RMRC Webinar Flyer

While I object to the term “webinar,” this was a fun project, mostly because Jeff challenged me to do better than FHWA’s big black oval design.  Not hard! So, a few things…

I used a layer mask on the road image.  After sizing and cropping it, I made a copy and fiddled with duotones until I got something I liked.  Then I changed the mode back to RGB and pasted a colored road pic on top of the duotone road.  I went to Layer, Add Layer Mask and chose Hide All.  Then I simply used the brush tool to remove the mask to show the double line in the original yellow.

After making it into a pdf, I used the Link tool (Tools, Advanced Editing, Link Tool) to hyperlink the registration url. Since the flyer is being distributed electronically and the url is a bear, this will make things much easier for potential attendees.

I laid this out in InDesign (yay!) because it’s easier to make pdfs there than in my ancient Photoshop version.  When I created the pdf, I the translucent bars had white edges and were raised a pixel or 2 over the image.  So in the pdf setup, I went to Advanced and set the Transparency Flattener to High Resolution. 

WTTAC Website Goes Live!

I relinked all of the WTTAC webpages on Tuesday so it’s all live and the old website is gone for good.  Vaso wanted it posted before the end of March so she could report it finished in the first quarter but with my accident and being sick on Monday, I didn’t get to it until the 1st.  Still, the work was done and it was just a matter of uploading.   It’s gotten some positive feedback, including a shout-out from Ashlee in Holland.  Hollah!

www.unh.edu/erg/wttac

Accident

There was a significant spring snowstorm last night resulting in messy roads this morning. I was rear-ended at the corner of Madbury and Edgewood on my way to work.  I was waiting for a truck to turn in front of me when the stupid kid behind me decided it was time to go and rammed me.  It had nothing to do with the weather…he wasn’t sliding, he wasn’t unable to stop.  Then he was SULLEN!  I took his name (Jon Sheehan) and phone number but there’s nothing wrong with my car.  I just wanted to make him nervous.

NOAA One-Pager for CRRC

Today I formatted a one-pager for CRRC that Kim worked on with Bill Lehr.  I did it in InDesign, natch, because I’m trying to transition completely away from WordPerfect.  It seems to work out well since the pdfs are perfect to send out and they print well.  Although, this one had to print at Standard quality since High quality was very dark.  I haven’t figured out yet why sometime Standard is better and other times it leaves all the graphics looking speckeled and fuzzy. 

Anyway, I kept the design pretty simple but changed up the look a bit from the regular one-pager so it won’t be so confusing.  I think it’s a little top-heavy but Kim is happy with it. For now, it’s in a directory I made under CRRC Promotions called “center one-pager lehr” for lack of any better name.

Nepal

Poor Maya contacted Maddy from Kathmandu (no joke!) asking her to clean up his map of Nepal which shows his sampling areas.  She thought it was beyond her so she asked me to work on it.  Ugh!  A fuzzy, poorly reporduced line map embedded in a word document!  I started by enlarging it in Word then taking a screenshot and pasting it into Photoshop.  In retrospect, I should probably have printed it out and scanned it but I didn’t think of it at the time.  I played around with the contrast to darken the lines as much as possible.  I actually drew in a river and its tributaries, completely guessing!  Then I cleaned up all the schmutz in the background, made new, larger symbols for the lakes, mountains, cities  and sampling sites and we sent it off to Maya.

Unfortunately, I was working with an older map that wasn’t up to date.  After Maddy sent it to Maya, he wrote back to say it was missing some of the data.  So, today I finally found time to revisit it.  In the end I had to add text layers for all of the sampling site labels so, while I was at it, I also rewrote the country and city names that I could make out.  I wish I could have found another map for him.  I even looked on line and would have been willing to shell out a little $$.  However, the only usable thing I found was $500.  That exceeds my generosity!  So, hopefully, this will be enough for Maya to include in his journal submission. I think it’s amazing that I worked on an image for someone in Nepal!  Ah…our shrinking global village. 

istockphoto

Last night, I purchased 10 credits at istockphoto so I could buy the pantone swatch image for my customized header.  I used my account and my credit card.  Do not use these credits for work!

Uploading Images to WordPress

Interesting.  WordPress will display an image in CMYK as a thumbnail but not full size.  Linking a CMYK image from Flickr works too.  But, I had to make my images RBG to make them load properly in WordPress.  Interesting.

Simmons Flyer

Matthew Simmons (the world’s leading expert on peak oil) will be speaking on the peak oil dilemma at UNH on April 4. NEK asked me to make a flyer. I wanted to keep it very simple since it’s only page-sized and I wanted it to be eye-catching.

I found a great image of an oil derrick on a snowfield at istockphoto (last time I use my personal account to buy images for CRRC). NEK liked it but said it should have a drilling platform. So I found a good but uncredited image of a platform on-line. NEK like it but wanted there to be ice. I gave up at that point but Kathy found an image for me. A teeny tiny web image (read: 72 dpi). I stretched it as much as I could and spent a lot of time cleaning it up. Not great but passable for what it is.

In each case, I placed the image at the bottom of the canvas. On the first 2, I was able to make a gradient on a seperate layer using colors sucked up from the image. Using some judicious blurring and erasing and a seperate layer of paint at low opacity, I blended the images and the gradient layers pretty well. Don’t judge by these images…I sharpened them after I shrunk them.  They printed very nicely.

On the final flyer, the sky was a mess so I ended up erasing all of it and made a circle gradient which I stretched and placed behind the platform layer. I had to get in pretty close to the platform to clean it up but I think it’s not too bad. Also, there is an additional gradient layer (linear) in the very back to give it color and depth to the sky. The circle gradient is basically light grey to transparent.

CRRC Annual Report

The annual report was delivered on Monday…as promised!  Paul Roberts at UNH Printing farmed it out to Ram Printing because we gave them so little time.  I have to say, they did a fantastic job.  Maybe because they’re so big or because they print all 4 colors at once (Paul told me the UNH press only prints 2 colors).  The blue is a dead match for my Pantone swatch (539) and is consistent all the way through.  I’m happy to go back to UNH printing our stuff but this turned out so much better than I expected. We did go with the Chorus Art paper with varnishing.  Hopefully it will not scuff.

WERC Logos

I created a folder in my Colleen directory (currently M called WERC and put the latest logo designs there.