Recent CS4 Updates

(this is a repost from John Nack at http://blogs.adobe.com/jnack/)

In case you've missed it, the CS4 versions of Flash, Fireworks, and InDesign have received updates in the last couple of weeks.

• Flash PM Richard Galvan lists the issues addressed in the Flash release, including performance problems & crashes.
• InDesign's 6.0.2 update (download for Mac, Win) includes the cumulative fixes from the 6.0.1 update (posted in February). For a list of fixes, check out its release notes (PDF), plus info on previous updates.
• Of the Fireworks update, newly minted Fireworks PM Bruce Bowman writes, "This updater fixes the most common bugs that we know about in Fireworks CS4, including numerous text shifting problems, stability issues on Mac and Windows, and bugs related to pasting text from Microsoft Office applications. The team would like to thank you for your patience as we developed this updater." Here are the full release notes (PDF).

Web Design for Print Designers Made Easy

Web design differs from print design in so many ways, yet employers and clients really expect that designers be able to manage both media with ease. The complexity of web standards, usability, accessibility and other best practices can make learning the web daunting...UNTIL NOW!

Really understand the process of designing for the web with this jargon-free introduction to the right way to make web pages. This one-day seminar provides a step-by-step introduction to the web design process. Originally designed to help print designers add web design to their skill set, this seminar will help anyone interested in how great web pages get built (with an emphasis on the best practices in the field).

Topics include: usability, accessibility, fright-free coding, process for developing goals for a web page, how to get a pixel perfect layout, and more!

Save the date to join Jim Conway, C2's lead instructor and web/Flash alpha geek on Tuesday, July 14 from 9 am to 4:30 pm. Lunch on your own from 12:00 pm to 1:15 pm. Registration opens June 1 for this $99.00 seminar.

Coming soon to C2!

C2's 100% fresh attitude will soon apply to the C2 web site, tagline and some fresh new marketing materials.

In June C2 will roll out the new site, designed to offer clients a better, more efficient experience for class registration and talent requests.

New C2 collateral designs crafted by C2 instructors Kevin Stohlmeyer and James Fritz will also be unveiled next month, all featuring the new tagline: C2, Your Shortcut to Success.

C2 strives to exceed client expectations through our training and talent placement services, and hope our new look and online interface do the same.

Apple Keynote Tips and Tricks

Shape Masks

You can use shapes created in Keynote to mask your image similar to a layer mask in Photoshop. First, create your shape, then using the Media Browser, drag the image onto the shape. You can then change the mask (scale, rotation, etc.) using the "Edit Mask" function. When finished, click outside your photo or on "Edit Mask" button to apply the mask.

Custom Keynote Themes

Online resources, such as keynoteuser.com, offer great custom themes for the beginner. Advanced users can create their own from scratch. Keep in mind that there is one trick. Never build your theme on a slide. Instead build your theme on a master slide. To see all your master slides, drag the divider down under the "Themes" window. This will reveal all the masters. Click one and go nuts. 

Importing Photoshop?

YES! In keynote, I am amazed at the diverse file formats that Keynote can accept, including layered, unflattened, wonderful Photoshop files. I use these to build my own custom theme backgrounds (see above). 

Audio files

One thing I am always asked when it comes to Keynote is how to create a continuous soundtrack for a presentation, or a looped track. Here's how:

In the Inspector panel, click the document inspector button, then choose "audio". Then either choose a track from itunes or drag an audio file from the finder into the audio panel. Here is the crux of the soundtrack - to make the audio file play through repeatedly while the presentation is running, choose "loop" from the pop-out drawer in the audio panel. 

The other issue to keep in mind is that this is a linked file, therefore it must go with your slideshow or it wont play. Here's a simple remedy - when saving your document, make sure to select “copy audio and movies into document” in the Save dialog box . This will embed your audio files and movies. 

We can't do it alone... C2 Partners, a love note

Every business has partners, sometimes known as business resources or valued vendors. I wanted to take a few minutes to both ENDORSE and thank our partners, our trusted and valued business resources. If you ever need support/advice/service in their area of expertise, don't hesitate to contact them directly or ask me to make an introduction.

In alphabetical order:

Big Shoes Network - need a job? an internship? a resource for marketing, advertising or design in the midwest? Look no further. Jeff and Martha Carrigan have created an on-line networking empire! We love that BIG Shoes Network!

Bill McGinnis - Bill is the guy who says NO! Until he says yes! He serves as C2's strategic & financial advisor. He facilitates meetings, advises on hiring, interviewing and on-going employee evaluation, compensation and professional development. He helps us budget (saying NO more frequently than yes, but that's why we're still here!), provides long-range strategic planning and short term crisis management as needed. He's our one-man board of advisors. Bill usually takes on bigger fish than C2, we're thrilled and lucky to have him on the team.

Burton & Mayer - Brett & Steve Waterhouse do an incredible job! From the start they've exceeded our expectations, getting jobs done on short notice or connecting us with clients. They're rock stars and I cannot say enough about the level of genuine care and over-the-top service they've provided to our business since our inception in 2004.

DigiCopy - Paul Otero owns the local branches of Digicopy. As a former Apple guru he trained his staff well. Martje and the crew at the Erie Street location really know the hardware and software needed to get short run jobs done FAST and right! If you need to hit a quick copy place, look no further!

Fairway Promotions - We love our green C2 pens, hopefully you have one on your desk right now! Dale Tegtmeier is our preferred purveyor of chatckes! We like to call him the Chatckes King of Milwaukee. If you can put a logo on it, he can make it happen!

K2PR - Kathryn Wellner serves as our public relations pro, getting us placement in local, regional and national publications. We have a stack of clippings attributed to her hard work. She reps clients that need TV and radio appearances, as well as trade show and other media placement. Even though we're small potatoes compared to some of her clients, she always makes us feel like we're her number ONE priority. She's responsive, talented and well connected.

Locatelli and Company - CPAs to the STARS, that's Jim Locatelli and his band of brainiacs. Jim, Sheri and Chris all make our life at C2 easier, helping us with budgets, taxes and guiding us through the fun challenges of business ownership. AND, they throw a heck of an after-tax party, reason enough to become a client! L & C serve several advertising, marketing and design firms, so they know our biz, our clients and are an invaluable resource to us.

MC Services - As one of the only purveyors of Apple Certified training, the pros at MC Services are both stellar trainers for Apple network support and FileMaker Pro training, they act as consultants in both areas as well. Duane Maas is an experienced technician and instructor, as well as a dedicated Brewer's fan! We're thrilled to have them on our roster of partners.

Park Bank - Jack Walden isn't just a banker, he and the people at Park Bank are supportive allies and friends. They really understand the needs of creative businesses and many of our clients are their clients. They've played an integral role in helping us grow!

Proven Direct - With brilliant new space on Canal Street, the team at Proven Direct has become an invaluable event partner for C2. They put incredible thought and care into their build-out, this 5S lean, green digital printing operation often hosts C2 and Adobe User Groups in their new auditorium on the 2nd level. They share both their space and expertise regularly and we appreciate them greatly! Thanks to Mike Limbach, Dave Hess and Rick Bauer for all the support.

Sells - James "Jimmy" Wamser and Robert Hammen know Adobe and Apple software at expert levels and we're thrilled to have them as a training partner. When it comes to network and pre-press technology they're the answer. The Wams (as we affectionately call him) is an Adobe Certified Instructor with certifications in Acrobat, Photoshop and InDesign, while Robert is positively certifiable, boasting several Apple certs: Apple Certified Help Desk Specialist, Apple Certified Technical Coordinator, Apple Certified Systems Administrator.

Stamm Business Technologies - Dave Stamm has put together an incredible team of Apple and PC network pros offering the best cross-platform, IT/network support available. They service several creative firms and the internal design/advertising/marketing departments of some of Milwaukee's top companies. They understand the unique challenges of font related technologies, RIPs, Adobe and Quark software, etc. We partner with them regularly, sending our clients to them with hardware and network challenges. Stamm's crew always gets RAVE reviews.

The Eisner - We love The Eisner...and we show it every year at their I LOVE THE EISNER event, also known as the XO (kiss hug). Join us at the XO every February and show this industry gem YOUR love, or just pop into see an exhibit or catch an industry speaker. We've used their amazing space for seminars, meetings, classes over the last 6 years, clients alway leave impressed. We appreciate the ever-evolving exhibits, Cori Coffman and Katie Sorenson's professionalism and dedication to both the museum and industry. The Eisner always needs volunteers...contact C2 or The Eisner for details!

C2 Gallery Night Returns - with Community High School!

The "Layers - Distilling Excellence" program is a collaborative effort with C2 Graphics and Community High School showcasing students work using Adobe Photoshop. The images explore both the internal and external forces that shape the “essence” of our self and represent how these influences have contributed to each student’s layers of memories, thoughts, dreams and opinions.

The exhibit is the result of a digital media/graphic design course provided by C2 Instructors James Fritz, Kevin Stohlmeyer, and Angelo Vasta with C2 talent Brad Krause and CHS Staff members Jason O'Brien and Roxanne Mayeur.

Each students art is unique both in their artistic expression, but also with the story that accompanies each piece. Students that would normally not have an opportunity to express themselves creatively in digital media really took to using Adobe Photoshop® and create spectacular works.

The exhibit is from 5-9 pm tonight (April 17) in the lobby of our offices at 222 E. Erie Street. All 21 Students are scheduled to be on hand to showcase their work, so please stop by and show your support to these young artists.

Shown below are some of the works from the show.

Adobe Photoshop 1.0

Before you hesitate upgrading to Adobe Photoshop CS4, take a look at this video and contemplate how far we've come in 19 years. (Yes Photoshop is 20 next year!) This is version 1.0 from 1990. The amazing advances from 1990 to today is one of the reasons I love what I do. (and you should too!). So sit back, take a relaxing breath and be happy that Adobe is coming out with better, faster, greater products for all of us to enjoy. Now go forth and upgrade.

Fireworks CS4 Tips and Tricks

This month, C2 Instructor Jake Stroh is sharing some great tips and tricks for Adobe Fireworks. Read up on this exciting addition to any designer's arsenal.

The key to profitability in web design and development is to build great prototypes for your clients, arrive together at a sign off point on the interface and then begin the build-out process.

This process can be further aided by demonstrating your prototype as a clickable PDF, where the navigation actually takes the user to the corresponding page of the prototype, or by exporting your Fireworks page layouts as a “demo” which produces a clickable flash slide show as a way to sell your design ideas to your clients.

Exporting a clickable PDF:

Once you have designed a navigation system that you like, it would be a good idea in an effort to save time, to create a Master page of this. To set your current page as a Master page, goto the PAGES palette and by using the palette pulldown menu, select “Set as master page”. Now when you create a new page all of your master page items will already be on the page.

Once all of your pages are prototyped you can then return to your master page, select the “Rectangle Hotspot tool” in the WEB section of the Tools palette. Drag a rectangular box across each navigation button. Once created you can select the cyan colored box and go to the inspector and select from the LINK pull down menu. This link menu will give you options to the names of each of your pages. If you took the time to name them (by clicking on the default names “01 PAGE” and typing in your own name), then it should not be all that hard to associate the named link with the proper Hotspot area.

With all of the hot spots LINKED to the proper pages, select FILE, EXPORT, Export as PDF. This will generate a multi-paged PDF that will jump to the proper page when the user clicks on the hotspot area.

Demo current document:

Another way to create an interactive slide show of your prototyped website, is to simply select COMMANDS, DEMO CURRENT DOCUMENT at any point during your design process. This will bring up a prompt that will give you the ability to CHECK which pages you wish to include in your presentation.

The benefits to this approach are: The presentation is viewed in a web browser and can be uploaded to a staging area for presentation on the we. A clickable thumbnail navigation appears when mousing over the bottom portion of your web browser and disappears when mousing off of the thumbnail navigation, which is a great non-intrusive way to present and navigate your designs.

Be mindful that this approach produces many files in order to work: Thumbnail and presentation images, HTML, XML, SWF and JS files produce this simply elegant way to present your ideas.

On a soapbox for public art

Day-to-day I represent professional artists: graphic designers, photographers, creative directors, production artists, copy writers and most related creative professions. Many of these professionals also paint, sing, dance, play instruments, write, sculpt, garden, weld, sew, bead, sketch, build furniture or otherwise immerse themselves in the arts to feed their souls. Lots of these creative-types and artists subscribe to this mailing list, as well as those of us who hire, train, educate, administrate and serve as vendors to these folks. Today I find myself on a soapbox talking to all of you about public art. I enjoy being surrounded by thoughtful architecture, colorful sculptures, paintings, photography and the energy of a city that appreciates art. Controversial as public art may be, it creates jobs, adds character to neighborhoods and promotes lively conversation.

I want our creative community to step up and support the already funded and art board-approved public arts project that the Milwaukee Common Council has yet to approve. This effort necessitates timely support, as deadlines for supplies needed by the artist fast approach. Please read the summary of the situation below and join me in supporting public art in Milwaukee!

From an email written by Christine Harris of the Cultural Alliance of Greater Milwaukee:
Many of you may be aware that a public art project, which had gone through the proper process of selection and approval, was taken to task by some of the City Council's Aldermen earlier this week at a Department of Public Works Committee meeting. The project was shelved at least until the next meeting and may be in jeopardy. The Cultural Alliance and many others in the cultural community believe this action has hurt the cause for public art in our community. We are asking you to communicate with the committee Aldermen in support of approving this public art project by Janet Zweig. For more background on the project, please go to Mary Louise Schumacher's blog site http://www.jsonline.com/blogs/entertainment/artcity.html.

The Cultural Alliance is taking the position that Bob Bryson and Alderman Bauman thought they had the votes to move this project forward and therefore didn't need to rally the troops. We believe we should be thanking Ald. Bob Bauman for his support. In addition, we will be working behind the scenes to help problem solve together with the Aldermen. Hopefully, the combination of grass roots impact and 'grass tops' communication will move this project forward. Both are needed.

In addition to your personal point of view, which is an important expression, here are some talking points:

This public art process was put in to place years ago and the project has been moving forward according to all of the guidelines. The money has already been approved.

The public art committee was comprised of people with the background and commitment of the public interest to make an artist choice that will serve our community well and meet the budgetary requirements.

The chosen artist, Janet Zweig, has committed to spend the $60,000 matching dollars being approved with local artists, thereby giving very valuable jobs to our city and helping to make the project community-relevant. Furthermore, she has a stellar international reputation for her work and a Milwaukee background.

We (the Cultural Alliance) believe that a well structured public art program is critical to having an interesting, culturally diverse community and that it not only adds to our quality of life but it helps to distinguish our region by reflecting our unique expression.

Please, please, please be respectful. We are not going to change attitudes or behaviors by beating people up - that only escalates negative visibility, as we can see by the opening comments being quoted in today's Stingl column. We have learned we still have much advocacy to do. I would like to share some comments from Brad Lichtenstein's well crafted letter to his Alderman.

"We can raise the entire cultural capital of Milwaukee in part by takings risks and supporting public art. You don't need to personally like every piece of public art that you vote on. Art is a matter of preference. You just need to like the idea of crafting a first-class city that can compete in these trying economic times. Art goes hand in hand with better transportation, business development and all of the other efforts to bolster our economy. I hope you'll reconsider your sentiments and support this project. Oh, and by the way, the part the city would pay for supports local artists by giving them jobs." Brad Lichtenstein

Contact information for the Aldermen is below. If you need to see which district you reside or work in so you can make the letter more personal, please go to: http://www.ci.mil.wi.us/router.asp?docid=304 . If you wish to contact YOUR Alderman in support of this project, please do so. Mail Address for all is City Hall, Room 205, 200 E. Wells, Milwaukee, WI 53202

Ald. 4th District Robert Bauman, Chair; rjbauma@milwaukee.gov voted in favor

Ald. 11th District Joe Dudzik, Vice Chair; jdudzi@milwaukee.gov

Ald. 7th District Willie C. Wade; wwade@milwaukee.gov

Ald. 8th District Robert G. Donovan; rdonov@milwaukee.gov

Ald. 9th District Robert W. Puente; rpuent@milwaukee.gov

We also believe that on the larger Common Council, Ald. Mike Murphy and Nic Kovac will likely be supportive.

Next Steps: Once we know the date of the next meeting where this project will be discussed we will get that information to you, along with a suggested strategy.

Thank you for being advocates for our furthering the reputation of our region by being a strong and mobilized creative community.

Photoshop 3D fix

Ok, I know a lot of you have not used the 3D feature in Photoshop, or have had issues with bringing in the really cool Collada files from Google 3D warehouse. If you are not aware, when you currently import a Collada file into a 3D layer, the surface opacities come in at 0%. This means it is invisible and you cannot see anything until you go through the significant struggle of changing all surfaces to 100% opacity (and guessing which ones should be less than 100% ie. glass, etc.)

Well a new script has surfaced thanks to John Nack at Adobe via his blog post today. Download this script file and load it into Photoshop. Run the script on your Collada file and BOOM! Corrected opacities! Righteous!

Here is the tech doc. 

Fooling Around with InDesign

Since April 1st is just around the corner, I thought it would be a good idea to show off a few different ways in which you can mess with a co-worker on April Fools day. Be warned, you may not be employed on April 2nd if you try these techniques on your boss. I don’t recommend doing all of these because it will be obvious that you did something. Just choose one or two and observe the results from a save distance, preferably behind bullet-proof glass.

Change all of your layers colors to white
This will make it impossible to for anyone to tell if they have anything selected. Bonus points. Edit the layer and uncheck print, now everything on this layer will be non-prining.

Change the keyboard shortcuts
Cmd(ctrl)+S changed to Quit
Cmd(ctrl)+Q changed to Save

Hiding Menu items.
Under the edit menu, you can choose menu’s at the bottom. In file menu, turn off save, save as, save a copy, place, print and package. Since you have changed the keyboard shortcuts, they will probably try the menus next, but they won’t be there!

Default Font
Change the default font in the basic paragraph style to something lovely like comic sans 72pt magenta 3pt leading.

Swatches
Rename the colors in the swatches panel. If you are clever (which I am not), you could create sentences with the names. For bonus points, change them all to spot LAB colors.

Preferences

• Change the tools tips to none (who needs reminders)
• Turn the thumbnail previews for placing off.
• Turn on auto collapse for panels (this will drive them mad)
• Change the ruler units to custom and put in 256 pt

• Change the snap zone for guides to 36. Now if you even get remotely close, everything will just get sucked over to the guide.
• Move the raster image view settings to the far left which will grey out every image.
• Change the Greek Type Below to 128 pt. Good luck editing

Misc
If you are looking for other non-InDesign related pranks I recommend my favorite subtle prank. Every morning go to a co-workers desk and remove all of the staples from their stapler before they get to their desk. Do this every day consistently. At first they may not notice, but eventually it may drive them mad.

Coolest.Technology.Ever.

While reading my weekly posts from around the design web, I ran across this amazing new tech called Augmented Reality. AR, as it is referred to in the industry, integrates 3D objects into live video, the video is digitally processed and “augmented” with the 3D components. In other words this digital processing mixes real and virtual worlds together, in real time.

So after researching this a bit and finding cool video snippets (see below), I actually was able to demo this myself using several websites (see further below). After playing around and showing this to the office, I can say that this is the coolest thing I have seen come out of technology in a long time. Leading the way with AR is Total Immersion.  They have even signed with Topps Baseball Card Co. who is jumping the shark and using AR in their 2009 lineup of specialty cards.

Video examples of AR:

2007 demonstration:



Mini Cooper Germany Demo:

Topps Baseball Cards Website. 

Demonstrations. In both cases, you must print out the marker PDF and have a webcam. 

Demo #1 (scroll past demo video to see directions)

Demo #2 

Take the next step...

In August 2008 the Creative Transitions Conference inspired participants to evolve into creative supergenuies in just 3 days. The CTC team knows professional development can't stop there, so we're bringing on the NEXT STEP in your evolution, the Creative Transitions Series '09!

We identified three hot industry topics that will help supercharge your skills:

* Web Skills for Print Professionals
* Best Practices in HTML Email and Social Media Marketing Implementation
* Advanced InDesign Skills to Enhance Workflow and Efficiency

Each $99 session provides participants six hours of expert instruction and, as take-aways, video tutorials and printed reference materials.

C2 Events plans to expand the series to provide year-round professional development opportunities for creatives in Madison and Milwaukee. Our April C2 NYCU newletter will provide more details about the Creative Transitions Series '09.

Why can't I just learn Dreamweaver?

Let's talk about web design for a minute.

In the print world, if you know how to use InDesign or Quark you essentially know how to create any document or page (with a couple caveats based on background knowledge like: placed images need the proper resolution, no accidental spot or RGB colors, etc). What you see is what you get.

Web design is different in that just knowing the Dreamweaver program does not allow you to make proper web pages. Or maybe a better way to put it is that there is much more required background knowledge before you will be able to build a professional, useful, successful web page. With that knowledge, Dreamweaver is a great tool for building websites but that background knowledge needs to come first.

What do you need to know before Dreamweaver is useful?

1 - You need to learn the rules for saving images for the web. Easy.

2 - HTML is how you get "stuff" on the page. You need to learn HTML and semantic markup (a fancy way of saying "tag things by their meaning, not their look"). It sounds like programming but it's really not, it's typing. You have to learn about 10 basic tags for HTML and then you're up and running. You can get a working knowledge of HTML in a couple hours. Fairly easy to learn.

3 - You need to learn CSS (Cascading Style Sheets). This is, admittedly, the difficult part of web design. Everything you think of as "Design" is CSS on the web - from font control to page layout. CSS has to be created by hand by typing text to create a set of rules - you can't use a tool like the frame tool InDesign to draw a box. This isn't as difficult as it may sound - you only use about 20 CSS properties on a regular basis so that's another 20 words to understand. But yes, CSS takes a while to learn because it's really more about judgement and problem solving than learning some "code words". And that's why when people ask me "Why isn't there a program where I put stuff where I want it then makes a web page for me?" I have to tell them there isn't a program like that because the act of laying out a web page involves creativity, judgement and problem solving and no program can do that for us (yet).

Acceptance that web design is not done the same way as print design is the first step.

We have 3 web related classes:

In our Standards-Based Web Design class we use Dreamweaver as we learn the 3 topics above and we create websites at the highest level of professionalism - what's known as "Standards Based web design" - This class has my strongest recommendation.

We do have a Dreamweaver specific class that teaches all the "parts" of Dreamweaver but it is for people who are part of a team that already uses Dreamweaver and that person is not responsible for creating pages but maybe updating them or doing a couple specific things using Dreamweaver. Recommended only for special cases.

We also have a class dedicated to Creating HTML Email - even though they may look the same, the rules are completely different for web pages and email HTML pages. This class uses a very specific subset of Dreamweaver's tools along with Photoshop.

Flash CS4 Tips and Tricks

Remember the new tweens live on the object, NOT the timeline, so select the object first then move the red playback head to the new frame and make your changes. The changes are "property changes" not "keyframes".

You want an object to finish its tween then stay in that state for an extended time? Shift-drag the last frame to the right (if you just drag, you extend the animation).

Be very careful with the scroll wheel on your mouse when you are over an editable field in the property or motion inspectors - most of the fields are active the moment your cursor is over them and scrolling the wheel changes values (handy if you're aware it's happening, annoying when you're trying to navigate).

BONUS TIP: If you are using the scroll wheel to change values, adding the SHIFT key changes the values by 10, COMMAND-Mac/Control-windows changes values by .1