Web Safe Colors

What Are Web Safe Colors?
Back in the early days of the internet there was a reason to be concerned about consistency in how browsers displayed the colors. Many computer screens back then had 8-bit color displays, which could only display 256 different colors. The computer system itself uses some 40 colors, for menus and such, and the remaining 216 colors could be used to display the actual web pages.
Although computers have a capacity for at least 256 colors, only 216 colors are common to all older computers. Newer computers are equipped with 64 thousand colors (16-bit) and the highest quality systems deliver 16.7 million colors (24-bit). However, approximately 10% of all computers are limited to 256 colors (8-bit).

WEB SAFE COLORS:

Web Safe, or Browser Safe palettes as they are also referred to, consist of 216 colors that display solid, non-dithered, and consistent on any computer monitor, or web browser, capable of displaying at least 8-bit color (256 colors). The reason why this palette contains only 216 colors, instead of the maximum 256 colors, is that only 216 out of the basic 256 colors will display exactly the same on all computers. The combination of Red, Green and Blue values from 0 to 255 gives a total of more than 16 million different colors to play with (256 x 256 x 256). Most modern monitors are capable of displaying at least 16384 different colors.

A Windows user opens a word processor document created on a Macintosh (or viceversa) and sees a lot of odd characters in place of the expected punctuation marks and other extended characters. While the basic character set of lowercase and upper case characters and numerals map identically on all platforms, each computer platform treats some extended characters, like ampersands, foreign currency symbols, accented characters, and so forth, differently. So what is gray on a Windows monitor, might display pale yellow on a Macintosh browser. In the same way that there are common characters and numbers that are consistent among computer platforms, so there are colors that display the same. These are what we call Web Safe colors.

Web colors are colors used in displaying web pages, and the methods for describing and specifying those colors. Colors may be specified as an RGB triplet or in hexadecimal format (a hex triplet). They may also be specified according to their common English names in some cases. Often a color tool or other graphics software is used to generate color values. In some uses, hexadecimal color codes are specified with notation using a leading number sign (#).

If your web site has a solid colored background, make it a Web Safe color. That’s your guarantee the color will not embarrass you when it displays on the other computer platforms. And on older computers capable of displaying but 256 colors at a time, and there are still a lot of those relics around, your background will display clean and non-dithered.When you create an image or text image that will contain an invisible background color, make the background color the same as your web site (which should be a Web Safe color). Or, pick a Web Safe color that comes very close to your background color or background texture. Using a Web Safe color, on the other hand, should produce a cleaner image like the one shown on the right.

A color model is a system for creating a full range of colours from a small set of primary colors. There are two types of colour models: additive and subtractive. Additive color models use light to display color, while subtractive color models use printing inks. The most common color models that graphic designers work with are the CMYK model for printing and the RGB model for computer display.
RGB
The RGB color model is an additive color model. In this case red, green and blue light are added together in various combinations to reproduce a wide spectrum of colors. The primary purpose of the RGB color model is for the display of images in electronic systems, such as on television screens and computer monitors and it’s also used in digital photography. Cathode ray tube, LCD, plasma and LED displays all utilize the RGB model.
For web-page design the colors used are commonly specified using RGB. Today, with the predominance of 24-bit displays, it enables most users to see 16.7 million colors of HTML RGB code. In web page design, there are 216 so-called ‘web-safe’ RGB colors represented by hexadecimal values. Quite simply, the web-safe color palette consists of the 216 combinations of red, green and blue.

Color is often a key aspect of artwork. However, the colors you see on your artboard aren’t necessarily the colors that will appear in a web browser on someone else system. You can prevent dithering (the method of simulating unavailable colors) and other color problems by taking two precautionary steps when creating web graphics. First, always work in RGB color mode. Second, use a web-safe color.
CMYK
The CMYK color model (four-color process) is a subtractive color model. Primarily used in printing, CMYK works by partially or completely masking colors on a white background. The printed ink reduces the light that would otherwise be reflected. That’s why this model is called subtractive because inks ‘subtract’ brightness from a white background from four colors: cyan, magenta, yellow and black. Black is used because the combination of the three primary colors (CMY) doesn’t produce a fully saturated black. This is evident in the central black color created by the overlapping circles in the color chart above.
CMYK is able to produce the entire spectrum of visible colors due to the process of half-toning. In this process, each color is assigned a saturation level and miniscule dots of each of the three colors are printed in tiny patterns. This enables the human eye to perceive a specific color made from the combination. In order to improve print quality and reduce moiré patterns, the screen for each color is set at a different angle.

In printing, a spot color is a single ink color that is printed using a single printing plate. Thousands of unique colors have been given names or assigned numbers allowing designers to match any specific colors in different locations without contact with one another. Pantone^® is the dominant spot color printing system used as the industry standard in North America and Europe.

Adobe Muse

Adobe makes programs like InDesign, Illustrator, and Photoshop, which enable every graphic designer on the planet to create nearly every piece of visual content you’ve ever laid your eyes on. Naturally, their bread and butter is making graphic designers happy. So their newest product, Muse, hopes to make life even easier for designers—specifically ones working in more traditional mediums who are being tapped to take on more web-based projects—as an ultra-simplified, graphically focused tool for making websites.

Anyone familiar with Adobe products like Photoshop will instantly recognize Muse — it shares a similar interface. Looks like Muse was designed to be Photoshop for building websites. So if you’re familiar with Adobe products like Photoshop, Muse might be a good option for you.

Muse’s biggest selling point is that designers don’t have to learn code (or “markup languages”) like HTML, CSS, or Javascript to break through the barrier of designing for the Internet. This is a way for designers to create a website. Because this website builder was developed with the needs of professional designers in mind, it may seem fairly complicated for non-designers. It does require prior experience of graphic design. All in all, Muse looks, performs and feels just like any other Adobe product. So, if you happened to work in InDesign, Illustrator or Photoshop, the interface won’t scare you away, it shares similar interface. Adobe Muse employs the drag-and-drop editing principle which also simplifies the creation process. Using an interface that’s much like Abobe’s InDesign, designers can quickly and easily create websites as a series of dynamic documents which generate the necessary HTML code for them to be published online. Elements like navigation bars and pull-down menus—typically complicated Javascript features—are included as a series of widgets that can be dragged and dropped onto the page. As a technological achievement, it’s incredibly impressive. The complete tutorial and built the tutorial website last about three hours.

It’s easy to see that Muse will allow designers who are skilled at creating beautiful print layouts to easily turn their work into a simple, fully functioning website. Muse provide a shortcut for those designers creating webpages, specially for some design firms, where learning code isn’t a bonus, it’s a requirement. There are no pre-made themes in Muse. Instead you design your website from scratch. Luckily Muse has built in some solid support for design. For example you can make lots of customizations to blocks: set opacity, blur, border radius, border sizes, add drop-shadows, scroll effects and more etc. Muse also has excellent font support. So, Muse allows designers to build a template that can be easily edited for each website page

Adobe Muse CC is a tool for designing websites without writing a line of code. In fact, unlike other tools, it doesn’t even let you code. You get 20GB of cloud storage when you’re a member of Creative Cloud, enabling you to access your website files when you’re away from your computer. You can share design mockups and live site demos with clients and colleagues. You can even let the website owners make changes to content on live sites through a browser (with the ability to retain control and accept or reject those changes).
Within the template-driven software, you can drag and drop to add custom navigation, slide shows, contact forms, scrolling effects and more to your websites. All the interactive widgets are touch-enabled, so you don’t need to do anything extra to make them fit for taping on touchscreen devices.
Overall, the resources for Muse are great and appear to only be getting larger. They range from free to paid, to sharing with other users, to add-on widgets and enhanced functionality, to templates that cater to almost any general type of site you may be designing.

 

 

 

Website Design: The Use of Placeholder Images & Text in Wireframes.

The layout of your website can be a deciding factor on whether your visitors will stay on your website or leave with an impatient click. You could think of the layout as a map. If it’s easy for the visitors to “read” the map, they are more likely to stick around and find the content you’re providing. A web designer’s job is to create a layout that keeps the visitor focused on the content while keeping it nice and easy to navigate around the site.

Wireframing is an important part of the design process for both simple and complex projects. If you’re creating a website for a client, a wireframe is a great tool for communicating your ideas visually at an early stage rather than just having a verbal description. If you’re creating a website for yourself, the wireframe helps to clarify what is required on each page of your website. It can be considered an overlap between the planning process and the design process. Creating a simple wireframe ensures that your page designs take into account all of the elements you’ll add to your pages and where they will be positioned. Wireframes are cost-effective because the time spent in the initial stages potentially saves you from losing much more time revising the design at a later stage.

Wireframes can be created in several ways, including pen and paper and computer-based tools. When it comes to computer-based applications for wireframing, there are many options available. Some designers use Photoshop, Illustrator, or even InDesign to put together their wireframes.

You can create a wireframe mockup of the site that outlines the positioning and functionality of page elements devoid of the final site’s graphics and text formatting. When designing websites, you may not have the images you need at first. But you already know the sizes and inserting some placeholders can help you better seeing the layout. By using placeholder text and placeholder image, the designer can get an idea of how to layout a page and get a good idea on how it may appear when real text and image is placed into the placeholders. Placeholder text is a descriptive text displayed inside an input field until the field is filled. As you build out a wireframe site, you can use the Text tool to create text frames and add placeholder (or lorem ipsum) text that you’ll replace later. Or if your client has an existing website, you can copy the text directly from a browser and paste it into the text frames. After creating text elements, you can use the Text panel to apply formatting to the text. The goal of a wireframe is to replicate the bare bones of each page, creating a simulation of the web presentation without the distraction of colors or visual content. Rectangles are used as placeholders to mark the location of images and handwritten or generic fonts are used to display the areas of the page that contain text content. The wireframes show the page layouts for the site and allow you to click through the links to see how the site flows.

After interacting with the wireframes, visit the final live site to compare the wireframes to the completed version. Notice how the placeholder elements in the wireframes were replaced with the graphics for the final version of the site.

Roles of Magazine Editorial/Design Team

Magazine member roles:
The key to success of every magazine is the working relationship between its key employees, and those are editor in chief and art director. However your relationship with your team of designers is also vital because your organizational and presentation skills are important because you and your team have to deliver the final product, that has to look good, sometimes under tight deadlines and tight budgets.

Editorial team
Editor In Chief: He or she is the key figure in every publication. Editor in chief has to be a person with great vision, because his vision and decisions are crucial for the success of the publication. Editor in chief has to be a person with many skills. First of all it has to be a great journalist. After that he has to be a great leader, because his team has to follow him on a tough and uncertain path. Editor in chief has to be in constant contact with an art director or creative director or design director, whatever title main designer in the publication has. Editor in chief also works closely with other key figures in the team. He has to be in constant touch with production manager, chief copy editor, picture editor, department editors (such as; beauty editor, fashion editor, lifestyle editor…). These key figures in the editorial team have to work together so that the process of publication production runs smooth and with no delays. Editor in chief is the one that has to oversee them. Sometimes it is much work so editor in chief has a deputy or assistant. The role of the editor in chief is the most important one and crucial for the success of the publication. The other person whose role is also crucial is an art director.

Art director is responsible for organization and commission of all the art work that will be included in the publication. He has to deal with its own team of designers, he has to outsource photographers, commission images with picture editor, outsource illustrations if needed, basically he is responsible for all the creative aspects of the job, how the magazine is going to look like. The success of the publication also depends on the design. There are times how good journalism and good publications were ruined by poor design.
His instructions to its designers, photographers and illustrators are vital. He has to give clear instructions to its design team. Some designer oversees every aspect of the design process and some give more freedom to their team. It all depends who is on the team. Art director generally has one deputy and he will work most of the time with him.

The responsibilities of a Creative Director include leading the communication design, interactive design, and concept forward in any work assigned. This responsibility is often seen in industries related to advertisement. The creative director is known to guide a team of employees with skills and experience related to graphic design, fine arts, motion graphics, and other creative industry fields. Some example works can include visual layout, brainstorming, and copy writing. Before one assumes the role of a creative director, one must have a preset of experience beforehand. Like anyone else, these types of artists start up from the very beginning in fields that can relate to motion graphics, advertisement in television, and/or book (or magazine) publishing.
A creative director is the visionary responsible for steering the entire look, feel and delivery of an audio or visual project, publication, department or company.
A creative director can work in any industry, although they are typically called upon to work in any creative format. This could be with a magazine, TV production company, marketing communications firm, automotive design house or graphic design agency. Generally, the creative director is tasked with determining the best way for a company to represent themselves (or their clients) visually to the market. They will usually be in charge of a creative team which may include a graphic designer, content editor, photographer and marketing manager (or team).
The creative director will interpret either the objective vision of their own company or that of their client. Once they have a grasp on the brief and overall strategy, they will work with their own internal teams to deliver a pleasing and coherent deliverable vision. This may be the overall guiding thesis for a magazine, or a theme and key message for their client’s advertising campaign. The role blends the need to understand a variety of disciplines, so the creative director will need to be capable of working in art direction, concept planning, timeline management, execution of deliverables and post-delivery reporting and analysis.

Art editors are responsible for the way a magazine looks. They present the words and images in a way that is easy for the reader to digest, with high visual impact. In the highly competitive consumer magazine market, the art editor’s role is essential to the success of a publication. The magazine’s cover, in particular, must always look distinctive, to attract potential buyers. As you can see key creative person in the publications team can have many titles, but however you call it, its line of work is the same, although the title of art director is the most common one.

A design director is a position usually found within the advertising, media, automotive or entertainment industries, but may be useful in other creative organizations such as web development and software development firms as well. The position has similarities to that of a creative director. The design director oversees the design of branding and advertising for a client, ensuring that the new branding and advertising fits in with the client’s requirements and the image they wish to promote for their company or product. However, unlike a creative director, the design director is not responsible for the overall quality of the final creative work, but merely for the quality of the project’s design elements. Design directors, are promoted from senior designer positions.

Senior designer: The Senior Designer establishes the conceptual and stylistic execution for projects and campaigns. The senior designer works in conjunction with the Art Directors and Junior Designers on all design solutions, including, but not limited to, digital including, web, interactive, social, tablet and mobile screens, print and retail solutions. The senior designer reports to the Creative Director and Agency Managing Director and collaborates with the entire creative team on overall cross-media solutions.

Designers: Their role is to design the publication under art director’s supervision and according to its instructions. Designers work closely with art director and their level of involvement and autonomy in designing material is determined by several factors.
The key factor is how much freedom will their art director give them, because some art directors like to oversee every detail of the publication design while others are happy to delegate work and check it once the pages are laid out. Senior designers have more freedom than the junior designers. The number of pages and the time frame of publication determines the number of designers. When the time frame is short the designers will have more responsibilities and more freedom in their work.

Picture editor: Usually responsible for the commissioning of the imagery, negotiating prices for the images from the stock sites, commissioning photographers, works closely with art director and ensures that the quality of the photographic material throughout the publication is on high level.

Copy editor: This kind of editor is responsible for acquiring text articles from the outsourced writers, also is responsible for the quality of those texts. Copy editor is writing all the display copy like headlines and kickers.

Proofreaders: Their role is to check all the text materials for correct grammar and spelling. Proofreaders also cut excess copy. They work closely with a copy editor.

Production manager: This is the person that oversees the physical compilation of all the materials by setting a production schedule and makes sure that everyone sticks to it. He is responsible for the communication with the printing-house, he is setting the deadlines for the commission of the text copy, imagery, design, editing deadlines and so on.

Department editors: Each publication has different departments, such as if you are working in fashion magazine then editorial team will have fashion editor and beauty editor. These persons are responsible for their departments (sections) of the publication.
They are responsible for acquiring and writing text copy, acquiring product images for their departments and they work closely with editor in chief, art director and production manager.

Magazine journalists: Magazine Journalists research and write news articles and features for a wide variety of publications, usually periodicals, including: consumer titles which cover both general interest and specialist areas, customer magazines from shops, supermarkets, etc; trade publications, also know as business-to-business (B2B) magazines. Magazine journalism can cover a range of disciplines, such as writing, interviewing, sub-editing, and designing.

 

 

 

Exporting InDesign files out to PDF before printing

About Portable Document Format (PDF): This is a universal file format that preserves the fonts, images, and layout of source documents created on a wide range of applications and platforms. Adobe PDF is the standard for the secure, reliable distribution and exchange of electronic documents and forms around the world. Adobe PDF files are compact and complete, and can be shared, viewed, and printed by anyone with free Adobe Reader® software.

Exporting files in PDF : Adobe PDF is highly effective in print publishing workflows. By saving a composite of your artwork in Adobe PDF, you create a compact, reliable file that you or your service provider can view, edit, organize, and proof. Then, at the appropriate time in the workflow, your service provider can either output the Adobe PDF file directly, or process it using tools from various sources for such post-processing tasks as preflight checks, trapping, imposition, and color separation.
When you save in Adobe PDF, you can choose to create a PDF/X-compliant file. PDF/X (Portable Document Format Exchange) is a subset of Adobe PDF that eliminates many of the color, font, and trapping variables that lead to printing problems. PDF/X may be used wherever PDFs are exchanged as digital masters for print production—whether at the creation or output stage of the workflow, as long as the applications and output devices support PDF/X.
Before printing, the document will be sent for a review as a PDF file, which you will export from InDesign. From Indesign, you can export your document to a composite PDF file called a digital master. These digital masters are compact, reliable files that you or your service provider can view, edit, organize, and proof. Then, at the appropriate time in the workflow, your service provider can either output the PDF directly, or process it using tools from various sources for post-processing tasks such as preflight checks, trapping, imposition, and color separation.
You can export a document, a book, or selected documents in a book as a single PDF file. You can also copy content from your InDesign layout to the Clipboard, and automatically create an Adobe PDF file of that content. (This is useful for pasting a PDF file into another application, such as Adobe Illustrator.)
When you export an InDesign file to PDF, you can preserve navigation elements such as table of contents and index entries, and interactivity features such as hyperlinks, bookmarks, media clips, and buttons. You also have the option of exporting hidden layers, nonprinting layers, and nonprinting objects to PDF. If you’re exporting a book, you can merge identically named layers by using the Book panel.
Exporting a document or book to Adobe PDF is as simple as using the default High Quality Print settings, or as customized as you need it to be to suit your task. The PDF export settings you specify are saved with the application, and will apply to every new InDesign document or book you export to PDF until you change them again. To quickly apply custom settings to PDF files, you can use presets.

Checking your document before exporting:
Before creating a PDF for a service provider, make sure that the InDesign document meets your service provider’s specifications. The following list offers some recommendations:
• Use the InDesign Preflight feature to ensure that image resolution and color spaces are correct, that fonts are available and can be embedded, that graphics are up-to-date, and so on.
• View your Adobe PDF export settings before exporting, and then adjust them as necessary. The Summary area includes a warning section that indicates when preset settings can’t be honored.
• If your artwork contains transparency (including overprints and drop shadows) and you require high resolution output, it’s a good idea to preview the effects of flattening using the Flattener Preview panel before saving the file.
• If your artwork contains transparency, ask your prepress service provider if they want to receive flattened or unflattened PDF files. Flattening is performed as late in the workflow as possible, preferably by the service provider. However, if your service provider wants you to flatten transparency, submit a PDF/X 1a compliant file.
• If your document is going to be separated, you can preview the separations and ink coverage limits using the Separations Preview panel.
• Use only high-resolution images in your document.
• For best results, use only CMYK images in a four-color-process job. Alternatively, you can choose to convert RGB images to CMYK in the Export Adobe PDF dialog box (Output category).
• You can exclude hidden or nonprinting layers from the exported PDF document.

When you print an InDesign document or generate a PDF file for printing, In Design must access the original artwork that was placed in the layout. If imported artwork has moved, graphic filenames have changed, or the location of the original graphic files is no longer available, InDesign alerts you that the original artwork cannot be located or has been modified. This alerts appears when a document is opened, printed, exported, or checked for printing in the Links panel.

Sending mistake free files to the printing house is a sign of a professionalism. Today there is a tool that can help you in this matter. It is a preflight option. It can help you to save time and to avoid the mistakes that can sometimes be devastating for your publication.

Preflight panel will tell you everything you need to know about your document. Green light indicates that everything is OK, red one indicates that there are some things that need your attention. Click on the Error tab and expand the arrow to see the mistakes. Info part below will show you detailed information about the corrections needed.

 Packaging Files:

Package gathers copies of all images and fonts used in the document along with a copy of the InDesign document itself into a single folder that you can easily deliver to a print service provider or to a colleague. You can even use this option to archive completed jobs, to make sure that all necessary elements are stored together. Here’s how:

1. Choose File→Package.The Package dialog box opens. The Summary screen shows you all current images and fonts in the document, based on an analysis of that document.
2. Click Fonts in the list on the left side of the dialog box. Any fonts in your document are listed on this screen. Select fonts from this list and click the Find Font button to discover where they’re located. These fonts are saved directly into the package folder when you finish.
3. Click Links and Images in the list on the left side of the dialog box. The links and Images screen lists the images within your document. Find the image, update it, and repair links before packing the file. If any images aren’t properly linked, your document is incomplete and prints with pictures missing.
4. When you’re finished, click the Package button at the bottom of the dialog box.Your document and all its associated files are saved into a folder. You’re given the opportunity to name the folder and specify a location on your hard drive.

If you’re taking a file to a professional print service provider, you can give them your original InDesign document or you can create a high-quality PDF file. It’s a good idea to ask your print service provider about the file type they prefer. By providing an InDesign file, you give them a chance to fine-tune the document, and if you provide a PDF, the document has limited capabilities for editing.

Export an open document to PDF for printing:

• Choose File > Export.
• Specify a name and location for the file.
• For Save As Type (Windows) or Format (Mac OS), choose Adobe PDF (Print), and then click Save.

  When you select the Adobe PDF (Print) option, you cannot include interactive elements in the PDF. To export an interactive document to PDF, see Create interactive documents for PDF.

• Do one of the following:

  • To use a predefined set of job options, choose a preset from the Adobe PDF Preset menu.

  • To create a PDF/X file, either choose a PDF/X preset from the Adobe PDF Preset menu, or choose a predefined PDF/X format from the Standard menu.

  • To customize options, select a category from the list on the left and then set the options.
• For Compatibility, choose the lowest PDF version necessary to open the files you create.
• Click Export (Windows) or Save (Mac OS).