Prepare for Success in Your Class
First up, I'd like to introduce you to some items that will help you prepare for success in our class together:
- Accessing the Lesson Videos
- The PDF Guides
- Downloading & Unzipping Files
- Downloading & Installing Fonts
- Organizing Your Files
- Questions & Feedback
- Request a Mentor
- Post Your Project!
- How to Contact Me
Access to the Lesson Videos
Our class together is primarily video-based. If you have a laptop, a tablet, or a mobile device that can view web pages, I might suggest setting that device up beside you as you work on your main screen in Illustrator. That way you won't have to switch back and forth between the lesson and the project you're working on. You can pause, start, stop the videos, and go back to the techniques as many times as you need to - this class never expires.
Companion PDF Files
Each lesson comes with a delightful and well-designed PDF file summarizing the lesson material. You can view the PDF right in the lesson page (it's always right below the video), print it out, or save it to your computer for offline access. Many students prefer to print the PDFs and put them in a binder, and then come back to the videos only when needed. The choice is yours!
Downloading & Unzipping Files
Almost every lesson includes a package of course materials that will help you create the exact project you'll see in the videos. They're yours for personal use in any project you like! By the end of class, you'll have a great collection going! After you have finished downloading the course materials for each lesson (which are located under each lesson's image), you'll need to "unzip" it.
Downloading & Installing Fonts
Another delicious item you'll start a collection of: FONTS! In the classes you'll take with me, we download a lot of fonts. I love fonts. LOVE. And I think you'll enjoy building your own delicious collection, too! I always put my font files in a folder so I know where they are and I can move the whole folder when I move to a new computer. That way they're easy to re-install as needed.
Font files come in two formats: .ttf and .otf. For our purposes, they behave exactly the same and are installed and managed in the same way. After you download a font to your Fonts folder, just double-click to unzip it, and then double-click on the font file. Your computer will install it for you. Installed fonts are available in all the programs on your computer.
Organizing Files
Let's compare our computer to a closet. For a storage closet where you only go in once a year to pull out Christmas decorations, you really don't have to spend that much time sorting and organizing and labeling and making sure nothing random goes in there. But your bedroom closet? It makes sense to try to keep some order in the place, so you know where you can find a pair of pants or a sweater. And if that's as good as our closet gets, that's great! With that closet metaphor in mind, let's talk about how you might set up a part of your computer's file system to prepare for success in our class.
Class & Lesson Folders
I recommend that you create a folder on your computer that will store everything you do here (closet). Let's say you call that PriyaCreates, DesignClasses or anything that will help you identify it. Then within PriyaCreates, create a Class Folder (start a new Class Folder for every class you take).
Within your Class Folder, create a Lesson Folder for each lesson, so you can download and easily find the materials for that project. I also recommend placing the PDF files in the main class folder. Like this:
Digital Supplies Folder
You'll be collecting other goodies too, because that's the nature of design (yay, pretty things!), and I recommend you put these in a separate folder. Mine is called DigitalSupplies, and everything goes in there.
Photos Folder
This one is really important. Sometimes when you're working on something you might open a photo, make edits to it, and then accidentally save that photo back over your original. Then you will cry. Ask me how I know this. So we'll make a goal right now, shall we, that we never EVER save anything back into our original Photos folder. Only Original Photos go here. If you edit your photos, create a folder called Edited Photos and put your edits there. Now Pinky Swear. OK? Okay.