If you’re a graphic designer, you will often have to work with off-the-shelf material created by others — for instance, combining ready-to-use fonts with images from a photographer or stock website. Also, you’ll often have to follow the branding already developed by someone else. It’s OK; it’s a part of the job, and you shouldn’t be bothered by it.

But the part of a project that almost every graphic designer likes and is proud of the most is something that you can do from scratch, something that you have control over and can sign off on confidently: illustration. It’s why I love illustration projects so much. You can show your individuality in every detail and create every stroke of the artwork, trusting your vision and fully exercising your skills.

Given this love of mine, it’s no surprise that I took on illustration duties for the Smashing Book #4 without hesitation, despite it being quite a large and lengthy project (20 illustrations). I pulled myself together and started working, promising to myself that no matter how hard it turned out to be, I would find the time and internal resources to complete the project.

I’m very keen on the traditional way of drawing — by hand, using paper, pencil, watercolors and so on. Of course, I’m not against using computers when necessary — especially nowadays, when we have drawing tablets and pens and all of that other digital stuff that mimics hand-drawn work. But it seems to me that there is still no substitute for the charm of a well thought out and elaborate handmade drawing.

My process for transforming illustrations into vector files is a little complicated and sometimes long, but it’s the only way to capture my drawings down to the smallest details. Retracing every line of the illustration as a curve using the Pen tool (in Adobe Illustrator, in my case), I am able to really feel every line and make the drawing as close to perfect as possible.

I began each of the 20 illustrations with many ugly sketches, trying to grab hold of an idea. I’m not able to think first and draw after. The two processes are one for me: I draw while thinking. I’ll waste piles of paper and use any surface at hand to capture an idea that suddenly comes to me. Reviewing the sketches now, I’m intrigued by the evolution of the ideas and the birth of the characters.

Looking for ideas. (View large version)

(View large version)

The evolution of a character from start to finish. (View large version)

Then, I made detailed drawings in pencil, which became the prototypes of the vector images. The more developed the drawing, the easier it was to create a vector image. When the pencil drawings were ready, I scanned or photographed them, and then painted with the usual brushes in Photoshop. These were the prototypes that I submitted for approval.

To color the sketches, I’ll choose one of the basic brushes with a sharp edge and just paint over the scanned image on a new layer. “Multiply” mode is on for this layer to make the texture of the drawing visible. Then, I’ll create one more layer for shadows (with “Multiply” mode enabled again).

Adding color to the sketch. (View large version)

This is a fast and easy way to estimate the color spectrum of the final illustrations (I’ll sometimes do several color sketches). I sent the colored sketches to the Smashing team for approval of the direction and concept of the illustrations.

The colored sketches retain a kind of watercolor effect. I love that this quality can be achieved so easily.

The colored sketches. (View large version)

Once the sketches are approved, I start the most important part of the work. I paste each scanned pencil drawing into an Illustrator file and trace it. I’ll put the pencilled prototype on the bottom layer and lock it. Then, I’ll look at my illustration carefully and divide it in my mind into several areas, creating a separate layer for each area. Working with layers is very convenient if the image is complicated and has many small details.

(View large version)

You can lock or hide layers that you are not working on to focus on the areas that you are. From the screenshot below, it is obvious that every kite will have layers and that the background will have several layers. I also separated each animal into different layers; for example, one layer for the body, one for the head (usually including the eyes and nose) and one for the limbs (legs, wings and so on).

Creating separate layers. (View large version)

There is no trick to tracing an image by hand. Just take the Pen tool and trace the contours of the sketch. I usually choose a bright color to mark off the contours well. The process is boring, but once you’re skilled at it, it doesn’t take much time. It can almost be meditative, sitting and calmly tracing element after element as your thoughts drift away.

The outlining process. (View large version)

I’ll usually use the Live Paint Bucket tool to divide a shape into several color areas. I draw lines that will be the borders between colors, and then select the group of shapes and enable the Live Paint Bucket tool . By clicking on each shape with the tool, I can assign a unique color to it. By the way, if you use colors from the swatches, you can find the appropriate tool by clicking the left and right arrows.

Using the Live Paint Bucket tool. (View large version)

If an element of the illustration doesn’t have a defined shape and needs a bit of improvisation, then I’ll use the Blob brush . Working with this brush on a drawing tablet is a real pleasure.

You can configure the settings of the Blob brush by double-clicking in the Tools panel. I’ll usually set it to the biggest brush to make the pressure of the pen as sensitive as possible. With several assured brush strokes, I’ll draw the background and the bushes, using random colors according to my feeling and then choosing more appropriate colors later. I’ll also draw the branches of the bushes with the Blob brush. If I need to correct the shape, I’ll usually use the Erase tool.

Using the Blob Brush tool. (View large version)

Here’s a tip if you ever have to transform a regular line into a ribbon flapping in the wind. I’ll use the Width tool to make the stroke weight variable. Using this tool, select the dot on the line where the stroke weight is to be changed, and drag the auxiliary lines until the ribbon looks the way you want.

Creating a ribbon from a line with the Width tool. (View large version)

Now, the image is ready for coloring. Yes, it looks weird without colors. But you need just a few minutes to fill in the shapes and get the image close to being complete. To complete the kite image, I added some small flowers on the bushes with petals flying up into the wind (using the Blob brush). I also added shadows using Multiply mode.

The outlined and finished illustrations. (View large version)

The technical work was not the hardest part for me. I’ll often spend much more time on sketching and developing the ideas. Now that the Smashing Book #4 is complete, I can say that the most difficult part was devising a “plot” for each chapter title. When I got the plan for the book and read the titles, I was at a loss.

Some of the titles are quite conceptual, suggesting obvious metaphors. But others are concrete and related to code, and those were hard to illustrate (especially with cute animals). When my imagination gave up, the guys from the Smashing team were ready to pitch in some inspiring ideas. So, this creative project was genuinely collaborate, and I think we were on the same wavelength.

Smashing Book #4, a new book for front-end designers and developers.

I believe both parties have taken only positive emotions from the project. Holding this hefty book now in my hands, I would have done some things differently — I’m never completely satisfied with my own work. Overall, though, I’m happy with the result.

So, enjoy the Smashing Book #4. It contains so much useful stuff. (Believe me, I know.)

(al, il, ea)

© Anna Shuvalova for Smashing Magazine, 2014.

White space is a powerful tool that can take your designs to the next level. When used strategically, that is.

Debunking the Myth: White Space is Wasted Space

Way back in 1930, groundbreaking Swiss designer and typographer Jan Tschichold wrote that white space "is to be regarded as an active element, not a passive background."

Long ago, Tschichold could see that white space was not simply dead space or wasted space, but rather, a design element in and of itself.

Let’s talk about some things that can be improved using white space.

Readability

Internet users don’t read, they scan. This just means there’s a lot more scanning going on than there is reading word for word.

Since it’s in the nature of people to scan content, we want to make sure we make it as easy for them as possible.

Good use of white space helps readers scan pages and information to pick up the most important key points.

A study carried out by Wichita State University showed that with optimal leading and margins — white space between and around text — comprehension improved.  The study fundamentally demonstrates that white space affects the reading experience.

Many designs can be improved simply by increasing the leading of text. The analog of leading in web design is the line-height CSS property.

For web designs, a popular line-height to font-size ratio is 150%. For example, if the font-size is 20px, then the line-height would be 30px.

The 150% ratio will vary depending on the font you’re using, but it’s a good starting point.

Compare the two paragraphs below. The text content and font-size is the same, but the line-height and padding properties are different. Which version is easier and more pleasant to read?

CSS properties of Version 1:

font-size: 16px
    line-height: 16px
    padding-left: 3px
    padding-right: 3px
    

CSS property of Version 2:

font-size: 16px
    line-height: 24px
    padding-left: 15px
    padding-right: 15px
    

By having sufficient white space in the form of line-height and padding, we can improve readability quite drastically.

Comfort

White space can make designs more pleasant to look at.

Check out the following example from an article about white space at A List Apart:

Source: alistapart.com

Both versions have the same text content. However, the one on the right has significantly more white space and is thus more comfortable to read. In contrast, the version on the left is visually jarring and busier.

Eye Flow

White space is a great tool for guiding users to chief focal points in a design.

Look at how white space is effectively used in the Apple iMac web page:

Even with a big and colorful competing image of the iMac on its right, your eyes will still flow onto the product name and tagline because of the strategic use of white space around it.

Emphasis

On every design, there will always be elements that are more important than others.

Using white space is one of the easiest ways to make your principal elements garner more attention. This is in essence due to having fewer competing visuals in close proximity to them.

For example, your calls-to-action are important. To make them stand out even when there’s plenty of other information on the page, you can surround them with white space.

Take for example the call-to-action button on the Marketcircle site screenshot below.

Because of the button’s visual weight and the white space surrounding it, the button is hard to miss even if the page has a lot of other elements.

Grouping

Let’s have a look at the following example. By simply adding in white space between the list items, we instantly create logical groupings within our list without having tax our brains:

All we have done with the list is add a little white space; we didn’t change colors, font sizes, add text effects or anything complicated.

Summary

As we have seen in the examples, white space can be a very potent tool in our designs.

Readability, comfort, eye flow, emphasis, and grouping are just some of the things that can be enhanced if we use white space as an active element.

Additional Reading on White Space

These will help you learn how to use white space more effectively:

• Negative Space in Webpage Layouts: A Guide
• Working with Visual Weight in Your Designs
• Gestalt Principles Applied in Design

Related Content

• Improving Usability with Fitts’ Law
• Symmetry in Design: Concepts, Tips and Examples
• Deconstructing Minimalist Landing Pages
• Related categories: Web Design and User Experience

About the Author

John Macpherson works for Media Surgery, providers of ExpressionEngine development services. He runs a podcast and video series about web development at Web Payload.

The post What White Space Can Do For You appeared first on Six Revisions.

Origami, developed by the Facebook design team, is one of the emerging next-generation tools for designers producing interactive, flexible websites and apps. It’s also free.

Origami is not a standalone application, but is actually a plugin for Apple’s (also free) Quartz Composer. While QC was originally developed to create motion graphics, Origami transforms (or evolves) it into an interaction prototyping tool.

The making of Origami

The team was frustrated by the process and the results of developing dynamic concepts with sets of static images. Not only was it limiting for presentation of ideas, they felt it also limited the ways they were thinking about interactive design.

The patches and examples that make up the Origami toolkit are specifically for creating interactive prototypes. Adding Origami also eases what has been a steep learning curve for Quartz Composer. No longer dependent on a coding team to create and test interactive mobile experiences, designers at Facebook are learning to use Origami in training sessions of about an hour and a half.

The giveaway

Facebook product designers Drew Hamlin and Brandon Walkin are largely responsible for developing Origami, and we can thank Hamlin for his work in making it freely available to the public.

The team at Facebook believes Origami can energize the field of interaction design and get us thinking about fluid behaviors rather than static image design. Internally, they’re training all their own designers to use both Quartz Composer and Origami going forward. There is also an open Origami Community group on Facebook dedicated to “discussion, questions, feedback, and sharing examples.”

By giving it away for free, are they missing a revenue opportunity? Maybe, but Hamlin reminds us it’s not the tools that make great design, but the designers.

Have you tried out Origami yet? How do free tools compare to premium tools? Let us know your thoughts in the comments.

X-Mirage: Mirror & Record iOS Devices to your Mac – only $9!

Small companies are showing that the technology we rely on can be redesigned to protect our data—and that consumers are interested.

As the reach of the Internet has grown, so has the medium’s favored business model: targeted advertising. Signals recording our activity are harvested as we browse the Web and, increasingly, as we use our smartphones. That information is used to build profiles that help advertisers target ads, and opting out is rarely easy.

While the Opening Ceremony of the 2014 Winter Olympics won’t take place until this Friday at 7:30 P.M. EST, some athletic events have already started.

But it is not just figure skating, snowboard half pipes and luge runs that are getting tongues wagging in the Olympic venue.

Here are seven Sochi Sins that are looming large behind the festive medal podiums:

1. Corruption. Many prominent Russian businessmen and officials have been accused of Olympic-sized fraud – and there’s even a map to explain it. Putin estimated in April 2013 that the Olympics would cost around $6.5 billion for 22 projects, and yet the minimum assessment was nearly $10.9 billion for 200.

These funded “projects” include a theme park to be finished in 2020, a motorway that destroyed 370 acres of the protected Sochi National Forest, and a 3 billion dollar alpine ski resort built for Olympic tourists.

2. Death to the dogs. Thousands of stray dogs roam the streets of Sochi. Basya Services, a Russian pest control company, was contracted to exterminate stray dogs through the entirety of the Olympic Games. The director of Basya

“was stunned last week when he attended a rehearsal for the opening ceremony and saw a stray dog walking in on the performers.”

Though no one knows how the dogs will be put down (because “catch and dispose” could mean anything), one woman witnessed a doing being poisoned. This practice isn’t new – thousands of dogs were killed prior to the 2004 Olympics in Athens.

3. Construction. The process is slow – Gorki Plaza is not yet finished, and only six of the nine media hotels are operational. Residents are uprooted – construction accidents led to several homes in Sochi collapsing or tilting.

Workers are not compensated – over one hundred Serbians were deported to their home countries without pay after being lured to work on Olympic construction sites for the past three months.

The city is a safety hazard – but the piles of trash, crumbling sidewalks and unfinished buildings won’t be seen on television. And sometimes, framed pictures of Putin are more important that a finished hotel floor behind the receptionist desk.

4. #SochiProblems. With 103,000 followers already, the Twitter account @SochiProblems has made a laughing stock out of the Olympic city. Pictures of uncovered manholes, falling ceiling lights and brownish-yellow water have been posted on the account. Users tweet in their own “#SochiProblems,” such as this one from New York Times sports reporter Mary Pilon: ”Day starts w/email to editor “stuck in hotel room.” The door lock appears to be broken. I have wifi and granola.”

5. A fickle flame. Over its 40,000 mile journey, the Olympic torch burnt out 44 times - including after Putin lit it in front of the Kremlin.

6. Not-so-fickle terrorists. The U.S. Department of Homeland Security has issued travel warnings for Russia, asking visitors to be on the look out for suspicious activity.

“Black widow” suicide bombers could potentially use toothpaste tubes to hide explosive devises, while internet threats were made by a militant Iraqi group called “Ansar al-Sunna” that took responsibility for the recent suicide attack on Volgograd.

 The Russian military has tightened security, enforcing pat-downs at train stations and stationing 40,000 troops and policemen in Sochi.

7. Even the internet has doubts about Sochi. Okay, this one is less serious, but take a look at these Russian-made memes making fun of Sochi. Our favorite is “Olympic Bingo” to find failures and mishaps over the course of the games – but you also can play this Predicted Opening Ceremony Symbols version by The Wall Street Journal.

This week, a project by Jason Hughes, IMDA, was included in a New York Times Education Life slideshow that highlights the work of students whose art creatively solves a problem. One of only 17 featured artworks, Hughes’ limited edition Artistic Futures Savings Bonds aim to raise and sustain support for future artworks. He says, “they can be bought for $100 and increase in value every six months, to $250 in 10 years. Art patrons can trade in the bond toward the acquisition of a new work or hold onto it as an artwork itself.”

View the full slideshow including Hughes’ work: “Students Get Creative”

The piece will also be included in an education supplement of the New York Times this Sunday, February 9. Learn more about Hughes’ artwork at his portfolio website.