Veerle's blog

Color management, it sounds complicated and technical and it is one of the most difficult aspects of graphic design. Getting color right early in the workflow, and keeping it right to the end, is increasingly critical. It is not easy to get color right across all media and as a designer we deal with this almost daily. Consistency at every step of the workflow—from capture to computer screen to ink on paper can be though when each camera, scanner, and printer records or outputs colors a bit differently.

As some of you know, I’ve been testing the Wacom Cintiq 12WX for about a month. The tablet has been returned to Wacom Europe about a week ago. Time to share my experience and thoughts, and why I’ve decided not buy it.

Sometimes readers mail me with the question on what’s the best approach to trace logos or illustrations. They ask if I do it with the Pen tool. Yes, I do, but I have been using this tool for more than 15 years. So it’s safe to say I’m very routined. Still, there are certain situations that I wish there was a tool that could do the job for me. Let’s say on a occasion that you don’t have the time or budget to charge the time needed to redraw company logos that are delivered in jpeg or gif format. The Live Trace option in Illustrator isn’t bad, but it doesn’t give me the expected result on most try-outs (too many nodes or noisy result, path imperfections…) . Recently the developers of an application called Vector Magic gave me the chance to test out their desktop app. Here is a short review…

It has been some time since we last talked about being a print designer. How fun and exciting the web can be it’s still no replacement to physically holding something you created in your hands. An essential tool in doing that is Pantone, you know the industry standard for color specification introduced 45 years ago. The designers landscape has changed a lot in those years and it’s time for something new.

Like I promised in the previous article, we will explore some applications that I have been testing to finally find the one I have been looking for. One of the most important decision factors is the ‘User Interface’, that’s why I said it has to have the attention to detail like CSSEdit to name one. There is one application that earns that title and it’s called Billings. You feel at home and you don’t see artifacts of badly designed icons or counter productive ways of working. It’s truly a Mac application and it shows the efforts that the engineers have put into it.