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AdobeMAX!

Tuesday, October 18th, 2011

Adobe announced a LOT of things at AdobeMAX this year!

The  new “Creative Cloud”

The idea behind this is essentially to make Adobe into the central hub of your creative life. I’m a regular Dropbox user and it makes having all my files on all my devices at the same time really easy. This works along the same lines… start a file on your tablet, save to the cloud, walk to your laptop and keep working on the same file. Lots and lots of synching.  Creative Cloud is a hosted service with a subscription going live in November with 20 GB storage to start.

There are three parts to the Cloud:

Part One  – Apps

Along with a cloud subscription of the Creative Suite (the programs will be saved locally), these are also six flash-based touch apps

• Photoshop Touch – scribble selections are ok,  tilting layers in space is awesome!
• Collage – one word…  moodboards
• Debut  – Presenting your mockups has never been easier
• Ideas – finger painting taken to a whole new level
• Kuler – the mobile love child of Kuler.adobe.com
• Proto – really USEFUL interactive wireframer for websites –mock up the site,  create a zip with assets, open in Dreamweaver and apply CSS = done!)

Part Two – Services

• DPS Single edition – publish something to the iPad
• Typekit – show every font in every browser
• Business Catalyst – Create sites for your clients complete with hosting and lots of bells and whistles

Part Three – Community .

• An inspiration gallery and support hub

Oh, and that’s not all…

• Edge
• Muse
• PhoneGap

This is really a quick and dirty overview. For more information, check out these links…

Learn more about Touch Apps here

Learn more about Typekit here
Learn more about DSP, Single Edition Here

Learn more about Community here

Learn more about Creative Cloud here

Posted in Adobe, Design, Software | No Comments »

Easiest Damn Color Rules Ever!

Friday, April 1st, 2011

Some people really love choosing “the right” color for their content and will spend ages getting it the way they want. Some people just want to be able to put colors on their content that works well and doesn’t make babies cry. This article is NOT for the first group.

Kirsten’s Super Simple “Heraldry Color Rules”

OK, these are not “MY” rules, but they are the ones I use in class fairly often. I am a bit of a color geek, though not a patch on my oil-painting husband. So, when it comes to making designs I’m reasonably happy spending a nearly ridiculous amount of time messing with color combinations. There are many, many people however for whom spending time that way is not only not productive but headache inducing.

We have the idea, can you hurry it up a bit (and be less damn wordy) ?

Um, yeah. Sorry.
If you are not sure what colors “go”, just follow these simple rules. Feel free to break them when it makes sense to you. You will find plenty of heraldic examples that break these rules but here are the basics.

The Rules

Metal on Color and Color on Metal

What is “metal”? White and Yellow stand in for silver and gold.

Red, Blue, Green, Black… your colors can go on either of the metals, and the metals can go on any color.

You don’t put metal on metal (like white text on a yellow shape) or color on color (like blue text on red or vice versa). In the image above, the black outline means it’s not white on yellow. It’s white on black on yellow. Basically it’s an easy way of keeping good contrast. Having said this I just made a layout in InDesign that used a dark cyan background with a tint of the same color as the title text. If you’re going to leave clear contrast behind, do it mindfully. Pale grey text on white is my least favorite graphics fad but there are times things like that can work.

But no one follows these rules anymore, do they?

Let’s see… Adobe, Dunkin Donuts, Subway, Chili’s, Harley Davidson, Starbucks
– and check out the logo for the US Cyber Command
There are examples of breaking these and it working fine…
Nasa’s logo has red on blue but it’s not red text – which I think would be harder to read than the white they use.

So, if you’re not sure about your colors. Take an easy shortcut. Just think Heraldry.

Tags: Color, Design, Layout
Posted in Design, Tutorials and Demos | 2 Comments »

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Thursday, July 8th, 2010

UI Design Guiding Principles

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A detailed article on visual perception

Tuesday, July 6th, 2010

Jeff Johnson has written a detailed and fascinating article over at UX Matters. Check it out – Visual perception

Posted in Design, Resources, Training | No Comments »