Mai's Atelier

The PDF that Refused to be Printed

2011-12-23T11:59:00.001-08:00

PROBLEM

My coworker emailed me two PDF files that wouldn't open in Adobe Reader on a Windows OS; they were scans of receipts from a receipt book with handwriting on them. I made the mistake of trying to open both PDFs in Preview (after downloading them), freezing my iMac in the process. After rebooting, opening just one PDF in Reader and selecting Print in the Print dialogue, Reader gave me a few error messages in this sequence, one right after another with each OK:

#1 "The document could not be printed."

#2 "There were no pages selected to print."

#3 "Insufficient data for an image."

#4 "A drawing error occurred."

The PDF remains open in Reader after clicking OK after each of the messages. But each time I try to print either PDF, I get this sequence of error messages.

I've tried opening them individually in Preview and trying to preview the file by selecting the file in Finder and hitting the space bar, all to no avail.

SOLUTION (that worked for my situation)

I noticed on both PDFs that they were scanned "images" and 418 KB each (pretty large files for scans of pages from a small receipt book). So I figured the settings on the client's scanner were unknowingly setup oddly.

Since changing the file extensions from .pdf to .jpg didn't change the results and it can't be read by Preview and Google Docs, I decided to convert them into JPGs via Photoshop at 72 dpi [Image > Image Size...] and saving it as a JPG for web [File > Save for Web & Devices...].

This may seem like the long way, but it worked for me, like it did for the last user in link #1. I was able to view it in Preview and print them out for my coworker.

PLAUSIBLE SOLUTIONS (suggestions that I've tried in addition to what was mentioned above)

Disabling / enabling java scripting in Acrobat / Reader brought me no results to my up-to-date programs
Changing the PDF resolution could work in theory; since my PDFs were one page each, there were no discrepancy in resolution, so I couldn't test this out in this situation. If you're not scanning images to retouch in Photoshop, I think 150-200 dpi are fine to set as the scan resolution. And why would you want to send someone a large file via email, and save a copy of it in your own email account. That is inefficiency at its best in the business world, my dear readers.
Workaround the issue with Foxit PDF Reader which only works on Windows as larryorr points out, so this is not a solution for the iMac, sadly.
Help / Repair Adobe Reader option did not work for this situation.
Changing the regional language to English (link #2) didn't do diddly squat, especially since it was already set to English.

There were lots of other plausible solutions that I didn't try, like making sure the network printer was online, removing the password on the PDF, recreating Acrobat preferences, using Print as Image in the Print dialogue, and etc.

Figure out what works for your situation and share with the community if it works.

Good luck!

REFERENCE LINKS

Separating City-States and City-Countries in a List

2011-12-21T18:06:00.001-08:00

I came across a very interesting problem while writing copy for a mailer idea -- how do you list cities and their states when you also have to list cities from different countries?

My work doesn't own a copy of Chicago Manual of Style, so I turned to the internet. After a quick search, the conclusion I've reached is that there is no one definite way of listing cities from various states and countries. So I'll go through the most probable solutions, with the one I chose to go with, listed at the end.

About.com: Splits, Spaces, and Stranded Prepositions: Ten Frequently Asked Questions About Grammar, Usage, and Style: Comment #6 by Richard Nordquist

The 2010 edition of the AP Stylebook says that the comma should be used after the city and state/country when listing them. The example from the stylebook uses the traditional abbreviations of the states and not the postal abbreviations, and spells out the country name. But I think it could get really messy and confusing if you're just listing them, rather than giving them parts in a functional sentence.
Yahoo! Answers: Is this the correct way to list multiple cities & states?

There are examples using hyphens between the city and state and followed by a comma or forward slash to separate the location pairs. No matter how I look at it, both ways look odd in formal and informal communications. I'm curious to know which stylebook this came from, but Gajendra didn't list their sources. I think the chosen "Best Answer" is truly the best solution for my situation -- use the semicolon to separate the location pairs.
About.com: How to Use the Semicolon, by Richard Nordquist

The third function of a semicolon is to separate items in a series if the items contain other punctuation marks. In the first example, cities and states are written out (and not abbreviated) in a list. Since commas are used to separate the cities from their states, instead of using extra commas, the semicolon is placed after each state is listed. It looks a little odd at first, but I think the semicolon grows on you, making the list seem more organized and more cohesive with each passing second.

To be fair to Gajendra, I don't know which stylebook Nordquist is referring to, but he has more grammatical explanations to back up his hypothesis.

I went with the third choice as it made my list of American cities and states and foreign cities and states easier to interpret.

This year, we were also involved in commercial real estate transactions in Hong Kong SAR, China; Chicago, Illinois; Phoenix, Arizona; and Southern California.

Quite the geographic mix!

Since no one knows what the future entails, this will serve as a good reference, in case I come across this issue again.

InDesign Dictionary Language Setting

2011-12-21T16:49:00.000-08:00

PROBLEM

On my Mac, InDesign CS5 was set to UK English instead of USA English. I was under the impression that if I set the dictionary and autocorrect language options to USA English, everything else would follow. But it didn't.

When I went to change a paragraph style to center alignment, I noticed that the alternative spelling of centre. InDesign's dictionary, autocorrect, character style, and paragraph style's language setting appears to be separately controlled.

SOLUTION

I found four places to set a language setting:

#1 InDesign > Preferences > Dictionary

#2 InDesign > Preferences > Autocorrect

#3 Character Panel

#4 Paragraph Styles panel > double-click [Basic Paragraph] > Advanced Character Formats

If there are more, please comment and share with the rest of us. :)

REFERENCE LINK

Adobe Help Resource Center: Text: Spell-checking and language dictionaries: Set the default language dictionary [Note: Though this was written for CS3, it applied to CS5, in my case]

Show Hidden Files on the Computer

2011-12-20T13:04:00.000-08:00

I often have to turn on (and then off again) the hidden files option on my coworkers' computers to fix an issue and to prevent a system file from getting deleted unintentionally.

Abrams wrote a pretty comprehensive list of instructions for Windows 95 to 8.

REFERENCE LINK

Bleeping Computer: How to see hidden files in Windows, by Lawrence Abrams

Outlook Reported Error (0x80040600)

2011-12-20T12:39:00.000-08:00

PROBLEM

Whenever my coworker's Outlook program (Microsoft 2010) is opened and does its initial send/receive function, a "Send/Receive error." When the sending and receiving are done, in the bottom right-hand of Outlook, it says, Double-click it and view the Outlook Send/Receive Progress window, which shows that the task of sending email was completed, but there was errors in receiving email. In the Errors tab of this window, it says:

"Task '_____@_____.com - Receiving' reported error (0x80040600) : 'Unknown Error 0x80040600'

REASON FOR PROBLEM

It seems that the PST file got corrupted. I had to repair this computer's Outlook this way about once every few months.

I'm just going to go over the basic steps that I normally have to follow to fix this one computer's issue. If this doesn't solve the problem, then keep on reading the posts in link #2.

SOLUTION

Make sure your hidden files are visible (See link #3), know where your PST file is located on the computer (See link #1's "Find the Outlook .pst file"), and close Outlook
Search for scanpst.exe on your computer (Start > Find) and double-click the application to launch the Inbox Repair Tool
Browse for the PST file that you searched for earlier, select that file, and click on Start to repair it. It'll take a couple minutes depending on how many files/messages are in Outlook, so when it's all done, click OK.
If 20 minutes have passed and it looks like the application froze, close it and restart scanpst.exe (step #2), and then you should see success the second time around. The application usually freezes on me when Outlook has more than 1,000 emails.

REFERENCE LINKS

Create Custom Placeholder Text for InDesign

2011-12-13T17:14:00.000-08:00

For a recent project, I found myself copying and pasting my company's name over and over again to create a text-based background pattern. That was until I had an "Aha!" moment. I remembered reading about creating your own placeholder text and turned to Adobe's Help file for guidance, which says:

To change the text that is used as placeholder text, create a text file with the text you wish to use, name it Placeholder.txt, and save it in the application folder.

Please note that I only tested this for InDesign CS5 on a Mac, but I'm pretty sure you could do something similar with the other versions of InDesign and on Windows.

STEPS TO CREATING YOUR OWN PLACEHOLDER TEXT

Open a text editor program like Microsoft Word
Type out whatever you want as your new placeholder text and save it as placeholder.txt
In Finder, look for the InDesign application folder -- Macintosh HD > Applications > Adobe InDesign CS5
By default, there isn't a placeholder.txt file there, so just place your new placeholder.txt file in the folder
In InDesign (if it's already open, that's okay), create an empty text frame or select an existing frame to fill with your new text -- Type > Fill with Placeholder Text
Voila! You've got a filled text frame

TIPS TO CREATING A GREAT PLACEHOLDER.TXT FILE

TextEdit on Mac can't create TXT files, but it can edit them.
If you save the file with just one word (and a space after it), you may get two different results depending on the text editor used to save the file. Microsoft Word will add a hard return after the word and space; so in InDesign, you'll get a one-word column in the text frame. TextEdit will save just the word and space, nothing extra; when used in InDesign, you'll see the word and space repeated multiple times in each row.
If placeholder.txt was created in Microsoft Word, edit and save the file in TextEdit, and remove that extra hard return Word added at the end of the document.
Adding space after the last word in placeholder.txt separates the last word from the first word when it's repeated in the text frame. The same applies to sentences; adding space after the period will separate the period and the first word of the sentence.
To alternate the pattern over the entire document, create and expand the text frame past the borders of the document, fill the frame with placeholder text, and adjust the size of the frame accordingly. This works best if placeholder.txt contains a word made of more than one syllable, more than one word, or sentences; and if hyphenation is turned on for the InDesign text frame.
To reset the placeholder text to its default text, delete placeholder.txt from the Adobe InDesign application folder.
Be creative and experiment! :D

REFERENCE LINK

Adobe InDesign CS5 & CS5.5 Help: Add text to a document

California small business grants exist?

2011-12-10T20:15:00.001-08:00

Ilise Benun wrote about a client getting grant funds from the state of Wyoming for the client's small business on her Creative Freelancer blog post, "Can the state help you freelance?" That client found great resources in her state, but what about the state of California or any other state?

After doing a quick search, it seems that they're hard to come by if you're a for-profit business. And with all those scams out there, it seems hard to come across any hope.

The best sites to search would be your own state's official website or the U.S. Small Business Administration (SBA) website.

Here's a quick roundup of what I found, especially for California:

For a short summary of what you could find in California with a few helpful links: http://usgovinfo.about.com/od/smallbusiness/a/cabusiness.htm
State of California's grants page that has a section for "Business, Employment, and Training" which sounds promising: http://www.ca.gov/grants.html
Shortcut to SBA's Loans & Grants page: http://www.sba.gov/category/navigation-structure/loans-grants
CNNMoney's Q&A on "Business grants: Sorting out the scams" sheds light on the dangers of grants that seem "too good to be true": http://smallbusiness.blogs.cnnmoney.cnn.com/2009/01/29/business-grants-sorting-out-the-scams/

I hope this information will come in handy for anyone looking at grants for their small business.

Good luck!

INDD CS3 File Keeps Crashing

2011-01-10T00:43:00.001-08:00

PROBLEM

On my work's iMac, trying to open a certain INDD file started crashing InDesign CS3. I had no problem opening this file in the past, and all the other files still worked.

SOLUTION

Search for the [harddrive]/user/library/preferences folder, send the com.adobe.InDesign.plist file to the trash bin, and try opening that problem INDD file. If it opens, there's no need to go further, but if it didn't, continue to step 2.
In Finder, enter fnt in the search bar, press Enter/Return on your keyboard, and make sure This Mac and File Name are selected.
Select all that has the LST file extension. It should be named something similar to what I found on my computer: AdobeFnt11.lst and AdobeFnt13.lst, or adobe07fnt.lst (as written in link #1). The problem should have resolved at this point. I also did the following two steps because they were also causing InDesign to crash.
In InDesign, go to InDesign > Preferences > File Handing... uncheck Enable Version Cue
Lastly, in the Pages panel, select Panel Options, uncheck Show Thumbnails for both Pages and Masters. And that should do it.

REFERENCE LINK

Tek-Tips Forums: Repairing Corrupted .indd files???? Need Urgent Help

InDesign RPLN files

2010-09-30T14:54:00.001-07:00

SITUATION A coworker receives an INDD file via email and asked me to edit it. PROBLEM When I open the file in InDesign CS3, I got an error message that says I'm missing two plugins -- conditionaltext.rpln and worldready.rpln. So, I couldn't open it at all.

STEPS TO SOLUTION Peter Spier's comment (April 11, 2009 12:37PM) in the "Cannot open the file.......?" Adobe Forums thread gave me a clue; since the two plugins associated with CS4 were the exact ones missing.

Just to state the obvious, in my case, changing the file name did not work. I think that if it was saved as an InDesign CS4 file, it wouldn't magically become an InDesign CS3 file. SOLUTION Sent an email back to the original sender and asked them to save it as an INX file. It was opened and edited successfully in InDesign CS3 after receiving the new INX file. Hooray!

Outlook Reported Error (0x80040201)

2010-09-22T15:10:00.001-07:00

PROBLEM

My coworker started getting an error message in his Outlook program (2007, I believe) whenever he composes an email and tries to send it. The error message would show in the Outlook Send/Receive Progress window:

Task '_____@_____.com - Sending' reported error (0x80040201) : 'Unknown Error 0x80040201'

REASON FOR PROBLEM

My company switched our email storage from our own server to a third-party vendor. The email account type changed from Microsoft Exchange to IMAP in Outlook, so that affected the Outlook profile that was originally set up; in technical terms, the PST file got corrupted.

SOLUTIONS

Apparently, there are two ways of solving this. I only had to use one way (the easier and simpler way), but I'll also include the second one which would fix any other issue that may affect Outlook.

SOLUTION #1 - The Easy One

While composing the email, look at the email address(es) listed in your email's To, Cc, and Bcc lines. Ensure that the email address(es) are included in the line like:

'Hancock, John'

And not just listed from your address book as:

'Hancock, John'

If only the name keeps appearing while you type the recipient's name, use your arrow keys to select the entry with the missing email address, and hit the delete button on your keyboard. This will remove the entry and prevent you from selecting it accidentally. (See link #3 below for more details on deleting individual cached entries and a way to remove all cached entries.) The cached entries will rebuild on its own over time.

SOLUTION #2 - The Slightly Harder Way

First, make sure your hidden files are visible (See link #5), know where your PST file is (See link #6), and close Outlook. Search for scanpst.exe on your computer (Start > Find) and double-click it to launch the Inbox Repair Tool. Browse for the PST file, select that file, and click on Start to repair it. When it's all done, click OK.

REFERENCE LINKS

PC Review: forum post: getting error 0x80040201
Exchange Master: FAQ 000024 - Error 0x80040201 reported in Microsoft Outlook when sending
Exchange Master: FAQ 000032 - How to remove address entries from the Outlook Address cashe [sic]
Hub Pages: How to solve sending reported error (0x80040201) error in Outlook?
Windows: Show hidden files
Microsoft Support: How to manage .pst files in Outlook 2007, in Outlook 2002, and in Outlook 2002 (To locate the PST file, in the "On This Page" section, click on "How to find a .pst file")

"Unsuck" Corporate Jargon

2010-08-17T23:18:00.000-07:00

I've been seeing links to this website multiple times for the past two weeks and actually checked it out myself rather than just rely on hearsay.

Unsuck It is a website designed by Mule Design that defines corporate terminology or corporalese as coined by Andy Epstein (that's where I first heard the term from, so I'm crediting it to him). To test it out, I looked to "unsuck" my most frequent request that I get at work: Could you make that red, bigger, in capital letters, and/or put a red outline around it? All of which is defined under the request to make it pop: "Add cliche elements to a site’s visual design (e.g., ribbon, drop-shadow, bevel)." Basically, they just want it to grab more attention than it already is.

What design requests do you get the most?

By the way, if I haven't recommended it already, Epstein's The Corporate Creative offers pretty good insights into how to maneuver through the corporate world from a designer's point of view.

Happy trails, my fellow designers!

Jewish Taco Truck: Newest Addition to the Craze

2010-08-11T13:37:00.000-07:00

A friend posted on her Facebook wall about how she wished there was a Jewish taco truck near her home in Texas. This whole food truck business is slowly picking up speed, based on the number and variety I've seen in San Francisco so far. In the spirit of rolling with the times, here are a few food-truck-related articles and sites that I've come across:

J Weekly: Jewish taco truck? It's true! (By Emily Savage)
J Weekly: Takin' it to the streets: Jewish vendors add deli favorites to SF mobile food scene (By Emily Savage)
Mobile Cravings: SF (They also have a list for other places like LA and Seattle)
Off the Grid (They schedule days for this food truck round-up at Fort Mason, SF)

So far, the one I've been to the most is the San Buena Taco Truck at Sansome and Sutter Streets. Love their Fish Taco Friday's. It's not on the printed menu and it's only made on Friday. At 2 for $5, it's a pretty tasty deal. If you're super hungry, get three of these little soft tacos.

Happy eating!

=== UPDATE ===

2nd Annual San Francisco Street Food Festival
Saturday, August 21, 2010
11 AM - 7 PM
On Folsom Street (between 24th to 26th Streets), 25th Street (between Shotwell to Treat Streets), and Treat Street (along Garfield Square)

For more information, check out SF Station's interview with Caleb Zigas (Co-founder of SF Street Food Fest) and on http://www.sfstreetfoodfest.com/.

Samantha Warren: Typographic Hierarchy

2010-08-11T12:20:00.000-07:00

I love reading HOW Blog! They're one of my favorite blogs to follow to find more information. So, the latest information comes from Megan Patrick's August 11th's Type Online post, which points to Samantha Warren's Typographic Hierarchy post.

Warren brings us back to design basics where using basic text choices (color, size, weight, style, or combination) and applying Gestalt theories does great wonders in guiding the readers' roaming little eyes to where you want them to roam. These are the type of lessons I wish to impart on my corporate colleagues over time. If they learned how to translate their needs using design terminology, my design workload would be very lean, very fast. A designer could dream, right?

Lessons from an intense Color and Design class resurfaced after reading this article. Spending an entire summer drilling these theories into my head did make me a better designer than I would have thought. I just loved the fact that these theories were immediately applicable in analyzing everyday designs.

On another off note, I really like how Warren designed her blog. It makes me want to log in more hours to design something fun like that, but I prefer something simpler and easier to manage/change whenever I feel like it.

Happy designing!

Mt. Rushmore Inspiration

2010-08-10T13:38:00.000-07:00

In John McWade's Design Talk post, An Eraser of Dynamite, he talks about the designer of Mt. Rushmore, Gutzon Borglum. I can sympathize with Borglum's frustration if your initial design doesn't work out. You do all the thumbnails, roughs, research, monochromatic comps, color comps, line drawings, and final drawings--all the planning work--only to find out that it may look good on paper but it doesn't translate as well in the actual execution, or in Borglum's case, his "canvas" wasn't as maleable as he would like it. And like all good designers, he knew where to "draw the line" and fix his work to look good despite the wall(s) he faced. Too bad I can't use dynamite to fix my designs. =T

Happy reading!

AMEX Phone Scam from 954-503-1800

2010-08-02T13:14:00.000-07:00

Just got a call on my cell phone from 954-503-1800 today @ 1:43 p.m. I googled this unknown number and found out that these people pose themselves as reps from American Express.

Scroll down past the middle of the page to read "Warning to All" (March 8, 2009) . What this person wrote sums up who this unknown scammer is:

This is a phishing scam and is NOT from American Express. Check their phone numbers on their (American Express) website and the back of your AMEX credit card and you will see that it is different. The prerecorded message is always the same:

THIS IS AMERICAN EXPRESS CALLING ABOUT A VERY IMPORTANT BUSINESS MATTER, YOUR ATTENTION TO THIS MATTER IS URGENTLY NEEDED BY THE END OF THE DAY, PLEASE CALL US AT 1-800-678-0738, AND PLEASE HAVE YOUR AMERICAN EXPRESS ACCOUNT AVAILABLE WHEN YOU CALL, WE CAN BE REACHED 24 HOURS A DAY, THANK YOU.

Some of the phone numbers he/they call(s) from are the following:

(215) 873-3443

(404) 697-3127

(718) 564-3261

(954) 308-5595

(954) 503-1800

These phone numbers seem to be from cell phones or landlines with disguised caller-ID info, even saying "American Express" on your ID screen. There are many people reporting this scam on various consumer complaint websites. American Express has verified that it is NOT them. (Call American Express using the number on the back of your card and see for yourself.)

This/these scammer(s) is/are relentless and will call 2 to 3 times a week, and usually 3 times during the day & evening, for months at a time.

IF YOU RECEIVE HIS/THEIR CALL, MAKE NOTE OF IT (time called, cell number used), AND REPORT IT TO THE FOLLOWING FEDERAL AUTHORITIES:

http://www.ftc.gov/ftc/cmplanding.shtm

http://esupport.fcc.gov/complaints.htm

https://www.donotcall.gov/complaint/complaintcheck.aspx

I called back just to see what they would say and to ask them to take my number off their list. The first thing that greeted me was a prerecorded message that said something along the line of "Please have your American Express account ready." I hung up after I heard that because I don't have an Amex account, therefore they have no business in calling me. As it falls under the line of suspicious business actions, I filed a report with the FTC.

The Art of Chinese Letterpress

2010-07-30T23:46:00.000-07:00

Came across a very interesting article posted by TransPacific Digital's Facebook wall about the "end" of movable type in China; it's written by Cheryl Yau on idsgn.org called, The End of Movable Type in China (June 30, 2010). Loved the pictures and the placement of quotes included in the article. Now I say "end" because it seems near but it's not here yet. It does seem daunting if you have to pick out a couple blocks out of a large wall of lead blocks stacked together. Whomever is in this field must love their craft, just like animation.

I can see why you need different blocks for each complex Chinese character. It's not like English, where there's a Romanized alphabet to work with. Each Chinese character connotes a different meaning and/or sound; with over 80,000 unique characters, I would probably throw my hands up in the air and walk out the door saying, "Forget it. This isn't worth my time and effort," after spending a few hours struggling to put together a sentence. But I do have to agree that the lead and wooden block type look more elegant than the digital Song and Ming fonts you find on your computer; it's just doesn't seem natural.

I can't wait to start taking my letterpress and bookbinding classes at the SF Center for the Book after I'm released from the shackles of debt. Just a few more months...

Cheers!

The Value of Good Editors

2010-07-28T13:18:00.000-07:00

How valuable is a good editor? According to James Mathewson, Editor in Chief of IBM.com, their study shows that good editors may add 30% more to the bottom line. Editors are not appreciated as much as they should, in my opinion.

In his Independence Day post, A Fourth of July lesson in the value of editors, Mathewson used the Declaration of Independence as a prime example of the effects of good editors. If not for Thomas Jefferson, John Adams, and Benjamin Franklin, the United States of America would not be the country it is today.

I originally read the article via Chicago Manual of Style's Facebook post (2010.07.27 @ 11:29 AM) and jumped from Digital Book World's July 14th post (reprint of the original), How to Measure the Value of Editors, to the original post. Both posts have links to the Yahoo's July 2nd article, Thomas Jefferson made slip in Declaration, revealing how Jefferson caught himself referring to the residents of America as "subjects," changing it to "citizens" while the ink was still wet. The things we learn every day.

Happy discovery!

New Bohemia Signs

2010-07-26T13:08:00.000-07:00

While reading Chronicle Book's blog post, "From the Design Desk: Old-Fashioned Hand-Painted Signs,"
it mentioned New Bohemia Signs, a group of type designers whose portfolio is spread all around San Francisco. The lettering of their signs are beautiful and thoughtful. I admired their architectural gilding, hand-painted signs and windows, as well as their original designs. If you want to see more of their work, check out their flickr site.

Deleting Duplicate Emails from Entourage

2010-07-21T13:20:00.000-07:00

SITUATION
Over the weekend, my office moved all our emails from our own server to a third-party email server. So on Monday, I had to move all the emails from the in, sent, and draft boxes into their respective places in the new folders in Entourage 2008 (for Macintosh computers).

PROBLEM
After taking a day or two to move everything, I noticed that I acquired 300 additional emails in my inbox. Somehow, duplicates were made of some emails. The thought of going through 800 emails made me cringe like this... ( > _ < )

SOLUTION
I found Barry Wainwright's script, Remove Duplicates v1.0, which "Removes duplicate email messages from a selected folder in Entourage." And it did just what it says. Don't think it can get any simpler than that. Thank you, Barry, for a simple and clean script!

STEPPING TOWARD RESULTS
[Note: Entourage can remain open during this whole process]

Go to Barry Wainwright's Applescripts site and download Remove Duplicates v1.0 zip.
Unzip the file and it will end up wherever you set your browser's default download location; mine is set to the Downloads folder.
In Finder, find and open the Entourage Script Menu Items folder (Documents > Microsoft User Data > ).
In a new Finder window, open the Downloads folder or wherever the unzipped folder is, and look for the unzipped foler, removeduplicates10. (If you want, rename it to Remove Duplicate Emails).
Drag this unzipped folder into the other Finder window's Entourage Script Menu Items folder. Doing this will create a submenu for this script in Entourage's Script menu.
In Entourage, open the Inbox or the folder that contains the duplicate emails, click on the Script menu button (next to the Help menu and looks like an S-shaped paper scroll), look for Remove Duplicate Emails (the name of the folder we renamed in Step #4), and click on Remove Duplicates v1.0.
Voila! Extraneous 300 emails be gone. Just don't forget to empty the trash.

Happy cleaning!

Lukes Beard's "A Lyric A Day"

2010-07-21T12:51:00.000-07:00

Sometimes, it's tough to jump start your creativity every day. Take Luke Beard and his A Lyric A Day site. Every day, he creates a poster inspired by a line or two of song lyrics. I was introduced to Beard's work via How Design's blog post, Luke's Beard (2010.07.12), because I recognized the lyrics from Daft Punk's Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger song.

His work helped me see various ways of improving my design brochures at work. Or so I hope.

Cheers!

Grain Edit's Q&A with Jason Munn

2010-07-16T13:45:00.000-07:00

Jason Munn recently had his book, "The Small Stakes: Music Posters," published by Chronicle Books. The Q&A I came across on Chronicle Books' Facebook post asks Munn about his beginnings, design process, and how his book came to be. A very informative post. And I really like the clean look in his designs.

Happy reading!

HP's ElectroInk White

2010-07-12T13:11:00.000-07:00

HP's announcement on May 26 is pretty exciting news for us designers. According to their press release, this special white ink could be printed on dark paper through their sheet-fed digital presses. It's not quite easily available for us small-time designers, but this is one large step in expanding our color and design choices for print. Who knows, maybe in the next 10 years, it will be readily available for our desktop printers.

The following is a summary of the press release and possible papers it could be printed on from HOW Blog's July 12's Design Industry News:

HP recently announced its Electroink White, the first opaque white ink that allows for digitally printing white text on dark papers. And Mohawk released a new series of white-ink-compatible sheets in its i-Tone brand of papers formulated for printing on HP Indigo digital presses. Designers can now spec white type on dark papers, or underlay a base of white ink beneath full-color images so that they print brilliantly on a colored stock. Mohawk’s new Studio Collection includes a range of gradelines, with 23 colors manufactured to perform optimally on the HP Indigo press.

I'm looking forward to what HP and competitors are going to produce next, based on this ink's capabilities.

Eight Qualities in Your Ideal Designer for Hire

2010-07-12T13:01:00.000-07:00

John McWade of Before & After's Design Talk wrote another great article that I want to pass around, "8 Things to Look for When Hiring a Designer." This definitely applies in left-brain corporate companies who are looking for a designer.

As these are just qualities, corporate hiring officials definitely need to do their research and figure out what they want their potential designer to do for them. And of course, designers can do a lot more than what's expected of them. We're creative like that, or we should be.

From this "corporate" designer, my advice would be to read Andy Epstein's "Corporate Creative" and learn to translate your words into corporalese (which is explained in said book).

Cheers!

Origin of "Google"

2010-07-12T12:47:00.000-07:00

I feel like an archaeologist sometimes when I read about the origins of certain things. Just recently, I read about how the Google logo came to be.

John McWade of Before & After's Design Talk wrote about the logic behind the Google's logo. Ruth Kedar of Kedar Designs designed Google's logo using the font face Catull.

Read more about Kedar's thought and design processes while creating this famous logo in Sonia Zjawinski's Wired article, "Gallery: How Google Got its Colorful Logo."

Cheers!

Design History + Paper Source

2010-06-30T13:11:00.001-07:00

Today, the HOW blog featured the "Design is History" website <http://www.designishistory.com/>. It's interesting to see how the times influenced the flow and development of design. Looking back, I think it's great to see how a variety of styles developed over the centuries, how new styles come about, and how old styles are redefined. There's still much to be explored.

Like past artists, you never know if you're making a historical impact on your community until you look back. So here's an opportunity to influence other crafters/artists in the digital age as Paper Source's guest blogger.

<http://blog.paper-source.com/ps/love-our-crafting-essentials-be-a-guest-blogger/>

I don't think my designs will last since I'm only adapting with the times and not really producing anything "new" per se. But I hope that I'll at the least be a good influence on those who I come into contact with.