love

Deke's Techniques 193: Drawing an ISOTYPE Couple in Love in Illustrator

Submitted by deke on 29 January 2013 - 12:15am.
Deke's Techniques 193: Drawing an ISOTYPE Couple in Love in Illustrator

Hey kids!

Remember the universal ISOTYPE symbols from last week? How could you forget, right? They're famous from airport bathrooms everywhere. I mean, just looking at them makes you wanna pee. And they have such sparkling personalities, it makes you wanna pee some more. Plus, Colleen devoted 17 blogs posts and a PhD treatise on the topic, culminating in this universal symbol for an airport bar. I know there's another pee joke in there, but I'm beginning to disgust myself.

Tangentially, did you know Valentine's Day is just 2 weeks and 2 days away? That hateful, horrible holiday. And these two, they have so much in common. So rounded and fingerless. He sports spandex, she wear that pretty cow-bell-shaped dress. And when they look at each other with their blank circular faces, you can see the sparks fly. Because you have eyes.

So I thought, let's put these two hotties in the same document and see what happens. And you know what, not to be a spoiler, but they fall in love. Not real, actual love, mind you, but pretend, stupid love, the kind you get when you edit vector-based path outlines in Illustrator. We even get to witness the man give his heart to the lady as a bunch of strokes. Which, frankly, is messed up.

And yet this all goes to a larger point: No one needs talent to draw anymore. You just need the Appearance panel.

Coming soon: How to render the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel using nothing but Illustrator strokes. And ISOTYPE people, of course. Speaking of which, what's the universal symbol for Adam touching God's finger, when they don't have any? And how does a rounded, fingerless, faceless, everythingless character invoke that cheerful old St. Bartholomew displaying his flayed skin? Because he's a gut buster.

This is gonna be tough. See, Michelangelo's peeps are always wandering around with their junk hanging out. And my lover's got no junk.

But you know, now that I think about it, I bet you can solve that problem with lots and lots of strokes. Inside Illustrator. Read more » 

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Creating a Universal Woman Symbol in Adobe Illustrator without Drawing At All

Submitted by colleen on 23 January 2013 - 12:15pm.

Me, again. I know, I was just re-inaugurated as Empress of dekeOtopia on Monday and I'm already back again. I really wanted to call this post Cherchez La Femme, but alas, I have just enough tenuous SEO knowledge to understand that's too clever by half. Nonetheless, I promised to show you how to make the Woman version of the Universal This Is the Restroom You Need symbol. The Universal Man we created in Monday's post is lonely. And more importantly the ladies room in dekeOpolis remains unmarked. Could be awkward.

Illustrator to the rescue, as we apply a series of transformed stroke effects to our initial line segment, and create this badly needed universal woman symbol (without having to draw a thing, not even a skirt).

To create our Universal Chick, we'll begin with the attributes that we applied to create the Universal Dude in Monday's tutorial. For those of you (uh, slackers) who didn't follow Monday's tutorial, there's a sample file you can start from at the end of this post. Or you can apply the stroke attributes and transformation effects shown in the graphics below to a standard perpendicular 266-point line you draw yourself with the Line Segment tool. You'll just have to create new strokes to apply the effects shown. You're smart, if lazy; you can handle it. For the rest of us hardworking folk, here are the steps:  Read more » 

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The Droplet Song (A Love Song to a Lost Feature in Photoshop)

Submitted by deke on 19 March 2009 - 12:30am.
Deke sings a loving song of love

dekePod Episode 012: Hello, friends. Please accept my sincere apologies for the 14-week gap between this dekePod and the last one. Life and work, and more life and work, and still more life and work got in the way. Happily, I managed to clear my plate and come up with something new and special for you. Think of it as a kind of St. Patrick's Day resolution, in which I abandon my feisty ways and embrace my sensitive side. Even if it's only for one episode. Read more » 

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New Year's Treat: Photoshop CS4 Channels & Masks One-on-One Video Lesson 1

Submitted by colleen on 1 January 2009 - 2:35pm.

Happy New Year, dekeOmaniacs. To get 2009 off on the right foot, (and seriously, put that last insane bit of 2008 behind us), we've decided to share something special with you, our beloved community. Frankly, we can't thank you enough for all the love, humor, and patience you showed us last year. (Especially the patience during the month of December where we both pulled off the miracle submission of the book and reintroduced ourselves to our families who were wondering who those smelly if vaguely familiar people who were always chained to the computer screen were.) Read more » 

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How to Celebrate Freedom and Love

Submitted by colleen on 3 July 2008 - 3:48pm.

Well, Deke is safely ensconsed in a broadband-challenged area of "off-the-hand" Michigan, so I can write whatever I like today without him editorally looking over my shoulder. (I think he enjoys turning the tables on me.) So I thought about running my seasonably inappropriate and infamous "How to Draw a Snowflake using InDesign" tutorial, but, instead, I'll celebrate my personal independence the way all red, white, and blue-blooded American's do this time of year here in the states, by rounding up the best advice on how to photograph fireworks.

  • Over at the The Digital Story, Derrick's got a great set of basic advice for shooting your pyrotechnic celebrations. His first item? Turn off the flash: "Yes, you're going to be shooting in a dark environment, and if your camera is set to auto flash, it's going to fire. This is the last thing you want, so turn it off." This presumes you know how to turn off the flash. In fact, that's probably an even better tip: know how to control the flash on your camera before you're in the dark trying to figure it out on-the-fly. (For more sage advice on shooting in special circumstances, from airplanes to underwater to infrared, check out Derrick's book, The Digital Photography Companion.)

Have a small light handy for checking and altering settings on the camera and tripod without having to fumble in the dark. A small red LED key chain flashlight is perfect for this task. Red light is less disruptive to your night vision than white light.   Read more » 

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