Beardie Bumper Sticker

[beardie]

Nice sticker design. And I have no concerns with the legality of putting BeardedDragon.org on it, if you want. Just run the final product proposal by me, and I'll give my approval for that design. That's all the legality you need to worry about. If you can use the same font used in the banner, that would be preferred, but I'm open to others if it just works better with your design.

BTW, if you haven't seen it before... check out 1001freefonts.com. You can browse MANY fonts, and they're free for use. I actually paid the $20 for the "10,000 font" bundle... I'm still weeding through the cruft, but there are many good ones making it worth the $20 to me (especially with my growing interest in Photography and design work).

And if you ever wanna just contribute the design (after making a little initial profit for yourself with direct sales) to the Beardie Stuff Store, just let me know. We have a few designs and ideas there, and profits from the store (typically only 10-20/mo total, except for the annual calendar) go to helping pay for the site.

Cheers,
-Alex

 

[Sidewind75]

this might be stupid..but how about a pic of the beardy with his hunting look and txt saying.."Are those bugs on your hood"

 

[TheFlyingLime]

Thanks Alex!! I'd much rather just contribute designs to the store directly instead of using them at Zazzle first; they only give a 10% kickback, and frankly I really love this site and would love to help out! I'm also really into graphic design, so I'll definitely check out that font site and see what works.

how about a pic of the beardy with his hunting look and txt saying.."Are those bugs on your hood"

Good one! Gotta love messing with that 4th wall. I'll add it to my growing queue.

 

[beardie]

FYI, CafePress' template for bumper stickers can be found here:
http://members.cafepress.com/content/help/img/templates/90_H_F.jpg

It's the recommended resolution for product images and such (200 dpi). Ideal file format is PNG (near lossless compression file format).

Also, if you're really into design, and haven't seen it before... check out creativelive.com. They offer free live (usually US day time hours) courses on all sorts of stuff. And you can buy previously recorded courses. I actually bought the 6-month Master Photoshop course (was cheaper if you buy before courses complete). But a good resource.

-Alex

 

[TheFlyingLime]

Thanks for the info, Alex, I'll definitely check out creativelive.com! I'm glad they like PNG, since that's my favorite file extension (and I recognize how much of a nerd I am for saying that).

I played around last night and came up with this design *nod to Sidewind75* using the cafepress template. The green border delineates the "safe" printing zone, so no bleed required on this design. This also displays my new favorite font (Alfredo something-or-other).

Now that I'm looking at it again I think I need to tweak the balance of the letters (too close to the top), and that green might be a little too bright or silly... any thoughts?

 

[beardie]

Ya know... I used to agree with you about PNG. And in some ways, I still do. PNG has some wonderful features (opacity, instead of just transparency, high quality compression, etc.). The file sizes are bigger than JPEG, but that's can vary... PNG8 is best for replacing GIF. Better looking and smaller files, and all the same support. PNG24 is a good JPEG replacement, except for a few things...

1. File size is usually larger (not always best for web pages)
2. DOES NOT SUPPORT EXIF DATA OR MOST OTHER META DATA!!!

Number 2 REALLY bothers me. You could use a program to embed geotagging, or even want to retain basic EXIF data (shutter speed, f-stop, etc.), but the moment you export to PNG, kiss all that data good bye! In that respect PNG is VERY behind the times. We need to be able to embed meta data into the images... date/time (of time shot, not just file time which can be changed when you copy an image), facial tagging, geo tagging, etc. PNG would be far more successful if they actually continued to extend it to support that... but from what I thought I remember reading, further extension of PNG was dropped. *sigh*

Wikipedia actually has a good article, and points out key advantages and disadvantages over other formats.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portable_Network_Graphics


As for the latest design... be careful of bleed zone. If you use the template I linked to, it will give good guides on where the "safe zone" is for content. I do think the green is a little to radioactive. And for "Bearded Dragon . org", I'd suggest increasing the character spacing a little... just enough to have a small gap between letters so it doesn't "blur" together. Also... don't forget... we're ".org", not ".com". The guy who own's .com won't sell the domain, and doesn't seem to do anything visibly useful with it. *sigh*

-Alex

 

[TheFlyingLime]

Wow, you're definitely more experienced with graphic design than I am (I started off with just traditional media and only in the past couple years have transitioned to digital arts).

I should specify that I originally used the template as a background layer, just to make sure everything does in fact fall within the safe zone. I think I actually need to include the bleed zone (with a white background) just so the image is centered correctly and whatnot, but the border does fall within that zone.

My bad on the ".com" thing! You're right, whoever owns beardeddragon.com is as lame as his site design (or lack thereof). Too bad we can't sic that 14-foot beardie from Youtube on him!

 

[Sidewind75]

here is another saying for you..

Yes my chauffeur is a Human

also maybe one that says something like I am not an iguana so many people think Mufasa is an iguana

 

[TheFlyingLime]

Sorry for neglecting the thread, I really will make the designs though!

 

[beardie]

heh. No worries. I get side-tracked with real-life all the time. Hmmm... which reminds me... I should make sure I haven't missed any moderator/admin topics in recent weeks. heh.

 

[ugamom]

I'd love one! Let us know when they are available!