Vacation is out

Welcome back to reality. Vacation time is over and we are settling back into our routines. Hears a last taste of summer as it slowly fades into the deep recesses of the mind. Very creative cover, very creative picture.

Great vacation great inspiration

What inspires you. A book, a place maybe a song. During this vacation try to take a slice of life and bring it back and have it reflect on your work. Share it with others. It will inspire. Send me some of your photos, we will post.

I took some photos of the the Shuk in jerusalem enjoy!

Mag 421/ FF 303

A couple of spread were worth noting that went to print last week. I know that its the summer and everyone is different schedules and trying to keep it together. Please take note of some spreads that were very inspiring from a graphic standpoint. If you dont have time to read, no mind, I dont have the patience to write.

Sit back and take in the color and enjoy

A picture is worth a thousand bucks

"What can be so hard about taking a picture?" you might say (don't).  In the case of Meit Haltovsky, he makes it seem that easy. In reality a good photographer is making Mishpacha look like a million...no...a billion bucks! Compare and look around. See what images are being taken for other publications, then come back to Mishpacha. See the difference. I do every week.

Keep your palette simple

Because I had the chance to do some illustrations in the upcoming Magazine heres a quick tip.  Of course there is a general excitement to use many of the colors that come with a beginners paint set. Burnt Umber, Raw Umber, Cobalt Blue, Red Crimson, as well as the basic colors of yellow, orange, and red. However, while approaching illustration keep your colors limited to three or four colors. Too many colors will be confusing and hard to balance on the canvas or computer screen. A good example, take a look at Monets paintings and see similar color palette is carried through the painting. Certainly there is room for dabs of accent colors, but the base should be limited and simple.

Below find some examples of Monets paintings

Celiac: A design Story

How it all started. Let me tell you a story about the day in the life of the design

Make a layout about Celiac, a in-depth article from Riva Pomerantz (spelled correctly). Quite a daunting task.Its very hard to make a nice design on a health piece. Many times the medical layouts look to techy, something more appropo for a medical journal rather than a womans weekly After some discussion with the editor the graphic designer found this image to match the article on Google images. Doing a search for Celiac, yielded this result.

Nice picture and good photography. The challenge was how can we do such a picture. So the next day we took some pictures of three wonderful children from Beit Shemesh (all with working papers) and it resulted in these pictures

Pictures were then brought back to Mishpacha studios where the graphic designer played with the image and created depth by adding an image found on Shutterstock

After some lighting changes and actions in Photoshop, the result was a very, original, and strong opening for a Family First article. Real thanks to the Editors (Bassi and Shana) thanks for supporting this, the Creative Director(me), the graphic designer (Leah Pinsky) and the little Elfs of Beit Shemesh.