Sessions

Acrobat Tricks Every Designer Needs to Know

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Graphic designers usually use Acrobat at the end of the publishing process, to read or maybe comment on a PDF. But Acrobat can do so much more than that! Join us and learn how you can use this incredible and deep tool to be far more more productive with your PDFs.

Topics include:

  • Modifying PDFs for print production
  • Exploring game-changing Fixups
  • Editing your content when the source files aren’t available
  • Using preflight tools and Compare Files to check your documents
  • Converting images to text with OCR
  • Repurposing your PDF into other formats
  • Turning printer’s spreads to a more reader-friendly online format
  • Asserting and protecting rights to a PDF
  • and more!

 

Design Law Triple Play: Contract, Copyright, and Trademark

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Graphic designers are visual problem solvers, experience creators, communicators, and storytellers. But the stories they tell are not usually their own. Designers use their skills to express the ideas of their clients, often in collaboration with other creatives. When balancing the rights of the designer, the company, other creatives, and the client, the laws of contract, copyright, and trademark work together to protect everyone involved.

In this session you’ll learn:

  • The legal rights you have as a designer
  • How to negotiate better contracts that reflect those rights
  • How to protect your work
  • How to respect the rights of others
  • How to educate clients about copyright and ownership

Understanding your rights and those of your client, company, and colleagues is key to a successful design practice.

Applying Racial Equity Awareness in Data Visualization

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How can designers, analysts, and developers apply a race- and ethnicity-conscious lens to their data analysis and data visualization work? How can we take a more diverse, equitable, and inclusive (DEI) perspective to our research, data, and visualizations? Just as we carefully consider our written words, we should be equally careful in how we visually present data to our readers, users, and audiences, including the words we use in and around those visuals.

Taking a DEI perspective means considering how the specific lived experiences and perspectives of the people and communities we are studying, as well as our readers, will perceive information and carry that information forward. In this talk, we discuss a variety of techniques that data visualization producers should consider when creating visuals with this DEI approach.

Why You Can’t Live Without Adobe Bridge

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Adobe Bridge may be the unsung hero in your Adobe Creative Cloud suite, waiting for its chance to save you time by cutting through the clutter of files and applications. 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.

Topics include:

  • Integrate Creative Cloud applications into a streamlined workflow
  • Use Bridge shortcuts to process many files rapidly
  • Hunt and gather project files and folders more quickly
  • Using Bridge to inspect InDesign documents
  • How anyone can use Bridge for free
  • Metadata: your key to smooth workflows

Creating Impact: Editorial Design to Influence Change

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Discover how freelance graphic designer Kieron Lewis uses InDesign to create a range of publications that push the boundaries of stereotypes about race and design. As Kieron shares his experiences working on publications that are designed to inspire and empower the African community and its diaspora, you’ll learn how he uses the power of collaboration to create impactful editorial design.

Join Kieron in this session to explore:

  • The impact that collaboration can have on your career
  • The importance of designing for the community
  • How editorial design can connect us

Powerful AI and Machine Learning for Creatives

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Each new release of Photoshop (and other Adobe apps) includes more features that rely on machine learning (ML), a.k.a artificial intelligence (AI). That could be cleanly enlarging images for print using Super Resolution, quickly making selections and masks based on the contents of an image (like a person or a sky), or smartly recomposing a video in social-media-friendly portrait orientation without cropping out the main action. This session breaks down what AI/ML is, how it works, and how you can use it to improve workflows and get better results.

Topics include:

  • What is AI/ML and how does it work?
  • Cloud versus on-device processing
  • ML object and scene recognition to find assets
  • How to spend less time making selections and masks (like Sky and Subject detection)
  • Photoshop and Lightroom Super Resolution
  • Neural Filters (Skin Smoothing, Colorization, and more)
  • Using AI to recompose videos for social media dimensions
  • Noise reduction in many third-party tools such as Topaz, Luminar, ON1 Photo, and more
  • Where ML is sneaking into InDesign and Illustrator

Print Marketing: The Secret Sauce

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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, when it’s 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 can make all the difference
  • How digital presses can produce amazing analog experiences

Typography: Little Tricks for Big Improvements

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Typography is the art of shaping space. Designers carve blank pages into dynamic layouts. Then, they adjust the space around letters, words, and lines of type. Join internationally renowned designer and typographer Ellen Lupton as she shows how to make better typography by activating key design principles—from macro to micro.

CreativePro Partner Panel: Finding Solutions

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These days, the only way to be truly efficient and productive is to think “outside the box” and look at the ecosystem of services, resources, and third-party tools that are available to you.

Join us for a far-reaching discussion, including a look at the future of publishing, with David Blatner, Marcus Radich (PageProof.com), and Mark Hilton (santacruzsoftware.com).

Designers and Editors: Collaborating without Tears

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Working remotely has forced many publishing teams to develop new ways to collaborate on projects online. Whether you’re still working from a remote home office or are moving gradually to an in-office status, contributing freelancers and publishing teams can continue to use the best of these solutions to streamline page production and proofing.

Join Anne-Marie as she presents tried-and-true options for teams of any size:

  • Setting up a cloud service (Dropbox, Google Drive, SharePoint, etc.) to act as a local file server
  • Tracking versions and rolling back
  • Placing and updating smart-linked Word and Google Docs
  • InCopy collaboration for accurate copyfitting

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 your projects!