InDesign Best Practices: Essential Techniques and Rules Every User Must Know

InDesign Best Practices:
Essential Techniques and Rules Every User Must Know

Monday, 1:00 pm – 4:00 pm

You’ve used InDesign a bit, but you still feel like there’s so much more to know… and you’re right! Learn the ins and outs of this powerhouse layout app from a top trainer who has taught pros all over the world. This session will ensure you know how to:

  • Avoid common mistakes made by InDesign users
  • Set up your styles properly for fast production
  • Make use of master page fundamentals
  • Import images and text quickly and efficiently


Creating Accessible PDFs from InDesign

Creating Accessible PDFs from InDesign

Monday, 9:00 am – 12:00 pm

Whether you want to help visually impaired people read your documents or just increase the flexibility and SEO of your PDFs, you need to learn how to make your InDesign documents accessible. This overview of the process is sure to open your eyes to the problems (and solutions!) involved.

  • The Articles panel isn’t enough!
  • Tagging (and re-tagging): What works and what doesn’t
  • Critical steps you’ll have to take in Acrobat
  • What is Section 508, and how can you get compliant?
  • Best resources to rely on


Spectacular and Easy Type Effects

Spectacular and Easy Type Effects

Monday, 11:00 am – 11:45

Incorporating text and typography into your Illustrator images is such an important part of your design process. We’ll cover several way to approach typography design within the context of Illustrator to make creatively engaging and impactful designs. Explore easy methods for producing and controlling typography that will liven up any layout. Explore some fun tips and tricks for making your text pop, stretch, and engage your audience.



Top Three Mobile/Desktop Workflows for Creatives

Top Three Mobile/Desktop Workflows for Creatives

Monday, 10:15 am – 10:45

Humans weren’t meant to design and create with one hand on a mouse and the other clawing a keyboard. We were meant to move, to stand, to explore. In this session, Paul Trani will show the latest in mobile apps that make it more natural to work.

  • Capture the real world around you using your mobile device, then use it in your designs
  • Ensuring you have all your assets wherever and whenever you need them
  • Creating on the fly, finishing at your desk

Come explore how new mobile and touch apps help expand your creative abilities while still having the power of your desktop when you need it.



Photoshop + Illustrator Synergy

Photoshop + Illustrator Synergy

Monday, 10:15 am – 10:45

synergy: the interaction or cooperation of two or more agents to produce a combined effect greater than the sum of their parts

Holmes and Watson, Bert & Ernie, Lennon and McCartney… Photoshop + Illustrator! These two powerhouse applications are better together. Learn effective and simple techniques for using PS/AI in ways that play to their strengths and extend your creative palette.

  • Get better results from Image Trace
  • Animate geometric objects
  • Add texture to crisp vectors
  • Combine Illustrator’s Shape Builder and Photoshop’s Layer Styles for Typographic Effects
  • Create compositions that effectively combine pixels and vectors


Power User Tools of the Photoshop + Illustrator Masters

Power User Tools of the Photoshop + Illustrator Masters

Monday, 9:15 am – 10:00 am

Join Dave in this information-packed session where he will share some of his coolest Photoshop + Illustrator tricks and power techniques for designers!

You will learn how to customize both applications to help you work faster, timesaving keyboard shortcuts, and ways to improve your workflow. This session will leave you saying “I wish I knew that years ago!”

Includes:

  • Work faster with type
  • Powerful ways to move files between the applications
  • Essential keyboard shortcuts you just have to know
  • …and a whole lot more!


Mark Heaps, 2015

Three Minutes Max + Closing Remarks

Three Minutes Max + Closing Remarks

Wednesday, 4:00 – 5:00 p.m.
Still hungry for more?! Watch our presenters each take three minutes max to show off their best tip, trick, or technique! Which one will blow your mind? You get to vote and shower one lucky attendee in the room with prizes… it might be you!

The Triumvirate: Photoshop, Illustrator, and InDesign

The Triumvirate: Photoshop, Illustrator, and InDesign (and more!)

Wednesday, 2:45 – 3:45 pm

What happens when you put two experts in the same room, and get them talking about the interaction (and/or inherent superiority of) Photoshop, Illustrator, and InDesign? We can’t be exactly sure, but we can say it will be inspiring, interesting, and infinitely instructional.

  • Cool type treatments
  • Migrating artwork from InDesign to Photoshop (and maintaining your layers!)
  • Free scripts that make these tools work better together

David maintains that Photoshop and Illustrator are really just plug-ins for InDesign. Deke insists InDesign and Illustrator are just add-ons for Photoshop! (Or perhaps everything feeds into Illustrator?!) Come see this fast-paced, technique-packed smackdown of the century!

Solving Real World Problems in Photoshop

Solving Real World Problems in Photoshop

Wednesday, 1:30 – 2:30 pm

Photoshop is a powerful tool, and it does amazing things. The more amazing it gets, the more spectacular our clients expect us to be. So whether your client is your manager, art director, or an outside business, you need to be able to solve problems that pop up during creation. In this session we’ll look at the various fundamentals of Photoshop that we can use in a way to support an optimal workflow. Whether you are editing a photo you took, or manipulating an asset from a stock house, or a graphic made by a member of your team, having the right workflow and solution can save you hours later. In this session we’ll discuss things like:

  • Lesser known options in the features we use everyday
  • Making complex adjustments without ever making a selection
  • Building graphics with non-destructive practices in your workflow
  • Recreating design treatments in a way that is easily replicable over an asset library for your project
  • Automating production steps to gain efficiency
  • Quality checking your work before sending it out

Collecting a database of questions from real world professionals working in the field, we’ll share the solutions that we’ve offered to peers like yourself at some of the biggest and littlest companies around the globe.

The PhotoshopCAFE Designer’s Special

The PhotoshopCAFE Designer’s Special

Wednesday, 11:15 am – 12:15 pm

For 15 years, PhotoshopCAFE.com has been one of the most visited Photoshop resources on the web. Over 40 million visitors have feasted on the quick, easy-to-follow, practical and eye-popping tutorials created by founder Colin Smith.

In this quick fire, action-packed session, you will learn more than you thought possible in one hour. Colin will be sharing the most requested of today’s Photoshop tutorials and tips. This fast-paced session will be surprising easy to follow, in a plain English, Jargon-free delivery and who knows? There may be giveaways too. You will learn:

  • How to make an image go from zero to hero in a few clicks
  • The fastest way to do things (You will kick yourself for some of your bad habits)
  • How to get the maximum quality result, while maintaining creative freedom
  • How to make the hottest effects for designers in Photoshop