Captains Log #5: Tools of the Trade
Since I’ve been breaking into the world of design more and more lately, I figured it’d probably be a wise decision to explore some of the practical tools and software designers use. Unfortunately, I am nowhere near what anybody would consider an artist… That’s actually one of the reasons I’ve never felt confident enough to actually begin exploring design, but luckily we live in the 21st century, a century in which people live twice as long, do half as much, and technology can augment otherwise poor doodlebugs like me into Picasso’s of the PC.
The most fundamental tools I use are the software with which I work. The most preferable (and the most readily available to me as a university student) are the programs of the Adobe Creative Suite; namely Photoshop, InDesign and Illustrator.
Photoshop is by far my most proficient program, having been a thorough user of the software for many years now. Being a photographer first and foremost took me on a natural course that introduced me to the wonders of image manipulation through my own picture-taking, through which I then began to experiment and explore. I would pretty happily say that Photoshop is the one of the fundamentals of my design arsenal, and I would recommend others follow suite.
Next on the list is InDesign, a software I am still yet to explore adequately. Much to my shame, I use Photoshop for practically everything, and I only touch InDesign when I’m designing the Magazine each month. This is largely due to the fact that I can do what I want much quicker in Photoshop, given that I know my way around the ol’ girl a helluva lot more. That is a shamefully narrow-minded plan of action, one that’ll not see me learn much…
My experience of the software has been more than a little frustrating, I’ll admit, given that simple things such as interface and methods of object movement are not cross-compatible, despite being the in the same software package.
Despite the less than fortunate and stunted experience, of which I can only blame myself, InDesign is a remarkable piece of software that should not be understated.
DISTORTED WORK
Illustrator is a completely new beast to me… One that I have only recently decided to tackle, considering the career path I now find myself so adamantly strutting on. As mentioned earlier, in some other post or perhaps in another life, I am not a particularly ‘artsy’ person. I struggle to think of original ideas, I am not good with a pencil, nor particularly good with a brush, or even an egg. As a result I’ve steered very clear from Illustrator, held at such a distance by my strange assumption that Illustrator was a program that must be used in conjunction with a graphics tablet. What a fool I am.
Don’t get me wrong, it has still been a rather difficult software to practise with, but I really don’t think it would be wise to pass on such a piece of kit. Illustrator would allow me to work more often with scaleable vector images and graphics as opposed to the rougher raster graphics that don’t resize too well.
So far I’ve made a simple little picture using simple little shapes depicting the various places I’ve called home, hopefully starting me on my way to grasping the basics of Illustrator. It may take a little while, given that whenever I have a task or project to complete I’ll head straight to Photoshop for efficiency and the knowledge that I can actually do the work, but once I am as proficient with Illustrator as I am with Photoshop, I believe I’ll have a far better chance in such an aggressively competitive market.
Captain Jakk.
