Adobe Flash Catalyst, Can’t Wait!

I cannot wait till this is released! If your a non-coding designer type check this out!!

Screenshot from Adobe Labs Flash Catalyst intro movie.

Adobe Flash Catalyst is a new application that Adobe has been working on for some time. It allows designers to make interfaces in their graphics apps such as Photoshop or Illustrator and then take them into Catalyst to add motion animations and interactivity WITHOUT CODING!

Is Acrobat.com Your New Office?

Adobe launches Acobat.com beta which could replace Office for some? You can access it through your browser or download and install the Acrobat.com AIR desktop application shown in the image above. Click the image to go to Acrobat.com.

Acrobat.com includes file storage, word proccessor, web conferencing, file sharing and a PDF converter. Below is a screen shot of the Acrobat.com AIR desktop application widget view.

Library of Congress Photo Archives on Flickr

The Library of Congress has a flickr  account. They currently have two collections, News in the 1910s and 1930s-40s in Color.

TV Micro Remote Stopped Working

I got a Miglia TV Micro for Christmas last year and it has been nice being able to watch TV while working on my computer. The TV Micro came with a remote control which either due to updating to Leopard or Elgato Systems update to it’s Eye TV software has quit working. Elgato Systems and Miglia’s agreement to ship Eye TV software with Miglia hardware ended recently so that may have something to do with it but Elgato should still support current Miglia customers. I’m not sure where the problem is but I hope it gets straightened out soon.

I am going to contact Miglia support and will add a comment with their response when I get it.

Something Important to Me

My daughter is fighting right now. PLEASE support research if you can!No kid should have to go through what my daughter and others are going through.Please watch the video and realize that your child really could be diagnosed tomorrow. It came out of the blue for us. I pray that no one reading this does have to deal with cancer in any way.Also seeFlickr cancer kids group.

A Suggestion for Design Teachers

Thinking back to my time in school and what I have learned since I had a thought about a good way for teachers to cover some issues a designer might have when going to press with a print piece.

The Idea: Have the students prepare their files as they would to go to press and simply have a class critique where the teacher could pick pieces that may present issues when going to press and explain what issues might arise and how the designer might go about correcting them. The teacher could take questions and help clear up some of the prepress mystery. As simple as this sounds I can’t remember my teachers doing it. Students pieces should be critiqued on their asthetics but going over some possible prepress issues would help all of the students a great deal. For the teacher it would require a little work maybe but it would be of value to the students.

Also it is unrealistic for students to expect teachers to be able to cover every possible topic or question in graphic design but the more questions they ask the more they will get out of their education. If you don’t understand something ASK! There is no stupid question but you will FEEL a lot less stupid asking your teacher in school than a printer or co-worker. Having said that, I did say FEEL a lot less stupid, all of the printers I have worked with were more than happy to help explain anything and they REALLY appreciated the fact that I wanted to give them a file that didn’t cause them problems! I told them that I was a new designer and that I wanted to learn whatever I could to make both of our jobs easier and they said “no problem, it’s so nice to have a designer that even cares about learning about prepress and getting it right”. I don’t have experience working with other designers because I work with a web design studio that added graphic design when I started but I would hope that coworkers with more experience would have attitude’s as good as the printers I have worked with.

Comments?

graphic design

Photography Tutorials from Layers Magazine

These are pretty good photography tutorials.

Manfrotto How To Lessons

I found how to lessons on Manfrotto’s site.

US Department of Labor – Overview of Graphic Design

US Department of Labor – Graphic Design

Thought it might be interesting for design students?

What is OpenType

This is a very brief explanation of OpenType and a small PDF tutorial on accessing OpenType features in InDesign.OpenType was developed by Adobe and Microsoft. OpenType fonts are cross platform meaning you can use the SAME fonts on Mac and Windows and from the info I have there shouldn’t be any type re-flow issues when for example taking an InDesign document from a Mac to a PC. OpenType fonts are excellent for print design and support the inclusion of many more characters and special characters in a particular font. Some OpenType fonts have many special characters making them valuable for refined typographical choices. Some OpenType advanced typography features include kerning, alternate metrics, and glyph substitution. OpenType is the new font standard and most font foundries are recreating their entire font catalogs in OptenType and adding special characters to some fonts.To use OpenType fonts added abilities you need to use a program that takes advantage of them. I know Adobe InDesign and QuarkXPress 7 allow you to access all of OpenType’s capabilities. If you are interested in other programs you should check to see if they take full advantage of OpenType.I personally try to buy only OpenType fonts now if available.Here are some more informational resources:

• Adobe OpenType overview videos – Watch thes, they explain OpenType well.
• creativepro OpenType article
• An article on OpenType by thetypographic.com
• OpenType overview from Typophile
• OpenType specific Overview from MyFonts
• Font Format Overview from MyFonts
• OpenType overview from Fonts.com