Dash of Inspiration Post for GCU Community Blog So let’s talk about Composition: Unprofessional Distracting Elements and/or Background: This really should be fairly easy to understand. It does apply mostly to photographs, though could apply to digital compositions as well. It’s one of those Photography 101 lessons to compose your photograph without things like; poles sticking out of the heads of your subjects, branches and dead leaves in front of your subject, body parts that don’t belong to your subject, etc. Remember; if it does not add to your overall image then it’s a distraction ... Read Entire Article
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Dash of Inspiration
Post for GCU Community Blog Let’s continue with a visual review and discussion of the areas listed in GCU’s Submission Guidelines. Today we’ll keep this series going with the second area in the COMPOSITION grouping of the Submission Guidelines which is: COMPOSITION: Balance of Elements The Submission Guidelines state this: A feeling of visual equality. Objects, values, colors, textures, shapes, forms, etc., are used in creating balance in a composition. Balance is a visual interpretation of gravity in the design. Large, dense elements appear to be heavier while smaller elements appear to be lighter. In art ... Read Entire Article ©Doreen Erhardt Dash of Inspiration Post for GCU Community Blog To be successful, this is such a critical element in greeting card design. Though there certainly is some percentage of people who lean more toward blank cards so they can add their own heartfelt message, it is a minute percent of the average greeting card buyer ... Read Full Article ©Doreen Erhardt Dash of Inspiration Post for GCU Community Blog When you put your copyright on your image front, here are some things to consider: Never spell out copyright, not only is this unnecessary, it’s adding a lot of text to the front of your card that stands out and is rather unappealing to the consumer … I mention this because there are some of you who do this, in rather large text. For those who don’t know how to make the © symbol, here’s how ... Read Full Article Dash of Inspiration Post for GCU Community Blog Hello … My name is Doreen Erhardt … and I’m a Fontaholic … all laughing aside, I really am, and I know some of you are too. This past week, it was time to go through my fonts and remove those which really aren’t appropriate for greeting card designs, add some new found treasures and in general do some font clean-up; making my card creation easier. That gave me the idea to pass along my ‘current’ list of favorite fonts ... Read Full Article and Get FONTS! ©Doreen Erhardt Dash of Inspiration Post for GCU Community Blog Here’s a great tip: Even if you’re designs have the year as Custom Text, if you used a year that has gone by, take the time to update those cards. Any card that is out of date will be ignored by a large percentage of customers. I tend to ... Read Full Article and Get Links Dash of Inspiration Post for GCU Community Blog If you’ve ever submitted to greeting card publishing houses, you know they only accept holiday specific designs certain times of year – usually anywhere from six-months to nine-months in advance of the occasion. As a professional greeting card designer ... Read Full Article & Get Links ©Doreen Erhardt Dash of Inspiration Post for GCU Community Blog Modify Images for Each Category There is no doubt that sometimes we are inspired to just create rather than design for a specific category. I’ve found that when this happens, I just create then I go back and use the categories which COULD work for the image as my guideline to make a unique fit for that category. Add elements unique to the category, change colors and message to suit each category. Here’s an example ... Read Full Article ©Doreen Erhardt Dash of Inspiration Post for GCU Community Blog Customer Requests – Yes or No? First thing you need to decide is whether you wish to accept customer requests. There are a few things to consider here. I know not all of you can respond quickly. I think one of the reasons I have a good turn-around for custom requests is because being a designer is how I make my living, so from the time I get a request to the time the card is available in my Private Gallery is usually a couple of hours; so I’ve kept the customer’s attention and therefore make the sale ... Read Full Article Dash of Inspiration Post for GCU Community Blog I never make a card without communicating to the review team through the Note to Reviewer field … and neither should you. We all wish review times would be quicker, well here is one way that if all artists used it, the reviewers would have less work to do per card. Let’s face it, the better we are at our job... Read Full Article |
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