Claudia McCue

I love the concept of Kindle — and it’s not limited to the Kindle device. I can read a bit on my Kindle, then pick up my iPad and, with the Kindle app, continue a book. I can even crank up the Kindle app on my Android phone and continue to read. Let’s hear it for the Kloud!

A couple of months ago, Amazon notified me that my account had been compromised, and thus had to be shut down: I would have to create a new account and start over. The result was that all the Kindle purchases under the old account would be wiped out. While there are a number of books I wouldn’t want to buy or read again (that’s another post), some of them are important keepers. I had to deregister my Kindle, iPad, and smartphone, losing all the archived titles in the process.

How would I remember all the books that were held in archive in the Kindle Kloud? Well, Amazon was kind enough to send me a list of every book I’d purchased in the last two years. I blanched when I looked at the list — holy cow, I’ve been spending a lot on books! Of course, that’s the beauty (and danger) of the Kindle: It’s so painless to buy a book with a simple click.

I’d just resigned myself to the expensive prospect of repurchasing the books I wanted to preserve, or having to request that Amazon reinstate my purchases to the new account, when I received another email from Amazon customer service, informing me that they’d given me a gift card in the amount of all my Kindle purchases since the beginning! And it was not limited to the books I’d purchased: it’s just a blanket credit to my Amazon account.

Now that’s customer service with a smile! And a hug. I was stunned.

I would’ve just repurchased my favorite books anyway; it never occurred to me to ask for reimbursement. Now, with thoughtful customer service, Amazon turned bad news into a gift, and created a lifelong customer in the process.

You may not have considered this, but software has to be regionalized to accommodate multiple languages. As you might expect, translating technical terms and interface components can be a challenge. But it’s important to make it easy for end-users to interact with the software.

In that spirit, I propose this change to the Buttons panel in InDesign, to be deployed in the Southeast U.S., where I live:

(We don’t click buttons down here in Georgia. We mash ‘em.)

A number of my clients are construction-related groups who are planning to use InDesign for proposals and other company materials. Previously, they’ve used Microsoft Word and Publisher, and found it frustrating to be creative. If you’ve ever tried been forced to do page layout in Word, I’m sure you can sympathize!

Most of these clients want to keep the “look” of their new InDesign documents in keeping with previous materials. But it’s tough to create templates when you’re still learning the program, so many of these companies have contracted with experienced designers to create the templates for them.

Since I like to see typical client files before training (so I have an idea of what they need to know), I often have the opportunity to deconstruct these supplied template files before the client starts using them. And it’s a good thing I do. With only one exception, I’ve found that the designers are not giving my clients a very good start! Clearly, they need to be asking more questions before cranking up InDesign.

Some considerations when building templates for a client: Continue Reading »

InDesign allows you to create custom stroke styles. If you’re tasteful, you can create interesting dashed effects or multiple-stripe borders. If you’re willing to be tacky, you can use some of InDesign’s hidden Easter eggs to take it even farther.

To get started, choose Stroke Styles from the Stroke panel menu (or the Control Panel menu). Choose the Dash option (this won’t work with the Dotted or Stripe options). The settings don’t matter — what’s important is the name. Name your new custom style “Lights,” and click OK. Now you’ll see a little strand of Christmas lights at the bottom of your list of strokes. Whee!

Click OK again to exit the custom stroke style dialog. Now you can apply your festive new string of lights to a frame. While you can only apply a simple solid stroke to text, if you convert text to outlines, that restriction is lifted. Mwah-ha-ha.

Create some text (preferably bold enough to give your lights some elbow room), then select the text frame and choose Type > Create Outlines. Choose the Lights stroke style from the Stroke pull-down in the Control panel, and set the weight of the stroke sufficiently high to make the lights visible (probably somewhere in the 5-10 point range). You can apply a fill color, but your choice of stroke color will be ignored. If you choose a Gap color, it will appear behind the lights, filling the width of the stroke weight you chose.

I’m not saying it’s right. This may fall into the JBYCDMYS category (Just Because You Can Doesn’t Mean You Should), but that just adds to the fun. All we need now is Debbie Gibson Boone singing “You Light Up My Type.”

You can’t select bulbs and change their color in InDesign, but you can select the art and copy/paste into Illustrator and modify it there. Then just paste back into InDesign.
By the way, there are others: try creating stroke styles named Feet, Woof, and Happy.

Just in time for Christmas and Hanukkah! Now you can give Kindle books as gifts!

True confession: I don’t have an iPhone (what?! What’s wrong with you?!).

That’s right — I’m a cellphone infidel. I’d like to have a sleek, hip iPhone, but I’m not willing to abandon Sprint for the more expensive AT&T service that’s spotty out here in the sticks where I live. Yet, I lust after the thousands of apps.

However, I do have an iPod Touch, so I can watch videos and listen to music while stuck on a plane, so I can run most of the apps I want, including the spiffy Color Expert app from Code Line Communicators. While it’s true that you’d get the most out of Color Expert with an iPhone (because of the camera), it’s still quite useful (and fun) on an iPod.

Some of the app screens in Color Expert. Note the photo at upper right, being sampled to pick a starter color for the palette-generation process.

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Choose from Color Wheel or Swatch mode, and then choose a color. Better than that? If you have an iPhone, use the camera to take a photo, and pick colors from that (on the iPod, you can pick colors from a stored photo). Then, choose the method for generating additional colors (e.g., Split Complementary, Triadic, etc.) If you’ve started with a color in the Pantone swatch book, all secondary colors are Pantone colors as well — very slick. A plus: Color Expert will display the CMYK, RGB, HSB, and Lab values for Pantone swatches. Is it a replacement for your Pantone fanbook? No, of course not — but it’s a great portable quick reference. Besides, you can’t play music on your Pantone Color Bridge swatchbook.

Once you have these palettes, what do you do besides admire your little screen? Well, you can save color palettes and email them. Unfortunately, they aren’t in a standard Adobe Swatch Exchange format, but at least you have a record of the swatch numbers or recipes. More than anything, I think, it’s a great way to brainstorm.

And it helps me justify having the iPod Touch

I realize this doesn’t fall under the heading of “graphics,” but I’ll bet a lot of you have an iPod touch. Even though I’d heard that the screen is sturdy and scratch-resistant, I wanted to ensure its smooth surface would remain unmarred.

There are a bazillion products to protect these things; I first bought a protector for about $20 that used a squeegee, sponge, and a small container of liquid to adhere the film. I made quite a mess, but with a lot of squeegeeing (is that a word?) I finally eliminated all the bubbles, only to find a piece of lint trapped smack in the middle. Aargh!

Then I found this product, absurdly priced, on Amazon. At first glance, you might get the idea that this is a cheap product. Its enthusiastic tagline — “The greatest guarder for LCD screen” — is quaint. The back of the package says “For iTouch II,” but it fit my iPod Touch 3rd gen perfectly. (Despite the illustration, it wouldn’t be appropriate for iPhone, unless you’re willing to cut a little hole for the speaker.) But it’s very well made, smooth and flawless, and the application procedure is painless and well thought-out.

It’s currently priced at $3.00, so I ordered 5 of them (in case I botched the installation–still cheaper than the one protector I’d already used). This protector provides a “tack cloth” to clean dust off the screen (I recommend using a good glass cleaner first). And it has a unique approach: there are two sheets protecting the screenguard: one covering the adhesive side, and one to act as a thick carrier sheet as you position the protector. A small protruding tag on the carrier sheet makes it easy to position the protector and use your fingers (or the tack cloth) to “roll across” the sheet and anchor it. The surface is smooth (not “rubbery” like the previous protector I used). It’s crystal clear, and you don’t even know it’s there. Highly recommended.

You’re probably familiar with Helvetica Neue. On the Mac, it’s even one of the built-in System fonts. It’s a commonly-used font — and commonly mispronounced.

It’s not “Helvetica Nu.” It’s “Helvetica Noy-yeh.” Sparked by my teenage love of German cars and a stint in high-school German classes, I long ago learned to love the Germanic economy of language. I always considered it wasteful that the French would put a perfectly good “T” at the end of a word, and then not pronounce it. The Germans, however, don’t waste letters. Porsche is pronounced “Porsh-eh,” not “Porsh.” It’s Noy-yeh, not Nu.

This has been a public service announcement

At first glance, you may have read this as “Hotel HelvetiCa,” just because we’re all so accustomed to the common font name. Our brains just want to fill in the “missing” C.

Helvetia was the Latin name for Switzerland in the Middle Ages. The label HELVETIA can be found on Swiss coins and postal stamps, while the abbreviation “CH” stands for “Confoederatio Helvetica,” the Latin version of “Swiss Confederation” (hence the CH sticker on Swiss cars and Switzerland’s top level internet domain, .ch.)

This is the Hotel Helvetia, in Lindau, Germany, on the beautiful Lake Bodensee.

The book — “Real World Print Production with Adobe Creative Suite Applications” (or “Son of RWPP,” as I call it)— is now in stores! It’s thoroughly updated for CS4 apps, including Acrobat 9 Pro. As you might expect, the chapters on QuarkXPress and Freehand are gone, but the general material about printing process and technology reflect some of the improvements in the intervening years, such as the spread of the Adobe PDF Print Engine in many vendors’ RIPs (we live in wonderful times).

The book is available from Peachpit Press, from Amazon, and through other booksellers.

Enjoy!

I’m sure you’ve seen and heard the flap over the Air Force One NYC flyover photo-op. It may merit the creation of an entirely new word for “stupid.”

But don’t you think it’s a great opportunity for a Photoshop ad?