Zest for Graphic

Monday, 11 July 2011

Post Secret

Have you ever had a secret you cannot hold anymore? Then make your very own postcard, write briefly down you secret and send it to Post Secret 13345 Cooper Ridge Rd, Germantown Maryland 20874, USA.

All the post cards will be scanned and displayed on http://www.postsecret.com/ a must-see blog.
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Wednesday, 4 May 2011

freebies: 14 fresh free fonts found on Behance.net

I am proud to announce a new section of the blog with lots of free stuff. I am delighted to begin with a collection of unconventional fonts found on Behance Network and coming from all over the world: Spain, France, Germany, Thailand, Bulgaria, Italy, Netherlands, Indonesia, Russia and Finland.

Download them all!

1| CODE by Font Fabric

Download here.

2| Deibi v1.0 by Wete

Download here.

3| Bigmouth by Timo Kuilder

Download here.

4| St Marie by Stereotypes

Download here.

5| Dekar by Font Fabric

Download here.

6| Zag by Font Fabric

Download here.

7| Juice by Dhany Arliyanti

Download here.

8| mister jun by Clément Romier

Download here.

9| Hyperbola by Tarin Yuangtrakul

Download here.

10| HVD Comic Serif Pro byHVD Fonts

Download here.

11| BADABUM by Jonathan Calugi

Download here.

12| Amperisk by Alexei Vanyashin - 110design

Download here.

13| Teardrop by Blastto

Download here.

14| Funky&Bould by Tuukka Paikkari

Download here.
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Thursday, 28 April 2011

tutorial: how edit the layout of a PDF without the original DOC or INDD file

whilst keeping its text selectable.

Recently, after a corporate identity upgrade, my client realised the company had tons of technical PDFs with the previous logo. But as I wrote, the company had only the documents in pdf format and nothing else, no DOC, no INDD. What to do? Here you the tutorial with the procedure I have been using.

First thing first: do not panic and open Adobe InDesign.

1_Crop the PDF with Acrobat Professional, remove all the layout components you are willing to delete. Choose Document > Crop pages (or press Ctrl/Cmd + Shift + T).

In the pop-up menu in the upper left corner, leave CropBox selected, and then adjust values for the Margin Controls, you'll see a black bar showing the selecion you are cutting. In the lower right area, Page Range, select All.

Click OK Your page are now cut. Save the PDF.

2_ Open Indesign and create the new layout. Keep it simple, because you will not be able to edit the text body of your PDF (shape, columns, fonts and colours...)

3_ Choose File > Insert (or press Ctrl/Cmd + D) and select your prevoiusly cropped PDF. In the pop up manu make sure to select "Show Import Options". Click Open.

4_ The "Show Preview" dialog box displays a page in the PDF before you place it. If you’re placing a page from a PDF that contains multiple pages, click the arrows, or type a page number under the preview image to preview a specific page. Specify the pages you want to place: the page displayed in the preview, all pages, or a range of pages. Choose Transparent background. Click OK.

5_ Now you can notice a very small, low-res preview of your PDF next to the mouse arrow. Click once on each page of the new document. The PDF pages will place where you click with your mouse.

6_ Now you are able to move the old PDF pages to fit the new layout. It takes a while, expecially on long documents, but it is still way faster than retyping everything.

7_ It's time to export the document to generate a new PDF.
Choose File > Export. In the pop up menu choose "Save as Adobe PDF". Click Save and choose your exporting options. I usually choose PDF/X-1a:2001. Export.