questions re: perfecting bumper sticker

[minni]

Hi, please don't mind if I can't respond readily. I spent a lot of time attempting to crank out a bumper sticker such as you see in my signature pic. but it's far from ideal.

Ideal might be rectangular eye pieces (so the mini-blinds look more realistic).

The nose piece, and texted-ear-pieces are also far from ideal (perhaps different fonts?

How to get the text to fit uniformly, plus curve the text for more curvy ear-pieces?

Other difficulties were because I'm inexperienced at:

• Masking (I awkwardly Magic-Wanded & selected an oval eye-piece
  then transferred the selection to Imported miniblinds
  then pasted the miniblind Oval on top of Right-Side Eye-piece
  (something like that)
   
• Black-outlining of the oval mini-blind selection (for contrast)
   
• Other tricks necessary for professionalizing

Is this question too much of an earful? Any preferable way to word it?

[Spectre]

Howdy Minni.

 

A couple plugins listed below might help with some of the issues you're dealing with:

 

Tube Effect/Oblique (will allow you to curve and object such as text - **use in conjunction with Align Object**)

Align Object (Align an object on the canvas) **several plugins function from the center point of the canvas, such as Tube Effect; thus being able to         center an object is extremely handy.

Outline Object (as the name says, create an outline around an object), in your case one of the lenses.

 

 

Other than that some extra advice I can offer is to take advantage of Layers. Keeping the different elements of your image on separate layers will allow you to modify them individually and makes using selection tools such as Magic Wand a bit easier.

 

As for the font type, maybe try using something that's more compact and perhaps all in upper case. I'd also suggest staying away from cursive fonts or fonts that have a type of cursive aspect.

 

From a design point of view I find your concept very interesting. However, I'm a bit confused as to which phrase corresponds with which temple (or ear piece) since there are three phrases. Also, I'd point out that if its an actual bumper sticker you are trying to design, then small text wouldn't necessarily be appropriate or easily legible.

 

Anyways, keep working on it and if there's anything else don't be shy to reach out the community again

 

Cheers

[minni]

Howdy Minni.

 

A couple plugins listed below might help with some of the issues you're dealing with:

 

Tube Effect/Oblique (will allow you to curve and object such as text - **use in conjunction with Align Object**)

I see. Don't suppose there's any demo's of merely curving simple text?

Align Object (Align an object on the canvas) **several plugins function from the center point of the canvas, such as Tube Effect; thus being able to         center an object is extremely handy.

Yes, I can see where it would be handy. I'd love if there were video's with tutorial demo's of these various plugins all comprising one simple video

 

Outline Object (as the name says, create an outline around an object), in your case one of the lenses.

...again, are there tutorial graphic-or-video demo's of many of these plugins?

 

 

Other than that some extra advice I can offer is to take advantage of Layers. Keeping the different elements of your image on separate layers will allow you to modify them individually and makes using selection tools such as Magic Wand a bit easier.

I don't quite follow - again, an animated demo would come in handy.

Or an Ehow-type of tutorial, since Ehow is often geared to newbs like me.

As an aside - while on the topic of "Layers" - I have a quick, simple & humorous idea for a Layers tutorial geared to Wet-Newbs, which would have saved me weeks of not-grasping-Layers-concept, had it only been available on YouTube. If anyone here is interested & expert it cranking stuff onto YouTube, it would serve to help both Newbs, as well as offering publicity to Paint.net.

 

As for the font type, maybe try using something that's more compact and perhaps all in upper case. I'd also suggest staying away from cursive fonts or fonts that have a type of cursive aspect.

 

From a design point of view I find your concept very interesting. However, I'm a bit confused as to which phrase corresponds with which temple (or ear piece) since there are three phrases. Also, I'd point out that if its an actual bumper sticker you are trying to design, then small text wouldn't necessarily be appropriate or easily legible.

Thanks for the tips Your word-finder signature is cute too, and there oughta be a tutorial of how you achieved that

 

As for the 3 phrases:

 

Either of the phrases which contains the word "NIH" was intended as the ear-piece for the White-Mini-Blinds.

But the left-slanted ear-piece was not able to fit in the word Yet

..(since there was no room for it.

 

So I included both, in order to demo either option for feedback purposes.

...and taking into account that the Checkmarked & XX-ed phrases need fitting in as well..

My original intention had been:

So many eyes are blind with no sight

Yet NIH guys are blind to their plight

The trick for me, is figuring out:

The prettiest way to fit that all in with the Check-marked and XX-ed slogans.

 

(in case it sheds light, graphically-speaking, to understand the background for this - my dad has macular degen. so last year I found out about Dr.Lanza's NIH controlled study, and requested the forms mailed to me. But when I saw the ridiculous hoops which the NIH requires people to jump thru, on the offchance that they'd be among the minuscule percent of those who just might get sufficient SC's necessary for true regen. I flipped out & gave up. You had to be the most twisted-minded person just to figure out their stupid requirements!

Edited May 26, 2014 by minni

[minni]

Bump - any tips re: my above followup?

 

Or are there any tutorials or video's of logo's similar to what I'm trying to achieve, for me to use as a guide to follow?