Sessions

Animation and Video for Print and Web Designers

Everything in the real world moves, so why should your designs and layouts stay still? Making stuff move with animation or video doesn’t have to be scary or difficult with easy tools that you probably already have (or can easily get).

In this fast-paced session, we will look at how to:

  • Create video for social media
  • Build HTML web ads with simple tools
  • Use Photoshop for video and animation
  • Learn about online services that can make your life easier

Diversity and Design

Audiences are changing and becoming more diverse by the day, and their wants and needs of are evolving—as are the expectations of us as designers. Diversity, inclusion, and equity is a critical component of a healthy design community and workplace. Learn what you can do to do the right thing.

10 Essential Acrobat Productivity Tips

Most of us use Acrobat day in and day out, but never really learn to master this incredible and deep tool. It’s time to learn about a variety of features that you probably never knew were hiding behind the scenes, and techniques that will make you more productive with your PDFs.

Topics include:

  • Powerful (but often non-obvious) tools for editing PDFs
  • How Preflight and Fixups are game-changers
  • What you can do in Acrobat that you can’t in InDesign or other tools
  • Why Adobe Acrobat for Mobile and Adobe Scan are so important

A Lifetime of Type: Interview with Roger Black

We use fonts everyday, often without remembering that behind each font there is a face, a personality, a life — a person with a drive to create and express. Pause for a moment to meet a star in the world of design and type, and gain a greater appreciation for the translation between inspiration and typeface.

David Blatner will interview Roger Black, a founder of one of the early desktop type design studios, Font Bureau, and is now chairman of Type Network, an agency and distributor for type designers.

How To Hire an Artist for Original Work

Sure, stock art agencies and sites are convenient for quick access and last-minute assets, but relying too much on stock art generally means sacrificing quality, originality, and that custom, bespoke feel that can mean the difference between “good enough” and “wow!”

But how do you find and hire original work, especially when you’re on a budget? It can be awkward at first, but the payoff is great!

Topics include:

  • Where to find artists who want to work for you
  • How to negotiate terms to achieve a win-win
  • Supporting a worldwide community of artists is good for everyone

Print: The Surprisingly Powerful Partner of Digital Marketing

An all-digital strategy may seem appropriate in a virtual world, but did you know that 85% of consumers expect and appreciate a blend of digital and physical engagement with brands? In fact, combining direct mail with a digital strategy increases lift by an average of 20%! Print, done right, can deliver phenomenal results, visual impact, and proven brand recall. Join us as we explore when, where, and why print excels in a digital world, as well as how best to build and justify print + digital strategies in your marketing campaigns.

Topics include:

  • Increasing perceived value, customer reach, and response with print
  • Using coatings and varnishes to create powerful sensory experiences
  • Building brand memorability with tangible media
  • Leveraging creative folded formats for marketing and mail
  • Making it personal: how customization and personalization makes all the difference
  • How digital presses can create amazing analog experiences

Adding Personality with Typography

Every font has a voice and personality. How you set that font on the page — size, color, caps, column width, and more — affects the voice, just like you can adjust your own voice, depending on what you’re trying to say.

In this short exploration of type and typography, we’ll explore how sometimes subtle changes can make big differences in how your message is received.

You’re Just Not Efficient Without Adobe Bridge

Most people think Adobe Bridge is just for photographers, but no! If you use InDesign, Illustrator, or Photoshop, you owe it to yourself to learn how this digital asset manager can make your life so much easier.

Adobe Bridge is just waiting for its chance to save you time by cutting through the clutter of files and applications. In this session, you’ll learn how to use Bridge to streamline graphics production workflows.

This session includes:

  • Using Bridge to inspect InDesign documents
  • How anyone can use Bridge for free
  • Use Bridge shortcuts to process many files rapidly
  • Hunt and gather project files and folders more quickly
  • Metadata: your key to smooth workflows
  • Batch processing the easy way

Designing with Data

Everyone who works with data needs to communicate their findings, their analysis, and their conclusions. It could be in an internal briefing or memo, a management report, an annual report or a scientific article. Learn the basics of how to how to use data visualization to more effectively communicate data, tell a story, highlight what’s important, and help your audience understand what’s really going on.

  • Learn data visualization best practices and strategies
  • Explore graphs and charts that you may have never seen before
  • Learn how our visual processing network facilitates understanding
  • Understand the philosophy of building more complex graphs in Excel
  • Make great-looking charts and graphs and get them into PowerPoint
  • Better ways to present data in a PowerPoint presentation

Remote and Virtual Workflows for Design and Creatives, Part 2

In Part 1 of this two-part session, we explored a wide spectrum of remote workflows. Now, let’s tackle editorial and review! The field of web-based collaboration and review is hot, hot, hot! If emailing PDFs out to remote clients and authors for review is slowing you down, you’ll be glad to learn about these newer, more streamlined alternatives.

This session includes:

  • Initiating and managing comment and review using Acrobat versus Creative Cloud services
  • Best practices for managing Acrobat comments
  • Discovering how InDesign’s Share for Review is better (and worse) than Acrobat
  • Using 3rd-party cloud-based review services like GoProof, Tweak, and PageProof
  • Using linked Word files for fast, round-trip copyediting with WordsFlow
  • When InCopy is the solution
  • Using Google Docs with InDesign

You’ll be so encouraged and energized by what you learn, that you’ll be fixing your own workflows as soon as you get back to the office!