Some people would celebrate by jumping up and down, I however designed an irregular sized poster (Rage couldn’t possibly be contained by German standardization, don’t be silly)!

THE NEW TYPOGRAPHY   ///   Jan Tschichold   ///   Essential reading for anyone who has eyes and uses type.

LIFE’S A PITCH   ///   Stephan Bayley & Roger Mavity   ///   Because life’s a pitch man!

OBEY   ///   Shepard Fairey   ///   Obey the giant! A feast for the mind. Highly recommended.

http://obeygiant.com/

THE NEW DESIGNERS HANDBOOK   ///   Alastair Campbell   ///   You can never have enough handbooks…probably.

FRAFTUR MON AMOUR   ///   Judith Schalansky   ///   The most amazing blackletter source book I’ve ever seen, beautifully designed with 333 blackletter fonts, and a CD containing 150 digital fonts. A typophile’s dream! Highly recommended.

http://www.fraktur-mon-amour.com/de/

TEN/SEA   ///   Bryan Edmondson + John Simpson   ///   Love their work, amazing stuff. Highly recommended.

http://www.seadesign.co.uk/

IN SIGHT   ///   Michael Evamy + Lucienne Roberts   ///   Posed with the question what is Inclusive design? If you reply with a blank stare, this is a great place to start. Highly recommended.

FONT: THE SOURCEBOOK     ///    Nadine Monem   ///   A comprihensive guide to typographic history.

MY SHIT LIFE SO FAR   ///   Frankie Boyle   ///   Bloody hilarious.

http://www.frankieboyle.com/

1001 ALBUMS  YOU MUST HEAR BEFORE YOU DIE   ///   Robert Dimery   ///   A musical education

Click here to listen or add to my collaborative playlist on Spotify (more albums will be added as I work my way through this epic book)

EYE NO.74 VOL.19 WINTER 2009   ///   The only graphic design journal you’ll ever need (and the only one I currently have a subscription with).

http://www.eyemagazine.com/

If you didn’t receive one in the post it could be because…

a) I couldn’t afford to get them printed.

b) I couldn’t afford to actually post them if I had got the printed.

c) You accidentally forgot to sent me a card.

or d) all of the above.

Next year (job pending) I’m going foil block all the way, oh yes!

You gotta love custom print runs, top marks for effort LF.

Wrong! Look at her going to town on my hand, vicious little animal!

What a gig! Never thought I’ve travel to Teignmouth for a recreational purpose but Muse’s homecoming gig was well worth the trip (cheers Dan). No idea who designed this poster but I think it’s rather nice, really captures the seaside / pier vibe of the occasion, it’s probably the big letters “PIER” that do it.

Here are a few of the technical time savers I picked up while on placement. I suppose a better word for them would be shortcuts. Most of these are for indesign which I did the bulk of the design work in. Some may be obvious others not so, you be the judge.

Show hidden characters ( alt + cmd + I ) for those pesky tabs and paragraphs

Text frame options ( cmd + B ) you’ll be needing this

Inserting auto page numbering ( insert special character > auto page numbering ) easy peezy

Scale in proportion ( tab + cmd ) everyone should know this one

Aligning tabbed paragraphs ( cmd + \ ) useful

Tab menu ( shift + cmd + T ) just like in word

Paragraph rules ( alt + cmd + J ) serious time saver

Soft returns ( shift + return ) override paragraph rules

Override all master page options ( shift + alt + cmd + L ) you’ll thank me for this one

Copying images while keeping alignment ( shift + alt ) mind blowing, I know

Search and replace ( cmd + F )  finding those double spacings just became a whole lot easier

Paste in place ( shift + alt + cmd + V ) the most useful shortcut for indesign you will ever learn, luckily I was shown this one while I was an under grad.

Words of wisdom

When designing brochures “let fours rule your life” you always have spreads of at least four when printing front to back, it sounds obvious and that’s because it is.

When designing for print CMYK good RGB bad, this isn’t a quote just a fact.

Never scale an image much above 100% it will look real bad. Always ask clients to re-supply images if they have them, everyone knows this right?

Tiff formats are better for print than jpeg as they are less compressed. I was using jpegs for nearly everything.

I hope sharing some of the things I picked up at Ranch has been useful, if not you’ve read it you can’t un-read it.

Many thanks to Mat & Racheal for the ‘assistance’ don’t know what I would have done without you.