Lay Layout Lay

…Lay across my InDesign spread.

Yes, today’s theme is layouts: Recently I put together a few new compositions, and polished up a couple of older ones.

When it comes to publishing software, there’s essentially two rival firms: Adobe (them of Photoshop) make InDesign, while Quark produce QuarkXPress. I haven’t used the latter for a long time, so I was sure to roughly re-create at least one of these ID works in QXP, looking up how to do particular actions when required. While features like arranging items forward/backward have yet to be discovered, it served as a good refresher task.

So, play the gallery theme in another tab and scroll down: You can click on any of the images for a larger view.

Donkey Sanctuary posters

InDesign version on the left, Quark practice on the right. The Donkey Sanctuary’s website has a pleasing colour scheme, which has been carried over to this. I also used a method from The Sun newspaper, in that specific words are made bold for emphasis.

d-t-gamemag

Moving on to this magazine cover, there’s a lovely triple meaning in the cover line “Second Life”: First off, it’s the name of an unrelated but well-known video game. Secondly, Vampire: Bloodlines is based around Vampires – creatures in their ‘second life’. Finally, Bloodlines has been given a new lease on life since the development studio closed, as fans fixed bugs and restored incomplete content!

Commitment, Salvation and Diction

I’ve reached that age bracket where a lot of my friends are getting married. I made a card last winter for one couple who got hitched, and yesterday another pair tied the knot!

I’ve known Mr West for almost a decade, and the now Mrs West for nearly as long, so they most certainly had to have a homemade card too. This one is also a pen and watercolour work, yet there’s no imitation of famous artists this time around.

Wedding Card for Mr & Mrs West
Deciding the inscription took some time.

This duo of feelies will likely become a trilogy, as there is one more wedding next month. The occasion is on May the Fourth, so stay tuned to see if I infringe on any Star Wars copyrights.

An acquaintance (who is already wed, for those keeping score) is branching out into his own first aid / CPR training business, and he knew I was the guy to hit up for a logo. Research showed that this kind of company always seems to use a combination of lovehearts, heart monitor lines and first aid crosses for it’s identity, so this one took a bit of a think to make more distinct. There was a heap of back-and-forth communication involved: Getting it down to case designs, then the decals, the colouring, selecting the font and word arrangment…

Save Someone logo - highlights of progress
Just some of the options exchanged by email.