Exposure

Adobe CS4

Raffi — Fri, 26 Sep 2008 12:05:00 +0000

If you’re not a designer - you don’t know…

And if you are - I don’t need to explain it for you…

I am excited for CS4.

You may ask why since I never bought CS3.

When I went to learn about CS3 in a workshop at USF’s St Pete Campus, it seemed like a few minor updates were made. I must say, being able to Place multiple objects at once in InDesign is rocking cool, but not $2500 rocking cool.

But yesterday Kelly and I watched the Adobe® Creative Suite® 4 Web Broadcast.

Here’s some of what I learned from Adobe:

- 500 million TVs will have internet access by 2011

- over 98% of PCs have Flash player installed

- there are now over 25 million Adobe Air installations

- CS4 has 13 products (Photoshop, Illustrator, etc.), 14 technologies (Bridge, Encore, etc.) and 7 services (kuhler, in context pdf editing, etc.) Why? Because Adobe understands that the expectation is higher these days for engaging interactive content. Which means “we the design people” need the tools to be able to create that engaging content - and having more of them in one box will sure help sell that box!

The upgrades in CS4 include time savers, better Macromedia integration, new technologies and innovation.

They had some designers explain in “their own words” what is so great about CS4. First Ben Grossman spoke about the video end of things. His projects include work for Sin City, BMW, ESPN and Radiohead… and he feels CS4 will help him “go confidently into uncharted territory” because even if he hasn’t done something the client is requesting, he knows he has the tools to figure out how to do it. (We feel like that here at RDesign a lot too.)

Someone from Odopod spoke about interactive digital design. His projects include MOSI Chicago, Playstation and Nike Skateboarding. He makes interactive prototypes in Fireworks. He can then save as a pdf with enabled commenting and disabled printing, to allow for ease of client interaction while not being worried that his prototypes (or comps) will get passed around too much. He showed a Scale and Transform of the path (ONLY the path) of an object being animated in Flash, Flash 3D effects, and said fewer programmers will now need to be involved with animation because it is easier for designers to use.

The best web / Dreamweaver upgrade I saw was the ability to click to see the CSS files being used on a portion of a site without opening the CSS file or switching to HTML view. You can also see code or CSS of items selected in preview mode.

The Curiosity Group came out to talk about graphics. Their projects include Disney, Microsoft, Dreamworks and the showcased Picklebird character for HP.

We oohed and aahed over tabbed Illustrator artboards, with multiple artboards working at once. The new blob brush creates filled paths quickly, similar to the Photoshop paintbrush tool. InDesign will show font, color and shape errors on the fly that deviate from your pre-set parameters. (Fewer surprises before going to print!) Then you can export to FLASH and change the Flash workspace set up to “designer” so it is set up more like the menus on Photoshop or Illustrator and more intuitive for a graphic artist to use. After exporting to Flash, you can edit text block while in Flash from the original InDesign file, and placeds pieces of art are auto saved as symbols.

The big WOW of Photoshop CS4 is “content aware scaling”. Let’s say you have an image of 2 cars parallel parked on the side of the road. There is enough space between to park a motorcycle, but you have an image of a VW bus to fit in the space. As you scale, or contract, the VW bus image horizontally to fit, the program intrapolates the important parts of the image and won’t scale those - so the bus is now 3 feet shorter but the headlights, wheels and doorhandle are the right size! As you’re dragging! It’s hard to explain but cool to watch. Let’s say you have an image only 4 inches wide of some people in a field, but it needs to fit across a magazine cover. As you drag horizontally to widen the image, the grass and sky fill the space, but the people don’t get wide and bloated. They stay the same width they were before you started scaling. You can watch a video of it on Adobe TV. You’ll be glad that you did.

A few fun sites

kelly — Wed, 24 Sep 2008 18:19:47 +0000

A great article on how important it is to have more than just “any old web site”, courtesy of A List Apart.
http://www.alistapart.com/articles/humantohuman

Cool online community all about setting goals, sharing them with the world, and inspiring one another to achieve them.
http://www.43things.com/

Write a letter to the future you. Pretty neat idea.
http://www.futureme.org/

A cool way to make a project more challenging.
http://hidethisthing.com/

Engaging Web Applications as homework

Raffi — Thu, 12 Jun 2008 21:14:52 +0000

There is a class at Stanford University dedicated to creating engaging Facebook Applications. For those of you who are not familiar with Facebook, it’s like MySpace with toned down design.

For those of you not familiar with MySpace - get out more! Internet social Media is reaching over 200 million people. It’s changing journalism, shopping, funding, careers and more.

Strong social networking delivers a great experience to its users. Then people come back for more. Then the site makes more advertising revenue. Just like TV shows. People spend time online, people spend time watching TV. There are ads. It’s very simple.

So this class at Stanford studies Facebook, its users, interactions online. Why? “The psychology that drives Facebook relates directly to other online success stories, including those Internet blockbusters yet to be invented.”

If you plan to go to college in California sometime soon, you can learn more about the Stanford course here.

Checking in from the Bahamas

kelly — Sun, 11 May 2008 18:39:34 +0000

My oh my…are we busy!!! Sorry my posts have been so few and far between. Aside from having our days packed with vocational, cultural and social events, it has been hard to come by a good internet connection during our travels. Here is a quick update of what we have been up to:

We spent a week in Kingston, Jamaica. As has been the case on all of our other stops, we were welcomed into the homes and lives of the most kind and generous group of people there. Our vocational days were a bit different in Kingston - we all attended each of the vocational trips as a group. The visits we made on my behalf were to The Gleaner Company (the oldest newspaper in the western hemisphere) and TVJ (Jamaica’s major TV network). We had a blast at both places, and our trip to Gleaner was covered in the paper the following day. We also spent loads of time doing fun cultural things like going to the Bob Marley Museum, The National Gallery, Hellshire Beach, and a Blue Mountain Coffee processing center. As a group, I think the favorite stop was going to the Kingston YMCA and meeting an amazing women named Sarah Newland-Martin.

We also got some time to spend at some of the Kingston Rotary Club’s service projects.

Daphne, David and I were lucky enough to take a day trip to Ocho Rios and climb the Dunn’s River Falls. Thank you to Dassy’s hosts, Locksley and Pauline!

Then we came to the Nassau, Bahamas for the Rotary District Conference at the Atlantis Resort. It has been a crazy couple days full of fun events and chances to meet up with all of the new friends we have met along the way. We finally got a few hours here and there to relax together and do things like tubing down the rapids, riding the water slides, and hanging out at the beach. I did not really take any pictures in our short time here, but will hopefully get a few from the team down the line.

We are scheduled to fly back to Jamaica this afternoon, but just found out that our flight is already delayed by 5 hours (until 1130pm!). So we may be stuck here another day.

Happy Mother’s Day to Raffi and all you other mom’s out there!

More words from the road soon…..

The human body as a canvas

Raffi — Tue, 06 May 2008 16:42:50 +0000

Emma Hack is a 35 year old body painter from Australia. She has been painting bodies for 20 years (yes, since her teens!), and some of her designs take up to 19 hours to produce. I have been unable to find a web site about her, but here is an article with some steamy photos of her work.

Farewell Virgin Islands

kelly — Thu, 01 May 2008 14:53:22 +0000

It has been a whirlwind stay in our third stop in the British Vigin Islands. We arrived Monday evening and have had a packed schedule since we stepped off the ferry in Road Town, Tortola. We were only scheduled for three full days here, and they had a lot planned for us. We spent Tuesday morning meeting with the BVI Heads of State. We had a lovely chat with the Governor (assigned by the Queen) as you can see in the photo above. Then we had a nice meeting with the Premier (elected locally) of which I will have to get a photo from one of my teammates.

I have had a vocational visit on my schedule each of the three days here. I have spent a few hours here and there with the design team at Bolo’s, the largest local print/design shop. I have actually done some layouts for them! Yesterday I spent the entire day at GIS (Government Information Systems), with the official design team for the BVI government. They are a great group of creatives who were thrilled to hear all about how we run things stateside and what we do to stay creative. When my ride showed up at the end of the day, I was sad to leave and I am pretty sure they were sad to see me go. Yet again, I have made so many new friends!

This afternoon we are going boating around to some of the smaller Virgin Islands. Tomorrow morning we leave at the crack of dawn for Jamaica (with a brief stop in St. Thomas for brunch with our friends from over there). We have a layover in Miami, so I will try to hop on and post some more photos for you all while we are there (I know pics are more fun than my ramblings!).

One way or another I will check in again soon.

Over and Out.

Word from the Road

kelly — Fri, 25 Apr 2008 13:11:06 +0000

Well… we are already on our second stop, St. Croix, USVI. We had a wonderful time in St.Thomas, but getting online was a little bit of a challenge for me, as I was staying with a host family high up in the hills where they only have dial up. I see that Raffi has already given a rundown of our time at our first stop - so I will breeze over that. We met so many fabulous people and have so many wonderful memories.

It was Carinval in St. Thomas, so there was no shortage of fun and Caribbean flavor. I spent a fantastic vocational day with the lead designer, Jerry, at the local TV station TV2. I shadowed him as he recorded voice overs, created screen elements, and put together a 30 second spot for Carnival. We got along famously and I am excited to have a new design friend on the island.

We arrived on St. Croix on Wenesday afternoon by seaplane. Again, we find ourselves surrounded by the most kind and gracious hosts. We have already attended a few Rotary meetings, been given the behind the scenes tour of Government House and given a vocational talk to 7-12th graders at a local school. I was thilled to find out that my vocational host is also my home host. I am staying at the home of Mike, the owner of Caribbean Printing, and today I am in the print shop getting to see how everything works here. I will let you all know how that goes in a few days.

Hope all is well on the mainland. More from the road soon…..

The end of Kelly’s first week away.

Raffi — Fri, 25 Apr 2008 12:52:31 +0000

During her vocational days in St. Thomas, Kelly worked with the graphics department at local TV station TV2. Team members from her Rotary travel group work with locals in their vocations, to exchange ideas and learn how their work is done in the local area.

Each team member also prepares a presentation to be used at Rotary Club meetings about their jobs and their personal lives. This photo was taken while it was Kelly’s turn to present.

Keeping tabs on Kelly

Raffi — Tue, 22 Apr 2008 17:00:57 +0000

As Kelly island hops, you may be jealous or curious as to her exotic whereabouts. Here is what she has been up to the last few days:

Sat. evening - private performance of Carabana Theater’s “Back Time”, a one man show about the oldest man in the Caribbean.
Sun. morning - Eco-tour kayaking and snorkeling in the Lagoon
Sun. evening - This is Carnival Week in St. Thomas, and they went to Lionel Roberts Stadium for the Steelband Jamboree, followed by a visit to Carnival Village to sample local food
Mon. and Tues. - Vocational days, we’ll have to hear from Kelly on this.
Mon. evening - another trip to Carnival Village
Tues. morning - Attend Rotary Club meetings
Wed. morning - Sampling local food at Carnival Food Fair, depart for St. Croix

My Island Adventure

kelly — Wed, 02 Apr 2008 16:12:22 +0000

I am thrilled to announce that I will be departing shortly for my exchange trip to the Caribbean. The trip is part of the Rotary International GSE Program and is a unique cultural and vocational exchange opportunity offered to young professionals. I will be traveling with a fun and fantastic team of four, along with our team leader (shown below). The Rotary Board did a wonderful job of building a very dynamic and well rounded group that enjoys being together to learn and laugh (this is important when we will be together every day for nearly 5 weeks!). We will be island hopping throughout the Caribbean for much of April and May and will be visiting St. Thomas, St. Croix, Tortola, Jamaica and the Bahamas. The team will stay with host families who will introduce us to their cultures by inviting us into their homes and showing us around. In each country, team members will be scheduled for individual vocational days, during which we observe and work along side others in our field. It is an incredible opportunity to grow both personally and professionally…not to mention having some serious fun!

April 18th is the big day, so STAY TUNED….I look forward to sharing my adventures from the road…