New Lesson! Logo Design (using Flash)...

This lessons comes on the heels of a good friend of mine getting offered $1500 just to "retool" a logo. Not even create one from scratch, but just to finesse it some. Now don't start salivating yet, and imagining yourself in a pool full of money just from creating a couple logos, but the point here is obvious... logo designers get paid well! As they should be. Corporate "identity" and brand recognition both rely heavily on an effective logo.

Suppose the Deli around the corner offered you $250 to design a logo. Not bad right. Probably it'll take a couple hours and if so, thats a good hourly rate. Now what if some new company specializing in micro-brewed beer was starting up, and wanted a logo. Would $250 be fair. Probably not. You'd be creating something that will be used heavily (on every beer bottle probably) to sell the product. So how a logo is going to be used is fair game in determining a price. And obviously too, a brand's logo will be scrutinized from everyone at the company from the CEO to the janitor. So you could expect plenty of revisions no matter how great your first draft is. So lets change the price tag. Is $2500 fair? You get to decide. I just sell the training.

Part 1 focuses on the basics of flash illustration, while laying out different things that can be done with single letter logos or logos using a company or person's initials.

Part 2 gets a bit more advanced in terms of shading the logo and some other Flash tricks common to this type work.

Part 3 (my fav) deals mostly with abstract shapes, which usually integrate into the logo or just sit beside or near a logo.

And where can you purchase this fine tutorial. Right here.

Actionscript 3 Music Player

Learn to program a Flash based Mp3 music player using Actionscript 3. The Features List (and roughly what's taught) includes...

-Dynamically load track locations from a text document (or simply write them in the Flash file). Easily update your player without republishing by simply editing file names (like "track1.mp3" ) in a text document.

-Use ID3 tags (embedded meta-data) in the MP3 file to display track name, artist, album and year. All this player requires is the location of your MP3 file, you do NOT have to specify the track info yourself.

-Change the audio balance by sliding between the left and right speakers. This is the first two types of sliders you'll learn to programm, the volume slider is the second.

-Minimize or Maximize the player (using that triangle in the bottom right). Switch the player to a more compact mode while not choosing tracks. You can decide how much you want to mask out.

- Spectrum bars animate based on highs and lows of the left and right speakers. Yes finally a player with working spectrum bars. You can adjust the visuals for this to look however you want.

-You always have the option to change the visual appearance of the player. Tint it, stretch it, brand it, do whatever you want to the player art.

-Drag it! The entire player can be repositioned by dragging the shell.

And hey, why keep reading about it?! Check it out in action CLICK HERE