. For each, we registered (if necessary), timed the upload of the same 50 MB, CMYK tiff file, and then timed each download. Other considerations were limits to file size, relative ease of use and whether it was possible to notify multiple recipients of the file's availability from their site. I also included the results from my personal server, via FTP just out of curiosity (see Speed Report graphic).

I also should note that these test were performed on a Macintosh G4, v10.4.8, with a 1.8 Ghz processor, 1.12 GB RAM, with an Ethernet-to-DSL internet connection. We also used Safari for these tests, so your mileage may vary depending on your configuration. Also, no other internet activity was going on while these tests were being performed, so the results should be fairly indicative of optimum performance for each service.

In order of personal preference:

This morning, my son came in with this ad, torn from the local paper (really... it was torn, as he and his friends were actually fighting over it).

Go ahead and take a look... I'll wait.

So many times we creative types get caught up in discussing the nuts and bolts of design, troubleshooting, figuring out what works and what doesn't, and we tend to skip the mundane, day-to-day stuff. After all, discussing billing, project management, gantt charts, etc. doesn't make for lively conversation. At least in my opinion, it doesn't. My accountant may beg to differ, but I digress.

I recently had an interesting discussion concerning workflow with another designer and I thought I'd continue it here on CB. By "workflow," I mean how projects are handled from start to finish. Now... I have to say that I've been freelancing (exclusively) for over 10 years and my workflow is a direct result of trial-and-error. And while your mileage may vary, I know what works for me. So, I thought I'd share and get your thoughts on the matter.

Ok... I was designing a credit card for a new client using provided, hi-res photos of a pile of US Currency when I got this error:

After doing a little research, it seems that Photoshop CS has an algorithm built-in that recognizes images of various currency and will prevent you from accessing the image.

My first reaction was "WTF Mate?" :)

You can read more about it here.

To save you all some time, here's the workaround:

1. Open the banknote image with ImageReady (fortunately, ImageReady does not have the same banknote protection as photoshop)
2. Go to File > Edit in Photoshop
3. Viola. The image loads in Photosohp without being checked.

Happy Counterfeiting!

Terry

In the haze of post Tiger explosion, Macworld reports a potential vulnerability in Safari.

Macworld reports:
A new Web page documents an issue with Mac OS X v10.4 Tiger’s new Dashboard feature that, left unchecked, could potentially be exploited by malware developers, according to the page’s author. The exploit is described and demonstrated on a page called Zaptastic: Blueprint for a widget of mass destruction. Going by the nom de plume of Stephan.com, the author has described how Safari 2.0’s default preference settings could lead users to unwittingly download and install a Dashboard widget.

Read more...