Delve into the process of stylizing a proposal cover by managing and organizing different project materials in cc libraries. Learn how to create groups for different elements, add images and brand colors, and initiate the design process.
Key Insights
- The article provides a step-by-step guide on how to compile and organize various project materials, such as logos, images, and documents, into Adobe Creative Cloud (cc) libraries for easy access during the design process.
- It emphasizes the importance of grouping items based on their type or purpose when dealing with multiple images or elements. This makes it easier to locate specific assets and understand what is available for the project.
- The article also demonstrates how to add brand-specific colors to the cc libraries and use them in designing the proposal cover, offering tips on creating a visually engaging layout using different images and color schemes.
Note: These materials offer prospective students a preview of how our classes are structured. Students enrolled in this course will receive access to the full set of materials, including video lectures, project-based assignments, and instructor feedback.
In this video, we're going to begin stylizing the cover of our proposal. So let's begin first by bringing in all of the elements into our CC Libraries for this project.
We'll go to CC Libraries, and rather than working with our Domus library, let's create a new one. To do this, we can select Domus and we'll go down to Create New Library. From here, we'll give it a name—Parks and Dwell—and we'll hit Create.
Next, we need to actually add our materials. In order to do this, we'll open up our folder and let's open up our Parks Dwell Engineering folder. From here, many of these materials we can add into InDesign.
For example, we'll drag our PD logo in for our Parks Dwell logo. We can also see that we have our Clark Kent signature, so we'll drag that in as well. We also have some documents and some spreadsheets, which we're going to leave here for now. However, we do want our general images, our precedents, and our staff members in here.
So to do this, we're going to create groups. We can do this by creating a group on the right-hand side. We'll click Create Group, and for this new group, we're going to call this "General Images" and hit ENTER. We currently have one image in here—our Clark Kent signature—but let's drag this out for now.
From here, we can reopen our folder, go into General Images, and click and, holding Shift, click the last image so we have all of our general images selected. We're simply going to drag these right into General Images. Here we can see that they're loading up. Let's create another group now. To create an additional group, we can go down to the bottom to our folder and click Create Group.
In this case, we can type a new title, and we'll type "Precedents" and hit ENTER. Next, we're going to add precedents. We can again open up our folder, and in this case, we're going to go back to Parks Dwell Engineering and go into PD Precedents.
We'll double-click, and we'll see we have three different folders with our precedent images. Let's click on the first one, and highlighting all of our images, we'll drag them in. Then, going back into our second folder, we'll drag all of these images as well. Finally, in our National Bridge Images folder, we'll highlight and drag those in. Since we're not currently working with our precedent images, let's close off this group.
Finally, we need one more group, and that's for our staff images. We'll create an additional group, call this "Staff, " and hit ENTER. From here, we're going to again open up our folder. We'll go back outside to Precedents, into Parks Dwell Engineering, and open up our Staff Members folder. Here we have three staff members, so let's highlight all three and drag them right into Staff.
Here, we've now added all of our materials. While we may not always need to group items based on the different projects we're working on, when we're working with so many different images like this—and in some projects, even more—it’s helpful to group them so that we know specifically what we're working with and what we have available to us. Next, let's begin adding some of the brand colors.
We can do this by looking at our PD logo. In this case, we're going to simply drag it in, and I'll click off to the right-hand side so that we can see our logo here. Next, we want to pull this red color using our Eyedropper Tool.
So let's use our Eyedropper Tool—shortcut I on the keyboard—and we're going to come over here and simply select the red color. To add this to our CC Libraries, we'll go down to the bottom to our plus sign, Add Content, and we're going to add our Fill Color. There we go—we now have our Fill Color. I'm going to double-click this, call it "PD Color 1, " and hit ENTER. Next, we need a second color. In this case, we can delete our logo since it only has one color and black. Let's come up with a second color that we can use throughout this project.
In this case, I'm going to double-click the Fill Color, and I already have one in mind. To use my color, I'm going to use the hex code #BF9B62. This will be the color that I'll use as my second color; however, feel free to create your own second color as this is your proposal.
We'll click OK, and now with this color selected, we can go to the bottom and again add the Fill Color. We're going to rename this "PD Color 2" and hit ENTER. We now have colors, we have images, and we have so many of the elements that we're going to be using throughout this proposal all within our CC Libraries. So let's get back to Page 1, and from here we're going to begin designing our work.
To start, let's add our bottom bar with our new color. Go over to the left-hand side, click and hold the Ellipse Tool to reveal the tool gallery, and select our Rectangle Tool. From here, we're simply going to drag a rectangle across the bottom inch. This will serve as our bottom bar. Feel free to use either color, as it's your design.
In this case, I'm going to use the red. Next, let's add a couple of images. To do this, we'll go into our CC Libraries, and from here, let's just use our general images.
A lot of times, working with projects like this, I'll simply compile many images that I can use throughout the project and be able to move them around. So feel free to choose two different images that you want on your cover page. For me, I'm going to use this top image here and drag it into this image frame.
Right-click, go to Fitting, and select Fill Frame Proportionally. If I'd like to move it around, I can hit A for the Direct Selection Tool, and I can move it up or down depending on what I think looks best. In this case, I like a little bit of the sky. Next, let's add a second image below.
Feel free to choose whatever image you'd prefer. For me, I'm going to use PD Image 3 here and drag it in. Right-click, select Fitting, and choose Fill Frame Proportionally. From here, we're starting to get a good look for our cover and beginning to see what it's going to look like. For now, let's save our work by hitting CTRL + S on the keyboard to save, and in the next video, we're going to finish stylizing this cover.
See you there!