Design

In my perpetual cash strapped times, I'm often stuck wondering how I can make money. Lately, that thought has focused on what skills I have that could possibly earn a buck or two. So, in the regard, I'm actively thinking of posting low-cost, bargain priced graphic design "situations wanted" ads at places like fiverr.com.

But let me be clear. I am a graphic design hack. My specialty includes spotting good stock photos or public domain art and putting fonts on it. I don't actively "create" art. I use what I can find, and I "edit" found art. However, this is why I created a different blog called Rich Ristow Designs. It's meant as an online portfolio while I seek design work. Want an ebook cover done for you for only $20? Unique blog headers for $5? I can do that. Why am I so cheap? I can give you something unique while relying on stock photography and public domain work. I draw or paint nothing new.

Another Quick One.

Not going off of an actual program template, but sometimes cover design seems as easy as picking a good detail from public domain art and picking a decent font, and coordinating the fonts with a color within the detail. This took about ten minutes or less to do. A few minor glitches, though. But still ... not as labor intensive as some might think....

More of myself trying to learn photoshop....

Silliness rather than madness

Well, sometimes, I do have to resort to this sort of thing (while at my parent's house)....

A Futile Attempt To Cheer Myself Up

Two Ways I Just Killed Some Stress

Because of obnoxious writing habits (aka writing stories greater than 7.5k, but less than 20k in length), I think I'm just going to slap this on kindle in a few weeks and call it a day. And I'll likely use the one with the halftone circles ... after fixing a spacing problem along the edge.

More Playing Around With Photoshop

Juxtapositions

My brother has all of the artistic ability in my family, which makes me jealous. I wish I could draw. However, I have been trying to teach myself how to design book covers. Because of SEO and content mills, finding a good tutorial online is a little hard. (Sometimes, it's like finding good articles about writing: a lot of "you can do it!" fuzzy-wuzzy feel-good bullshit, but nothing telling you the actual nuts and bolts).

So, I have been relying on my training as in poetry to guide me. That may sound like fuzzy-wuzzy feel-good bullshit, but there's an actual point there. People who have extensive training in how to write contemporary prose are fo

cused more on writing sentences and paragraphs. People who have extensive training with poetry tend to think in terms of constructing resonant, striking and original concrete imagery. Two things often used in writing poetry are juxtapostion and parataxis. Simply, putting two images together and letting each other resonate off of each other. This is often seen in the "real" prosody and construction of haiku and other asian forms. So, with that in mind... here was a crack at a chapbook cover that will likely not be used. The idea was something that could go through a photocopier and be used for a side stapled pamphlet.

Stuck On Covers

One Possible Design (Grayscale is on purpose)

.

Another Possible design, but with the text needing centering away from the edges.

One Big-Ass Cat