www.discovergraphicdesign.com

[David Gillaspey]

Hi all,

I've been working hard to launch a new website, http://www.discovergraphicdesign.com. I think it's now ready for people to look at, though it will be a continuing endeavor for a long time to come.

The site is intended to teach the basics of graphic design. Nothing but text there at the moment (yeah, boring — but there's a lot of principles there already) but my goal is to use Flash's animation capabilities to create Flash movies that illustrate design principles in a way that static illustrations in books can never do.

The site does not yet specifically address web design. That's for the future.

Sincerely,

David Gillaspey
President
Great Church Websites

[ibda12u]

Wow,

I've been glancing at your site, and that's awesome. I think we often time just do, without know exactly what we are doing. I'll definitly be spending a lot of additional time here. :) looks like a great endeavor!

[flutem3]

WOW, DAVID,

That is terrific. I will learn a lot. Thank you for wanting to help us use the principles we need to be using. I have discovered that I use a couple.

Anything I can do to help, let me know!!

Carol

[David Gillaspey]

Thanks!

I held off replying because I hoped to add an example Flash illustration to the site (and wanted to mention that I had done so), but I'm stuck on a technical point, so it's going to be a few days before I can add the example Flash movie.

Sincerely,

David Gillaspey
President
Great Church Websites

[Faithhb_lutheran]

I'll be looking forward to those flash tutorials. in the mean time looks like I have some more to add to my reading list.

[David Gillaspey]

Hi Kyle,

To clarify, I won't be adding Flash tutorials ? just animations. I'll verbally describe one here (though I had hoped to actually create and post one on www.discovergraphicdesign.com over the weekend).

Goal: To illustrate the Gestalt principle that objects close together (as, for example, in a composition) appear to belong together, while objects spread apart don't appear to belong together.

The illustration: click on a button in a Flash movie and drag it from left to right. As you do so, a number of objects (e.g., small rectangles), formerly scattered throughout a small area, move closer and closer together until they nearly touch. When they're that close together, they appear to belong together, as one unit.

Now in a book on graphic design, you may very well see the before and after illustrations: the multitude of objects spread apart, and close together as a group. What you'll never see in a book, due to the expense, are the nearly infinite steps between objects spread apart and objects close together. Somewhere in the middle is where you, the viewer, will begin to perceive the objects as being one group.

Can't demonstrate that with an illustration in a book. Flash is perfect for it.

So, the Flash illustrations will actually be rather simple, but I think they'll have a powerful learning effect.

Now as for tutorials, I'm also, at this moment, learning Adobe Captivate for a class project. (The art school class is Basics of Computer Training.) This is a product that records the onscreen motion of the mouse as you create software demonstrations. (It can be used to teach other things, too.) I literally just tried it out, capturing my mouse movements in GIMP as I created a new document and entered some text. You CAN expect tutorials along this nature.

Personally, I use Adobe Photoshop, along with most professional graphic designers. But I realize that maybe 1% of church webmasters (that is, webmasters of 1% of the 350,000 churches in the United States) will ever shell out the big bucks for Photoshop. To be sure, more would buy the far cheaper Photoshop Elements. Nevertheless, I believe it would be helpful to provide some online tutorials (made with Captivate) about GIMP (http://www.gimp.org), the powerful open-source (free) graphics program. Where exactly I'll post those tutorials is still open. (There are at least three options: this forum, Great Church Websites, or www.discovergraphicdesign.com.)

(Well, I won't say I won't EVER add tutorials to www.discovergraphicdesign.com, but it's just not the immediate goal.)

As I say often, stay tuned.

Sincerely,

David Gillaspey
President
Great Church Websites

[Faithhb_lutheran]

Ok so I used the wrong word. that's never happened before :D. I was wondering what captivate did, thanks for the explanation and I will definitely add this site to my standing list of weekly visits.

[David Gillaspey]

Kyle: that's OK, it gave me a chance (or reason) to expand upon my previous post.

All: I've now added an example Flash animation to the website. (I solved the technical problem I was having.) It will explain itself.

I'd write more but it's late and I need to go to bed.

Sincerely,

David Gillaspey
President
Great Church Websites

[David Gillaspey]

I will definitely add this site to my standing list of weekly visits.Hi Kyle,

Actually, I wouldn't start visiting the site regularly til late November. That's because it will be a few weeks before I have time to start adding Flash illustrations en masse. (I say this so as not to waste your time.)

Right now I have a full-time gig (for which I've worked all weekend) ending in mid-November, and a tutorial to create for my Fundamentals of Computer Based Training class at art school to work on. That will keep me busy for the next few weeks. I'll post the tutorial on this forum when I'm done. It teaches how to do something in GIMP, the open-source image editing program.

After that, I hope to devote much time to www.discovergraphicdesign.com.

Sincerely,

David Gillaspey
President
Great Church Websites

[flutem3]

Hi, David,

I am so glad you are going to do something with the Gimp. I have it downloaded, but I have a terrible time using it. I can see that there are all kinds of possibilities available. I just am not really good at following some of the directions. I don't know what alpha channels etc. are nor why they are there. But I am much better than I was three years ago. :D

At that time nothing at all made any sense to me...nothing. And now I am trying to help an 85 year old and a 15 year old with web sites for their churches. And neither one of them can understand instructions any better than I could. I still don't understand the instructions on how to get Word to work. I may be 100 before I figure it out.

Carol

[exiruscreative]

Thank you for your efforts David in helping churches achieve great church website designs. They are greatly appreciated!

[David Gillaspey]

Thank you for your efforts David in helping churches achieve great church website designs. They are greatly appreciated!Hi Lynne,

Thanks for the kind words.

This week I opened up my directory of church website design at Great Church Websites (see URL below) to make it free to browse. I'm hard at work right now redesigning and revamping the site (offline).

As for http://www.discovergraphicdesign.com, the original subject of this thread (yes, we ramble somewhat on this forum), that will be a project I'll resume work on in January. I want to turn it into a wiki. That way, expert graphic designers can add their own thoughts on each principle of design. As well, I want to make it possible for expert graphic designers to add their own example artwork (small Flash movies that illustrate each design principle interactively). All this will enhance the value of the site.

In your original post (that is, the one to which I am now replying), you linked to your own website/design business in the body of the post. Did you mean to do that? Probably not. That would overstep the lines of propriety on most forums, so I removed the link.

(I host and administer this forum, which you may not be aware of, so you may see links to my other sites on this forum from time to time. It's a perk.)