Easy Text Clean Up with GREP in Find/Change

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If text cleanup is a regular part of your InDesign work, and you spend much of your day handling long documents, inconsistent copy, or late-stage edits, this session is for you. When text-heavy projects pile up, manual fixes slow everything down and increase the risk of errors.

In this session, Erica Gamet focuses on a pattern-based approach to text cleanup inside InDesign, helping you work with greater control and consistency as documents grow more complex. The emphasis is on efficiency, accuracy, and repeatable workflows that hold up under real production pressure.

You will learn how to:

  • Recognize when pattern-based text cleanup is the right approach for complex documents
  • Clean up inconsistencies introduced by imported Word or Google Docs content
  • Tackle repetitive formatting problems that appear across long or multi-section layouts
  • Handle text corrections that need to be applied consistently across an entire document

Illustrator for InDesign Users: You’ve Got This

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You love InDesign: It makes sense. It behaves! But Illustrator? That’s usually a “hold your breath and click carefully” situation. In this session, Tony Harmer helps InDesign power-users feel far more at home inside Illustrator.

You’ll learn how to navigate Illustrator with confidence, spot the features that save time, and stop treating it like a mysterious side quest you only enter under duress.

You will learn how to:

  • Recognize when Illustrator is the better tool before things get messy in InDesign
  • Navigate Illustrator using concepts that already make sense to you
  • Prepare and clean up vector artwork so it behaves predictably in layouts
  • Export individual vector assets quickly and efficiently for real-world use
  • Shift your mindset from “I’ll get through this,” to “I get to do this!”

Beyond Compositing: Creative Workflows Powered by AI

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In this session, you’ll explore practical, cross-application techniques that blend Photoshop with AI-driven workflows. You’ll also see how exploratory and experimental approaches can spark new ideas and push composites beyond conventional solutions. Learn how familiar design skills translate into more flexible and expressive workflows when combined with technologies such as Firefly and Firefly Boards. Expect practical examples and inspiring ideas that go beyond a single tool, helping you rethink how you design and create.

You’ll learn:

  • How to build AI-powered workflows across tools like Photoshop and Illustrator
  • Ways to move beyond compositing using cross-tool techniques
  • How tools like Firefly, Firefly Boards, and other new tools fit into everyday design work
  • Creative approaches to explore ideas, iterate, and spark new directions with (and without) AI

The Power of Print: Amplifying Your Marketing Impact

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In an increasingly digital-first world, print has become more powerful, not less! In this session, Vicki Strull reframes how marketers and designers think about print, showing why physical experiences now carry more weight, credibility, and memorability than ever before.

Drawing from decades of Sappi’s publishing and print strategy work, Vicki explores how print captures attention, builds trust, and drives action in ways screens alone can’t. The focus is on modern, intentional print design—aligned with real business goals and crafted to stand out in a crowded marketing landscape.

Key takeaways:

  • Strengthen consumer trust and authenticity
  • Cut through digital overload
  • Pair print with digital channels for stronger ROI
  • Create luxury experiences that engage all the senses
  • Build brand loyalty through tangible connections

Welcome Reception

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Join us for drinks, nibbles, and a fun opportunity to meet the speakers and your fellow attendees!

AI Roundtable Discussion

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You have questions… let’s discuss them! We’ve assembled the perfect blend of experts—professional creatives who were both early AI adopters and who have worked with some of the world’s best known brands. We’ll explore the fears, rumors, assumptions, and predictions we’ve all been talking about.

Speakers: Mark Heaps, Amy Balliet, Amybeth Menendez

Three Minutes Max: Photoshop

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This crowd favorite is back and better than ever! Don’t miss this fun-filled, action-packed, highly educational, and mind-blowing session where each of our instructors will have just three minutes to share their favorite Photoshop tip—then you get to vote for your favorite!

In past years, some of the best tips have been held for this session, so you don’t want to miss it!

Embracing a Punk Rock Attitude for Modern Design

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You can design stronger, clearer work by questioning assumptions and designing with intent. In this session, Michael Mondragon shares a mindset-driven approach to modern design rooted in clarity, purpose, and judgment.

Using a “punk rock” attitude as a metaphor—not a visual style!—Michael challenges autopilot thinking, over-templated solutions, and trend-chasing. The focus is on making deliberate design decisions that serve the message, not the tool, template, or shortcut.

This session helps designers push back on defaults, trust their creative instincts, and create work that communicates more clearly, confidently, and memorably in today’s fast, AI-assisted design landscape.

You will learn to:

  • Make intentional typography choices and find the right fonts
  • Make non-destructive image enhancements in Photoshop
  • Create textures from your own images
  • Style and modify letter forms in Illustrator
  • Bring it all together in InDesign

Making Confident Color Choices in Illustrator

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In Illustrator, color flexibility and creativity go hand in hand, making it easy to explore ideas, tweak palettes, and revamp color as your design evolves. But with Illustrator’s incredible spectrum of color tools at your fingertips, how do you know which features move your work forward, and which leave you, hours later, still spinning your color wheels?

In this session, Laura Coyle shares her practical, creative approach to working with color in Adobe Illustrator. You’ll learn go-to ways to spark inspiration and land on that perfect color you’ve been searching for. And when you need a flexible process that supports last-minute changes or adapting a design for different outputs, Laura will show you how to keep things moving without losing momentum.

You’ll explore:

  • Using Color Groups, Libraries, and Recolor Artwork to spark color ideas
  • Refining palettes and sharing color swatches with your team
  • Building color workflows that support quick changes and multiple versions
  • Adapting color for print and social media as your project needs change
  • What’s new and most colorfully useful in Illustrator 2026

Adobe or Affinity? Why Not Both?

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For most professional designers, Adobe Creative Cloud is the undisputed king. No one wants to dump the tools, workflows, and skills they’ve used over their entire careers. But what if you didn’t have to ditch Adobe to take advantage of some uniquely powerful features in Affinity? Wouldn’t that be the best of both worlds? Can these two bitter rivals coexist on your desktop (or iPad)?

Sure they can! In this session, you’ll discover how to leverage the unique strengths of Affinity Photo, Designer, and Publisher to supplement your existing Photoshop, Illustrator, and InDesign projects. Instead of a replacement for Creative Cloud, start thinking of Affinity as an amazingly powerful add-on to boost your existing workflow.

Whether you are looking to overcome technical hurdles or just want a fresh creative spark, you’ll walk away with a practical ideas for integrating these two ecosystems into a single, high-performance workflow.

You will learn how to:

  • Generate unique textures and 3D-style lighting effects using with non-destructive Live Filter layers (no Smart Objects needed!)
  • Retouch photos faster with Built-in Frequency Separation and Cross-Mode Live Curves
  • Use Designer’s Pixel Persona to add hand-drawn depth to Illustrator assets
  • Access PANTONE color libraries
  • Send your designs directly to colleagues using Canva
  • And more!