We Are Designers

Currently we are reworking the entire site and will be having a massive overhaul for mid of January. A logo, finally… new site wide structure, regular monthly columns and even more design related news & reviews and possibly video postings from the crew. We’ll see you again in January.

Have far to many fonts? Can’t keep track if you really need that font or not? Then it’s time for you to invest in a font management program. For years Extensis has been making some of the industry leading software for just this. The latest incarnation of their font management software is called Suitcase Fusion but now it looks as though they are getting ready to release a major update, Suitcase Fusion 2.

The application is getting refresh of the user interface and even allows you to do a live font preview, which is something no other font utility has done in the past, at least to my knowledge. And if your like me and use the app on a daily basis, the $50.00 upgrade price looks like it be worth it. 

Photoshop CS4 Feature Tour Bryan Hughes, Photoshop Product Manager, walks through the top features that make this release a must have.

Design Premium CS4 Feature Tour Watch how the all-new Design Premium CS4 helps you deliver innovative ideas in print, web, interactive and mobile.

Dreamweaver CS4 Feature Tour Product Manager Scott Fegette demonstrates new features such as the Live View, Code Navigator and AIR Authoring.

Flash CS4 Feature Tour Product Manager Richard Galvan demonstrates new features such as Object Based Animation and Inverse Kinematics (i.e. the new Bones Tool).

Illustrator CS4 Feature Tour Product manager David Macy demonstrates the Blob Brush feature.

Photoshop CS4 Extended Feature Tour Product Manager Zorana Gee shows the all new Photoshop CS4 Extended, which includes everything in Photoshop CS4 plus more.

Fireworks CS4 Feature Tour Product Manager Rick Jones demonstrates new features such as the New User Interface, CS4 Export and AIR Prototyping.

InDesign and InCopy CS4 Feature Tour Product Manager Michael Ninness demonstrates new features such as Smart Guides and Live Preflight.

If you miss the launch broadcast of Adobe CS4 than no need to worry. Thanks to AdobeTV you can check it all out.
Total time 59:16 mins.

If you haven’t signed up for the broadcast event tomorrow, then you better.Quickly go to http://adobe.istreamplanet.com/ to have instructions on how to view to the broadcast emailed to you, with your preferred viewing time.
If the recent leaked images of InDesign CS4 are any indication, we should be in for one heck of a show.

Well it looks like Amazon has done it again… Back in March of 2007 Amazon “accidentally” released the shipping date and pricing for Adobe CS3, and yesterday they did pretty much the same thing. But for only InDesign CS4.  Appleinsider reported that Amazon released a full product page for the upcoming InDesign CS4, which is to debate next Tuesday, including full screen shots of the actual products redesigned interface as well as full list of product features. (Screen shots are included below)

Release date: November 1, 2008

New features include:
Live Preflight
Preflight while you design. Continuous preflighting alerts you to potential problems in real time so can quickly navigate to a problem, fix it directly in layout, and keep working.
Export to Adobe Flash CS4 Proessional (XFL)
One of the most exciting features in InDesign CS4 is its new integration with Adobe Flash CS4 Professional. Combine the page layout strengths of InDesign with the power of Flash authoring to create rich, interactive graphics.
Placed InDesign files
When you place one InDesign file into another, the source file remains an editable link. Now, when you initiate an edit, the linked source file opens to the exact point where you wish to make your edits, even if that source file is multipage or complex, long document.

One year ago this day Jack Nack announced on his blog that after twenty years, Photoshop was finally getting a logo. With such a long history of using a sans serif font when referencing the product, usually complimented by the Adobe logo, many designers were shocked by this announcement. Yet many more were shocked by the logo itself.
One reply on Jack Nack’s blog seemed to sum the collective’s thoughts. “Did Microsoft take over creative direction at Adobe?”

According to the press docs: To represent this rich family of products, Adobe is introducing the Photoshop visual logo. This logo will soon appear in all Photoshop-related marketing, so keep an eye out for it. The Photoshop logo on a product, service, or technology, represents the rich legacy, technical quality, and attention to detail that has made Photoshop the gold standard in digital imaging.

Now… The real question. Since the launching of the logo has the branding of it made people more aware of Photoshop itself? Has this logo rejuvenated the creatives that use Photoshop? Have we seen commercials, print ads, web ads or anything else promoting the various Photoshop applications using this new logo?

As of today the only place I’ve really seen the logo being used to brand anything Photoshop related is on Adobe’s Photoshop Family page and Photoshop.com.

As designers we all like “Free” and we all like fonts, and ordering Adobe’s Font Folio is a little out of most of our price range. So isn’t it nice when we can find Free Fonts to help keep our pocket books a little fuller.

Urban Fonts and DaFont both have a large selection of Free Fonts to choose from without running into duplicates. Both sites offer a variety of fonts organized into different catagories along with samples of what the fonts look like.

If you have any recommendations for Free Font sites go ahead and comment about it.

We’ve all dealt with one, we all know one, to most of us they are our friends. As designers we all can relate to the frustration that these programmers / developers are dealing with whether it’s from a client or boss.
So the next time you run into a developer give them a hug.

If you haven’t had the chance to try Adobe’s Kuler, an RIA (Rich Internet Application), then you’ve been missing out on one of best FREE tools a artist or designer could have. I first started using Kuler a little over a year ago and I have to say it gets used just about as often as I use Photoshop.

Basically, Kuler is a Flash application that was developed to generate themes of color that you can save or download as Adobe Swatch Exchange .ASE files and import into Photoshop, Illustrator or InDesign. Browse, download or even comment on other color themes people have generated, until your heart is content. Essentially Kuler acts and feels just like Illustrator’s Live Paint, but much easier to handle and for everyone to enjoy.

In the past year Kuler has even been upgraded to offer a new feature that allows color themes to be generated from a photo. You can either uplaod your own photo, or browse through public Flickr accounts. Heck, you can even sign into your Flickr account and grab your own photos. This new feature even has built in presets to help you find colors that work well together.

Kuler also comes in a bit size version of itself for use on your OS called Kuler Desktop. The AIR app is pretty much a slimmed down version of the online experience, but I’m sure they will eventually release it with all the same features.