Design HELP!!!

Get A Custom Flash Design For Your Website

nobody@vox.com(Synapse India) — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 04:53:42 -0800

Websites of today are far more interactive than those a few years ago. Today, visitors expect a website to be dynamic and more engaging. These days, professional flash website design is in high demand. Almost all good websites today are built using the Flash technology. A website will only work if visitors like to visit and revisit it. Greater traffic leads to recommendations and more traffic. More traffic means more business. Having flash website can improve the overall experience of the visitor.

You can select from several flash designers that have expertise in designing flash websites and games etc. Flash games may or may not be relevant to your business but help in attracting and keeping visitors to your website. If the designer is innovative enough, he can even develop a game that goes with the theme of your business. A flash game can also be used to deliver messages and advertise in a manner that creates an impact in the mind of the player.

You can hire a Flash development company to create custom Flash design for your website based on your unique requirements. It will keep the design relevant and convey the right business message.

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How to: making your own pattern swatch on Adobe illustrator CS3

nobody@vox.com(jeh) — Sat, 07 Nov 2009 17:44:09 -0800

I had been looking for just the one straight forward tutorial that offered this info but only seemed to find bits and pieces of what I was looking for in other tutorials. So after figuring it out, I thought I'd share it although this is a basic way, I'm sure there's many other ways to do so or perhaps maybe all this has already been shared. Nonetheless, I'd still like to post it, for my future reference as well.

Creating the pattern

1. So I start with a square art board (400px by 400 px – doesn’t have to be 400px, as long as it’s a square) and have drawn 2 shapes with the pen tool, which will comprise of my pattern. You can place your artwork/pattern anyway you like on the square but anything that overlaps one side will need to be moved and copied to the opposite side.

2. To do so select your shape/artwork (one at a time), go to object – transform – move.

3. Now if your artwork overlaps the left side of your art board you enter ‘0’ for ‘vertical’ and ‘400’ for horizontal. Select preview and you will see the artwork automatically move 400px to the right side.

4. Click ‘copy’ and it will duplicate and move it for you. If your artwork is originally placed overlapping the right side just enter the negative value of px (if it were in my case, it would be ‘- 400 px’) and it will automatically move to the left side. You do the same thing for shapes/artwork overlapping the top and bottom edges of your art board except, you need to enter ‘0’ for ‘horizontal’.

5. So now I have the pattern that I would like to see repeated. Before I drag it into the swatch palette I will need to crop out the overlapping edges.

6. Otherwise, if I were to turn it into a swatch as it is now and used it as a fill it would look like the above (although it looks decent enough, it’s not what I want).

Cropping

7. In the same layer, create a square of the same size as your art board with no fill and no stroke, then place it exactly over your art board. You can use the transform palette to do this.

8. Select everything and expand.

9. Whilst everything is still selected, go to the pathfinder palette and select ‘crop’.

10. Now you can drag everything into the swatch palette to turn it into a swatch.

11. And voila, you have a seamless repeat pattern when using your swatch as a fill.

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Set Your Goals To Infuse Enthusiasm In Life

nobody@vox.com(Synapse India) — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 04:26:36 -0800

As children we all have uncountable dreams and belief level so high that we see nothing as impossible in life. As we grow up and face challenges and defeats, our belief level tends to die. Some people compromise on living mundane lives with no hopes, dreams and goals while others do remember their dreams but choose to do nothing about them. While the fact remains that nothing is impossible for the one who believes, it becomes hard to do so. The people who have no goals in life are definitely missing out the best parts of their lives and not living it to the fullest.

A dream becomes a goal when you put a date to it. Setting your goals fills your life with enthusiasm as you have something to chase, a direction to move towards and put your energies into. Once you set reachable goals, you also need to monitor your progress. You can divide your main goal into sub-goals, daily and weekly goals and see that you meet them. Make a list of things that you need to do in order to reach the goals you have defined. Acknowledge yourself when you reach the milestones to keep yourself motivated and in expectation of more success.

The author of this post is a webmaster at SynapseIndia, an offshore web development company from India.

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Vector Graphics Designing Gaining Popularity

nobody@vox.com(Synapse India) — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 00:58:45 -0800

Graphics designing images can be of two types – vector art and bitmap. Bitmap stores the pixel by pixel information of an image while vector art stores some program that is used to create the image dynamically every time it is requested. This results in better image generation for different resolution without any drop in quality.

Vector art is rasterized before it can be presented on the screen. Instead of the actual image pixel data, vector art stores the descriptions like color, size, location etc for generating the image. Due to its resolution-independence, vector art has found huge applications in graphics designing, CAD and DTP packages.

Postscript description language, PDL by Adobe is used for creating images. The popular document format PDF is also a type of PDL. Another popular format is the Windows meta file (.wmf) format that is used by most of the clip-art for windows. AutoCAD and other programs exchange their data using the ‘.dxf’ format called drawing interchange/exchange format. These days data exchange format has become less useful with AutoCAD supporting more complex datatypes. HPGL (Hewlett Packard Graphics Language) is a popular language for printing/plotting in addition to printer Command Language (PCL)

Wide use of different formats of vector art emphasizes the fact that vector art is a better choice for graphics designing specially where it has to be used on varied systems, configurations and resolutions.

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Types of Multimedia Authoring Tools for Graphic Designing

nobody@vox.com(Synapse India) — Fri, 23 Oct 2009 03:44:25 -0700

These days multimedia is widely used for training and education, presentations, information kiosks as well as on websites and for entertainment. Selection of the right tool is essential while starting graphic designing and multimedia ventures. There are three types of multimedia tools classified according to the style in which the multimedia presentations are created.

Card Based Tools: These tools divide the content of your multimedia presentation into a number of pages called cards. These are the simplest tools for beginners to learn and start creating multimedia presentations without in-depth knowledge of graphic designing. The challenge faced with this type of tools is concurrent playing of media. Apple's HyperCard and Allegiant's SuperCard are examples of card based tools.

Time-line Based Tools: These tools use a reel of film on which multimedia content is organized along different tracks Adobe’s Director and Flash are two popularly used time-line based tools. Running concurrent media is easier in time-line based tools.

Flow Control or Icon based Tools: These tools let you drag and drop icons into a page and then help you link multimedia activity by double clicking the icons through dialog boxes. These tools are expensive and are used for interactive public kiosks etc. Examples of these tools are Macromedia's Authorware or AimTech's IconAuthor

While choosing a multimedia authoring tool, you need to consider the type of media and formats are supported, the integration capability of the tool etc. Irrespective of your choice, a multimedia authoring tool will definitely help you organize your content in an attractive multimedia presentation.

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Why Follow A Process For Corporate Website Design

nobody@vox.com(Synapse India) — Wed, 21 Oct 2009 00:16:27 -0700

Initially as the Internet started gaining popularity, most businesses used websites as nothing but brochures in electronic form accessible from anywhere around the globe. A simple interface was enough for the web page design and the focus was on the information presented to the visitors in the form of website content. With time, website designs have become more complex with the inclusion of a variety of features and functionalities that a website of today is expected to provide. A website of today is more complex than a desktop application because of the large audience it caters to, the functionality and higher security required.

The websites today call for better approach to website designing rather than the ad-hoc approach that was used in the past. If a structured and robust process model is used for website designs, many problems that occur in the later stages of the web development process can be avoided.

Following a step by step process not only makes things organized for the web designer, but can also reduce the chances of project failure, make the website more flexible to adopt to any changes in requirement and ensure timely delivery.

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How to Choose the Technology for Web Design

nobody@vox.com(Synapse India) — Tue, 13 Oct 2009 06:07:15 -0700

There are many aspects of creating website designs. Understanding the purpose and need of the website, analysis of market and target audience are very important but selecting the right technology can also be quite challenging at times. The website can use rich Flash animation design or plain traditional HTML design based on what is expected from it.

Flash web pages are heavier and require some time to load. If the Internet speeds are slow, the animations can be quite irritating and not worth the wait. In such situation, a plain and light HTML web design would be better because it loads fast and also looks simple to use to the not-so-savvy users.

A web site with design in Flash is far more interactive and better looking than the conventional ones. The animations catch the eye of the visitors and engage them for a longer time. The overall experience of the user is also enhanced with a Flash design and the user is more likely to remember the website and visit again.

Another consideration can be the cost because HTML websites are more affordable for smaller businesses whereas Flash animation design can cost much higher. Ultimately, it is the prospective audience of the website that should not be ignored while choosing the web design technology.

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Animation Technology – Yesterday and Today

nobody@vox.com(Synapse India) — Thu, 01 Oct 2009 04:32:58 -0700

Animation was first used in the entertainment world and has found major applications in the field till date. There was a time when animation was a complicated process that required lot of time, expertise and complex equipment for its development. Animations were created with pencils on cels by a number of animators for a single piece of animation, but today Flash Animation development does not require more than a creative mind, a computer with Flash and little time.

Animations are classified as two dimensional and three dimensional. Two dimensional animations are more widespread as compared to three dimensional animations that are rare. Cartoon films of the last two decades are a good example of 2D animations. Examples of 2D animations are also visible the web in ads and e-cards and also for creating interactive web pages.

3D animation is more complex and is used for creating virtual space. 3D video games are the most popular application of 3D animations. There have also been a few movies that included a few animated 3D animation scenes. The techniques used for 2D and 3D animations are very different and need different skills. The tool used for 2D animation development is Flash by Adobe, while 3D Studio Max is used for 3D animations.

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Moontain

nobody@vox.com(Artisthe?) — Thu, 24 Sep 2009 05:36:33 -0700

Moontain Globe

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Multimedia Authoring Tools for Interactive Website Design

nobody@vox.com(Synapse India) — Tue, 22 Sep 2009 05:44:50 -0700

With the reach of Internet to the remotest areas and the blazing fast speed that is available now-a-days, use of multimedia in web design and development is becoming popular. Though some people still prefer quick loading websites, most users would prefer the one with with interactive activities for them.

Gone are the days when managing multimedia was a programmable task and one needed good programming skills and lots of patience to author multimedia. The task of integrating different forms of media into one has become quite easy with multimedia authoring tools. We all agree that multimedia presentation is more effective than any other form and hence multimedia finds many applications. An authoring tool can provide wings to your creativity and you can portray whatever you want to in an attractive manner.

A good multimedia web design is interactive and gets the user involved and provides a great overall experience. A multimedia authoring tool can add life to almost any piece of information you want to present. Multimedia authoring tool can link different objects together and lets you set their sequence. Most website design agencies are opting for multimedia authoring tools to enhance the productivity of their designers.

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