Textures and patterns

There's a great resource of textures and patterns here on the website flickr.

afrgraphics is a member of the "pool" which means we are able to upload our own samples, but it also allows us access to use a number of the images there. Be careful though as some of the images are still under copyright, while others require a credit.

There's plenty of freebies around too, like this one.

Login is afrgraphics, and the password is the same as the one for this site..... (Les)

CBA debacle

This first attempt at an interactive timeline was pretty lame in the end.... Based around the Lehman Brothers, Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae dramas last September, it was too big for the average small screen. All the info was there, and while it had a few photos and graphs included, it was very static.



This next one was a better size for screens, remade from the original printed graphic......

This is how it appeared in the AFR....


and here it is online....

Rudd front page - Feb 4

Earlier this month the Rudd government launched the idea of a $42 billion stimulus package to boost the local economy in the current world financial crisis. News of the stimulus package hit the desks on the same day that the RBA had met and decided to drop official interest rates by 100 basis points..... this all added up to big news on the Australian financial front, which in turn called for a front page graphic.

There was plenty of early discussion about the number of graphs, pointers and photos to appear in the graphic. Drew was heavily involved in deciding what went in and what was left out. A difficult task given so much detail was required. Great job in the end Drew!

Further discussions are being held among some of the senior artists to decide how best to attack future front page graphics like this one.... (Les)

Illustrator small CAPS

There's another way you can change text to ALL CAPS in Illustrator CS3. You can still use the usual "Type" menu at the top, but there's also a little menu on the Text tool box which also does the ALL CAPS thing!

There's also a few other bits & pieces in there for the typographers out there, the most useful for us I reckon, being the SMALL CAPS option...... (Les)

The year that was....

To finish the year off, the AFR ran a couple of big graphics showing how bad the ASX faired during 2008 (the worst year on record apparently)..... the biggest graphic was a full double page spread produced by Ev and based around an open diary. It was a great looking job and took a fair amount of tinkering to get all the relevant details in.... The new handwriting font Ev used was a nice touch too - it helped make the diary notes and the two little side graphs look like they were hand drawn...... Awesome job!



The other major graphic was a timeline of key events through the year, again over two pages...... It used a nice set of colours and a collage of pics under the line, combined with a large amount of text above the line...... plenty of info in a much smaller space, but another great graphic.



As a side note I guess, this one looks like it may have caused a few cyber issues being sent through as 2 seperate images as opposed to a single true spread image.... not really evident unless you're looking for it though.... (Les)

End of the month special

Did you see this little beauty? The graphics package at the end of "Black November" featured a massive 14 elements - 11 charts and 3 tables!! Quite a job to get everything in and readable eh? Nice work!! Let's hope its not something we'll have to do EVERY month!! (Les)

Obama front pages

I guess it's all said on the Font Feed blog that "Historic moments call for historic front pages and historic headlines".

Last month (November 2008) when the US elected a new President it was big news worldwide. Barack Obama beat John McCain to become America's 44th President, the first African American President is US history. All over the internet, websites started displaying, comparing and commentating on newspaper front pages from all over the world. The biggest collection of "US election" front pages was at the Newseum site with over 700 examples from 60-odd countries... (all with downloadable PDFs also).... if you look long enough you'll even find the AFR one - though, because of the time difference between Australia and the US, the AFR US election edition is actually on the "next day's" page!!

Below are the AFR's and SMH's front pages.... Neither paper varied too much from their "usual" edition styles which was a little disappointing. Given it was arguablly the biggest news story in recent time, more could've been done to make the editions leap off the stands like The Daily Telegraph and Syndey's MX newspaper's did.



Below I've added a few more of interest (no I didn't look at all 700 of them!!).... some used a single image and large header to dominate the whole front page, and others used different approaches with graphics and multiple images. I thought the two newspapers below that used smaller black & white images of the past 43 US presidents were interesting. The Staten Island Advance in particular was the boldest use of images I saw.

I've included a cover from Spain here also which features a US-flag style graphic which is something along the lines of what Dot had been suggesting we investigate at the Fin. The graphic end up dominating the whole cover and looked OK. It was interesting to see how it was done too because at the time I hadn't been able to envisage exactly what Dot was suggesting.





Go and have a look at the Newseum site..... there's plenty of front pages there every day.... some with graphics too... (Les)

First interactive best & worst

Just thought I'd post a link to my attempt at an interactive "Flash" Best and Worst graphic....

Probably needs a few bells and whistles to spice it up, but I think I finally nutted out a few things that had been bugging me because I couldn't get 'em to work before.......

Anyway, let me know what you reckon I can do to make it look better, or more user friendly.... (Les)

Tips for improving as a graphic designer

I found this article of a site called The Design Cubile. Not a bad read. The writer has some good points for improving design skills and ideas. While we mightn't want do everything on his list straight away, it's certainly food for thought....

A "self improvement guide".... you can use some of it in your next performance review anyway!!

We've done the "blog" part at least ;-)

You can read the whole article titled 16 tips to improve as a graphic designer here

Page 1 goes live

Yesterday saw the first attempt at one of our "new" page 1 graphics..... As predicted, it arrived with late notice, but the lateness of the decision to run a graphic on the front page was due more to the actual timing of the BHP/Rio Tinto announcement driving the graphic rather than any indecision about whether to graphic or not graphic. The late news also created a fair bit of page changes for the subs inside the main book, along with a couple of extra graphics to boot, including a timeline and graphic size changes.



The actual page 1 graphic didn't seem to present any major dramas for the guys though. Clear communication, a simple idea, short, sharp text grabs (and not too many of them) all helping in the end. The BHP Billion share price line also fitted nicely around the photo of BHP chief Marius Kloppers.

A solid start (well done team) which will no doubt encourage the decision-makers to use more graphics on the front page in the future I'm guessing...... (Les)

The more links, the merrier!!

If you come across any interesting graphics links, please add them to our list of links!! The more links we have, the more useful this blog will become I reckon, even if we only end up using it as a gateway into other sites.....

Links to other graphics sites or blogs, map references, page and graphic design sites, fonts sites, illos, photos, even Illustrator & Photoshop tips and tutorials that could come in handy. Anything you can think of I'm sure we'll be able to use somehow... (Les)

US election graphics

There was no shortage of US election graphics going around the world this week.... most of them containing a US map of course. We ran a map of the US almost everyday in th AFR. During the weeks building up to the election with predictions etc, right through to the latest results were reported on the Wednesday night.



This year we also produced a US election map for the online guys.... it was nowhere near as sophisticated as the one the graphics guys on the New York Post produce like this one, but it was a start I guess. We updated our map 3 or 4 times through the afternoon to try and keep up-to-date with the latest results. This was the final 3pm update.



Most of the election graphics going around were fairly similar... there's not too many ways you can draw a map of the US after all!! It's a fairly recognisable shape, and all the details needed are contained within the individual states. I saw one graphic that stood out simply because it looked different. It was in the Sydney Morning Herald on the Thursday morning. Pictured below, each of the states is made up of a series of squares that represent each college vote. While the look of the actual US map is distorted somewhat, the graphic was simple, informative, and a very effective way to display all the information. (Les)

Page 1 samples

With the recent volatile share market activity, we've been asked to come up with a few ideas of how "graphics" could be used on page 1 of the newspaper in place of a photograph. Here are a few samples we've worked up so far as potential ideas. Each example tries to keep within the usual AFR style of including 3 or 4 stories on the front page, along with a few pointers and the usual masthead and pointer box across the top.

Obviously the page 1 graphic of the day (should they eventuate) would hinge largely on the information provided, and the accompanying photos available. Clear communication between all parties involved is paramount to maximise the time available for the best result possible..... (Les)