Adobe CC Export for Screens

Much excitement over the introduction of Adobe Illustrator CC’s ‘Export for Screens’ tool, bringing a structured workflow to managing and exporting web assets.

Export for Screens

So rather than having to create individual artboards at different sizes for responsive websites, ‘Export for Screens’ acts like a mini CMS, allowing you to design once, and publish artboards to multiple iOS and Android device preset formats.

Export Assets

But wait – there’s more! Export for Screens also has an option for exporting individual graphics assets. Great for producing individual icons or other graphics without having to slice up the overall layout.

And all your saved assets can live update, so if you need to edit the base artwork, the graphics update automatically.

And of course, if you export to Creative Cloud, your assets are available for anyone else working on the project.

Now I have to admit that I’m ambivalent about Adobe’s Creative Cloud. The range of tools, features and storage that Adobe offer temp me to commit completely to their platform, and I find that uncomfortable.

However, with ‘Export for screens’, I’m almost won over.

Top tips:

• Make sure your artwork is aligned to the pixel grid. [Note to Adobe – when will you offer a ‘snap artboard to grid’ option?]
• Images cropped with a clipping path export to the size of the unclipped image & need to be re-cropped in Photoshop.

Colour management

And so to Fedrigoni Paper on Clarkenwell Road to attend a presentation on colour management by designer Andy Brown and colour consultant Paul Sherfield of the Missing Horse Consultancy

The Print Handbook

Andy is the author of The Print Handbook, a pocket guide to help designers get the best from their print projects, and I’d met Paul a couple of years ago when he was contracted by COI to help improve our studio colour management.

As the responsibility of pre-press has shifted from printers to the design studio, creatives find themselves required to colour manage their open or PDFX output files, but have little idea of how to work within a structured colour-managed environment. Paul’s mission is to help designers improve their pre-press workflow by explaining the benefits of colour management policy, where it is needed and how it is applied.

Colour management provides a unified environment for handling colours, where a common colour reference is used at each step of production, from photography through design, plate making and printing.

It aims to unify the image throughout the entire production process by using the profiles of the various devices to manage colours.

Comparison of some RGB and CMYK colour gamuts

Basically, you have two colour gamuts, RGB for optical devices and CMYK for output devices. RGB has a wider gamut, whilst CMYK ‘clips’ the available colours into a space that can be rendered by an output device.

However, neither is an absolute – both RGB and CMYK gamuts are device dependent, so the space you work in depends entirely on the input device and the intended output device.

Problems of colour perception also arise because the designer is looking at a monitor that generates colour in RGB, a local colour proof is typically produced in CMYK on an inkjet printer (which deposits ink on the surface of the paper), whilst the commercial printing process (which is also working in CMYK) presses ink into the substrate. (Printed material reflects light, so colors also look different depending on the lighting environment!).

To achieve the best colour fidelity, you therefore need to align your input, editing and output devices, from camera through to press, so they are all working in a common colourspace (independent of any device) so that the various colours can match as closely as possible. This is the basic principle of colour management.

Translation between devices is achieved using International Colour Consortium (ICC) profiles. Based on Apple’s ColorSync engine, ICC profiles are the accepted means of maintaining the consistency of colour files when transporting them between the originator/creator, publisher and printer.

The ICC profiles manage colour between different devices, ensuring that the correct rendering intent is maintained.

The standard rendering intent for printing in North America and Europe is the Relative Colorimetric method. This compares the extreme highlight of the source colourspace to that of the destination colourspace, and shifts all colours accordingly. Out-of-gamut colours are shifted to the closest reproducible colour in the destination colourspace.

So how do you go about setting up a colour-managed environment?

Working backwards from your commercial printer, find out what colour profile your printer is using for the intended press and paper stock, and ask how they would prefer your open or PDFX files set up.

Outputting to a PDFX format retains your embedded colour profile so that your printer knows the colour intent.

For example, in the UK most printers working to ISO 12647/2 will use Adobes ‘Coated FOGRA39 (ISO 12647-2-2004)’ profile which is in the later versions of Adobe CS and used by their colour settings file ‘Europe Prepress 3’. Colour profiles created in this way will prove to be repeatable and maintain their colour fidelity for both litho and digital presses - and are therefore preferable to custom profiles.

Your local proofing device should be set up to use the same profile.

In Adobe Bridge, set your CS colour settings to ‘Europe Prepress 3’.

Calibrate your monitor into the same working space – although note that as monitors warm up, the perceptual colour will change slightly, so for colour-critical work, monitors should be re-calibrated at regular intervals.

Finally, ensure that all images have an ICC profile embedded – if not, then a generic RGB colourspace, such as sRGB or Adobe RGB (1988), will be assigned when the file is first opened or imported. (If you open a document embedded with a colour profile that doesn’t match the working space profile, in most cases, the best option is to preserve the embedded profile because it provides consistent colour management.)

sRGB is recommended when you prepare images for the web, because it defines the colour space of the standard monitor used to view images on the web.

Adobe RGB is recommended when you prepare documents for print, because the Adobe RGB gamut includes some printable colours (cyans and blues in particular) that can’t be defined using sRGB.

So having aligned the colour profiles of all the devices in your workflow, you can design in in a colour-controlled environment, knowing that what you see really is what you’re going to get.

Just what was it about Richard Hamilton?

Just what is it that makes today’s homes so different,
so appealing?

Visiting the retrospective of Richard Hamilton at Tate Modern, I was struck by the way he constantly embraced new ideas in his art, and experimented with different drawing, painting, collage and printmaking methods and latterly digital techniques.

Hamilton took a very experimental approach to art, exploring the boundary between figurative and abstract images and the interface between organic and industrial forms.

In 1951, for his exhibition Growth and Form at the ICA, Hamilton used grid-based structures to look at form in nature and explore their influence on design trends in contemporary architecture and design.

In the seminal 1955 Man, Machine and Motion exhibition at the Hatton Gallery in Newcastle and then at the ICA, Hamilton arranged around 200 images in a modular steel grid. The viewer was encouraged to explore the installation and see images around, above and below them.

His developing interest in popular culture led to the creation of the collage seen as the first Pop art work, Just what is it that makes today’s homes so different, so appealing? Hamilton listed the characteristics of Pop art;

• designed for a mass audience
• transient
• expendable
• low cost
• mass produced
• young
• witty
• sexy
• gimmicky
• glamorous
• big business

Effectively he was describing the next 50 years of modern advertising.

Heartbleed

It's a simple logo for a complex bug. But creating an identity to raise awareness is entirely the point.

You’ve probably never heard of CVE-2014-0160. But you probably have heard of the Heartbleed bug, the security hole in some implementations of the OpenSSL protocol that provides secure communication between servers.

The two are one and the same, except that CVE-2014-0160 is the name assigned under the Standard for Information Security Vulnerability Names protocol, wheras Heartbleed is a catchy, scary name with a catchy, scary logo depicting a red heart. Bleeding.

The power of the Heartbleed logo is in its sheer, bold literalness, and in that regard it’s perfect for its purpose.

Heartbleed was given its identity by the international security company Codenomicon, which independently discovered the CVE-2014-0160 OpenSSL exploit on the same day as Google researcher Neel Mehta.

Most security holes like CVE-2014-0160 would be posted on messageboards read only by the coding and hacking community, but in this case Heartbleed was so serious that everyone who uses OpenSSL in applications such as web, email and instant messaging was at potential risk of having their passwords compromised.

A Codenomicon engineer came up with the name Heartbleed, inspired by a tangentially related piece of software called Heartbeat, and in a brilliantly inspired piece of marketing, Codenomicon registered Heartbleed.com, designed an FAQ explaining the bug, and accompanied it with a logo by Codenomicon designer Leena Snidate.

The logo went viral and the Heartbleed brand was born.

Don’t be surprised if the next major bug also gets its own name and logo™ and probably a clothing range.

Behavioural science

Behavioural science and behavioural economics show us that, very often, we do not behave in ways we would expect to if we were perfectly ‘rational’ human beings. Many of us still have not insulated our lofts, despite the fact that doing so will reduce our energy bills; we very rarely switch our bank accounts, despite the fact that we may benefit from higher saving rates elsewhere; and we may not yet have committed to becoming an organ donor, despite the fact that the majority of us would be willing to do so if asked.

Many of today’s issues have a strong behavioural component. From tackling anti-social behaviour, to education and health – our behaviours as citizens, parents and neighbours significantly affect the quality of our lives and that of others.

We can influence people’s behaviour in a number of different ways. Tough laws can be made, with fines for those who fail to comply with new legislation, or bans can be introduced that prevent people from eating certain types of food or engaging in particular types of activities.

This is where advertising and design can make a difference. We can give citizens more or better information. We can prompt people to make choices that are in line with their underlying motivations. And we can help to encourage social norms around healthier behaviours in ways that avoid inadvertently communicating that the ‘problem behaviour’ – rioting or driving whilst using a mobile phone or dropping litter – is relatively widespread.

And, if we know anything from behavioural science, it is that behaviour is strongly influenced by what we think others are up to.

Governments, businesses and charities are using the behavioural change MINDSPACE framework to support advertising and design decision-making that impacts upon the behaviour of citizens.

M I N D S P A C E
Messenger  – We are heavily influenced by who communicates information
Incentives -– Our responses to incentives are shaped by predictable mental shortcuts such as strongly avoiding losses
Norms – We are strongly influenced by what others do
Defaults – We ‘go with the flow’ of pre-set options
Salience – Our attention is drawn to what is novel and seems relevant to us
Priming – Our acts are often influenced by subconscious cues
Affect – Our emotional associations can powerfully shape our actions
Commitment – We seek to be consistent with our public promises, and reciprocate acts
Ego – We act in ways that make us feel better about ourselves

For example, exercise is strongly affected by our tendency to discount future
gains, such as being fit and feeling good, relative to short-term pains. Turn this
problem around, such as by introducing an immediate pleasure through the fun of
the Stockholm Metro piano stairs (affect and salience). Making the stairs
eye-catching and fun to climb also had a motivating effect, in that once more people started taking the stairs, others tended to follow.

Or by changing the social norm around exercise with the London city bike hire scheme Seeing more people cycle creates a new social norm and visual prompt, encouraging more people to want to cycle.

In most cases, success will not come from a single design intervention. Instead it will come from a combined approach between many partners – local communities, professionals, businesses and citizens themselves.

A key objective is to try out a range of behavioural approaches – to experiment at local level – to find the most effective ways communicating and of ‘nudging’ citizens lifestyles in ways that make it easy for them to adopt 'good' behaviours.

Effective images

How images are framed depends on the overall look and feel that the designer is trying to achieve, but there are various ideas that photographers – and painters – have found useful in creating effective images.

The selection, sizing and cropping of images is directly related to the accompanying text, in that they are either designed to illustrate the text, or the text provides an explanatory note to the image.

A common mistake is to use an image as it is provided, resulting in the use of poorly composed shots without a clear focal point or direction. Wheras any image can be made to work harder if the composition of subject elements is manipulated to communicate effectively with the intended audience.

There should be a good reason behind every image you select. Ask yourself;

• Is your chosen image relevant and meaningful to the audience?
• Is it right for the task and does it make the accompanying words work harder?
• Will the combination of the words and pictures get the reader thinking?
• Will the choice of image provoke the reader to do what you want them to do?

Designer and editor should work with a selection of close-ups, mid and long-range images. They should look to engage more directly with the subject matter and create interest through cropping, using orientation, symmetry or asymmetrical composition and the rule of three.

Cropping
Cropping is the easiest and most effective way to edit an image. This can change the whole emphasis of the shot by removing extraneous or distracting subject matter and manipulating the relationship between the subject elements and the edge of the frame.

Conversely a poor crop can ruin a good image. Be careful not to end up with a crop that is just slightly rectangular, as this communicates a sense of indecision.

Orientation
Picture shapes are normally dictated by the natural arrangement of elements. Landscape images tend to emphasise the relationship between subject elements to the left and right of the frame, whilst portrait images tend to relate background to foreground.

Choosing a landscape format for an image of a person, or using a portrait format for a landscape can produce an unexpected effect or pleasing juxtaposition.

Composition
People are predisposed to prefer symmetrical composition and this is the starting point for editing any image, placing the subject central in the frame. This signifies stability and strength.

However, symmetry can become monotonous and can lack movement. Asymmetrical composition places the subject off centre to create a more dynamic image with tension between the contrasting spaces around the subject.

The rule of three
The rule of three is a useful rule of thumb for asymmetric composition. Dividing the frame into vertical and horizontal thirds creates four ‘sweet spots’ at the intersections of the gridlines. Placing the most important elements of the image on or adjacent to these intersections can transform an ordinary image into one with a stronger composition.

Original image

Image divided into thirds

Image recropped with the subject positioned adjacent to the top right gridline intersection

Using these simple tools, a designer and editor can manipulate images in a structured way and get the most out of their pictures.

Bass notes: Saul Bass at London's Kemistry Gallery

Saul Bass is acknowledged as one of the 20th century’s most successful corporate designers, responsible for (amongst others) the logos and identity systems for AT&T, United Airlines, Alcoa and Warner Communications.

Bass’s work is instantly recognisable for its directness, its simplicity and the way it makes its meaning felt. Breaking all conventions in the 1950s and 60s, Bass virtually invented film titles as we know them today, and he was the first to synthesize movies into compelling trademark images.

Looking at his poster designs on display at the Kemistry Gallery, I wondered how much his style was driven by the silk screen process and the need to reduce the visual idea down to it's simplest, most expressive components.

His later posters were more colourful and visually complex, yet seemed to have less impact.

In a period when graphic imagery can be easily manipulated electronically, Bass reminds us that to cut through the visual clutter, a strong idea is always at the heart of a great design.