Questions tagged [best-practice]
Questions about preferred methods of achieving an effect or other result. Using best practices may affect, amongst others, compatibility, degradation, and usability.
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Tips and resources for beginning designers
Thanks to the internet, graphic design and programming are becoming increasingly overlapping fields.
As a programmer, I constantly find myself needing basic knowledge of Graphic Design, but have ...
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Is there a reason Hillary Clinton's logo has hidden notches?
This question is not political in the least!
While looking at the SVG version of Hillary's logo found here, I noticed there were notches in the two vertical bars of the H. The arrow crossbar covers ...
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What is your file naming convention you use for version control? [closed]
I'm trying to figure out the best way to link a printed piece to the electronic file name. What are the best practices for file naming and version control? Do you use a log of sorts for graphic design?...
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Best way to send layouts with editable text to writers/editors who don't have design software
Here's a common design workflow problem, probably most relevant to in-house designers, but also to agencies who have a lot of non-design writing or research staff, or freelancers who work with in-...
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Best File Management Practices when you have thousands of Files
We publish over 100+ textbooks and growing (1-color, 2-color, 4-color) maninly designed in CorelDraw & Indesign with associated Image and Font Files. We also have merged multipage PDF & EPS ...
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Favicon best practices regarding size and format
I'm busy on a WordPress site and have come to the stage to add the finishing touch, being the favicon. I'm primarily a developer so graphics and icons aren't my strongest point.
What are the best ...
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4
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What technical/objective qualities do good logos have?
What objective (that is, not aesthetic) qualities should (almost) every logo have, that should you take into account when designing a logo or ask for when hiring someone to create a logo for you and ...
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Why should I ever use Unicode’s special characters for Roman numerals?
This is to answer a question which arose in the comments on this question on the Unicode characters for Roman numerals:
Why is this necessary or preferred over the usual way of typing ai, ai-ai, ai-...
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When should someone use ligatures?
What decisions and factors should be considered to determine when to use ligatures? Only in headings? Only in body? Purely by eye?
I ask because about seven people looked over a poster design and ...
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What are the best practices for dealing with desired line breaks in responsive web design?
I design a great deal of simple single page web items for sales or email. I often find I run into issues with headlines and my desired line breaks at different media widths.
For example, I could ...
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InDesign: How to create lines for form design?
Every once in awhile I make forms (applications and whatnot) in InDesign, and, as it often is with ID, there is more than one way to get it done.
I have a few techniques that I use, but I often float ...
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Technically, what are the prime gotchas that could affect your logo further down the road, if it incorporates justified* fx & blend mode treatments?
Explanation
(*Justified meaning they favorably add to the identity and aesthetics; i.e. we're assuming that they make perfect sense in a structural meaning.)
I'm looking for technically specific ...
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In a sentence ending with a bold or italicised word, does the period need to be bold/italicised too?
Maybe this will be considered a bit of a nitpicking argument, but I constantly find myself asking: In a paragraph where the last word is bold or italicised, should I make the period at the end bold or ...
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If a logo implies movement, should that movement be mirrored to match the movement of a vehicle it's placed on?
I've designed a nice logo for a company's charity food-drive campaign that incorporates a tilt and some speed lines to imply forward (rightward) movement. I matched the tilt of the art to the italic ...
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Methods for improving color choice and combinations?
I often struggle choosing proper color combinations. I'm self-ware enough to realize that I'm most comfortable with, and often settle on, colors which could be seen as more corporate or retro - blues, ...
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"Correctly" vertically center text in a box
Is there a canonical rule how to vertically center text in a box? Or, in other words, how to align a box around text?
I could imagine three options based on typographic metrics (see my non-exact ...
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How do big design companies share art files
Many projects with many files all uploaded by humans on one server will get messy, by definition. Even if they have a structure, when 1000 of people work on projects there will be made mistakes.
How ...
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The role of the designer in content – should he have one and how big should it be?
I'm a designer, not a marketer, and not a writer (at least not professionally). A lot of the work I do involves working with material in a field that can be above my head. Because of that, I'm content ...
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How to give back as a designer?
What are some places or areas where one could donate graphic design services for the greater good?
I don't really mean local not for profit organization, but more on a regional, national, or global ...
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What are the pros and cons of embedding images in InDesign?
I used to be against embedding but realized recently that it's possible to disembed and retain the original data (layers, etc.). Here are the pros and cons I already came up with. I'm interested to ...
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Best practices for full width browser images?
What are the best practices people follow in respect to images on larger viewports?
What size browser should we design for? Meaning how do we deal with high resolution monitors and what % of users ...
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How many logo variation is too many? [duplicate]
Some background & context
When including third party logos, we often get given low quality files. Mostly these are low resolution JPGs, but I have seen badly hand drawn scans (expected to be used ...
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Which raster image format is better for digitally displaying images when there is no transparency; JPEG or PNG?
I'm trying to determine which format is better to use when there is no transparency in an image. More importantly though, I'm trying to figure out when it's better to use one over the other.
From ...
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Changing Opacity vs Changing Color
I have noticed in several professional documents (templates, guidelines, co-workers' projects, etc.) the designer has adjusted the opacity of certain elements to get the desired colour.
Is this best ...
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