Father’s Day is coming up soon, and what better present than to design him something he’ll love?
This was my task yesterday. My dad owns a classic Mustang, and when he goes to shows he sees other cars with the custom boards displaying their modifications and such. I thought it would make a great Father’s Day present, and set about designing it.
As with any design project, the first thing you do is research. I needed the text (modifications, etc), images and a couple of vector logos. I remembered he had a mod list from when he first bought it, and I had typed it all up and posted it online a couple years ago. A quick Google search later and I found the text, copied it to InDesign; task #1 done. Next was to find the images for the board.
My previous backup setup was to use a NAS device (network attached storage). It’s a Netgear SC101, and doesn’t work anymore. I moved a couple months ago, and my computers can no longer see it on the network. I don’t know if it’s the network or the device itself, and to be honest, I haven’t had the time or motivation to mess with it. But now the pressure was on…I no longer have the HDD the original images were on, and my backup was down for the count.
Luckily, I had shot the images of my dad’s car with my Canon K2. Luckily? Yup, because back before I had my slick digital SLR, I shot only with film, and when I got the rolls developed I had them burn the images to CD as well. All of those CDs sat in an album I had long forgotten about, and thankfully was able to find in an unopened box. With the right CD found, I loaded them into InDesign; task #2 done.
#3 was by far the easiest, getting the ‘MACH1′ logo. That was found here. I now had all the necessary pieces and set about doing what designers love to do, creating something from nothing.
The big story here is backing things up. Do it often, do it now; you never know when HDDs will blow up, NAS devices will fail and you want to do something for your dad without him asking, for once.
Oh, and here’s the design. The final product will be a 12″x18″ print, mounted and laminated.
- Ashley
PS: This is my first blog post via WordPress. I love it, and wish I had done this sooner.
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Tags: backup, dad, design, harddrive
Great idea for a gift, and it’s good lookin’ too! Also: your dad’s car is SO COOL.
Thanks! I’ve driven it…once.
Also, if you want to see something else…my personal site in-progress is: http://ashleyhilldesign.com/index.php
I’ll be adding a link to your site once mine is done.