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This site was created in 1997 by Sandra Ragan, senior designer and owner of plum grafik visual communications since 1984. Images and editorial content within this site is provided as the expression of a strictly personal viewpoint.

Life is a continual process of exploration,
learning, and sharing.

A Southern California native, I began providing graphic design, illustration, fine art, training, and photo retouching services in Hollywood in the 70's, before moving to the San Francisco Bay Area in 1975 and Monterey in late 2004, coming back to SoCal in 2014.

The images provided on these pages are the exclusive property of the copyright holders. Basic credits and ownership information have been provided where possible. No images may be reproduced without the express permission of the copyright holder. Please help uphold the legal and moral rights of all the individuals represented.

The plum blossom was drawn with water-soluble crayon on rough watercolor stock and softened with spring water on a sable brush from a live budding plum branch. The blossom sketch was digitized with an Agfa Argus II flatbed scanner. My grandmothers cameo, the butterfly pin, and the nuts and bolts were scanned the same way. The new design icon was created from a single lead type block belonging to a friend. The letter forms and the tack were created in PhotoShop, overlaid with a newer scan of the butterfly pin. The tech savvy viewer may spot the Mac II motherboard circuitry in the pattern used as background in many areas. The plum logo font is Avante Garde Demi. Menu fonts are Myriad MM 565 semi bold condensed 300. The Default HTML font is Gill Sans, Helvetica, Ariel, San Serif and the re-design now uses CSS style sheets.

Content and usability will always come first. This site was designed in 1996, when the first graphic elements were prepared on a PowerMac7500 with a Newer Technology 300/200 G3 upgrade card, using Adobe PhotoShop 5.5 and ImageStyler (I've been using Photoshop professionally since it was BarnyScan.) HTML and initial page layout was done in Adobe PageMill 2. Subsequent versions were done in Adobe's PhotoShop 7 & GoLive. Currently the site is being maintained on a MacBook Pro with Adobe's CC 2015; PhotoShop, InDesign & Dreamweaver. As always, Wacom tablets are in integral part of my work flow. Nothing on the iPad, as yet, works as well.

I am a long time Freehand and Director user... when both were new and before either were owned by Macromedia. Its also why I maintain an older MacBook Pro with a dual system boot... it allows me to keep supporting Freehand, which is still far and away more productive than any other drawing program on the market today. If you want to know more, the Freehand Forum as lots of information. Or check the many YouTube videos.


What none of them do well yet is allow you to work on multiple devices, over the Internet Adobe has recently added a mobile version of both PhotoShop and Illustrator. A new player is the iOS/MacOS product, iDraw. This program was recently purchased by AutoDesk and renamed Graphic. I'm looking forward to how it will work on the Apple iPad Pro with Apple Pencil.

The site provider is Earthlink, who was Apple's preferred ISP before they began doing it themselves. Back in the day, they were the only company that would actually trouble shoot Mac connection issues without giving you grief about why you weren't using Windows.

Please be aware that MS Windows fonts traditionally display on screen a full point larger than they should. In order for the text to be readable to Mac users, myself included, I have elected to use the smallest font size readable on a high resolution Mac screen, knowing that it may appear excessive on Windows machines. I have not seen what Windows 10 has chosen to do.

The images and data on this site are the property of sandra ragan/plum grafik, clients thereof, and others as noted. Please respect their hard work and creativity by following the "Golden Rule,"
Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.

Webmaster: webmaster @ www.plumdigital.com. Thanks.

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