RESEARCH POINT - Finishing your artwork

Identify the software you have available to deal with desktop publishing, image manipulation and graphics/illustration. How familiar are you with it? What do you need to learn? Make notes in your learning log. Don’t forget that as a student you can get software at reduced rates, so take the opportunity to ensure you have what you need.

Currently I use the Adobe Creative Suite. I use Illustrator for drawing and vector graphics, Photoshop for image manipulation and InDesign for desktop publishing for booklets, magazine and leaflets etc.

I am very familiar with InDesign and like the way it can deal with many pages and apply master pages if the design needs to change instead of doing the changes page by page. I'm still learning Photoshop and follow tutorials on Skillshare, YouTube and design websites to help me create an effect that I want as I did in the H.G. Wells book cover exercise. As there are so many different things you can do with Photoshop I often forget how to do something and have to refer back to my notes. Illustrator I do find a challenge and need to do more online tutorials to be much more proficient.

Learning all three programs to a higher level will enable me to use all of them together to design a stunning project.