Laser, Silk Screen Press & Vinyl Cutter / My Tools!

The Best part about being a Graphic Designer is seeing your work completed. The advantage of being hands on with my projects provides a complete understanding of all the aspects involved in the design process from start to finish. And also you get to see first hand how a design may look completed and come to find out it may need a few more tweaks, before lets say doing 300 hundred shirts or decals. Because every Graphic Designer knows what appears on screen may not come out the same way finished, such as blues looking purple if your not entering correct Pantones and wrongfully deciding to wing it.

CorelDRAW X5 Effects

Using the Contour and Envelope Effects in CorelDRAW X5 can make your designs a lot easier and beneficial to work with. The Contour Effect is similar to adding a stroke, but simplifies your desired look. Since you now have 2 layers you can add stroke to the both of them to add more color, efects etc... The Envelope Effect makes applying text to follow along shapes very simple. Using these effects together will make for easier changes and tweaking. Click on the image to enlarge. www.davidgklotz.com

What Makes a Great Business Card?

The most important idea of a business card is to pass on your essential information. We all know of the special paper stock and the raised ink and even your photograph in a box off to the side. In my opinion that's just plain boring. A great business card has to have a great photograph, good color scheme and a good layout! The above business card was a client of mine that wanted just that, along with a photo with her personal handshake on the back to go with her last name in the tagline. Click on the image to enlarge. www.davidgklotz.com

The Famous Mirror Effect

This effect is widely used, itunes for example uses it on ipods when sliding through album covers to give that more futuristic look. Hey its way better and more eye-catching then just having and image or object straight and flat. This photo for example looks like the corvette is at an auto show rather than a rocky driveway! Click on image to enlarge. www.davidgklotz.com

Color or Black & White? How About Both Together!

This is always a great effect! Enhanced the focal point which is the bride and Gaussian Blur the background to make the photo pop out at you, along with a few other adjustment like curves, levels and saturation. Layers are the best way! And don't forget get to add a little dark vignette effect. Click on image to enlarge and see more detail. www,davidgklotz.com

To Vector, or Not To Vector?

When your designing a logo you should absolutely Vector. This gives you the ability to size up or down at any time without losing that sharp crisp look. If you design in a program such as Photoshop the moment you transform your design (other then a text layer) you will lose that crisp look. You can not res up or try to enlarge once you down size. So keep in mind when designing not only file size, but what file format is the best to use. www.davidgklotz.com

Photo Collage

The Photo Collage is probably the biggest reason everyone loves to use PhotoShop. It's like putting together a puzzle and coming up with an art piece. www.davidgklotz.com

Digital Cosmetic Retouching

Digital Cosmetic Retouching is a great skill to have. This skill comes into play on every photo that you work with, whether its adjusting your levels, curves, saturation, etc... You will always want to make every photo, what I like to say "Pop". But, remember you have to make every photo stay realistic, and you do not want to make people look like porcelain dolls. This photo above was chosen by my client even though the flash was way too much, but I was able to adjust her coloring and add some features she requested, see above. www.davidgklotz.com

Realty Team Photo

This company is a client of MarketMe designs Inc. I photographed these realtors on several different days and added them to create a team photo with their logo as the background. Since it had to be placed together the most important thing in doing a team photo is to make sure you have the same lighting, camera positioning and remembering each individuals height to make the photo keep its real look. www.davidgklotz.com

Award & Apparel Logo Design

This is the Logo I created for All American Awards & Apparel. They were formally known as All American Trophy King, but wanted to change their name by adding awards and apparel, since the company is in more marketing direction towards apparel. I came up with this idea because the first thing that comes to mind is red, white and blue and also the American flag. That's where the star and three stripes come into play. Simple and easy to remember! www.davidgklotz.com

Wedding Photo Enhancement

This photo was taken by wedding photographer Nicole De Luco. I worked along side her with photo enhancements from this July wedding, and the photo above is a sample of one of the photos I enhanced. To see more of her stunning photography check out her site at www.nicoledeluco.smugmug.com

Tinley Park Soccer Logo Design

This is the Logo I designed for the Tinley Park Soccer Club. They will be using this logo for around 450 jerseys, uniforms, etc... It is a one color design for silk screening and embroidery. Since they are the Bobcats I thought a of the idea of claws ripping a soccer ball over the basic soccer idea of a shield in the background. www.davidgklotz.com

Re Creating My Design Portfolio

Over the next few months I will be re creating my design portfolio, which means more accessibility online. This may be a big task with the majority of my work over the past 10 years I do not have all the design files, but I do have some hard copies. But, that said it will be great once finished! www.davidgklotz.com