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Deke's Techniques 039: Creating the Perfect Command Key

Submitted by deke on 27 September 2011 - 12:15am.
Deke's Techniques 039: Creating the Perfect Command Key

In this week's free installment of Deke's Techniques, I show you how to create the perfect Command key symbol in Adobe Illustrator. (For those who may not know, the Command key is the cloverleaf character in the bottom-left corner of a Macintosh keyboard.) Which may prompt you to ask, why? After all, the character is available from many Symbol fonts available for both the Mac and Windows. Two reasons: First, this is an altogether intriguing exercise---for experienced users and novices alike---and it may help you navigate your way around all sorts of symmetrical symbols in the future. Second, you can use this technique to make a symbol that matches other characters in a given font. In other words, drawing the symbol yourself provides you with a designer's degree of control.

Here's the official description from my video publisher lynda.com: Read more » 

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How I Translated a Comic Strip into a Career in Computer Graphics

Submitted by deke on 25 May 2009 - 12:05am.

Last Monday, I mentioned how recently I stumbled upon my cache of 400+ comic strips that I wrote and illustrated during the tail end of my college career. The comic strip, in case you forgot, was called Cereal. It never actually appeared in color, but thanks to Photoshop, I can turn the official logo into a collection of colorful, sugar-coated letters floating in artificial milk. Just the thing for a high-calorie breakfast.

I also mentioned how Cereal is the reason I was first confused for a computer graphics expert. To learn why--you know, like, as if you care--forge ahead.

Below is a summary of the turning point in my career in one frame. For the sake of modernization, I've added color in Photoshop. But otherwise, the image appears as I created it 25 years ago, six years before Photoshop hit the market, a few months before Adobe announced its existence. It's a blend of hand-drawn line art--which I drew with a real pen on real paper--and computer art--which I printed from a personal computer, cut with an X-Acto knife, and pasted with rubber cement (not Edit > Paste).

Now for the long story: Read more » 

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