Roger C. Parker's Graphic Design Tips

Slim book takes the mystery out of choosing color combinations

Confused about color? You're not alone. Choosing the right color palette for your corporate identity--your ads, brochures, newsletters, and web site--is of crucial importance to you, and your client's, success.

Luckily, help is at hand: Jim Krause's Color Index: Over 1100 Color Combinations, CYMK and RGB Formulas for Print and Web Media. This volume is slim enough to have have constantly by your side, next to your computer, yet you'll probably never outgrow it. It's one of those books you'll refer back to time after time.

To learn more, here's a special issue of Guerrilla Marketing & Design newsletter devoted to Marketing with Color.

Is this the best book on type?

Effective graphic design is based on choosing the right typefaces and using them intelligently.

Few books do as good a job of relating the centuries-old craft of typography with today's digital environnment as James Felici does in his Complete Manual of Typography: A Guide to Setting Perfect Type.

This is the best single volume available for anyone who wants to know how to make their ads, brochures, newsletters, and other marketing communications more attractive and easier to read. This book does the best job of combining the aesthetic aspects of typography to the capabilities of today's page layout programs.

Click here for a copy of my Guerrilla Marketing & Design newsletter discussing other favorite books on typography.

Learn the 10 Commandments of Guerrilla Marketing Design

Guerrilla Marketing, a name coined by Jay Conrad Levinson over twenty-five years ago, is a marketing philosophy based on efficiency and results.

Guerrilla Marketing puts a premium on obtaining big results from small budgets, eliminating the ego and creative excesses characteristic of so much graphic design.

Download my free special report, The 10 Commandments of Guerrilla Marketing Design, and learn how a marketing  philosophy of results and restraint can revitalize the way you deliver your messages.

Subhead formatting no-no's to avoid

Subheads are not sentences.

Therefore, they should not end with periods!

Periods after subheads add a subtle amount of clutter to the page. Periods also create barriers that discourage readers from reading on.

My Marketing Your Business with a One-Page Newsletter contains more formatting tips as does my Newsletter Marketing blog.

Three tips for more effective subheads

Here are some tips for increasing the communicating power of subheads. Subheads are short phrases that preview the next topic in a newsletter article, proposal, or on your website.

Subheads play a major role in making your message more attractive and easier to understand by "advertising" the text that follows, converting skimmers into readers.

1. Keep subheads short. Restrict subheads to just keywords. Never use full sentences. Subheads are like highway billboards; they should communicate at a glance. Subheads should never occupy more than one line!
2. Use white space purposefully. Avoid subheads that "float" between paragraphs. There should be more white space above the subhead, separating it from the previous paragraph, than between the subhead and the paragraph it introduces.
3. Put typeface contrast to work. Subheads should be set in a contrasting typeface, type size, and type style, than adjacent text. If you are using a serif typeface for body copy, use a larger and bolder sans serif typeface for subheads.

Are you a graphic designer that uses an Apple Macintosh?

If you are, you probably already know about Jay Nelson's Design Tools Monthly.

Each month, Design Tools Monthly summarizes articles, reviews, and software tips about Apple Macintosh software from dozens of books, magazines, and web sites, and also previews new typeface options.

Instead of spending a day or two each week keeping up to date with the latest news about desktop publishing software for the Apple Macintosh, Design Tools Monthly will quickly get you brought up to speed.

Find out  about the latest bug reports and workaronds for Apple Macintosh software like Adobe InDesign, Adobe Photoshop, Quark XPress, as well as news about Macintosh fonts and upcoming software versions.

Learn how to create an effective logo

There's a world of difference between an alphabet and a logo, and the best way to learn how to convert the characters in an alphabet into an effective logo is to read Doyald Young's masterpiece volumes:

• Logotypes and Letterforms
• Fonts and Logos

These two volumes define the high end in graphic design book publishing. Not only is each page a visual delight in itself, but you'll learn exactly how a master typographer takes the standard characters in an alphabet and converts them into an appropriate and memorable logo.

Visit Doyald Young's website to preview these books and advance your design education to the next level.

Third edition of Editing by Design now available

The third edition of Jan V. White's Editing by Design: For Designers, Art Directors, and Editors is now available and should be considered required reading.

Editing by Design enjoys a long, successful history, first appearing in 1974. Jan White completely revised the third edition, but--fortunately--it still has the original's one-to-one conversational tone and  revealing hand-drawn illustrations.

Adding white space makes text columns look easier to read

There are three ways you can easily make an obvious improvement in the appearance of print publications like newsletters and proposals:

• Add white space between the top of each column and the header of each page (which can consist of text, a horizontal line, or both)
• Add white space between the bottom of each column and the footer of each page
• Add white space in both locations

Simply replacing two or three lines of type on each page with extra white space can go a long way towards opening-up the appearance of your pages. Just be sure you add the same amount of white space to each page.

Jumpstart your InDesign, Quark, and PageMaker graphic design skills

Chuck Green has just introduced three books which can jumpstart any design project:

• The InDesign Ideabook
• The PageMaker Ideabook
• The Quark Xpress Ideabook

Chuck's goal is to helop you "start your next project with most of the work already done." He achieves that goal by providing a CD containing over 300 ready-to-use files with each version.

These files provide the framework you need to succeed.

Click here for more information.