Designing Better Information Graphics

By Steve Bain 

Before desktop publishing became just another job responsibility, producing graphically appealing information was a creative endeavor involving a number of creative and academic skills. In this tutorial, we’ll explore some of the basics involved in representing data in creative ways to add interest and engage the viewer. Although the techniques can be used with virtually any graphic application, the examples I’ll use to illustrate my points were created using CorelDRAW.

Cool Tricks with Paragraph Text in CorelDRAW

By Steve Bain

These days, there’s no excuse for churning out plain-looking text layouts. Using recent versions of CorelDRAW, there are so many ways you can make text more interesting to read, it’s a shame not to take advantage of them. In this tutorial, we’ll explore a few tricks that you can use with paragraph text to produce more visually appealing and professional-looking text layouts. Although this tutorial depicts a previous CorelDRAW release version, these tips are valid throughout virtually all recent versions of the program.

How to Crop Bitmaps in CorelDRAW

By Steve Bain

With all the various ways you can work with digital images in CorelDRAW, you’re eventually going to need (or want) to do a little cropping. Image cropping involves temporarily hiding – or even deleting - portions of a digital image. It’s generally done to change the image proportions to fit a specific design need and/or delete unneeded pixels and reduce your file size. You can do it easily with any version of CorelDRAW and it’s a relatively straightforward operation.

How to Design Better Newsletter Layouts in CorelDRAW

By Steve Bain

Not only is CorelDRAW one of the most robust illustration tools around, but unlike other graphics programs, it can also be used to create multipage layouts. This nifty feature makes it the perfect choice for designing projects like booklets, brochures, and newsletters. While expecting to create a 2,000-page catalog with CorelDRAW isn’t realistic, handling a few dozen pages with CorelDRAW is a breeze.

Adopt Better Layout Strategies with CorelDRAW

By Steve Bain

There are good and bad ways to build a layout, and simply making a project look pretty doesn’t guarantee it will be successful at getting a message across. In this tutorial, you’ll learn about layout and design habits that you should definitely avoid, and I’ll demonstrate a few best practices to adopt. These techniques apply regardless of which recent version of CorelDRAW you are using, and the core concepts generally apply to any software you happen to be using. So, there’s a little something for everyone in this installment. 

Design Basics: Increasing Image Impact

By Steve Bain

Want to make the mundane look magnificent? Transform ordinary pictures into images with impact through cropping, colorizing, sharpening, and other tricks of the trade. Here are the top techniques for adding punch to pictures in your layout.

I’ll demonstrate several techniques for enhancing the impact of digital photographs, including effective cropping, picture shape, adding focus to pictures, and special effect options.

How to Create Floating Images with PHOTO-PAINT

By Steve Bain

Digital camera photos and scanned images usually have a rectangular shape. This is fine if the shape fits your project. But if what you really want is a non-rectangular photo shape, you need to create a floating photo object.

In this tutorial, you’ll learn how to use Corel® PHOTO-PAINT® to select portions of your rectangular photos and save them as non-rectangular floating photo objects – the kind that allow the underlying background area to show in areas where no photo image exists. You’ll also learn how to use them in layout-capable programs such as CorelDRAW®, Corel Ventura®, Adobe® InDesign®, or QuarkXPress®.