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Archive: 2005 September
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Faith in Design – a lecture by Michael Osborne
As a designer working in the wild, it’s important maintain a dialogue with your peers, whether that’s done through email, by phone, in person at cafés or other establishments, or even through classroom or convention interactions. One good way to keep up this kind of conversation is by attending the events.
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GoLive vs Dreamweaver
Which one will survive after the Adobe/Macromedia’s merger?
Many people are wondering what will happen to GoLive and Dreamweaver once the merge between Adobe and Macromedia will take effect. Will Adobe get rid of GoLive? Will it change its purpose? One of the ways to to predict future occurrencies about this, until official word from Adobe, is to look at the existent market.
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The Case for Technical Certification in Content Creation and Delivery
Technical certifications quantify and qualify skill sets, enhance workflows, provide a powerful tool to hirers and add market value to job seekers.
By definition, this is an instrument attesting to a level of achievement in a course of study or training, or the favorite IT term, “benchmark,” in this case, a skill set.
Read more on The Case for Technical Certification in Content Creation and Delivery…
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PhotoSpin.com Offers Tutorial on Smart Objects
Tommy Maloney’s tutorial explains the basics of Smart Objects, the new non-destructive way to manipulate images
The Smart Objects feature is one of the most exciting things Photoshop has brought to the table in recent years: importing an image and being able to scale, distort, transform and otherwise manipulate it without making it go soft or blurry because you scaled it too large. It’s like working with an image in Illustrator and being able to enlarge it 1000% without any image degradation. I tell people that I predict the way of the future is a single Adobe application for page layout, photo manipulation and graphics creation (Creative Suite, anyone?) and this is one of those little examples of one Adobe application using ideas from another and/or using one app to do another’s job. Heck, lots of designers use Illustrator to create layouts when they should be using InDesign, so why not use Photoshop in a way championed by vector editors like Illustrator?
Read more on PhotoSpin.com Offers Tutorial on Smart Objects…
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Photoshop Elements 4: Mac Version is coming?
The word from Adobe is now yes, there will be a Mac version of Photoshop Elements 4, its popular entry-level photo-editing software.
In a post on Photoshop Elements User forums, the word from Adobe is that yes, there will be a Mac version of Elements. There was no annoucement of when, leading to speculation that Adobe may be waiting to release the Mac version to be compatible with the new Intel chip as well as the current Unix-based Macs now on the market.
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Nationalatlas.gov: Your Tax Dollars At Work
The National Atlas of the United States of America online is a wealth of resources for the curious and the professional alike
Wired cartographers both professional and amateur, as well as people who simply love maps and like information, have a great resource at thier command. Best of all, it’s free, and nearly completely public domain.
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Cartography Word of the Day: Projection
Second in an irregular series.
The Mercator Projection, illustrative of the paradigm. Courtesy Nationalatlas.govIt is axiomatic that the only truly accurate map of the world is one which is drawn upon a spherical solid. The planet, after all, is a 3-dimensional shape. As a sphere, in total, it is of limited use, not appropriate for every application, and can be tough to carry–never mind the age-old problem of folding it back up and putting it back in the car’s glove-box.
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Yet another web design trend?
A website’s main navigation has always been featured someplace near the top of the page. Nowadays, people are questioning that. So, where should your navigation be placed?
It started a couple of weeks ago with websites such as This is Powazek and Keegan Jones. Great designs but what usability results can this new approach have? For years now, usability gurus such as Jakob Nielsen or Jared Spool have argued that users hate to scroll. Their findings, based on numerous user testing sessions, were the base on which everyone positioned their website’s main navigation either on top of the page, or on its side. It’s what everyone does without spending one minute to think about it and, most importantly, it’s what users expect.
There are times, however, when designers, fed up with doing things the same way over and over again, will try and challenge the state of things. It happened about a year ago when the web saw a massive surge in using the Trebuchet font. Designers were trying harder and harder to break away from the rule of Verdana and Arial so they went for something new. For a while, I’d say around 90% of the websites designed at that time were using Trebuchet. It was something new, different and it followed the “cool†trend. Things eventually calmed down and people started going back to Verdana and for good reason: it is currently the single available sans-serif font (the other one, serif font, being Georgia) that was designed specifically for the web. This provides improved legibility at small font sizes and on the low resolution of today’s monitors. But this isn’t about fonts. It’s about trends. I agree that sometimes a trend can bring something good and useful to the table but I’m not convinced that placing your navigation on the bottom of your screen is one of those trends. -
Macromedia Dreamweaver 8 – The review
Viewed by many as the world’s best Web editor, Macromedia’s Dreamweaver just got an upgrade. Part of Macromedia Studio 8.0, Dreamweaver 8.0 brings in some improvements over the last version, but is it worth paying for the upgrade?
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Illustrator CS2 Killer Tips
By Dave Cross and Matt Kloskowski
Illustrator CS2 Killer Tips is full of tips and tricks for Illustrator users no matter what your level of skill with the software.
The latest entry into the Killer Tips series of books, Illustrator CS2 Killer Tips, comes from Dave Cross, author of Illustrator CS Killer Tips, and Matt Kloskowski. Full of color illustrations and quick, meaty tips, this book will increase your Illustrator productivity, whether you are a new user of Illustrator or have been using the software for years. As with previous Killer Tips books, you can start reading anywhere. Scan the contents or index for the tips that relate to a specific problem, or, if you want to know all the tips, read it cover to cover.
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Adobe Announces Photoshop Elements 4.0
Elements 4.0 for Windows is here, leaving Mac users to ponder the fate of this program on the Macintosh platform.
Adobe announced the new version of their entry-level photo editing and organizing program Photoshop Elements 4.0 for Windows XP today. As in version 3, there are two options: Photoshop Elements comes by itself or bundled with Adobe Premiere Elements 2.0.
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“Smasher” Gets Medieval On Font Suitcase Problems
New utility from Insider Software promises to clean up and streamline font suitcases and caches, improving system performance.
Modern font management in the Mac OS X environment is something that leaves many longtime Mac users wishing for the relative simplicity of OS 9′s drag-and-drop management. Fonts in OS X live in multiple places depending on which environment, how many users, how many applications, et cetera.
Read more on “Smasher” Gets Medieval On Font Suitcase Problems…
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New Survey: New Year’s Resolution Usage Plummets from 88% to 45%
The results of a survey released today conclude that only 45% Americans say they write up New Years Resolutions–down from 88% in past years.
In a random telephone survey of 1012 people conducted between 5 August and 8 August, 2005, Stephen Shapiro, president of Goalfree.com and Opinion Research Corp. of Princeton N.J., asked about American’s New Year’s Resolutions. The results bode ill for the institution of annual stop smoking and weight loss self-promises.
Read more on New Survey: New Year’s Resolution Usage Plummets from 88% to 45%…
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Tutorial: Eliminating Jaggies
How two of Photoshop’s most basic tools can turn a pixellated scan into a quality bitmap image
I suppose it’s the initiation rite of any newspaper production designer: the sales rep’s client wants their logo scanned in for the next day’s ad, and when you ask for the Illustrator file or PDF they instead hand you a god-awful fax. “Just scan it in,†they say, and you know that no matter what you say or how you explain the real-life problem of working with poor originals, they will only beg you to make it work because it’s easier than going back to the client and asking for a press-ready file that they have long since misplaced.
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Margulis Drops Photoshop CS2 In Favor Of CS
Color-correction guru quits using Adobe’s latest version, citing poor Bridge performance.
Dan Margulis, inaugural inductee into the Photoshop Hall of Fame and one of the world’s foremost color-correction experts, recently announced that, “while [Adobe Photoshop] CS2 is a usable program,†beginning August 1 he reverted back to using its predecessor, Photoshop CS, due to poor performance with the new standalone application Adobe Bridge combined with a less-than-phenomenal set of new features for this most recent upgrade.
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Let us know your opinion in this poll
Jacci Howard Bear, About.com Desktop Publishing Guide questions whether QuarkXPress 7 will win back designers, or InDesign CS 2 will keep them with the Adobe family. She says:
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Rand McNally Releases 2006 Road Atlas
2006 edition of RMN Standard boasts more than 2.000 updates, enhanced coverage, more tourist and internet features.
On 15 Sept 2005, publisher Rand McNally announced the release of thier signature U.S. Road Atlas, 2006 edition.
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BeLight Releases Image Tricks for OS X Tiger Free
BeLight has released its Image Tricks image editing application for free. It is for Mac OS X Tiger only, and uses Mac OS X Tiger Core Image filters. Easily edit and apply various effects and filters to your photos and images.
Read more on BeLight Releases Image Tricks for OS X Tiger Free…
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InDesign Setting up a Document Part 2
Rulers and Spine
If you need to measure things on your screen put that plastic ruler back in your drawer right now … InDesign has rulers which are located right on the top and on the left of the document’s window. You have the horizontal ruler (x axis) and the vertical ruler (y axis). They they can help you to measure what you see on screen. If you don’t see them you just need to go to View> Show Rules. If you don’t want to see them but they are turned on, you go to View> Hide Rules (or press F7 to turn them on or off).
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Small Is Beautiful with Atomic Media
Digital Typefounder creates and markets bitmap fonts especially for web media
A sample of Matthew Bardram’s Hypersigna font, available at Atomic MediaNeed a font for a Flash, Web, or WAP application that will stay sharp at small sizes? Hunting for a bitmap font to give a certain presentation feel, perhaps retro? Atomic Media may have just what you’re looking for.
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Typeradio.org Offers Podcasts For Typography Addicts
Typeradio.org interviews to go in podcast format
Typeradio.org has been conducting interviews at typography events all over the world for a year or so now, and if you have an iPod you can now download them as podcasts. They tell me that the podcasts will work with any software that supports podcasts, but they designed to work best with iTunes.
Read more on Typeradio.org Offers Podcasts For Typography Addicts…
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Apple from the Beginning of Time
Apple Ads Collection for the Most Passionate
1983 Apple print advertisement for the Lisa.Apple is gaining more and more market share with their Mac OS X, their inexpensive Mac Mini and their powerful G5. As Apple released their Mighty Mouse, iPod Nano recently came on the scenes. But have you ever wondered how the very first Apple products looked like? Do you know what they were?
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Firefox 1.5: The Next Major Release Undergoing Beta Testing
Shortly after writing about the new Opera 8, now free, I gladly find out that Firefox is testing their next major release
It’s a browser war. It’s imminent. Microsoft promises Internet Explorer 7 with the release of Windows Vista. Opera has just released version 8 of their browser and it’s free too. And Firefox is testing their next release 1.5 since a few months now. Web Site developers need to be on the ball and keep up with all these upgrades. Though there is no point in releasing a new browser, unless this makes it easier both on the web developer and the end user.
Read more on Firefox 1.5: The Next Major Release Undergoing Beta Testing…
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Alien Skin Plug-Ins Now 100% Tiger-Compatible
All Photoshop plug-ins now Tiger-compatible, including Eye Candy 5
Alien Skin Software today announced that their Photoshop plug-ins have been updated to include compatibility with Mac OS X 10.4 (Tiger, released earlier this year) as well fixes to some minor bugs. The updates are free and available to registered Mac and PC users of the following:
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