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May 2013 Tips and Tricks: Making a Striking Coffee Table Book Cover
Making a Striking Coffee Table Book Cover
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Learn how to create the look of a fine tooled and gilded leather book cover, fit for display on the swankiest coffee table in town, using Xara Designer and Xara’s Live Effects. Gary Bouton (Gare online) shows you the way to master this special effect. More…
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Re: May 2013 Tips and Tricks: Making a Striking Coffee Table Book Cover
This makes a very nice foil effect. I like how the extra layer with the stained glass transparency gives the foil a richer look.
I do have a question, in Step 5 of the gold foil section you say that filter forge and some other live effects can't be applied to a shape with a fractal fill, but I've often done that. Perhaps it's because I'm using the full version of Filter Forge rather than the free distortions set? One thing though when doing this the first thing I always do when the effect has rendered is to lock the effect.
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Re: May 2013 Tips and Tricks: Making a Striking Coffee Table Book Cover
Hi Frances—
If you're using version 8, then I was able to get away without making a copy.
But I want this tutorial to work as described for previous versions, too, and the deal-breaker—which I've reported to Filter Forge—is in version 6, just as an example, when you try to apply the filter, you get (or at least I got) an error:
<class XFW::OSCallError> ::WriteFile(block 4, parent pipe 00000B34, slave pipe 003C8958) failed with error code 0x000000E8: The pipe is being closed.
So we're both right.
There are a lot of third party filters that cannot run in Xara; happy, most (that I own, at least) perform as described.
My Best,
Gary
P.S. Nice book illustration!
=======================This just in==============================
Tech Support for Filter Forge is excellent. They describe the problem as follows:
This error usually occurs either when the host application is terminated in Task Manager while Filter Forge is running, or when the host application hangs up or crashes while Filter Forge is running.
Unfortunately, we cannot do anything to prevent the issue.
It's also noteworthy that this free Distortion filter is 64x, while the version I tested against of Xara is 32x.
But the tutorial, as written, should provide the results I've shown if you make a bitmap copy of the fill and use that as the target for the filter.
-g
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Re: May 2013 Tips and Tricks: Making a Striking Coffee Table Book Cover
I thought I'd offer some more textures. You can certainly go out and get a free leather texture, but these are seamless tiling examples of concrete and other stuff. And they're free with no restrictions—a gift to our membership.
Attachment 96144
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—g
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Re: May 2013 Tips and Tricks: Making a Striking Coffee Table Book Cover
Hi Gary, thanks for a very enjoyable May Tips and Tricks and I learned a few more things from this Tips and Tricks, especially the destroying of the dynamic property of the Bevel. Also using the page and layer gallery to bring objects to the front instead of using Alt and selector tool, I was never aware of this. The use of the Filter Forge Free pack 4 was striking for the gold foil effect and a useful edition to my Live effects plug-ins. :D
Stygg.
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Re: May 2013 Tips and Tricks: Making a Striking Coffee Table Book Cover
Your finished example looks identical to my own, stygg!
Good show, glad there was something to learn, so let's see an original logo done up real pretty like Cotton Dan's, eh?
My Best,
Gary
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Re: May 2013 Tips and Tricks: Making a Striking Coffee Table Book Cover
This was inspired by some beautiful photos of the earth from the Space Station that I've been looking at lately. I used one of the Starfields that you posted a few months ago (I can't remember which thread) Gary.
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Re: May 2013 Tips and Tricks: Making a Striking Coffee Table Book Cover
Here is an example of using the gold foil effect on something other than a book.
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Re: May 2013 Tips and Tricks: Making a Striking Coffee Table Book Cover
Gary, thank you for the tutorial. I really do prefer the written out tutorials, and I appreciate that they probably require more work from your side.
I did have a problem installing the plug-in. As you suggested I chose "Filters" as the destination folder, but when in Xara it didn't show up under the live effects. So i looked for other filters (like AlienSkin) and found them in a map called PSplug-ins inside a map Xara Picture Editor. So I reinstalled using the PSplug-ins folder and that got it working. I'm using XDPX.
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Re: May 2013 Tips and Tricks: Making a Striking Coffee Table Book Cover
Quote:
Originally Posted by
guyke
..and found them in a map called PSplug-ins inside a map Xara Picture Editor. So I reinstalled using the PSplug-ins folder and that got it working. I'm using XDPX.
Hi Guyke—
Okay, I think this is one of the places where XDP and XP&GD are different. I try very hard to accommodate users of all versions, but sometimes I mess up. In XDP, you can define a plug-in wherever on your hard drive you like.
I will try to make a note in the tutorial that XP&GD requires that you install a plug-in to a specific, per-determined folder, thanks for letting me know!
I am trying to have one written and one video tutorial a month, but as with this month, it gets a little overwhelming to write, and then produce two unique ones. If anyone has a tutorial locked in their heart, PM me and let's talk about it!
Thanks,
gary
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Re: May 2013 Tips and Tricks: Making a Striking Coffee Table Book Cover
Quote:
Originally Posted by
angelize
Here is an example of using the gold foil effect on something other than a book.
That's really cool Francis, did you use the same technique as for the Cotton Band logo?
Stygg
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Re: May 2013 Tips and Tricks: Making a Striking Coffee Table Book Cover
Just finished my extra logo for the Cotton Band but I think I messed up some where on the text for Golden, not sure where or how but it doesn't look right.
Stygg
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Re: May 2013 Tips and Tricks: Making a Striking Coffee Table Book Cover
That looks good to me Stygg :)
Yes I used the same gold foil technique for the cup with two differences I left out the bevel layer as I wanted the foil to appear brushed on the cup rather than stamped into the surface, and I used the embossing filter on the gold foil to make it appear a bit shinier.
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Re: May 2013 Tips and Tricks: Making a Striking Coffee Table Book Cover
Thanks for that Francis, would not have thought to use Emboss to make it shinier, all good tips. :)
Stygg
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Re: May 2013 Tips and Tricks: Making a Striking Coffee Table Book Cover
Small informational point here:
You can fill a logo with a texture that's in the document, and you can also use ClipView if the texture you want to apply to the logo is large enough (without the need to tile).
-g
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Re: May 2013 Tips and Tricks: Making a Striking Coffee Table Book Cover
Tried another texture fill as you said in your last post Gary for the Cotton Dan
logo and seeing they were from the 70's, gave it that 70's look, or have tried to :D
Stygg.
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Re: May 2013 Tips and Tricks: Making a Striking Coffee Table Book Cover
I think it looks better with out the Fractal trans. as in #16, looks a bit more zingy mad colours of the 70's :cool:
Stygg
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Re: May 2013 Tips and Tricks: Making a Striking Coffee Table Book Cover
It's an interesting version, Stygg.
But Cotton Dan is a country/western group, and your new texture looks a little psychedelic.
I was thinking natural surfaces such as wood, or snakeskin might be more appropriate, but what you did is very artistic!
My Best,
Gary
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Re: May 2013 Tips and Tricks: Making a Striking Coffee Table Book Cover
Thanks for the tutorial, really the figure 20 did a great difference, however with converting the bevels to editable shapes, later realized that I lost the chance to change the bevel light angle at figure 10 :D Because somehow was not able to see that small line with arrowhead at that step, so just around set it rather on the infobar and thought that will modify it later :D
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Several other things are also learnt, tried to accustom using shortcuts too, so like Ctrl - Alt - I import and Ctrl - Shift + C bitmap copy. Ah and for me the Filter Forge plugin was not in Xara Live Effects list immediately, I had to add manually through Options/Effects&Plugins/Setup the folder C:\Program Files(x86)\Xara\Xara Designer Pro X\Filters\
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Re: May 2013 Tips and Tricks: Making a Striking Coffee Table Book Cover
One with snake skin :D
Stygg
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Re: May 2013 Tips and Tricks: Making a Striking Coffee Table Book Cover
very nice Stygg, I can tell you have been enjoying this :)
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Re: May 2013 Tips and Tricks: Making a Striking Coffee Table Book Cover
Quote:
Originally Posted by
angelize
very nice Stygg, I can tell you have been enjoying this :)
I have Francis :) It's surprising the possibilities you can do with this Tips and Tricks for May and I wouldn't be surprised if you came up with a few tricks more on this mini-tut :D
Stygg
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Re: May 2013 Tips and Tricks: Making a Striking Coffee Table Book Cover
@ stygg and everyone—
I created a font I consider a "logo starter kit". You type a gylph, add some text, you have a logo. At least a beginner's one!
Attachment 96321
Why not get some brushed aluminum, or some wood, and have a go at texturizing these logos?
It doesn't have to be a book this month! Get comfortable with making pressed lettering and symbols look photorealistic!
-g
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Re: May 2013 Tips and Tricks: Making a Striking Coffee Table Book Cover
Something like this, for a LEGO family looking for a starter home?
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Re: May 2013 Tips and Tricks: Making a Striking Coffee Table Book Cover
I had a look at the font, thanks for sharing with us Gary. Here is a pizza place logo done in sausage on a gooey carmelized cheesy background! The background image is a seamless procedural texture and the sausage texture I found on a free texture/stock photo site called Image After.
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Re: May 2013 Tips and Tricks: Making a Striking Coffee Table Book Cover
@Frances, and actually for everyone—a little mini-lesson in logo design:
Although in theory the pizza image outside of the logo and sausage texture inside is inspired and inventive, I don't feel it works.
• The brownish red predominant hue is too similar
• The pizza slice artwork is supposed to be a "hi-con" (high contrast) photo, and as such it's dimensiuonal and has drop-outs to suggest shapes through negative space. This makes the piece not ideal for filling with a complex texture. The overall look becomes disorienting and a logo should be clever but forthright.
So my bad for telling anyone that all the logos in this font would be good to use.
However, I like the idea of a fictitious pizza parlor (that isn't Dominoes), and I believe if we re-think, simplify, and leave ourselves open to interpretation and revisions, there is some fun to be had here. Bear with my train of thought:
Here's a very different treatment of your logo, Frances. The slices suggest, but do not depict, toppings. It's very stylized but recognizable as four slices of pizza. I ran some sans serif, narrow text around the top sort of like how a dealer's felt looks at a casino, the pizza slices might be thought of as playing cards dealt out (I know this is a stretch, okay?). Finally, I used a typeface called Elephant Italic to contrast against the tall skinny text, and it also looks a little Italian in its design. The Xara file is attached.
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So I looked around for a pizza background on the web, and bleached the daylights out of it so any lines in the photo wouldn't compete with the logo.
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Usually, green is not an attractive color for food, but pizza is an exception. I decided on a glossy solid color fill for this version to try to emphasize "cheese". Finally, I got desperate that the logo wasn't separating well enough against the visually busy pizza photo, so I spread a dark brown drop shadow beneath the text. It's not a great treatment of the logo, but then again, a good logo should be able to stand on its own without embellishments, and I believe the white on maroon original does that.
Okay, version 2:
Attachment 96335
I like this one a lot; I did three different bevels, each a different color, and the centre appears to have a slight highlight on it.
Version 3 harkens from the K.I.S.S. School—just use a solid color that contrasts against the photo. I used a slight drop-shadow to help separate the brightnesses in the pizza photo from the white of the text.
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And version 4 does indeed use an interior and an exterior texture, but ya gotta find ones that are appropriate and...work!
Attachment 96337
This is not my favorite version, not if I was trying to sell it to the client. It's too busy visually, I had to cheat and outline the logo, it's very very "busy" at the expense of visual communication....but I'll betcha someone in our community could make this work swimmingly.
I'm tapped!
My Best,
Gary
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Re: May 2013 Tips and Tricks: Making a Striking Coffee Table Book Cover
Quote:
Originally Posted by
stygg2003
One with snake skin :D
Stygg
I like this one, stygg!
:)
-g
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Re: May 2013 Tips and Tricks: Making a Striking Coffee Table Book Cover
I tried a different way to go about a this. I agree that my original was not working. In this one I used the pizza slice in a different way. I created my sausage which is just an ellipse filled with the sausage texture I used before and used the bevel technique to make it appear pressed into the cheese and even used the eraser to make it look like the sausage is under the cheese a bit on one side. I used the bevel technique on the logo to make it appear to be seared into the sausage (this took a filter forge noise distortion, a fractal plasma transparency and and embossing effect as well as the bevel.
I also adjusted the hue in my cheesy texture so the sausage stands out better.
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Re: May 2013 Tips and Tricks: Making a Striking Coffee Table Book Cover
Angelize, first and foremost, please understand that I'm not picking on you, okay?
My criticism is meant to be constructive, and actually the definition of "criticism" is not "to bash"....it's
"The honest evaluation or appraisal of a work or body of work."
Your revised design passes the legibility and contrast test.
But it fails to be appealing, I think.
Yes, it quite looks like what Barbara and I get in a box delivered to our door, but we're hungry, our sense of smell tells us it'll be great to eat, and it's warm (usually), and these other sensory distractions take our minds off what a pizza sometimes can look like: at it's worst, it's cooked meat slurry, an uneven shade of brown for the crust, and little bits of things scattered around it.
This is why advertising agencies spend big bucks on food stylists, professionals who know how to prepare food not so it tastes good, but so it photographs in an appetizing way.
I think you might be on to something with the logo branded into a slice of pepperoni...as a design element. But as the whole piece is presented, I'm going to go to Pizza Hut and not Blackjack's.
And I'm not being snarky here.
Give me a graphical reason why I'd choose Blackjack's Pizza over the competition. Not a slogan, a visual reason.
I know this is getting into logo design which is a little O/T, but color and texture and logos are inextricably linked in business graphics today.
Give it a thought, Frances?
My Best,
Gary
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Re: May 2013 Tips and Tricks: Making a Striking Coffee Table Book Cover
I know this is going in a completely different direction but I came across a lovely orange leather texture last night and it made think of handbags, and inspiration struck. So I took a whirl at using the tutorial methods along with some Eye Candy chrome metal effects to create my own designer label.
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Re: May 2013 Tips and Tricks: Making a Striking Coffee Table Book Cover
It is beautiful, Frances, truly top-notch work.
Now?
Work on your logo, your signature! Don't just use a font—modify it to express your individuality!
You'll thank me some day for this critique.
Or not.
-g
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Re: May 2013 Tips and Tricks: Making a Striking Coffee Table Book Cover
That is a lovely design label Francis, great complimentary colouring and chrome work. =D>
Stygg
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Re: May 2013 Tips and Tricks: Making a Striking Coffee Table Book Cover
Just finished this, well not sure what you'd term it as because I got stuck half
way as to whether I was trying to design a logo or an imaginary advert. So I carried on and ended up with this :D
Stygg.
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Re: May 2013 Tips and Tricks: Making a Striking Coffee Table Book Cover
You're having fun with this, and your design is nice, stygg!
-g
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Re: May 2013 Tips and Tricks: Making a Striking Coffee Table Book Cover
Ok back to the pizza logo this one is stamped into the top of a pizza box. I have some idea's for the designer handbag label, I'll play around with that more tonight.
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Re: May 2013 Tips and Tricks: Making a Striking Coffee Table Book Cover
good free place for vector stock
Obviously, I only had one pizza illustration in my font, but these others can surely inspire you when you sit down and design!
My Best,
Gary
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Re: May 2013 Tips and Tricks: Making a Striking Coffee Table Book Cover
A question cropped up in the Xara Graphics chat forum this morning about creating an etched in stone look and I gave it a whirl using this technique
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Re: May 2013 Tips and Tricks: Making a Striking Coffee Table Book Cover
Gary's piece is quite visually striking, as is yours, Frances.
General question to all: I came across a technique about ten years ago for first defining the centerline of a fat typeface such as Lithos Bold, and then cutting up pieces and applying different types of transparency to fake a chiseled look in stone, not etched.
Attachment 96427
The original file is attached.
Does anyone think this might make a good video tutorial for June? I have no other ideas at the moment!
TIA,
Gary
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Re: May 2013 Tips and Tricks: Making a Striking Coffee Table Book Cover
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Re: May 2013 Tips and Tricks: Making a Striking Coffee Table Book Cover
Sounds good to me too Gary :D
Stygg