Graphic Design for Photographers
with Susan Gertz
As a professional photographer, your expertise in lighting, posing, lenses, and composition shows with every shot! The last thing you want is to take away from your hard-won professional image with amateurish graphic design. Just as being a professional photographer is much more than knowing how to open Photoshop, graphic design is much more than opening software and typing words in a document!
In this program, you will learn how to make your own DIY designs look less like “crap” using the using the CRAP design principles: Contrast, Repetition, Alignment, and Proximity. You’ll also learn how to select and use typefaces to create the right mood and choose the right file formats and color spaces for digital and print uses.
Improving your design skills needs to go hand-in-hand with learning better production skills so you can execute your idea. We’ll focus on using Photoshop as your graphic design tool since it’s what you already own and use. These skills will translate to other Adobe Suite applications if you decide to branch out to dedicated tools for document design (Adobe InDesign) or vector drawing (Adobe Illustrator). You’ll leave this program knowing how to control every aspect of type spacing. You’ll also learn when (and how) to create vector objects in Photoshop.
Improving your DIY skills is valuable, but understanding when and how to work with a professional graphic designer is important too. So, we’ll end the program with what to look for when hiring a graphic designer and how to get the most out of that relationship.
A bibliography of learning resources will help you build your skills after the program.
More About Susan
Susan is the owner of Dog Patch Pet Portraits serving the Dayton and Cincinnati, Ohio area. She is a Master Photographer and CPP and has been a Grand Imaging Award Finalist in addition to being a Gold, Silver, and Bronze medalist in the International Photographic Competition. In addition to being an accomplished photographic artist, Susan has a Master’s Degree in Technical and Scientific Communication from Miami University which includes coursework in graphic design. She taught a graphic design course for that program for several years after graduating. She has worked as a graphic designer and technical writer for the Center for Chemistry Education (CCE) at Miami University for 30 years. Her design work for CCE includes logos, promotional materials, educational materials, and websites. One of her specialties (and favorite jobs) is designing long books using Adobe InDesign and producing both digital and print versions from the files. In recent years she has been learning animation using several different programs. As a freelance designer, Susan designs many of the same types of materials, often for fellow photographers.
