Different projects call for different type choices and combinations. Are you working on a book? Is the book a novel, or is it a coffee table book that includes lots of pictures and explanatory text? Are you working on a brochure, a catalog, a magazine, a poster, an invitation? Each project has different requirements as to readability, legibility, and impact. Your first task is to determine which part of your project needs readability, which needs legibility, and which needs impact.

• The lengthiest text needs to be the most readable.
• The text that people will skim through, such as items in a catalog or headlines in a newsletter, needs to be the most legible.
• The text that’s designed to catch someone’s eye in a hurry and create an instant impression needs to be the most impactful.

One project might include all three of these possibilities. For instance, you might have an annual report that has lots of boring copy that you hope people will read, many headlines they’ll skim through to find what they want, and some brave text here and there (like on the cover or section heads) that will grab their attention in the right way—”right” meaning in a way that’s appropriate to that particular audience.

So let’s begin by looking at some guidelines—then we’ll branch out from there.

READABILITY
Readability refers to how easy it is to read long blocks of text. The more text, the less you want the typeface to grab the reader’s interest; the more unbroken the text, the more invisible the typeface should be. For instance, in a novel a reader wants to get to the end of the novel without being interrupted by quirky letterforms; we don’t want anything to take us out of the story and make us think of something as silly as the interesting shape of the letter g.

I once read a novel that was trying to be very intense and heavy, but I couldn’t take it seriously. For days I wondered why I was feeling a disconnect between the words and my reaction to them. It finally dawned on me: The book was set in Souvenir, a casual, friendly face. The unspoken impression the type gave me was in total contradiction to the words. It was very disconcerting.

The most invisible typefaces are in the oldstyle category, possibly because when that typeface structure was set in hot metal in the 1500s (based on ancient Roman letterforms), there wasn’t anything except books to use the type for—no billboards, no magazine ads, no packaging. Whether it’s because over the centuries we have become most familiar with oldstyles or because the actual structure of the letterforms is more conducive to the reading process, oldstyles turn out to be the easiest to read in long blocks of printed text.

[For more on type categories, see “Choosing Type Combinations,” You can find the article at http://www.layersmagazine.com/category/columns—Ed.]

In my computer books, my point is to communicate clearly. Some of what I have to communicate is technical and complicated, so the last thing I want to do is make the typeface obnoxious. I use Garamond, Warnock, or Jenson, and my preference is still toward certain versions of Garamond as being the most readable face on the planet.

But in my book Sweet Swan of Avon: Did a Woman Write Shakespeare?, I allowed the oldstyle font, Brioso Pro (a gorgeous Robert Slimbach font from Adobe), to use some of the special ligatures. I realize they can be slightly distracting, but I allowed them for three reasons: (1) The book being on a historical topic, I appreciated the historical flavor the ligatures added to the look. (2) The book isn’t a novel—it includes a vast collection of documented data so I intentionally broke up the text into digestible chunks so a reader can feel comfortable skimming through the pages and dropping in anywhere. Because the text is in these smaller chunks, I could get away with the added attractions. (3) The subtle distinction of these special letterforms helps make the book less intimidating to read. Thus I was willing to accept the distraction of the ligatures.

Design for the audience
Starting with the premise of classic oldstyle for lengthy copy, expand your text face options depending on the project. Is it a formal project, such as an annual report or scholarly tome? Use the most invisible typeface you can find. Is it a newsletter? You can get away with a typeface with a little more character. Is it a brochure? Depending on who it’s for, you can experiment with quite a range of text faces and even move into sans serif fonts because the columns are typically narrower in a brochure.

In this magazine you’re reading, the body copy is sans serif (Cronos, also a Robert Slimbach font). Now, you might think that a magazine has lots of text and should qualify for an oldstyle font in the body copy, but this particular magazine has many small blocks of text broken up with lots of graphics, which means you don’t need a typeface as invisible as Garamond. Notice also that the text you’re reading has generous amounts of linespacing, which makes the blocks of sans serif much more inviting than usual.

Also, the small, open sans serif gives Layers a very trendy, upscale look, which is extremely important in its market and is an acceptable trade-off for “perfect” readability. A magazine such as Scientific American will never be set in trendy, small, sans serif with lots of leading because it just wouldn’t be appropriate for their particular audience, which includes a lot of people who believe that to be truly scientific, articles must look slightly dull and pedantic. My book Sweet Swan of Avon has been criticized by professional scholars because it doesn’t look scholarly (which, frankly, to me is a compliment, and professional scholars aren’t my audience).

We all have perceptions of what certain types of information should look like, and as a designer you need to take that into consideration. It’s a great exercise to take one particular piece, say a magazine article, and design it to fit a variety of magazines where each has a different market and different expectations from their readers. The magical design feat is to make something look terrific while staying within the boundaries of expectation.

LEGIBILITY
While readability refers to how easy it is to read lengthy text, legibility refers to how easy it is to instantly recognize short bursts of text such as headlines, freeway signage, catalog entries, etc. It turns out that sans serif faces are the most legible for short bursts of text. Apparently the clean and distinctive letterforms make it easier for the words to go straight into our brains when we need to get small amounts in a hurry.

Among sans serifs, you can find very strict, simplified forms, or ones that have a more casual edge to them by adding curves and quirky characteristics. As with readability, however, the quirkier it is, the less legible (that’s why you don’t see freeway signage set in Peignot). The extreme light weights and bold weights of sans serifs are also less legible.

How often do you see a freeway sign set in Peignot?

All caps
Remember, type set in all caps reduces the legibility and the readability of any text. We don’t read letter by letter—we read in groups. Entire words go into our eyes, straight to our brains. We recognize those words by their shapes. Once you put words in all caps, all their shapes are the same and we have to go back to reading letter by letter.

I’m not suggesting that you never use all caps—just keep the reduced legibility in mind. Sometimes, of course, your design calls for those rectangular forms of words in all caps, and you know they’re not impossible to read. If you can put into words why that rectangular form is important to your design and why it’s okay to accept a little less legibility/readability, then carry on with all caps.

IMPACT
For the display text that constitutes the main elements of something like a book cover, poster, invitation, brochure, etc., it can be even more daunting to find the right typeface because it’s that typeface that’s going to set the mood. Jeepers, what a responsibility! One thing you must do is trust yourself—you know what feeling is evoked from a particular typeface. Your gut reaction to a chosen font is probably the same as that of your audience.

But what I encourage you to do is experiment beyond your initial reaction to type choices. For instance, perhaps you have to create a poster for a local gym. You might initially think you need a macho, thick, strong, bully face. But today, gyms cater to all sorts of different clientele—one might be limited to just women, just gay people, just mothers and pregnant women, just macho males, just seniors, etc. What is it about this gym that the owner wants to emphasize? The friendly atmosphere, the female-ness, the high energy, the low energy? Find the essence of what you want to evoke, not the surface cliché.

A high-tech brochure doesn’t need those awful “computery” fonts, the ones that look like computer type on old PCs from the ’70s. Apple, one of the highest tech of all high-tech companies, for decades used a slightly condensed version of an oldstyle Garamond font originally created in about 1530. Rather than evoke a “computer” look, they went for a look that captured classic elegance, elitism, stability. Lots of white space helped, too.

High-tech, high-end products tend to have a crisp, clean, sharp look (that’s one reason the Microsoft logos look rather dorky—they’re soft and blobby). Children’s products tend to be colorful and energetic; new age products tend to have warm, earthy tones; scientific and scholarly works tend to be very conservative. But you already know that—what you need to do is take those ideas that you already know and experiment with typefaces that convey that feeling in slightly new or different ways.

In praise of platitudes
Keep in mind, however, that sometimes the obvious is the best solution. With platitudes, everyone knows exactly what you’re talking about: blood dripping off the type on a horror poster, a lovely script for a wedding invitation, grungy type for a skateboarding poster. There’s a certain comfort for the reader in knowing what to expect; so don’t try to make everything so new and different that the basic meaning gets confused. Things become clichés precisely because they work so well.

GENERAL TYPE GUIDELINES
Below is an encapsulation of the general guidelines for the basic categories of fonts that I mentioned in last issue’s article, “Choosing Type Combinations,” and how to apply them to projects.

Oldstyles are great for long, uninterrupted text such as in a book or lengthy articles in magazines. The more invisible (the fewer quirks), the more sedate will be the overall impression. The smaller amounts of continuous text you have in the project, the more you can use quirkier oldstyles.

Moderns are less desirable for lengthy text because those thin strokes at body copy sizes (9 to 12) get too small to see or print clearly; they’re best used when you can set them a little larger than body copy or use them in small amounts for special text. Set large, moderns have a stunning classic beauty.

Slab serifs are a little too heavy for lengthy text, but create a good strong impression for smaller amounts of text such as newsletters or brochures. When set really large, slab serifs can be gorgeous and classy and make strong statements. Experiment with the light weights and heavy weights in combinations.

Sans serif, as I mentioned earlier, is terrific as headlines, signage, bullet copy, etc. It can also be used for short blocks of body copy, especially if you add extra linespace and try to keep the lines a little shorter in length. You might have an individualist desire to set a novel in sans serif, but I suggest you control yourself if you want people to actually read it. Save your anarchy for something else.

Scripts and decoratives are like cheesecake—absolutely divine in small doses. But these fonts are the most fun to play with! And because they’re so powerful in small doses, they’ll create a strong impact with minimal use. You might use a decorative font in your main title—try picking it up again in initial caps or special headlines as an element of repetition and unity.

EXPERIMENT
Once you have an idea of how to narrow down your choices, experiment. Go to someplace like Veer.com or MyFonts.com where you can choose categories of type, and then enter your own text and point size so you can see how different faces might look.

For body copy, take a paragraph of text from your project, set it in at least five different fonts, and narrow it down to a couple that you like. Then using those two or three faces, experiment with the point size and leading values. Even such miniscule changes as tenths of a point in both font size and leading values can change the look of the piece. Don’t rely on your monitor when making a text face decision—you must print out the samples before you make a final choice.

Make a decision as to what part of your design will set the tone, the impact. It might be the title, or the headlines, or the body copy. For instance, in a lengthy article that you want people to read, start with the body copy and its settings. From there, work with the guidelines in “Choosing Type Combinations” to find typefaces that will combine beautifully with your chosen face, plus support the essence of what you want to convey. For a poster, experiment with fonts for the largest text on the page before you begin to make decisions for the smaller text. Choose some fonts you might not think are appropriate and see what happens.

There’s no quick-and-easy solution to font choices, and having thousands of fonts to choose from doesn’t make it any easier. Keep in mind, however, that there isn’t one perfect choice, but thousands of perfect choices. With a conscious eye and thoughtful combinations, your problem won’t be to find the perfect solution, but which one of your many perfect solutions to choose for the final piece.

Sometimes “overwhelming” is the right choice. Font is Fragile.

CREDIT FOR SILHOUETTE ILLUSTRATION IN POSTER: ©ISTOCKPHOTO/BRETT LAMB

Remember those guidelines about combining fonts—the most surprising combinations can be just what you need. Fonts are Profumo and Ministry Script.

How about a nice ’70s look, when the only typeface designers would use was Helvetica? Font is Helvetica Neue UltraLight.

Sometimes the most obvious solutions can work. One font looks like a designer’s handwriting (Viktorie) and the other font is based on the type used in the first Bible in print (Ferox) in 1454.

Drop caps are a great spice for text-heavy pages. InDesign makes simple drop caps easy but typographically refined ones are more challenging. No matter what kind of a drop cap you create, the following techniques will give you maximum control.

Basic controls
InDesign’s drop-cap controls lie under Drop Caps and Nested Styles in the Paragraph panel’s flyout menu. Here you define how many of the first characters in a paragraph are enlarged, and how many lines deep they’ll be set. Text lines are indented automatically. Curiously, InDesign never tells you the point size of the enlarged initial cap. The Control and Character panels identify the point size of the drop cap as the same as the rest of the paragraph text.

A new control in InDesign CS3 allows you to compensate for descending characters (normally only J, unless you use a lower-case initial character). By default, InDesign scales your drop cap so its baseline aligns with the baseline of the last indented text line to its right. This makes drop caps with descenders overlap text on the following line. Checking the Scale for Descenders box reduces the size of descending drop caps so they’ll fit within their appointed indent.

This isn’t much of a solution. If you allow such a character to be scaled, it will be noticeably smaller than other drop caps in the text. If you manually create an indent to allow the descending character to set at its full size, that indent will be at least one line deeper than those for all other drop caps in the text. The lesson: Avoid using descending characters for drop caps.

Refining your results
InDesign can enlarge as many characters as you like for your drop caps, but for the rest of this article, let’s assume that you just want one character set large.

InDesign assumes that you want your drop cap to top-align with the rest of the type on the first line. If you’d rather it didn’t, place the text cursor between the drop cap and the following character, and type Shift-Return (PC: Shift-Enter). This creates a line break without starting a new paragraph, so your first line of type sinks down to the next baseline. More such line breaks sink it lower and lower.

You can also make the drop cap larger or smaller by selecting it and altering its point size—best done by using the point-size field in the Control panel. Because the values you see displayed don’t reflect the visual size of the drop cap, use a fractional point size (e.g., 12.2) for precise control.

To control the width of the indent for the text that runs around the drop cap, place the text cursor between the drop cap and the character that follows it and use your manual kerning controls: Option-Right Arrow (PC: Alt-Right Arrow) spreads the characters apart (enlarging the indent); Option-Left Arrow (PC: Alt-Left Arrow) makes the indent smaller. Using Command-Option (PC: Ctrl-Alt) with the Arrow keys increases the kerning increment tenfold. (Note: This increment is defined in the Preferences under Units & Increments.)

Flush left at last
In the past, large drop caps have always appeared slightly indented, because their side-bearings push them in from the margin. (Side bearings are slivers of space that flank most characters to separate them from their neighbors.) InDesign CS3 can compensate for this. Checking Align Left Edge in the Drop Caps and Nested Styles dialog causes the visible part of the drop cap to align smack against the margin. But some characters (particularly those with rounded left sides, such as C) will look better aligned if they extend slightly into the margin. You may also just want to let your drop caps extend into the margin for design reasons.

To move a drop cap beyond the margin, first place the cursor to its left and insert a Thin Space or Hair Space from the Type>Insert White Space menu. Then go to the Paragraph panel’s flyout menu and change your drop cap setting to affect two characters: the space and the initial cap. Now, with your text cursor between the space and the drop cap, use your kerning controls to move the drop cap to the left. The farthest you can move it is one em. Although InDesign’s Control and Character panels insist that the point size of your drop cap is the same as that of the rest of the paragraph, the em’s worth of kerning that you’re allowed is based on the visual size of the drop cap. This allows you to hang the entire drop cap into the margin, if you like.

More fancy kerning
This same trick is useful for adjusting just the first line of text so it snuggles up more closely against the drop cap, closing the often-distracting gap between the two. Again, the trick is to place a Thin or Hair Space between the drop cap and the first text-size character in the paragraph. Now kern the text back toward the drop cap. If you have a long way to go, the one-em limit will be too restrictive; in that case, add yet another space and kern back against that too.

This kind of extreme kerning makes it difficult to select characters in the first line. Say, for example, that you want to set the first few words of the paragraph in small caps. The best way to control your selection is to position your text cursor after the last character you want to select and then use Shift-Left Arrow repeatedly to select the characters you want one by one. If you simply try to click into the area of wide, overlapping kerns, it’s impossible to see where the cursor really is.

Here’s one more cool thing. If you need to apply some special effects to that drop cap, select it and choose Create Outlines from the Type menu. This makes the drop cap into a straight-ahead vector graphic. But InDesign still recognizes it as a character at some basic level, so your Drop Cap settings are unaffected, even though the first character in the paragraph isn’t really a character any more.

This drop cap uses only the InDesign CS3 controls in the Drop Caps and Nested Styles dialog. One character sits five lines deep and Align Left Edge pushes it against the margin. The indented lines crowd the drop cap and should be kerned away from it, but this is corrected in the next image.

The drop cap has been changed to Bernhard Modern Bold and enlarged from 12 to 14 points, creating better spacing between the drop cap and the text. The drop cap has also been kerned to the left to extend slightly past the margin.

The opening text-size characters have been converted to small caps and enlarged by one point. To make a better visual and logical connection, the first text line has been kerned closer to the drop cap.

Question: My company has given me the task of creating training videos for the various applications we use here in each department. I have a year-old laptop that I will use to capture the training clips. Can you suggest any hardware upgrades I should make, along with any tips for recording the best video clips possible of the screen?

Answer: For many years now, capturing high-quality “screencasts” has been one of the most difficult chores faced by instructors and corporate trainers tasked with educating as many people as possible, as fast as possible, with as few resources as possible. I don’t envy you one bit! But I definitely have some tried-and-true tips that will make the whole process go a lot smoother for you.

Many people are under the misconception that recording your screen is an easy task that doesn’t demand many physical or technical resources. The reality of the situation is exactly the opposite. For example, let’s say that you wanted to capture a screencast of a tutorial on Adobe After Effects. You first need a computer system that can run After Effects smoothly and without incident and then have enough overhead to run a video capture utility that can record all of the multilayer video clips that are playing as you apply filters, color correction, animated text, moving graphics, and assorted effects—all at the same time! This is definitely not something you want to tackle on a weak system.

Rejuvenate your laptop
So on the hardware side, besides buying a brand-new multiprocessor computer that’s used exclusively for capturing recordings of your screen actions, the next best thing you can do is add as much memory as your system can support. On most laptops, that usually ranges from 2 GB to 4 GB of RAM. Do I think 4 GB is too much? Not at all. This is because many of the most popular video screen capture utilities for both Mac and PC use a postprocessing method to actually record the clips to your hard drive. It works like this: You start the utility, which immediately begins caching into RAM all of the video frames that will eventually make up your final video clip. If the program runs out of physical RAM, it moves to virtual RAM, which is a scheme that uses the free space on your hard drive to store information dynamically. When you finish your tutorial and stop the screen recording, the program then starts to compile the video clip into your preferred codec and save it to your hard drive as if your were rendering out a video clip from your favorite nonlinear video editor. The advantage of this postprocessing method is that it ensures that the video is captured without any sort of interference or dropped frames. The only downside is that you will have to wait for the video to render after you’re done with your recording session.

Another piece of hardware to look at is your internal hard drive. Historically, laptop drives are usually twice as slow as their desktop counterparts, so odds are yours needs to be replaced. When you’re looking for a replacement, you want to find the largest capacity (200 GB+) and fastest spindle speed (7200 RPM+) 2.5″ drive you can afford. After reading some reports online, I recently purchased a 200-GB, 7200-RPM, 16-MB buffer, Serial ATA/15 Hitachi Travelstar 7K200 (model # 0A50940). It beats all other 7200-RPM spindle drives in its class in all speed tests and is by far the best laptop drive I have ever owned. Highly recommended! [For a review of the Hitachi Travelstar, turn to page 110.—Ed.]

Time to record
Now that you’re ready to record your screencast, you’ll want to present your message as clearly and as focused as possible. Here are some quick tips on how to best hold your audiences’ attention while causing the fewest distractions possible:

1. Avoid unnecessary mouse movements while you’re recording your clip. Besides the fact that this can cause a larger file size than necessary (especially at lower frame rates), it can also be terribly annoying. It usually happens with people who are used to gesturing with their hands as they speak in person and then they transfer that behavior to their mouse when they record a video. While gesturing can help tell a story during a face-to-face conversation, it’s terribly distracting when you’re watching a screencast where the cursor has been possessed by the devil.

2. Clean up your desktop of all miscellaneous icons. Nobody likes to walk into a cluttered and messy room and no one likes to be distracted by a cluttered and messy desktop.

3. Have a neutral or solid color desktop pattern/picture. A picture of your favorite NASCAR driver with his pit crew, or you on vacation at Mardi Gras is just not appropriate for this type of video presentation. Even company logos can be distracting. You want the viewers’ attention to be 100% focused on the information you’re presenting to them.

4. When capturing video of the whole screen, hide your computer’s clock if it’s visible. The changing time will distract the viewer and if you have to do any editing, it will make it a whole lot easier. (I always laugh when a clock jumps several hours during a 15-minute video clip!)

5. Set your screen resolution to something smaller than what you normally use. Odds are you’re not going to need to deliver a screencast at 1440×900, so change your screen resolution to something smaller and make the clip easier to edit, download, and view.

6. Consider setting up a new user account on your computer exclusively for capturing screencasts. This way you can set up all of the above tips just one time in a separate, pristine environment specifically for your recording sessions and then switch to that account (and those settings) in just a few quick seconds (while leaving all your current work—and mess—behind).

Every adventure begins with a first step and so it is with the creative world of digital infrared (IR) imaging. That first step is to have a basic understanding of infrared light.

Technically speaking, in IR digital photography, infrared light (invisible wavelengths to our eyes) is recorded, as opposed to visible light (the light that we normally see and the light our cameras normally record). The name infrared comes from the combination of the Latin word “infra,” which means below, and red (which has the longest wavelength visible to our eyes). The IR wavelength is below that of red.

In IR photography, some of the reality is removed from the scene, giving us a more creative and artistic image. Green grass, foliage, and trees look white—having an ethereal glow. An IR picture can also look like a dramatic black-and-white image, with a black sky punctuated by brilliant white clouds. We can even create an IR image that shows part of the image in black-and-white and part of it in color, as we see in the opening picture for this article, which I took at Bodie State Historic Park (a real ghost town) in California. What more could a creative digital photographer ask for?

Making the change

For creative digital photographers, there’s a very easy way to get into IR imaging. Life Pixel (www.lifepixel.com) and IRdigital (www.irdigital.net) convert compact and SLR Canon and Nikon digital cameras to IR-only cameras. They do this by removing the filter that’s normally over the image sensor and replacing it with a filter that filters out visible light, leaving only IR light to fall on the sensor.

Even with the original filter removed, however, IR images need some Photoshop help with color, contrast, and brightness. The opening image for this article is one of my favorite IR images. I shot it with my IR-converted Canon SD800 compact camera. As you can see, the sky is blue but the landscape is black-and-white—a popular IR effect that’s easy to create in Photoshop.

The technique

In landscape photography, my technique is to expose for the highlights so that they’re not washed out and overexposed. When shooting with my IR camera on automatic mode, that usually means setting the exposure compensation to –1. Then, in Photoshop, I use the Shadow/Highlight adjustment (Image>Adjustments>Shadow/Highlight) to open up the shadows. Those techniques make shooting into the sun relatively easy.

Okay, here’s how to create the popular blue-sky effect, no matter what camera you have converted. (Hey, it’s only one technique, one that works for me.)

STEP ONE:
Set the IR-converted camera to Manual and choose Custom as the white balance setting. Now, fill the frame with green grass and set the Custom white balance for the grass. Now all the green tones in your image will look white.

Out-of-the camera image with custom white balance

STEP TWO:
Create a Hue/Saturation adjustment layer (Layer>New Adjustment Layer>Hue/Saturation). In the New Layer dialog, choose Color as the Mode, then in the Hue/Saturation dialog, move the Hue slider completely to the left and click OK.

At this point, the greens will look white, but the other parts of the image will have an ethereal blue tint. Now, flatten the layers (Layer>Flatten Image).

Image adjusted with Hue/Saturation

STEP THREE:
Create a duplicate layer (Layer>Duplicate Layer). You now have two identical layers, one on top of the other, both with a bluish tint. Click on the bottom layer in the Layers panel. Go to Image>Adjustments>Hue/Saturation and completely desaturate that layer (drag the Saturation slider to –100).

You’re almost done! Click on the top layer. Select the Eraser tool (E) from the Toolbox and erase the area you want to be black-and-white. As with most digital files, you can create a more dramatic image by adjusting Curves, Levels, or Brightness/Contrast. I’ve found this to be especially true with IR images. So play around with these adjustments to see how you can create more dramatic images.

Blue sky and black-and-white landscape

Variations on a theme

I share the following examples, illustrating different techniques and results, because different photographers like different IR effects.

Grayscale IR: Want an IR image with the look of IR film (basically a grayscale image) like this image that I took in Yosemite National Park? That’s easy with an IR-converted camera. Leave the white balance on Auto then when you open your image in Photoshop, simply desaturate it using a Hue/Saturation adjustment layer. In Auto mode, however, the blue-sky effect will not be an option. What’s more, on your camera’s LCD monitor, your picture will have a reddish tint, as opposed to looking more like a black-and-white image when you manually set the white balance.

Yosemite National Park

Pseudo IR effect: Creating a pseudo IR effect from an RGB image in Photoshop is easy, which is what I did here from a color file of the church at Bodie. I admit it doesn’t look exactly like an IR photo. (That’s why I call it a pseudo effect.) First, convert your color file to a black-and-white image (Image>Mode>Grayscale). Next, apply the Diffuse Glow filter (Filter>Distort>Diffuse Glow). For different effects, play around with the fade filter command (Edit>Fade Diffuse Glow) and the contrast of the image (Image>Adjustments>Brightness/Contrast).

Pseudo IR effect

Ethereal blue tint: As mentioned at the beginning of this article, IR images can look more artistic and creative than color images. Shooting in IR can also make you see and picture the world more creatively. These two images, taken at the same location—the ruins of a 1930s country club not far from my home in Croton-on-Hudson, NY—vividly illustrate that point.

The IR image has a blue tint, created using the technique described above. The unworldly image gave me the idea to use a “mirror” effect to create a pond (that isn’t there) for an even more creative image. (The frame was created using a Brush frame from PhotoFrame Pro 3 [www.ononesoftware.com].)

For this and all my IR images, I set the exposure compensation on my camera to –1 so as not to blow out (overexpose) the highlights in a scene. That’s because my camera only shoots JPEG files. If you shoot RAW files, you can rescue up to one stop of overexposed areas in Adobe Camera Raw. Still, be on the lookout for overexposed areas on your camera’s LCD monitor when you’re shooting, because sometimes with IR photography, the white subjects can be much brighter than the rest of the scene.

So, if you’re stuck creatively, try your hand at IR photography. I think you’ll enjoy the creative opportunity it offers. What’s more, once you get into IR photography, you may start to “see the world in IR,” as I now do when I travel with my IR camera.

P.S. I always like to give credit where credit is due, so I’d like to thank Deborah Sandidge (www.deborahsandidge.com) for inspiring me to work in IR photography. I’d known about IR imaging for years, but it wasn’t until I saw her work at a photography event that I decided to give it a whirl.

BEFORE

CLIENT: Niles Charter Township www.nilesmi.com/townships

“We’d like to represent ourselves as a progressive community with rural values.”

Niles Township, located in the southwest corner of Michigan—not far from South Bend, Indiana—was established in 1833. Set among rolling hills surrounding the St. Joseph River, the area has (to quote its website) “evolved over the last 200 years from solely a farming community to one that offers a variety of business opportunities including agriculture, industrial, and commerce.”

One manifestation of those changes is that the community has recently become Niles Charter Township, a change in administrative nomenclature that reflects the area’s growth. Along with the change of name, the township board decided to seek a new logo that would look to the community’s future.

The current logo features a tree of no particular species set in an oval with the township name spelled out in an arc over it. Before that, the logo was a drawing of a leaf from an ashwood burr oak, the township tree, sometimes in conjunction with the tagline “The Township With A Historical Past—From A Stagecoach Station To A Developing Community.” Neither of these conveys the kind of professional image the modern Niles Charter Township needs. “We really would like a creative logo,” says Town Clerk Marge Durm-Hiatt. “We’d like to represent ourselves as a progressive community with rural values.”

The town board foresees continued extensive growth, so they’d like a logo that will grow with them. At one time, they were considering an idea based on puzzle pieces to symbolize the way the community is made up of rural, commercial, and residential areas. And even while using the word progressive, Durm-Hiatt stresses that Niles Charter Township is a conservative community in a conservative corner of the state. That was the challenge for our designers: to express the spirit of a community that’s looking to the future while trying to honor its roots in the past.

AFTER

DESIGNER: Steve West www.68design.com

“I wanted the logo to have a modern look so they weren’t stuck with something that made the township look 200 years old.”

Niles Charter Township’s current look is all over the place with no single logo giving a consistency to the township’s communications. Some items feature the tree, some just an oak leaf, and some just use the state emblem for want of anything better. I wanted their logo to have a modern look so they weren’t stuck with something that made the township look 200 years old.

I looked through some information about the township (e.g., reports on the land use and population trends) and was struck by the layout of the township within the county. I played with using squares to suggest farm fields, but I just couldn’t come up with something I liked. Then I tried circles and really liked the way that looked. So I worked a circle pattern into the dot over the i in Niles. I also think that circles bring a scientific feel to the logo.

For the type, I started in a modern direction using standard fonts such as Helvetica Neue, Univers, and Akzidenz; however, I settled on Gotham Rounded because I thought it gave the logo a friendlier tone than the others. For the rest of the name, I wanted a serif font to add a more official, formal effect. I chose Mrs. Eaves and set it in small caps to give the logo a strong base without overwhelming it visually.

ABOUT THE DESIGNER: STEVE WEST
Steve West graduated in 1996 from the University of Tennessee, Chattanooga, with a BFA in Graphic Design. After working in corporate, ad agency, and small design firm settings, Steve currently has his own freelance design business.

Steve also teaches typography at The Creative Circus, a design, art direction, and photography school in Atlanta, Georgia. Steve says, “I’m very committed to teaching my students to have fun with type. While very important in design, it should be approached as an opportunity to experiment. I push them to dress everything up, even to consider how page numbers are laid out and placed. Good type is what begins to separate you from the rest of your peers.”

APPLICATIONS USED: Adobe Illustrator CS2 and Adobe InDesign CS2

AFTER

DESIGNER: Sandra Koenig www.sandrakoenig.com

“It’s a contemporary design that conveys a sense of place and reflects the rural beauty of this township.”

Niles Charter Township encompasses farms along with residential and commercial areas, but what makes this area in southwestern Michigan uniquely beautiful is the rolling hills and its river valley. As the website describes it, “Entering Niles Charter Township driving north on the US 31 Bypass and descending into the river valley, motorists are greeted by a breathtaking vista—a mile-long view of rolling orchards, vineyards, pastures, woodlots, and the broad, shining St. Joseph River.”

After looking at several possible directions this identity could take, including others that maintained a tree motif, I chose this one for its strength and simplicity. It’s a contemporary design that conveys a sense of place and reflects the rural beauty of this township.

I used Berthold Akzidenz Grotesk Bold Extended for the logotype. This font’s boldness makes the graphic representation of the hills and sky easy to see. Helvetica Condensed is used for the secondary type on the letterhead and business card. The township has quite a bit of important information to communicate and a condensed font helps that chunk of information take up less real estate on the letterhead.

This logo can be used in a very straightforward way, as seen on the front of the business card. But the rolling hill motif can be enlarged and used as a secondary graphic to add color and interest to various pieces in the system, as seen on the truck and in the watermark at the bottom of the letterhead.

ABOUT THE DESIGNER: SANDRA KOENIG
Sandra’s first love as a teen was art, so a career in graphic design was a natural choice, starting with a degree from the top-ranked University of Cincinnati School of Design. She has more than 20 years’ experience in graphic design and art direction and has worked with many of the largest agencies in San Francisco, including Landor Associates and Clement Mok designs. She’s experienced in a wide variety of media—print, Web, and packaging—and now leads her own design firm, specializing in brand and corporate identity. Her award-winning work includes projects for national and international clients including Apple Inc., Budget Rent A Car, E. & J. Gallo, Johnson & Johnson, Macromedia, Monsanto, Pacific Telesis, Symantec, Times Mirror, and Sanyo. Recently she designed, created content for, and project-managed a 100-page Intranet website for the Anheuser-Busch corporate-identity guidelines.

APPLICATION USED: Adobe Illustrator CS2

AFTER

DESIGNER: Michael Rowe www.upstreammedia.ca

There is nothing worse than a brilliant image of a fuzzy concept.—Ansel Adams

A brand is achieved through a consistent identity, and a good or bad design will determine whether it’s effective. The original Niles Charter Township material, however, was lacking in both design and consistency. It needed new vision.

I started to formulate the client’s perspective when reading the description of the township and their concerns about the current logo, and I continued to research the township culture, landscape, politics, heroes, etc. Before my pen ever hit plastic, I knew what I was trying to achieve: a respectful identity for a historical and agricultural community situated between two larger city centers.

For starters, the old slogan was more of a dated description than a current vision. I asked my strategy planner, Joe Coffey, to bottle the essence of my research and give them something they could be proud of. He came up with “Defined by a rich heritage, destined for a bright future.” I tried to embody this theme in the design.

My intent has been to effectively unify who they are, rather than rebrand them completely. I also kept the burr oak tree and the river as significant elements; they represent the past, present, and future of the township.

I created two versions, one with the name of the township overlapping the drawing and the other with the name in a formal border, more like an official seal. This gives multiple display options but maintains consistency among official and public identity materials—the idea was modeled after the way the state of Michigan uses its coat of arms.

ABOUT THE DESIGNER: MICHAEL ROWE
Once a full-time youth pastor, Mike is completing a business degree at Memorial University of Newfoundland with a joint diploma in Performance and Communications Media. Mike attributes the depth of his design skills to a three-year stint at his university’s Digital Media Centre. “I was on staff to assist the 17,000 students…that’s where I honed many of my techniques and was paid to play multimedia. It was a sweet job.” Mike has also handled an expanding company’s advertising, branding, Web development, and design for three years.

In September 2006, Mike launched his own marketing company, Upstream Media, where he currently hangs his hat as the creative and technical director. Mike and his business partner/strategy planner are passionate about return on investment and growing their small company as a player in their industry. They create everything from corporate videos to full-scale media campaigns.

APPLICATIONS USED: Adobe Illustrator, Adobe Photoshop, and Adobe InDesign

What Is Real?
To understand the concept of photorealism, it’s important to understand how the human eye sees, and more importantly, how we know what’s real. This was one of the more profound observations made in the hit movie The Matrix. While trying to explain the concept of the Matrix to Neo, Morpheus asks, “What is real? How do you define real? If you’re talking about your senses—what you feel, taste, smell, or see—then all you’re talking about are electrical signals interpreted by your brain.”

When you look at an object, what you see is a reconstruction of the object that’s based on the light entering your eyes. An object will reflect light at different wavelengths. This light enters the eyes and is converted to an electrical signal which travels to the brain and is re-created to give us what we see as an object. This all happens in an instant. Our brain quickly extracts information from these light wavelengths to define color, form, perspective, and shading or lighting. So this means that the world we’re seeing is our brain’s reconstruction of the data gathered from the many wavelengths of light.
So what does this have to with photorealism? Consider this piece by photorealistic digital artist Bert Monroy. Bert is considered one of the true pioneers of digital art and has been wowing people for years with his realistic digital paintings. In this piece titled Red Truck, we see the headlight and partial body of an old truck. Our brain is telling us we’re seeing a red truck because it has interpreted the various wavelengths of light to define the form, color, perspective, and lighting of a red truck.

Bert has manipulated the pixels in Photoshop to simulate the light wavelengths that the actual truck would reflect in those lighting conditions, and because our unconscious mind can’t distinguish between what’s real and what’s simulated on paper or on a computer monitor, it appears to be realistic. Now, of course, it’s not real in the sense that we can touch it and feel the contour of the objects; it has merely convinced our brains that it seems real. Knowing this, we can surmise the eye is easily fooled, which is why we’re able to enjoy movies and TV shows. This is quite an advantage to the photorealistic artist as well. With an understanding of the principles of color, form, perspective, and most importantly, lighting or shading, an artist can implement these consciously into his work.

Let’s examine each of these principles through a series of examples:

Form
Form is defined as the external, three-dimensional outline, appearance, or configuration of something. It’s the basic shape of an object. It’s how we know that a basketball is spherical or that a stop sign is octagonal. The form or shape of an object can be determined even in the absence of perspective or color (think silhouette). Understanding form is the basis of illustrating something realistically.

STEP ONE:
Here’s an example of one of the techniques I use to create realistic objects in Photoshop. Start by using the Pen tool (P) to draw half of the shape of a lamp as shown here. (Make sure the Pen tool is set to Paths in the Options Bar.) Load the path as a selection by pressing Command-Return (PC: Ctrl-Enter). Click on the Create a New Layer icon in the Layers panel to create a new layer. Click on the Foreground color swatch and choose 50% gray in the Color Picker (C:0, M:0, Y:0, K:50). Press Option-Delete (PC: Alt-Backspace) to fill the shape with gray.

STEP TWO:
Duplicate this layer by dragging it to the Create a New Layer icon. Then, simply flip this layer horizontally by going under the Edit menu and choosing Transform>Flip Horizontal. Use the Move tool (V) to position the straight edges of the two lamp halves right up against each other. This will define our basic shape. Simply merge these layers together by pressing Command-E (PC: Ctrl-E). Although it’s merely a shape, we’re off to a good start because we’re able to tell it’s a lamp just by the shape alone. Now we need to consider perspective.

Perspective
Perspective is what gives an object depth. Depending on the angle that we’re viewing an object, we need to consider what’s going to be visible and what will be hidden. By looking at the shape of the lamp we can determine that the horizon line is just above the bottom of the base. Having established this, we can now determine that we’ll be viewing the lampshade at an upward angle. This will reveal the inside of the lampshade on the backside, with the neck of the lamp going up until it’s hidden by the front of the lampshade.

STEP THREE:
Use the Elliptical Marquee tool to draw a selection around the bottom of the lampshade to define the area that we’ll see the inside of. Once the selection is in place, press Shift-Command-J (PC: Shift-Ctrl-J) to cut this area out to its own layer. Click the Eye icon in the Layers panel for this new layer to hide it temporarily. Use the Rectangular Marquee tool to select the remaining portion of the lampshade. Make the main lampshade layer active in the Layers panel, and press Shift-Command-J (PC: Shift-Ctrl-J) again to copy this section to its own layer.

STEP FOUR: Use the Pen tool to draw a path to complete the shape of the neck. Activate the base layer and load the path as a selection. Fill with 50% gray to complete the shape. Now each piece should be on its own layer: the main lampshade, the inside portion of the lampshade, and the base. So with the shapes and perspective set, let’s move on to color.

Color
Now here’s a good question: Is color real? Light enters our eyes and the color information is received by tiny photoreceptors called cones. The brain then interprets this information into the colors we see. So color is subjective. Whether you know it or not, you have a role in how real something appears to you because your brain has to reconstruct what you see. In reality, an object reflects a certain color. That color passes through the given lighting conditions, through the atmosphere into our eyes. So it’s virtually impossible to see an object in its purest color form. Unless, of course, you’re in controlled lighting conditions, but even then there’s some inconsistency.

STEP FIVE:
So let’s reverse engineer that thinking to our lamp. We have a shape, so let’s apply a color. Duplicate the base layer, and then hide the lampshade and the top copy of the base layers. Change the Foreground color to a flat red and fill the bottom copy of the base with that color by pressing Shift-Option-Delete (PC: Shift-Alt-Backspace). This layer will remain unaltered from this point because we’re going to build the light and shading over multiple layers, leaving the color information untouched. It will make sense in a moment. Let’s talk about lighting.

Lighting
Lighting is the most critical element. In the next steps, we’ll essentially be painting with light. This is what I like to call layers of light. Photorealistic illustrations viewed on a computer screen are much more convincing to the eye because a computer screen is capable of transmitting wavelengths of light that would otherwise be impossible to see with printed images. This is also why printed images often look less vibrant than what we see onscreen. Printing technology has certainly improved over the years but it’s simply the difference between reflected light and transmitted light.

STEP SIX:
Continuing with the lamp, switch to the Burn tool. In the Options Bar, set the Range to Midtones and the Exposure to 50%. Hide the red base layer and make the gray base layer visible and active. Then use the Burn tool to paint in the shadow tones to define the form. Use the Dodge tool (also set to Midtones) and paint to give the hint of a light source from the front and reflected light on the sides. By working on a gray-filled object, you can concentrate on the lighting separate from the color.

STEP SEVEN:
Now we need to change the blend mode of this layer so that the lighting effect will interact with the color in the layer below. Which blend mode depends on how intense the shading is and the color you’re blending with. For the lamp here, we chose Multiply. This will blend the dark areas with the color layer (make sure to make the color base layer visible again). As you can see, the object has taken on a whole new dimension. In just two layers we’ve taken a simple shape and created a seemingly real shape. This is because of the “light” layers.

STEP EIGHT:
Now let’s take it a step further and duplicate the light or shaded layer and change its blend mode to Soft Light. Apply a Plastic Wrap filter (Filter>Artistic>Plastic Wrap) to add subtle hints of reflected objects in the surface of the lamp. The result, as you can “see,” is a seemingly dimensional object. Notice that we did it with only three layers.

STEP NINE:
We have the basic form, color, perspective, and lighting all in place for the base, so let’s move on to the lampshade. We’ll start by creating the light emitting from the lamp itself. Make the layer that depicts the area of the inside of the lampshade visible and active. In the Layers panel, move this layer below the base layers so it will appear behind them. Fill the shape with white, then apply an Outer Glow layer style by clicking the Add a Layer Style icon at the bottom of the Layers panel and choosing Outer Glow. (I’ve filled in the background with a gradient so it’s easier to see the Outer Glow.)

STEP TEN:
Next, activate the main lampshade layer and make it visible. Just as we did with the lamp base, duplicate the layer and apply a color, such as a yellow or light brown, to the bottom copy. Then use the Dodge and Burn tools on the top gray layer to paint in the light and shadow areas. Change the blend mode to Hard Light. When done, merge these layers together by pressing Command-E (PC: Ctrl-E). Duplicate this layer and change the blend mode to Multiply. This will increase contrast and intensity. If it seems too much, simply drop the Opacity of the layer in the Layers panel.

STEP ELEVEN:
Lastly, we need to create the light source itself. Create a new layer and place it above all the other layers. Select the Gradient tool (G) in the Toolbox. Then in the Options Bar, click the gradient preview to open the Gradient Editor. Select the Foreground to Transparent gradient, which is the second icon in the Presets area, and click OK. Choose the Radial gradient and set the Foreground color to a very light yellow color. Estimating where the light should be inside the lampshade, click-and-drag the gradient down from that point to the base of the lamp neck.

Change the blend mode of this layer to Pin Light. Duplicate this layer and change the blend mode to Vivid Light. This will increase the intensity of the light itself. All there is left to do is to add the finishing touches, such as the reflected light on the neck and top of the base of the lamp and the reflection of the lamp on the table surface.

Understanding light, form, perspective, and color are all necessary to achieve photorealism. By creating the lighting effects on gray layers and using blend modes to mix them with color below, we have more control over light as well as the coloring. (If I want to change the color of this lamp, all I need to do is fill the color layer with a new color—all the shading will remain intact.)

Let’s wrap things up here with a simple assignment: When you’re out in the “real” world going to work, traveling on vacation, or just hanging at the mall, pay close attention to the behavior of light around you. Don’t necessarily look at an object itself, but rather look at the light and how it’s reflecting off an object. How is the object reflecting off other objects? Look at the absence of light. Look at the way other people react to what they see. Just stare at things—stare at yourself in the mirror. Look at the tiniest, most mundane things around you and how they look in the light.

These are the things that photorealistic artists pay close attention to. They’re constantly “seeing’ things and figuring them out. When you do this, I guarantee that you’ll start to see things a lot differently. It gives new meaning to the words “open your eyes.” Also, if you’re interested in the science of sight, I highly recommend a book called Visual Intelligence: How We Create What We See by Donald D. Hoffman. It’s an interesting exploration into how the human eye perceives light and creates the world we see.

Another piece of hardware to look at is your internal hard drive. Historically, laptop drives are usually twice as slow as their desktop counterparts, so odds are yours needs to be replaced. When you’re looking for a replacement, you want to find the largest capacity (200 GB+) and fastest spindle speed (7200 RPM+) 2.5″ drive you can afford. After reading some reports online, I recently purchased a 200-GB, 7200-RPM, 16-MB buffer, Serial ATA/15 Hitachi Travelstar 7K200 (model # 0A50940). It beats all other 7200-RPM spindle drives in its class in all speed tests and is by far the best laptop drive I have ever owned. Highly recommended!

Time to record
Now that you’re ready to record your screencast, you’ll want to present your message as clearly and as focused as possible. Here are some quick tips on how to best hold your audiences’ attention while causing the fewest distractions possible:

1. Avoid unnecessary mouse movements while you’re recording your clip. Besides the fact that this can cause a larger file size than necessary (especially at lower frame rates), it can also be terribly annoying. It usually happens with people who are used to gesturing with their hands as they speak in person and then they transfer that behavior to their mouse when they record a video. While gesturing can help tell a story during a face-to-face conversation, it’s terribly distracting when you’re watching a screencast where the cursor has been possessed by the devil.

2. Clean up your desktop of all miscellaneous icons. Nobody likes to walk into a cluttered and messy room and no one likes to be distracted by a cluttered and messy desktop.

3. Have a neutral or solid color desktop pattern/picture. A picture of your favorite NASCAR driver with his pit crew, or you on vacation at Mardi Gras is just not appropriate for this type of video presentation. Even company logos can be distracting. You want the viewers’ attention to be 100% focused on the information you’re presenting to them.

4. When capturing video of the whole screen, hide your computer’s clock if it’s visible. The changing time will distract the viewer and if you have to do any editing, it will make it a whole lot easier. (I always laugh when a clock jumps several hours during a 15-minute video clip!)

5. Set your screen resolution to something smaller than what you normally use. Odds are you’re not going to need to deliver a screencast at 1440×900, so change your screen resolution to something smaller and make the clip easier to edit, download, and view.

6. Consider setting up a new user account on your computer exclusively for capturing screencasts. This way you can set up all of the above tips just one time in a separate, pristine environment specifically for your recording sessions and then switch to that account (and those settings) in just a few quick seconds (while leaving all your current work—and mess—behind).