Sharin' The Love 0 replies

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something to believe.

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19th February 2005

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#1 10 years ago

I suppose this would go down as a tutorial, but really I'm here to share some tidbits that anyone who makes signatures might find useful, if they haven't already found out on their own.

Tidbit 1: Contrast! The first tidbit seems pretty obvious, but I just wanted to get it out of the way quickly. It's also pretty self explanatory; but I'll just post contrastbad.jpg As you can see, without contrast (not including the text, unless that's all you have in your signature), it's usually pretty hard to see quite what things are. And it just doesn't bring attention to what's really there.


See the difference? She looks so much happier, and you should be happier too.

Tidbit 2: The Almighty Rule Of Thirds I don't know how many of you know about the Rule of Thirds, but it's a pretty important (and overlooked) part of making signatures in photoshop, or really any kind of visual art or photography.

If you don't know what the Rule of Thirds is, it basically states that if you draw two evenly spaced horizontal lines, and two evenly spaced vertical lines, that the human eye will automatically be drawn to the points where they intersect. If I completely just lost you, then consult this animation;


The focal point of the image, signature, drawing or photo should (according to the rule, anyway) be at or near the intersection. Frankly, I don't know how it works exactly; but it seems to be true to me at least, since all of my favorite signatures/artwork seem to work with it.

Example, Compare: jokerthirds0.jpg to jokerthirds1.jpg

Which image did you like better? If you're like the majority of the human race, you probably chose the second one. Why? Because it was aligned better.


Here are some other examples of alignment;

Spoiler: Show
Spoiler: Show
Spoiler: Show

Keep in mind it doesn't have to be perfectly aligned, I've just got a preset PSD file I use to make all my signatures so I can get it as aligned as possible. Just try and think about it when you're deciding where to put renders and such.

Anyway, that's all for now. If anyone has any questions, comments or wants to add any tidbits; knock yourself out. I should probably be sleeping right now, Peace.