Cyberpunk Librarian – Episode 27 – Pretty Pictures, Better Design

Join Dan for an episode full of tips, tricks, tools, and techniques for creating better graphic design! After all, you don’t want a dumb looking sign in your library! Put some thought into your design and it’ll show in the end result!

Links

Books worth checking out

• Thou Shall Not Use Comic Sans – Amazon | WorldCat
• Graphic Design: The New Basics – Amazon | WorldCat

Websites worth clicking

• Have a look at some beautiful examples of De Stijl.
• Behance Graphic Design Portfolios are great places for some ideas and inspiration!
• Smashing Magazine goes in-depth about design tips and tools.
• Hack Design will teach you about graphic and web design via email!
• The Design Blog is another fantastic place for ideas.
• Identifont will help you discover great fonts and replacements for fonts you don’t have.
• Library Signage gives you the good, the bad, and the OMG of library sign design.

Software worth your while

• Office 365 Personal and/or Home editions will get you the latest versions of Microsoft Office direct from the source. Always updated and always available via the cloud.
• Scribus – The graphic design studio for the rest of us. Also available in a Portable Apps edition.
• LibreOffice – The FOSS solution for your office suite. Also available in a Portable Apps edition.
• Pixelmator – The best, most affordable image editor for OS X. Highly recommended.
• GIMP – Cross platform, free and open source image editing. Also available in a Portable Apps edition.
• PaintShop Pro – A sadly underused bit of kit that is just as useful as Photoshop for 90% of the population at a tiny fraction of the price!

Music and Audio

• Woman in Blue by Cafe Del Chillia
• Ivana Kupala Night by Crosswords
• Gravitational Slingshot by Daniel Messer. Download for free on SoundCloud or buy yourself a copy of The View From Amalthea which includes this song and a few others.
• Printer sound courtesy of FreeSound.org.