Mandar Apte

UI/UX Designer from Mumbai, Maharashtra, India.

Category: Graphic Design

Graphic design is the process of visual communication, and problem-solving through the use of type, space, image and colour.

  • Wondering How to give design Interview? Here are few Design Interview Notes that will help you to prepare for the same

    Here are few words about Design Job Interview preparation from my own experiences.

    Here are my two earlier blog post that will allow you to prepare Resume & Portfolio

    1. How to write your Design Resume?
    2. Creating & Choosing Your First Design Portfolio Format & updating it over the years

    Details of Preparation

    • Prepare yourself for interview a day before on interview date
    • Cycle through in your mind what are your capabilities, your professional goal in life etc.
    • Go through your portfolio to see it is in perfect order for presentation
    • Read your resume to see there is no spelling mistakes or something missing from it etc.
    • Preparation can also start with having own domain & personal dedicated blog & portfolio website that showcase your work handsomely.

    Preparing specific job related Resume
    It’s not bad idea to have separate resume for different domains of Design dedicated to each i.e. If you work in this three domain called Web Design, Animation Film Design & Graphic Design then you can prepare three different resumes dedicated to each three domains.

    Preparing specific job related Portfolio
    If you have three types of resumes dedicated three different domains that can also go with three differently designed ‘Portfolio’ dedicated to three separate domain of design. e.g If you are going for post of Web Designer then surely you can show Web Design Portfolio & Web Design Resume to recruiter to tell him you have mastered the web technologies like HTML5, CSS3, ActionScript & even design tools like Adobe Dreamweaver, Adobe Flash, Adobe Photoshop etc.

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  • Design Tools Comparison

    Today I decided to compare different design tools or computer applications available in market to just to differentiate them with each other

    Before even talking about Computer Design Applications you can guess what big companies are involved in to developing them, examples are Adobe, Autodesk, Apple, Microsoft

    Sometimes as Graphic Designer, Web Designer, Animator is really hard to understand what tools to choose before even starting a design process but you have to keep in mind that tool are just tools not an design solution that will dictate your design process but it will just help you to do your job done.

    Comparison of Design Tools can be made on following basis:

    1. Price
    2. Ease of Use
    3. Popularity
    4. Type (Raster or Vector or Voxel)
    5. Apps’ Availability over particular Computer Operating Systems
    6. Compatibility with other file format & tools
    7. Features

    Price
    Price of paid apps like Adobe Photoshop, Adobe Illustrator are around $ 1,000. Paid apps may cost too much to your pocket if you are starting a fresh as a freelancer. But there are other opensource apps may just cost nothing to you pocket & save lot of investment in digital assets like apps

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  • What is right PC or Mac for Design i.e. Choosing Your Dream Machine to do Designing & less Computing

    Let me help you to buy your personal computer to do design…!!!

    As Apple’s Boilerplate suggest, ‘Apple ignited the personal computer revolution with the Apple II, then reinvented the personal computer with the Macintosh. Apple continues to lead the industry with its award-winning computers, OS X operating system, and iLife, iWork and professional applications. Apple leads the digital music revolution with its iPods and iTunes online store, has reinvented the mobile phone with its revolutionary iPhone and App Store, and has recently introduced its magical iPad which is defining the future of mobile media and computing devices.’

    It all started with Macintosh & Mac Paint…

    But in decade of 90’s Microsoft’s Windows system dominated the User Interface Driven & icon & folder driven computing.

    But When you want to buy a personal computer to do design tasks in your work routine you will want to buy a better computer with great processing power, a large display to occupy big images than to just minimizing & maximizing images, with good internet & networking support, big amount of RAM, Larger capacity hard drive.

    If you go by cost factor attached to buying a personal computer then assembled computer will win the race as computer hardware will cost around $500 & installing a linux operating system will add no cost to the bill. but you have to keep in mind the Adobe doesn’t support Linux operating system so most Adobe Apps like Photoshop, Adobe Illustrator, Adobe Flash will not work & support Linux.

    Then you will say what about Dell, HP & Sony computers…??? Well don’t they just are another type of Branded Assembled Computer who are using Windows 7 Operating system???

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  • Creating & Choosing Your First Design Portfolio Format & updating it over the years

    Being in field of ‘Design’ where person identified by his work… So documenting your own work in some kind of portfolio or just collection of well designed Artworks will work for Artist & his career.

    In today’s world of digital art having portfolio in tradition form like printed artworks on fine paper sticked inside leather jacket & having own domain name & website dedicated to showcase portfolio online will build credibility to artist’s professional career

    First I will describe what details that portfolio should describe on his portfolio

    1. First Page with Introduction to Artist & his Background
    2. Title of Artwork
    3. Brief Given
    4. Method of Approaching to Work & some details
    5. Nice High Quality Screen Shots of work
    6. Nice Layout & Arrangement of Artworks
    7. Year of Design
    8. Copyright Notice
    9. Artist’s Contact Details
    10. Credits
    11. A Thank You Note

    Here we look in to two ways of building portfolio, Digitally & in Traditional printed form.

    Digital Portfolio
    A Digital Portfolio may contains of two platforms PDF (Portable Document Format) PDF is Open Standard of Document Exchange, (I will not recommend PPT – Power Point Presentation as it needs Microsoft Powerpoint installer on display machine) & HTML (Website)

    Portfolio in PDF File
    You can design portfolio in Raster Format through Photoshop & then export it to PDF or Design Portfolio in CorelDRAW, Adobe Illustrator, Adobe InDesign & then export it in to multipage PDF. Having consistent user experience will definitely work to identify you with your artwork.

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  • Want to attend a design interview? What will you carry in to showcase your design portfolio, and what will cost less to your pocket? MacBook? MacBook Air? or Just An iPad

    For almost the last year or two, I have been surrounded by this question….

    You want to attend an interview with a big company for a post related to the design industry…

    Then what will you carry with your MacBook? or MacBook Air? or iPad…

    Carrying your whole work portfolio on a CD or Flash Drive is risky as a recruiter may copy your work to their computer without asking you to do so. So there is the possibility of theft of your intellectual property… So, the right way to carry out your work would be on your Mac.

    What would be your next portable machine if you owned a desktop, like an iMac or Mac Pro? A MacBook or MacBook Air or iPad.

    It will be the right way to compare these Apple Products would be through their Price, Display Resolution Size, User Interaction and experience.

    Practically thinking all are Portables or Tablet & they all have Multi-Touch Gesture Support.

    All are costly: MacBook is $1,000, MacBook Air is $1,500, and iPad is $829.

    MacBook & MacBook have Mechanical keyboards, but the iPad has a Modern Multi-Touch UI that is groundbreaking in the Industry that even competitors are not catching up with,

    iPad 2 is with the duel processing in Tablet Form,

    MacBook Air & iPad have no optical media support, but all have WiFi inbuilt… But Adobe Flash Player is not supported on iPad.

    iPad Display Resolution is 1024px by 768px, MacBook’s Display Resolution is 1280px by 800px, MacBook Air’s Display Resolution is 1440px by 900px.

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  • Designed on Mac & Designing on Something Else

    Few points that I recognize that are important while experiencing design process on Mac & Something else called PC… Those are as follows

    Designed on Mac

    1. Mac has factory Calibrated display
    2. Square looks Square & Rectangle looks Rectangle & not other way around
    3. 15% black has identity on display & which is recognizable
    4. It has world class Industrial Design working for you
    5. It’s a style statement while using it
    6. No compatibility problem while working in group
    7. You know your design will look exactly as it is on every mac
    8. ‘Designed on Mac’ is kind of branding itself for your work for quality
    9. You have full control on your machine not other way round
    10. Has kind of hardware insurance as an ‘Apple Care’ program
    11. Almost clean workspace
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  • One Designer’s Problems Having MBA person as his Project Manager

    1. MBA Person thinks he own all work & credit of the same work as his own not the artist… because he thinks by giving suggestions & corrections he owns the artwork as his intellectual property…
    2. Because of the earlier point MBA person thinks he owns the salary increment & not the artist for work done by the artist.
    3. Manager thinks he should get at least 7 options for design problem & Designer thinks what the F
    4. When Designer say to MBA guy we need specialist in development but MBA person thinks otherwise & ask’s then “What’s Your Use?”
    5. Designer thinks about himself as he is designer… & he has to learn a lot about design
    6. MBA persona thinks about himself as he is BOSS… & he knows everything about design
    7. Designer is Designer but MBA person is Boss + Designer
    8. MBA person thinks Photoshop can do anything I mean almost everything… but designer says I need Illustrator or CorelDRAW
    9. One fine day MBA guy learns about GIMP & he thinks our designer should adopt GIMP than investing lot money on Photoshop
    10. MBA degree earns the respect & Designer degree has do lot of work…

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  • How IT Company or Upcoming Animation Company’s Design Supervision Department Functions

    Here is details of How IT Company or Upcoming Animation Company’s Design Supervision Departments Works or Fail to Work

    1. They decide everything even video editing on phone
    2. They try to find defects in you & your work so that you can improve on that
    3. They have so many hidden salary structure rules that when you find about that rules you just can’t stop laughing you find this when your actually salary totally differs from salary on the paper
    5. They have think tank discussing about future of design in their company where designer’s presence is not required
    6. They pay designer a salary structure of house keeper of their company
    7. They will find 5 main defects in your design but they will be unable to find 15 advantages of your design
    8. They will ask you one day their main query about design i.e. Dude What is Pixel?
    9. When you tell them about h264 codec they think it sounds like H2SO4
    10. When you tell them about h264 they think wmv is best format you can get on personal computer
    11. They think Pentium P4 is ideal machine to do video editing for designer
    12. The IT company has grade system to evaluate it’s employees but designer for that matter only fits in bottom first
    13. They want you to join them as trainee for first five months without getting paid for anything then they want you to sign Agreement or Bond with them for not leaving the company & then if you ask them how much you will get for that they say Rs. 3,000 to Rs. 4,000 per month, then you get the feeling what you want to do now…!!!
    14. They try to use 5 year old technology for their day to day work
    15. They think designers die to work in their companies

    So finally It really sucks to do job in IT company or Upcoming Animation company where being designer fetch no value…!!!

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    Mandar Apte
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  • Learning Web Design & Graphic Design on Personal Computer

    I know the day the I got my first windows based computer.

    In few days or so I started learning to design through computer using CorelDraw & Photoshop… as it was more popular in those days & as it is today. But mind you it was not long ago as it was year 2002-03.

    I read somewhere on web If you want to learn web design compare two technology giants’ websites i.e. Microsoft.Com & Apple.Com

    & Yes it was brilliant suggestion made…

    So I got to know one phenomenon called WYSIWYG, acronym for What You See Is What You Get. I started using Microsoft Frontpage to edit & design websites. I used to use Tables to design content with. But I got to know that there is something CSS (Cascading Style Sheets) & DIV tags. But it was not until year 2007 I started to learn CSS & Year 2010 I started to learn about DIV tags.

    Today I have website powered with WordPress (CMS – Content Management System) Designed through CSS & DIV tags.

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  • Few Important Tips to Designers & Flash Animators

    (I assume that you are well versed with design terms & design applications)

     Three Important Tips to Adobe Flash Animator while preparing 2D animations for E-Learning Courseware OR for Web

    1st Tip

    Use Movie Clips to place object on stage, use movie clips to place text, vector objects or image on stage when you want to animate it

    2nd Tip

    (Importance of Tip #01)

    Don’t create Tween in Library If you are using Flash older version than Adobe Flash CS5 because that create problems while using Action Script

    3rd Tip

    (Importance of Tip #01 & Tip #02)

    When you place & animate movie clips on stage, contains of those movie clips can be replaced without affecting animation e.g. If your movie clips has animation on stage & it contains vector graphic with color red, the same red color can be changed to blue or you can replace even whole vector graphic to anything without affecting animation as this animation not creating any tween in library.

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    Mandar Apte
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