Graphic Designer

Graphic Designer

paulscottondesign

41 Years Experience

Marbella, ES

Male, 58

I have been in the graphic design industry since 1981 working in London, Los Angeles & Spain. My career started in the traditional way on a drawing board, using Rotoring Pens, Magic Markers, Pantone Pens & Letraset working as a Designer/Visualiser/Artworker. My design career has taken me through the music, toy, t-shirt, packaging & print industry. I am now a freelance graphic designer (British) based in Spain with many clients worldwide ...now using Photoshop, Illustrator & InDesign on a Mac.

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Last Answer on September 13, 2021

Best Rated

What steps do you take when you create work that needs to be printed? I am creating an invitation through Photoshop but the graphics I usually create are only for web and print feels like a whole different beast. What criteria to you use for printers

Asked by Lucero over 10 years ago

UPDATE...I have now written a guide to becoming a graphic designer. It is available as Kindle or in print ...check it out here... AMAZON LINK . Designers that work mainly on web make the same mistake all the time ...which is, when asked to do a print design they do it in RGB and low res ...because that is the spec they only know and always work in.

So when doing a print job (such as the invitation you want to do) make sure the document settings are CMYK (not RGB), 300dpi (not 72dpi) and if the design will bleed off the edge of the page allow for at least 3mm bleed (extra space off the edge of the design).

To be honest Photoshop is not the best tool for designing invitations etc. Photoshop should be used for web graphics, photos, image retouching etc. I always use InDesign for this and import any relevent photoshop images I need. Also any vector illustrations i need i do in Illustrator.

Hope this helps

What do you call this type of design or typography
http://www.google.com.pk/imgres?imgurl=http://www.f-covers.com/cover/jesus-grey-facebook-cover-timeline-banner-for-fb.jpg&imgrefurl=http://www.f-covers.com/cat/other/&h=314&w=850&tbnid=D2odw7w__IBTFM

Asked by Saad Ahmad about 9 years ago

UPDATE...I have now written a guide to becoming a graphic designer. It is available as Kindle or in print ...check it out here... AMAZON LINK . As far as I am aware there is not a particular name for this type of typography. I just tried to google an answer but could not find anything. But please let me know if you find an answer as I would be interested to know if if they was a special name for it.

is graphics done after inter second year

Asked by shiva over 10 years ago

UPDATE...I have now written a guide to becoming a graphic designer. It is available as Kindle or in print ...check it out here... AMAZON LINK . To be honest I do not know. I went to Art School over 30 years ago and am now in my 50's. So I guess things may be very different now. I suggest contacting the college itself to ask this question.

How would you define branding? ??What is the role of the designer in branding? And why do you think branding is important?

Asked by lorena almost 10 years ago

UPDATE...I have now written a guide to becoming a graphic designer. It is available as Kindle or in print ...check it out here... AMAZON LINK . A brand is more than just a logo ...it is a powerful tool that is in the public eye all the time which needs to reassure the consumers that the product etc is the best in their field. A logo usually takes a couple of days to get right ...but a brand can take months with many meetings with the client and lost of research by the designer. Branding is very important for big companies as it is stuck with them for a long long time and will always be remembered ...for example Coca cola and Apple etc.

Have you ever gotten to design movie posters or t-shirts? What's the hardest part of doing the design?

Asked by newliving about 10 years ago

UPDATE...I have now written a guide to becoming a graphic designer. It is available as Kindle or in print ...check it out here... AMAZON LINK . Back in 1981 I did work in the music and video industry in London so got to design record sleeves, t-shirts and posters for new record and video releases. But didn't design a movie poster as such. All this was before computers so a lot of the design work was done as marker pen visuals then I was off to a photo studio to direct the photographer with the product or models ...all fantastic for me as I was only 19 at the time. Coming up with a design was not difficult ...if you are creative a passionate about design (as I am) ...the design process flows. In 1988 I was working in Los Angeles designing purely t-shirt graphics ...again this was beore computers were used for design work and so all my designs had to be hand drawn ready to be burnt onto the silk screens. This was more difficult than doing marker pen visuals as the drawings (including hand lettering) had to be accurate). I remember the LA Dodgers were in the World Series in '88 and I was on standby to design their official celebration t-shirts if they one. They did win and had to work through the night doing 2 versions ...one in English and one in Spanish because the 'pitcher' was Mexican ...so it was for the Mexican fans. I already had sketched out ideas so knew what to design.

Nowadays coming up with design ideas is a lot easier as we have the internet at our fingertips to do research ...as long as you do not copy, ideas are out there to get inspiration from.

What is minimal design??

Asked by Nirbhay almost 9 years ago

UPDATE...I have now written a guide to becoming a graphic designer. It is available as Kindle or in print ...check it out here... AMAZON LINK . Minimal design is a design with a lot of white space, very little colour and nicely laid out text. Hope this helps

I created a vector in Illustrator CS6 from a photograph of a dandelion, made into a logo. I used live trace to create the vector file. But now the printer is saying The new vector file is jagged and multicolored. Can you help me smooth to 3 colors?

Asked by BPeace over 9 years ago

UPDATE...I have now written a guide to becoming a graphic designer. It is available as Kindle or in print ...check it out here... AMAZON LINK . Using live trace is a very rough option for turning photos into vectors ...the results will never be perfect and will always result in tidying up rough edges by removing points on the path and recurving the line to how you want it. You can play with the settings and choose the option of how many colours you want the end result to be ...but you still may have to tidy it up after.

I prefer not to use live trace and always place the photo into Illustrator and draw the image over the top and add in the colours after. Once finished I remove the photo.

Hope this helps.