Happy Christmas from Vickers Creative!

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How to adjust the baseline grid spacing in InDesign

A good habit to get into when typesetting in InDesign is to use the Align to Baseline Grid function to ensure lines of text on neighbouring columns sit on the same baseline.

However, the baseline spacing panel isn't that obvious…

In the menu bar, go to InDesign>Preferences>Grid. Here you will find the area where you can adjust the baseline grid, application-wide. The options available are: baseline start distance from top margin, relative to…, increment (this should be set to the body text leading unit, for example if your body text is 12pt on 14pt leading enter 14pt in the increment box), and view threshold for zoom level.

To make the grid visible go to View>Grids and Guides>Show Baseline Grid, and to align the text to this grid highlight the text and click on the Align to Baseline Grid button in the bottom right hand corner of the Paragraph palette.

How to remove sticky 'favourites' from the Mac OSX Finder sidebar

So, you've gone and added some folder or file shortcuts to your Finder sidebar (you know, the list of files and folders down the left hand side of your Mac OS X Finder window) and you can jump to regularly used stuff quickly.

Pretty cool, huh?

But after a while the list gets big and you can't see what you need quickly anymore. Maybe it's a shortcut to an old server item, or a file that doesn't exist anymore… Usually one would drag the item out of the Finder sidebar and the item disappears. But sometimes those pesky shortcuts just won't budge!

A little tip to remove them for good is to drag the stubborn favourite item out of the sidebar while holding Alt & Cmd. This forces the deletion!

New client: Saferworld

Vickers Creative is proud to announce Saferworld as a new client, designing their Gender & Security training document for Nepal.

Images to follow.

Multi column text box in Illustrator

Just like it's more type-friendly brother InDesign, Adobe Illustrator also features multi-column text boxes. Although in Illy, it's not as obvious but just as easy:

Create a text box using the Type tool. With the text box highlights go to Type>Area Type Options. From there you can set the following:
Text box width/height
Rows/columns (and their span/gutter)
Offset/inset spacing
Flow direction of text.

Makes Illustrator that little bit more powerful when trying to set text, huh?

How to create clipping masks in InDesign

Creating clipping masks in Creative Suite has a different approach for each of its programs, despite being a 'suite'. Here I'll explain how to mask an image or object in InDesign.

A clipping mask is simply the masking, or selective hiding, of parts of an image or object against a given shape. The shape can be rectangular, circular, or an arbitrary path drawn with the pen tool. It's the preferred method of cropping as the designer can non-destructively crop an image, for example in a magazine layout, then move the mask around the image in order to find a better crop.

If you're used to creating clipping masks in Illustrator or Photoshop you might find doing the same in InDesign a bit baffling at first - I know I did! Illustrator has probably the most logical way of dealing with masks: Path on top, image below, select both objects, highlight the path in the layers palette and hit F7 - a new group is created with the clipping mask on top, easy! Photoshop works the opposite way, obviously: Image above, path below, in the layers palette Alt-click on the dividing line between the two layers. Or use the new 'Mask' palette in more recent versions of Photoshop, which has a nifty opacity and feather feature, which is quite nice for softening masks when used in a montage.

InDesign requires you to do a third process. One must 'Paste Into' the mask!

Images brought into InDesign from Finder/Explorer/Bridge will automatically have a clipping mask attached. Try it: Selecting an image with the direct arrow pointer (black arrow) will select the image and give it a blue bounding box with handles:



Now deselect and reselect with the indirect arrow pointer (white arrow) - notice the bounding box is now brown with handles?



The blue represents the clipping mask which can be resized, cropping or masking the image:



The brown is the actual limits of the image, which can extend invisibly beyond the blue mask. One can use the brown handles to resize the image directly (keeping a finger on the Shift key to keep proportions, of course).




Scenario: You've just created a shape with a gradient, or some outlined type which you want to mask against another shape - how do you do that?

Well, simply create your object:



Then create your new mask shape:



Select the object you want want masked and Edit>Cut or Cmd+X:



Then select your mask and hit Edit>Paste Into or Alt+Cmd+V:



Voila! Your fancy gradient is now inside your mask!

July Newsletter

Leith on the Fringe
Rad Rooster, with design input from Vickers Creative. The stationery and promotional material is being produced by the Leith branch of printing.com, and clean grafitti promotional stencilling equipment supplied by Stirling's Laser Cut It. Read more at Leith on the Fringe and Vickers Creative.

Leith on the Fringe 2011 has now officially launched! The LotF guys have been busy on the streets of Edinburgh with a 'clean graffiti' advertising campaign which is sure to get the word spreading throughout the city. As well as the logo and branding, Vickers Creative has also produced the first in a series of flyers to be distributed throughout the city, business cards, and a venue show programme which is just about to go to print. The awesome website has been designed by Anthony Ellis of

Emotion Energy
Recent work: Presentation folders for the Royal Highland Show

Refer me onto a friend or colleague - 10% off for them, 10% off for you!

Not only will they receive a 10% welcome discount, you'll also receive 10% off your next invoice!
(Discounts apply to billable design work only. Not including billable third party printing services)
6 months old and growing!
Although Winter seems like a distant season at the moment, it's been 6 months since the dark days of January when Vickers Creative was born. And boy so much has happened; From working in the corner of a Glasgow tenement bedroom to studio space in a bright West End office, it's off to a flying start!

Over the months I've had the opportunity to work with great clients, including: Gav Livz, Cycle Responder, Singletrack, International Network of Street Papers, Emotion Energy, The Choke Folk, Prevailing Analysis, The Pokey Hat Vintage, DirtSchool, The Caurnie Soaperie, Leith on the Fringe, and most recently Crocodile Business Solutions and Iron-Oxide's 'The Tide Machine' kinetic theatre performance in Kirkcudbright. As well as working with my own clients, I have also had the opportunity of working freelance with great agencies The Marketing Café and Merchant Soul.

Here's to the next 6 months!

June Newsletter

Latest work:

Leith on the Fringe 2011 has now officially launched. Expect to see LotF artwork hitting the streets of Edinburgh in the next few days - literally. Stationery and promotional material is being produced by Leith-based printers, and other promotional equipment supplied by a Stirling based company. Read more at Leith on the Fringe and Vickers Creative.


Caurnie Soaperie - The world's oldest cold-press soaperie (founded 1922) is revamping it's packaging. Vickers Creative has produced two very different design for customer feedback, . The beautiful artisan soaps can be found at Farmer's Markets across Scotland, the Mugdock Makkers craft shop and selected locations nationwide.

May Newsletter

Work:

'LotF' lives! I'm proud to present the Leith on the Fringe '11 logo and identity. Leith on the Fringe is an exciting new Edinburgh Festival venture, running for the Festival duration in various venues across Leith! It will present physical theatre and dance from the fantastic Drill Hall. Website coming soon... Read more at Leith on the Fringe and Vickers Creative.


The Choke Folk also goes live this month - a brand new, high performance drain cleaning, repairs and logistics company. Vickers Creative was commissioned to design the logo and identity, vehicle graphics, advertising and more.

New clients:

Caurnie Soaperie - The world's oldest cold-press soaperie (founded 1922) has engaged Vickers Creative in revamping it's packaging. The beautiful artisan soaps, which contain only naturally occurring ingredients, can be found at Farmer's Markets across Scotland, and selected locations nationwide.


Pokey Hat Vintage - Vickers Creative is now working with Glasgow-based vintage clothing retailer, Pokey Hat Vintage. The first project is a web banner soon to be appearing on the Look website!

Cool stuff:
The inaugural Scottish Bike Show happened this month at Glasgow's SECC - The event's organiser Magdala Media really pulled it out of the bag! Looking forward to next years already...

Vickers Creative was there, drinking too much coffee (which was actually quite good) and chatting with the exhibitors. A big thanks to everyone I spoke to, the day flew by!


Philosophy:
Vickers Creative is committed to ethical graphic design and print practices. Where possible, I will use printers and suppliers in your area, not overseas. You can be proud that as a small or growing business you are supporting other businesses in your community. I believe this is essential for keeping valuable skills in Scotland and the UK, and in building self-supporting communities for future generations.

The Scottish Bike Show 2011

The inaugural Scottish Bike Show went off this month at Glasgow's SECC - Rowan @ Magdala Media really pulled it out of the bag!

Exhibitors included: No Fuss Events, Pocket Mountain books, Dramlanrig/Rik’s Bike Shed, Singletrack mag, Edinburgh’s The Bike Chain, Flotec Suspension tuning, Ironwood, Dirt School, Pedal Power and Renner clothing, 2Pure, Freeflow Bikes, amongst many more. In the middle of the huge hall were the BSD riders, jumping around a custom made plywood park, with quarter-pipes and kickers to entertain the crowds.

Vickers Creative was there, drinking too much coffee (which was actually quite good) and chatting with the exhibitors. A big thanks to everyone I spoke to, the day flew by!

New client - Caurnie Soaperie

Founded in 1922 the Caurnie Soaperie is the world's oldest cold-press soaperie.

Vickers Creative has been engaged to help in revamping it's packaging. The beautiful artisan soaps, which contain only naturally occurring ingredients, can be found at Farmer's Markets across Scotland, and selected locations nationwide.

New client - The Choke Folk

The Choke Folk goes live this month - a brand new, high performance drain cleaning, repairs and logistics company.

Vickers Creative was commissioned to design the logo and identity, vehicle graphics, advertising and more.



More to follow as it happens!

New client - Pokey Hat Vintage

Vickers Creative is now working with Glasgow-based vintage clothing retailer, Pokey Hat Vintage.

The first project is a web banner to be appearing on the Look website - launched in 2008, showcasing the best of the high street every day, plus features the latest high street fashion, beauty and celebrity style news.

Prevailing Analysis cycle jerseys

Vickers Creative shares an office with windfarm site analysis specialists, Prevailing Analysis. The guys are taking part in this year’s Etape Caledonia, and needed a custom designed jersey which continued and complimented their established brand.



The jerseys are being produced by Owayo.

Dirtschool cards and flyers

Dirtschool’s Chris and Andy are exhibiting at the Scottish Bike Show, and in dire need of flyers and business cards! A phone call to Vickers Creative and they’re sorted...

Check out Dirt School and the amazing mountain bike courses on offer.

'Leith on the Fringe' logo & ID

Leith on the Fringe is an exciting new Edinburgh Festival venture, running for the Festival duration in various venues across Leith! It will present physical theatre and dance from the fantastic Drill Hall. Vickers Creative is pleased to unveil the Leith on the Fringe ID to be used for the inaugural LotF festival.

Visit Leith on the Fringe

From the Leith on the Fringe official site:

"This is the exciting first year of Leith on the Fringe!  Inspired by the many artistic companies and individuals who call Leith home, we've focused the traditions of the Fringe into a modern formula and created an extension of the Edinburgh Festival network at our absolutely fantastic location – a performance venue, bar and Fringe ticket office at the Out of the Blue Drill Hall in Leith.

We'll be running for the entirety of the Fringe Festival and in an effort to make the venue as inclusive as possible and fully utilise the wonderful facilities the Drill Hall has to offer, Leith on the Fringe has been designed with circus art, aerial performances, physical theatre and dance in mind.  Think Big Top!  However we do actively encourage artistic proposals across all art forms and for all ages so please do get in touch with your ideas!

Leith on the Fringe has community at its heart – after all, it's from this vibrant community that our inspiration is drawn!  We invite you to provide a one hour workshop or masterclass twice a week as part of our workshops program, taking place around performances in the studio.  These workshops would be open to all for a small fee and provide you with a means to increase your proceeds at the festival.

LOTF will be effectively promoted and hopes to attract most, if not all, the 26,000 people who live in Leith! We also have the potential to attract a high number of people living in the greater Edinburgh area and many of the 1,955,913 estimated total audience that attended last year's festival; so think big!

LOTF is a fledgling initiative and one of our eventual aims is to provide an affordable space in which artists from the more unusual disciplines can showcase their work.  We are a not-for-profit organisation and our share of box office revenue will be put straight back into improving our service for next year and the years to come!"

Expect this event to grow and diversify over the next few months...

April newsletter

Clients:
I'll be working with Chris Ball and Andy Barlow's mountain bike tuition company, DirtSchool this month (you will have seen Chris and Andy ripping up the trails in the Border's trail centres, and Chris' monthly 'How To' feature in MBR mag). You can also check them out at Scotland's first ever cycle show on 16/17 April 2011, appropriately named The Scottish Bike Show.

Studio:
Vickers Creative has moved into a new studio on North Claremont Street -  a beautiful top floor office in a sandstone tenement building right next to Kelvingrove Park. For those not familiar with Glasgow's West End, it's a lovely quiet area with loads of coffee shops and bars. (I'm lucky enough to have the An Clachan café on my doorstep selling their own Arabica ground coffee, and boy is it good!)

Cool stuff:
To brand myself in a way more fitting with my own ethos and give my stuff a more personal, analogue touch, I ordered some rubber stamps from Stamps Direct. Very impressed with the service, the stamps seem well made and should last many years. Cue stamping anything that will take a solvent ink! They're great fun and very affordable, and a supplied design doesn't cost any more to produce than stock lines of text.

Philosophy:
Vickers Creative is committed to ethical graphic design and print practices. Where possible, I will use printers and suppliers in your area, not overseas. You can be proud that as a small or growing business you are supporting other businesses in your community. I believe this is essential for keeping valuable skills in Scotland and the UK, and in building self-supporting communities for future generations. 

Oh, one last thing...
Make sure you do something useful with the extra hour of daylight in the evenings!

VeloSolo cards

The latest job to be produced is a calling card for VeloSolo, shipped with any products bought from the best supplier of singlespeed and fixed gear exotica!

To compliment the vast array of sweet gear, VeloSolo wanted a nice cost-effective card which carried through with the contemporary theme of the company. I had already worked with the owner in developing the logo back in Spring 2009 so knew exactly what was required.

Because of the way the cards were to be used a 400gsm silk board was chosen, printed four colour instead of spot, with no special finish - with this in mind the print quality, colour reproduction, finishing and overall feel is extremely good.

Check out the goodies available at VeloSolo.

Printed by Solopress, a budget-conscious, fast turnaround online printer.

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March newsletter

February was a busy month, with new clients from all over the Scottish central belt; Edinburgh's Diamond Event Services http://www.diamondeventservices.com/; Glasgow's Jimmy Duncan and some exciting new projects still under wraps; and Stirling's Emotion Energy http://www.emotionenergy.co.uk/ joining the rapidly expanding client list.

During March I will be offering a free design audit! I will take any piece of design work (logo, illustration, flyer layout, business cards and stationery...) and analyse it. My design audit will highlight any weaknesses and show how it could be redesigned to make it more effective. It's completely free of charge and without obligation, so get in touch today (or pass onto someone you know who could do with a makeover).

Vickers Creative is committed to ethical graphic design and print practices. Where possible, I will use printers and suppliers in your area, not overseas. You can be proud that as a small or growing business you are supporting other businesses in your community. I believe this is essential for keeping valuable skills in Scotland and the UK, and in building self-supporting communities for future generations.

Have a great March, looks like Spring has come early!

New client - Emotion Energy

Vickers Creative is now working with Stirling’s Emotion Energy http://www.emotionenergy.co.uk/ on a range of graphic design projects.

Emotion Energy are MCS accredited installers of renewable heat and energy systems.

New client - Diamond Event Services

Edinburgh's Diamond Event Services http://www.diamondeventservices.com/ has commissioned Vickers Creative to work on a series of branding updates to improve the company’s public identity.

Diamond is rapidly becoming Scotland’s No.1 choice as supplier of support and specialist crew for events and conferences.

Site of the Day

AisleOne is one of the most interesting and diverse design blogs I regularly read. Great for a bit of left-field inspiration if the creative juices are drying up!

http://www.aisleone.net/

Site of the Day

Identity Designed is the showcase site of David Airey for corporate brand projects undertaken by the world’s best agencies. Well presented with an unbiased view on the work presented, and gives a fascinating insight into how problems were overcome. Some entries feature artwork used in the final presentation.

http://identitydesigned.com/

New client - Natasha Lee-Walsh

I would like to announce Natasha Lee-Walsh as a new client of Vickers Creative!

We’ll be working hard over the next few weeks on an exciting new project to be unveiled later this Spring. At the moment I can’t release any more details except that it’s a wonderful opportunity to work with Natasha on such a high profile job.

More details to follow...

February newsletter

This is the first of a regular newsletter I'll be sending out to past, present and hopefully future clients to keep you updated with what Vickers Creative has been up to lately.

First off is the new Vickers Creative website - over the dark winter months I've been drinking lots of tea, eating biscuits and tinkering with Cascading Style Sheets. The result is a brand spanking new website! And not a template in sight... check it out www.vickerscreative.co.uk

Secondly, the Vickers Creative facebook page is a hive of activity. You can see it here www.facebook.com/leepaulvickersdesign (the name will change once Mr Zuckerberg allows Pages to be renamed...). 'Like' it in order to be kept up-to-date with all the latest happenings in the Vickers Creative studio, straight onto your Wall!

Thirdly, my Twitter page has also had an overhaul. Yep, I've been busy. If you're a fan of tweets then follow me here www.twitter.com/leepaulvickers. I tweet occasionally (less is more) but this will increase as I have more to shout about.

And lastly, if you don't socially network and would like to become a professional 'friend', connect with me on LinkedIn www.uk.linkedin.com/in/leepaulvickers. I treat my LinkedIn contacts with the utmost respect and won't bombard you with endless mails.

All systems go!

It’s been a while in the making, but I have finally decided on a trading name, logo, a ‘brand’ identity and have applied it to this new site and my documents and stationery.

After much deliberation over what name I should choose to work under (and how it should look), I have decided to keep it short and simple and use ‘Vickers’. When using the name online and places outside of the realm of design I’ll add the suffix ‘Creative’.

The site was created in the extremely powerful and intuitive Rapidweaver app. I used a basic template and rewrote the HTML and CSS files to suit my needs. It is hosted by the excellent Website Design Glasgow.

Many thanks to the Design Forum, Graphic Design Forum and Designers Talk Forum regulars for their constructive criticism and advice.

I’m always interested in receiving feedback on any of my work, including my own logo, colour palette or fonts.