I fixed the Fox News logo.
Fox News Logo
Get a good looking backup gif from a flash banner ad
I used to have a problem when creating banner ads in Flash. The backup gifs that Flash generates look horrible so instead of fighting with Flash I change my process.
I design banners in Illustrator. Illustrator has better tools than Flash and now Illustrator and Flash are so integrated that you can turn objects into symbols in Illustrator and they will stay as symbols in Flash.
You can also convert text into Flash text that can be edited later on in Flash if needed by selecting the text, then choosing Flash text in the menu above.
And embed the text characters which translates seamlessly into Flash by choosing Dynamic Text –> Character Embed link.
Now that you have your banner designed in Illustrator you can save it as a gif and get a crisp and clean gif backup of your banner ad then export the banner into Flash to animate.
Back it up or lose it
In December 2008 my computer crashed, I called it the great crash of ‘08. I planned on backing my computer up…when I had time… but I never seemed to have time. I lost over two months of work and some cool projects.
I’ve found a system that works so I won’t lose important work again.
1. Use Dropbox
I love Dropbox so much that I would marry it. Dropbox gives you 2 Gigs of free online space.
You have to download and install Dropbox, it then creates a folder in your ‘My Documents’ folder called ‘Dropbox’. It acts as a real folder on your computer. You drag a file into your Dropbox folder and it syncs up with the Dropbox server and any other computer that you install Dropbox on. Your work is now backed up. Dropbox also saves revisions of your documents in case you need an older version.
It’s wonderful.
2. Back-up to a CD or DVD
When I’m working on a project I work directly from the Dropbox folder on my computer. When the project is done I burn it to a CD or DVD and file it away. I know I’m the only person that has ever thought to save work to a CD or DVD, it occurred to me one day in a stroke of genius. Working out of the Dropbox folder then burning CDs from the Dropbox folder will ensure that you never have a great crash of ‘08. My work is backed up and now a computer crash will only set me back a few hours while I reinstall some programs. My work is safe.
That logo isn’t in vector format
You get a new project from a company or a new project at work and the logo provided is a small gif that is saved from the client’s web site. If you’re doing print layout this just won’t do, you need the logo as a vector file.
But what can you do?
There are a couple ways to find a vector logo of a company.
1. Online vector logo sites
If the company you are designing for is somewhat well known you might be able to find their logo on Brands Of The World. Brands of the World has a huge database of vector logos, it’s the place I try first. (They recently redesigned their site, it’s looks very nice)
2. Look for a PDF
If I can’t find the company’s logo from a vector logo site I do a Google search for “the company name .pdf” or “company name anual report .pdf”
After some searching you can usually find a PDF with the company’s logo, download it and open in Adobe Illustrator and you have their logo in vector format.
Customizing A WordPress Theme for Designers
I’m not a programmer, I’ve tried coding but coding and I don’t mix. I wanted to learn to use WordPress as a Content Management System so I set up this blog to learn the WordPress basics.
Customizing a theme was a lot easier than I had thought. You don’t have to know PHP to customize a theme, a working knowledge of HTML and CSS is a must though.
Step 1: Install WordPress
Go to WordPress.org, download and install WordPress or check if your webhost has WordPress avaialble for download like mine.
Step 2: Copy the default theme
Using an FTP program like Filezilla go to the wp-content/themes directory. Make a copy of the default directory and rename it. I named mine craig, very original I know.
Step 3: Customizing the theme
All the files needed to display your blog are now located in the new directory. There are a lot of files but it’s easy to figure out. There are four basic files, the header, footer, index and sidebar.
WordPress pulls the individual php files to make the blog.
I edited the header file and added in my own HTML and attached my style sheet. I deleted a lot of the PHP code that displayed the name of the blog since I want the header to have the same navagation as the rest of my site.
Same with the footer, I deleted some of the PHP code, added in my own HTML and attached my style sheet again.
The index.php page is where your entry will be displayed again, I added some HTML attached my stylesheet and moved the PHP code for the sidebar so it would be inside my site wrapper.
Once you’ve edited the four files above you have a basic blog, I found attaching my style sheet to the rest of the PHP files helps them look like the rest of the site.
If you’re trying to learn WordPress install it on your own site and play around with the files, it helped me learn a lot.