affinity designer Artwork for greetings cards

[William Overington]

There has been discussion of a problem, but what follows seems more appropriate for Share Your Work, so a new thread, but with a courtesy link to the original thread.

https://forum.affinity.serif.com/index.php?/topic/136552-bleed-area-issue-with-designer-bug-or-feature

I am producing artwork to make what are notionally photo greetings cards, but I am making jpg files of the correct size at 300dots per inch CMYK colours and using those instead of photographs to produce one-off greetings cards, then uploading to the company's website and in due course receiving a card by post.

https://www.papier.com/

https://www.papier.com/photos/photo-cards

I have used

https://www.papier.com/customise/landscape-photo-313

and

https://www.papier.com/portrait-photo-315

I have found that the best way to do this is to work in pixels at 2171 by 1571 pixels, which is 7 inches by 5 inches with a 3 mm bleed area on each edge.

The two that I have produced thus far were produced using PagePlus X7 as I was used to it, but they were basically simple images on a white background. This was because I was used to using PagePlus X7.

 I am now starting to learn how to use Affinity Designer, I am a beginner, 

The following is a png of a copy of a part of the new design, produced today.

I have it in mind that this will be centred in a portrait format card, then using Affinity Designer to add colours at each side and into the bleed areas, with the intention that the finished card will have colour right to the edges.

The image is of some language-independent glyphs, some used more than once, so as to produce a poem, with each glyph representing a whole sentence. I produced the designs as abstract designs, but if one knows the meaning of a glyph one can read the poem in any language that you know.

I am wondering if readers who like a puzzle might like to try to work out the meaning of the poem. The designs are abstract but there are some clues.

William

These stars are so that if readers post their attempts or other comments, then the puzzle can still be new for new readers.

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[William Overington]

Here is my attempt to localize the poem into French.

(Supplementary note: My attempt has some errors, please see the later posts)

C'est l'éte.
La soleille brille.
La couleur est bleu ciel.
C'est l'éte.
Il pleut.
C'est l'éte.
La soleille brille.
La couleur est rouge.
La couleur est orange.
La couleur est jaune.
La couleur est verte.
La couleur est bleue.
La couleur est violete.
C'est l'éte.
La soleille brille.
La couleur est bleu ciel.

 

[Alfred]

*l’été

*le soleil

*violette

[Alfred]

Since it’s a poem, it might be nice to change “It is raining.” to “It is raining heavily.” so that the French version changes from “Il pleut.” to “Il pleut averse.”

[William Overington]

Thank you.

Here is the corrected version.

C'est l'été.
Le soleil brille.
La couleur est bleu ciel.
C'est l'été.
Il pleut.
C'est l'été.
Le soleil brille.
La couleur est rouge.
La couleur est orange.
La couleur est jaune.
La couleur est verte.
La couleur est bleue.
La couleur est violette.
C'est l'été.
Le soleil brille.
La couleur est bleu ciel.

[William Overington]

21 minutes ago, Alfred said:

Since it’s a poem, it might be nice to change “It is raining.” to “It is raining heavily.” so that the French version changes from “Il pleut.” to “Il pleut averse.”

Well, that would need an extra glyph..

So maybe two drops side by side?

William

 

[Alfred]

2 minutes ago, William Overington said:

So maybe two drops side by side?

Peut-être que oui !

[William Overington]

This is what I have got so far.

I need to add some more at the left side and maybe modify what is already there, and this is a png file rather than the jpg needed.

The file is poemdraft3.png

This is 7 inches by 5 inches at 300 dots per inch, with a 3 millimetre bleed area at each edge, using pixel measurements of 2171 pixels by 1571 pixels.

William

 

[William Overington]

I am trying to complete this card design.

What I am trying to do is the following.

In an updated copy of the above image, I have deleted the three solid area lowest down at the left side.

What I want to do is to add six coloured areas, one above the other, so as to fill the white space below the sky and sun.

I can produce the shapes with the pen tool.

The bit that I cannot work out is that I want to copy the colour from the watercolour areas at the right side so that these solid filled areas are the same colours as those at the right. So solid colour at the left, watercolour effect at the right, yet the same colours.

So that the completed card, bearing in mind that this artwork includes bleed areas within it, will display the poem, have colour to the edge of the card, and will also be a test piece to display how the colours look both solid and watercolour style.

The inside of the card to have the English localization.

But when I try to fill the solid areas, I cannot seem at present to be able to copy the colour from the right to the left, I just seem to be offered a colour palette. I have tried to use the colour picker. I expect that it can be done, but at present I cannot do it.

Any advice please?

William

 

[William Overington]

I have now got poemdraft7.afdesign, which has the six shapes, but they have placeholder colours.

William

 

[Alfred]

48 minutes ago, William Overington said:

But when I try to fill the solid areas, I cannot seem at present to be able to copy the colour from the right to the left, I just seem to be offered a colour palette. I have tried to use the colour picker. I expect that it can be done, but at present I cannot do it.

Please tell us more about your workflow, William. Are you using the Colour Picker Tool, or are you using the colour picker in the Colour Panel? What particular action invokes the colour palette?

[William Overington]

 

 

10 minutes ago, Alfred said:

Please tell us more about your workflow, William. Are you using the Colour Picker Tool, or are you using the colour picker in the Colour Panel? What particular action invokes the colour palette?

Hello Alfred.

Thank you for replying.

Oh, are there two colour picker tools!

I have been trying to use the one over at the right in the swatches panel.

I have six solid areas at the left that I want to fill with the same colours as used at the right. The colours at the right are line colours for the watercolour brush. this is all in the vector format.

The solid colours at the left are in placeholder colours at present.

For example, the second one down is currently a green colour, not necessarily the same as the green at the right.

I want it to be the colour of the orange line at the right.

If I select it and then click on the green rectangle next to Fill on the toolbar, I get the colour palette.

As a result of your post I notice that there is a colour picker tool in that palette.

But I tried it and I can pick up line colour from the right but thus far I cannot get that into the Fill rectangle.

William

 

 

[Alfred]

I think your problem is that the colours on the left are fill colours but the ones on the right are stroke colours. Try using the wells in the Colour Panel: pick a colour from a shape on the left, select a watercolour stroke on the right and then click on the picker’s colour well to apply the picked colour to the selected stroke.

[William Overington]

Thank you.

I'll try to have a go.

William

 

[William Overington]

I have now completed the artwork and paced an order for the card.

I had already done the watercolour part.

In the event I resolved the problem by going to the Colour tab at the right and finding out the rgb values for each colour in turn and writing them down onto paper with a pen and then using those rgb values in the colour palette at the left and got the desired result that way.

Having got the artwork right I produced a jpg file, had a look at it in Paint. then uploaded it to the Papier website, checked it and the greetings inside the card, which are in fact the English localization, together with a short writeup of what it is about. I had set up the greeting a few days ago.

I managed to get it all in there, using the Garamond typeface, the poem, centred, in 14 point and the description, centred, in 12 point, including my name and March 2021 so that the card has a timestamp.

Here is the finished artwork, 1571 pixels by 2171 pixels, which is 5 inches by 7 inches with a bleed area of width 3 millimetres at each edge.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I have been advised that the colours will appear darker when printed onto card.

William

 

 

 

[Alfred]

57 minutes ago, William Overington said:

In the event I resolved the problem by going to the Colour tab at the right and finding out the rgb values for each colour in turn and writing them down onto paper with a pen and then using those rgb values in the colour palette at the right and got the desired result that way.

You can copy and paste #rrggbb values into the box in RGB (Hex) mode. No paper or pen required!

[William Overington]

Here is s link to the basic template for the card.

https://www.papier.com/portrait-photo-315

William

 

 

 

[William Overington]

6 minutes ago, Alfred said:

You can copy and paste #rrggbb values into the box in RGB (Hex) mode. No paper or pen required!

Thank you.

How does one get the #rrggbb value onto the clipboard to do that please?

I suppose that my use of pen and paper dates back to when I did the NVQ level 2 course in Using Information Technology when that was the way we used so as to carry out a series of repeated actions without getting into a muddle.

William

 

 

[Alfred]

1 hour ago, William Overington said:

How does one get the #rrggbb value onto the clipboard to do that please?

Select the text in the box and copy it.

 

[William Overington]

Thank you.

Here is the English localization of the poem.

It is summer.

It is sunny.

The colour is sky blue.

It is summer.

It is raining.

It is summer.

It is sunny.

The colour is red.

The colour is orange.

The colour is yellow.

The colour is green.

The colour is blue.

The colour is magenta.

It is summer.

It is sunny.

The colour is sky blue.

 

If anyone reading this can provide a localization into another language, that would be welcome.

William

 

[William Overington]

On 3/26/2021 at 7:22 PM, Alfred said:

Peut-être que oui !

How about these?

For these, 'heavily' as you suggested for raining.

For the other five, 'heavily' for hailing,  yet 'very' for sunny, cloudy. windy and foggy.

William

 

[Alfred]

24 minutes ago, William Overington said:

How about these?

I think it might be better if the snowflakes were a bit smaller so that they didn’t collide, but otherwise that all looks fine to me.

[Smee Again]

Sorry, but this 63 year old man is very confused, and the following question is in no way critical of the OP and his image. Rather it is both an acceptance of my ignorance, and an acknowledgment of my being chemically altered by my chemo.

(A short pause while I plant tongue firmly in cheek . . . )

When did symbols replace words in poetry? Also, is there a book I can buy to translate this?

🙃

[William Overington]

On 3/31/2021 at 4:41 PM, Smee Again said:

Sorry, but this 63 year old man is very confused, and the following question is in no way critical of the OP and his image. Rather it is both an acceptance of my ignorance, and an acknowledgment of my being chemically altered by my chemo.

(A short pause while I plant tongue firmly in cheek . . . )

When did symbols replace words in poetry? Also, is there a book I can buy to translate this?

🙃

Thank you for your interest.

The symbols do not replace words. However, the symbols are language independent, so can be read in any language that one chooses.

This all arose because back in 2009 around the time that emoji were becoming encoded  as characters in Unicode, I got to thinking what can be encoded each as a character.

So, letters of the alphabet, already being done.

Digits, already being done.

Punctuation, already being done.

Symbols, already being done.

Whole words for Chinese and Japanese, already being done.

Emoji, picture characters, already being done.

What other items could also be encoded each as a single character?

What about whole sentences?

Yes, in principle, but there are a vast number of possible sentences!

Yet a subset could possibly be useful.

I then realized, and perhaps this is an inventive leap that may seem obvious in retrospect, like a Columbus Egg, that if a set of such sentences could each be encoded each as one character from a drop down menu from a list in, say, English, the character could be decoded automatically by software using a decoding list in, another language, for example French, but it could be in many (all?) languages representable using Unicode.

As part of English culture is to talk about the weather, the weather in England being very varying as a result of a high geographical latitude and proximity both to a large ocean and a large land area.

So I started thinking about dialogue through the language barrier about the  weather.

As time has gone  by I have thought of other applications, such as seeking information through the language barrier about relatives and friends after a disaster.

A proposal for the system to become an international standard is with the ISO TC/37 committee.

There was a good chance that the proposal, using the slide show that I produced, would have been presented at the plenary meeting of ISO TC/37 in June 2020, but the meeting did not take place due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

There is not a book that you can buy.

However, there are documents available free.

http://www.users.globalnet.co.uk/~ngo/localizable_sentences_research.htm

You might perhaps like the slide show.

To decode these symbols the following is available, free.

http://www.users.globalnet.co.uk/~ngo/locse027.pdf

http://www.users.globalnet.co.uk/~ngo/

The website is safe to use. It is not hosted on my computer. It is hosted on a server run by Plusnet PLC.

The website was originally acquired in 1997 as a "free with dial-up" internet facility.

When dial-up closed, people with email and websites were allowed to keep them.

I manage the website these days using ftp access over a broadband link.

The following links may be helpful.

Specifically,

https://corp.unicode.org/pipermail/unicode/2021-March/009397.html

https://www.unicode.org/review/pri408/

Generally,

http://www.unicode.org/main.html

William

 

[William Overington]

The above post is now complete.

William