The Plastics of Graphic Design

just an example of what can be made using free online editing sites.

So, some may not understand the meaning of my blog's title: plastic paper. I know its weird, but in my head it makes lots of sense. I gathered the 'title' from my boss, Annette who stressed to me during one of the first photo shoots that I did with her that lots of the things that we see in publications are 'fake'. Hence, the name plastic paper evolved from the process of attempting to make plastic appear to be paper...I often refer to 'fake' things as 'plastic'...so I hope that makes sense. 

Here's a good example of a plastic paper concept:

I don't own a copy of photoshop. I love graphic design. Those two sentences don't go together very well. 

Unwilling to fork out the money for a copy of photoshop, I've been forced to find other ways of creating pretty graphics for my blog, web-site, and business in general.....so here's my secret:

Microsoft Word is the far more than a program for word processing. Long ago when I was in desktop publishing class, Word and Publisher were to separate programs, but they are now all combined into the new version of Word for Mac. Here is how I frequently use word to create graphics. For the example, I'll pretend to be making a blog graphic about weird chairs..

1. Open word. You should get a screen that looks something like the one below. Next, choose: "Word Publishing Layout"

2. Now, my favorite feature of Word comes into play: Removing the background from pictures. Let's insert the pictures that I've gathered about weird chairs. Do this by choosing INSERT, and then PHOTO FROM FILE..now, select the pictures and go up to the tool bar and choose 'Remove Background"

Before Removing Background

Now, all we have to do is do a screen clip of this image to use on one of my favorite editing sites.

Press and hold these three keys and select the area (if you don't know how to take a screen clip):

Command + Shift + 4

Here's a list of my favorite online publishing tools...well, they're actually intended for use as photo editing or Flash website production, but I'm sneaky and use them for other purposes...they all have great features such as collages, cool fonts, drawings, etc.

picnik.com
wix.com
Picasa by Google (download)

And now, add fonts, drawings etc...and you'll end up with something like the picture at the top of this post :) it's made with picnik

best of all, these websites and editing options are free, and the possibilities are endless...you just have to be thrifty :)