Today, on my downshift day, I have been having a bit of fun.
I have been learning the basics of graphic design. I decided that my original podcast needed an image face lift. This is what you are used to being served up if you subscribe to The Greening of Gavin podcast. The image was originally made by my son Adam, many years ago. Cool for the blog, but looks quite plain in the iTunes store against all the other podcasts made by professionals.
So after much artistic direction from my lovely wife, and some critique from Ben, this is what we came up with as a podcast banner. I used a free tool called GIMP to make it.
I had to figure out how to layer images upon images, make transparent backgrounds and many other little tricks. YouTube is such a wonderful learning tool. Subsequently, I have a newfound respect for all digital graphic artists. It was a long learning curve, and took me over four hours to construct. Anyone with experience probably could have made it in 20 minutes or less. At least I can say that I made it myself!
Anyway, it should appear in the iTunes store in a few days, replacing the old banner. Not really important in the grand scheme of things, but once in awhile, having fun whilst learning new skills is worth the time and effort.
Just like sustainable living I reckon.
Looks good Gavin. Congratulations.
Thanks Jean!
Looks good Gav, I like having the photo there. More personal and you are such a jolly looking guy. Like a favourite uncle. 🙂
Favourite Uncle? I like that a lot!
Gav x
Great job Gav.
Another good free program for Windows that is similar to Gimp (and Photoshop) is:
Paint.net (not to be confused with the old “Paint” program in Windows)
There’s a bit of a learning curve as well but worth the effort
Cheers
Hi Mick, I did start using Paint.net, but found it far too confusing, so switched to GIMP. There are so many more video tutorials for GIMP, so that is what made me convert, plus I could kind of understand the layering concept.
Looking forward to our show!
Gav