I’ve been working very hard, which hasn’t left much time for blog posts. I’ve decided to start posting quick tips here — the solutions to problems I’ve run across in my work. Some of you are working designers, and these tricks may be helpful to you. Some of you are design aficionados, in which case these kinds of posts may not be interesting , but I’m working up a new feature for you, too, in the near feature.

Problem: You create a JPG image in Photoshop that has the same background color as you’ve specified for your web page. The goal is to make the image background blend into the page, so that the image is not boxed.

The page looks great in Firefox (and other browsers), but when you open Safari, the background colors don’t match. You double check — the hexadecimal codes are the same. What gives?

Solution: Check to see if your Photoshop JPG has saved a color profile with the file. Safari, unlike other browsers, will respect this setting and actually change the colors in your image to match your specifications. It’s pretty sophistiated of Safari, but it’s usually not what you want when you’re designing a web page. Save all of your Photoshop JPGs without an attached profile, and you should fix this problem.

ETA: Here are some example screenshots:

JPG image on color background in Firefox

JPG image on color background in Safari, saved with profile

JPG image on color background in Safari, saved WITHOUT profile

You can see these pages at http://www.leslietanedesign.com/example/ (with profile) and http://www.leslietanedesign.com/example/test2.html (without profile).

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Thanks to an excellent client (Massachusetts 4H) who kept an open mind, a fantastic writer (Julie Roads – Writing Roads) who brought me in right at the beginning of the project, and (ahem) my design, I won an American Design Award for this poster:

From GDUSA:

2008 AMERICAN GRAPHIC DESIGN AWARD WINNERS
CONGRATULATIONS TO ALL OUR WINNERS

This year, roughly 1,000 pieces were presented in our annual from among more than 10,000 entries, the fifth straight stunning year in which this milestone level of entries has been exceeded. Slowly but surely, over four decades, our Annual has become a meeting place for the best and the brightest.

Media diversity abounds: print and collateral, package design and in-store graphics, advertising and sales promotion, invitations and announcements, direct mail and catalogs, magazines and books, broadcast and film and — surprise, surprise — more internet and interactive pieces than ever. Diverse, too, are the organizations and clients: Fortune 500 companies and entrepreneurial start-ups, consumer and business-to-business ventures, political and religious organizations, governments and trade associations, universities and cultural institutions.

Moreover, the winning pieces come from many of the established creative minds and organizations of our time, and even more who are striving to excel, to gain recognition and to find a deserved place in the sun. This is a particularly satisfying mix, since GDUSA is tempermentally welcoming and accessible to a broad range of work and voices in an often insular industry.

View all of the winners here.

Thanks to Julie, for brainstorming this idea with me, and especially to the client, for letting us run with the idea.

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