Adobe Max 2015

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adobe max header

Event Date: 3rd – 7th October 2015
Pricing: $1295 per person for an early bird ticket (around £825), $295 for students (other discounts available)

What is Adobe Max?

Adobe Max is an annual conference organised (obviously) by Adobe. During this five-day event, Industry experts, designers, tutors, and creatives hold workshops and seminars about the latest Adobe apps and related technology, design, innovation and creativity.

Started by Macromedia back in 2003, Adobe (after they bought Macromedia in 2005) decided to continue the event each year adding new elements and increasing overall quality.
More than just a conference, Adobe Max is best describes as five days of creative mayhem, learning, growth and coolness. You can expect spectacular keynotes presented by leading Adobe experts with hands-on labs, where you learn to use these new apps & technological advancements. The event ends with the famous Max Bash party, an opportunity to connect with everyone and enjoy listening to great live performances from well-known bands.

Sessions, labs and workshops are graded by skill level and separated into the following areas:

  • Creative Careers
  • Web & App Design
  • Digital Publishing
  • Graphic Design & Illustration
  • Photography & Creative Imaging
  • Video

Why?

The activities from Adobe Max are designed to improve, inspire and challenge the creative acumen of participants. The training labs, taught by some of the best artists and engineers in the industry, allow you to apply learning-by-doing lessons, to grasp the techniques taught in a fun & easy manner.
Seminars introduce you to new concepts and ideas, enhanced by the personality and (usually vast) experiences of the speakers. They will share tips & tricks and ways to overcome those fiddly difficulties that arise when you’re trying to achieve those outstanding results.
You’ll also get a first glance at the new technologies released by Adobe, and learn how to use them to your advantage.
It’s also a fantastic opportunity to engage in constructive discussions and get fresh perspectives on creative and design topics. General altruistic sharing with the other participants occurs in abundance seems to be the norm at the Adobe Max event.

Who should go?

You, if you’re reading this, chances are you’ll probably benefit from attending. Aimed at professionals in creative industries, and anyone that wants to network, Adobe Max is an Industry event for you to improve your knowledge with valuable insights from the industry leaders in the area of graphic design. Let’s face it: Adobe has pretty much cornered this market so if you are a designer, artist or involved in creative processes and use software that Adobe makes; you’re a suitable candidate!
If you are a student, on your way to becoming a great designer, artist or film-maker, this can be one of the most impactful experiences that you can have at this point in your development. The event is huge, and it can open a lot of pathways into the creative domain, not just on the technical side. The speakers are charismatic and serve as an inspiration, and the full conference pass for students costs just $299.

Adobe Max creative cloud seminar

What did they show last year?

Adobe Max 2014 was an astonishing event. With more than 5500 participants, a plethora of interesting seminars, tech labs and keynotes held by Adobe executives. They presented important additions with an emphasis on the new mobile apps that are now part of the Creative Cloud. Some of the novelties from last year’s conference included;

  • Creative Profile – the main repository on the cloud, allowing access to the stored resources for all connected devices.
  • Brush (allows you to create brushes from different objects), Shape (converts high contrast pictures into vectors) and Color (creates new palettes relying on photos of anything in the environment).
  • Creative Cloud Libraries – the cloud’s asset management feature.
  • The public beta for Creative SDK – that allows third party apps to connect to Creative Cloud (an IOS exclusive at the time this article was written).

One of the surprises of the event was the appearance of Microsoft’s CEO, Satya Nadella announcing a partnership with Adobe. They revealed Windows 8 device support for Photoshop and Illustrator.
Another impressive moment was Lee Hirsch’s presentation of “The Bully Project” film. Delivering an emotional and moving speech, in which she insisted on the importance of reducing the phenomenon of bullying. At some point, Ann Lewes, Adobe’s chief marketing officer, joined her on stage and announced the Adobe Bully Project Mural, through which artists were able to share their experiences.
Max Sneaks, where the company allows the users to get a glimpse of their experimental technologies, was presented by Adobe’s Ben Forta and actor Joseph Gordon-Levitt. Ideas shared included;

  • A visual speech editor.
  • A couple of new ways to improve photographs like the Defog filter, which removes haze from pictures.
  • A Photoshop web editor that allows you to edit PSD files directly in a browser and more.

What to expect this year?

This year’s conference promises to be the best yet. With a whopping 141 (so far) scheduled sessions and labs with 111 speakers from different areas of expertise. The conferences and labs are delivered by some of the best in the industry, here’s short list:

  • Aaron Blaise –Digital Artist and Animator
  • Justin Seeley – Staff Author at Lynda.com
  • Anne-Marie Concepcion – CEO of Creative Publishing Network
  • Stephen Gates – Vice-President of Global Digital Brand Design
  • Chris Orwig – Professional Photographer, Author and Teacher
  • Mark Heaps – Director of Development at Duarte

You can take a look at all of the sessions and labs scheduled here, together with the full list of speakers.
After the Max Sneaks session, the Max Bash will be taking place in the L.A. LIVE Plaza with live music performed by Cage the Elephant and Fizz and The Tantrums.

La convention center

When & Where?

The event is scheduled to occur between the 3rd and 7th of October. The first two days will host pre-conference training sessions in which participants delve into design techniques. It takes place in Los Angeles, California, in two locations: The LA Convention Center and Nokia Theatre L.A. LIVE.

Final Thoughts

The Adobe Max conference this autumn looks more than promising, with a solid lineup of great speakers, Innovation and a few surprises.
Adobe enthusiast or not, this is a “must-attend” industry event. They even provide an email template to convince your boss to send you to the conference, which is an awesome idea (you can find it here). The only problem here could be that your boss becomes too excited about the whole thing and decides to go in your place!
If after reading this small guide, you are curious for more, visit the official website.

 

Image credits and attribution:
Cbl62 at en.wikipedia [CC BY-SA 3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0) or GFDL (http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html)], via Wikimedia Commons

What is Indesign Cc

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Indesign and desktop publishing

what is Indesign?

Creating media content used to be a cumbersome process. It involved a lot of people and specialised tools, so the accessibility issues were a problem for most of the people who lacked the resources.

Everything has changed, due to software like Adobe InDesign. Its quarters lie in a small sector of your hard drive. The little people working there are lightning fast and never get tired, allowing you to bring to life any thought or image created by your brain.

We are going to start a small journey through the world of desktop publishing, at the end of which you’ll have a clearer image of how this field can change your life forever.

Desktop Publishing?

Desktop publishing software allows you to create layouts for different types of documents or media content. The great advantage is that the typographic quality is the same as traditional printing, thus allowing practically anyone to produce high quality and ready to print materials without the need to outsource.

Ok, but what does that mean for me, you might ask. First of all, this is a great gateway for wannabe artists who have some brilliant ideas and need an environment where their vision would become a reality. No longer do you have to linger outside the rich man’s door, nor have the excuse that you weren’t allowed to express yourself due to the lack of resources. All you need is a computer and a good piece of software, and that’s it. You can start immediately.
But this is just the beginning. Maybe you want to spread a social message. Maybe you want to create some comic books, or want to shine in your company with original marketing flyers or a corporate newsletter. You might need to help your parents sell something, as you see them struggling with newspaper ads that no one reads anymore. The possibilities and applications of this technology are limited only by your prejudice and preconceived ideas. So take a step forward and join the creative community. It’s easy to enter, and we have tea and cookies!

A Small History Lesson

Pagemaker 1 DTP software

Before we jump into the technical side, a small incursion back in time, to see how it all started.

Pagemaker is Indesign’s predecessor and was released in 1985 when Apple released the LaserWriter printer, which allowed users to print in the comfort of their homes. Pagemaker, created by Aldus, shortly turned into the standard for the newly born DTP industry. As a turning point in history, it allowed the typesetting industry as well as the personal computer industry to develop with the remarkable results now apparent.

a colourful visual history of Indesign

Here Comes InDesign

As with all great stories, we find twists and turns when we start talking about InDesign. Its origins are strongly related to PageMaker, as Adobe purchased Aldus in 1994.
In the following years, PageMaker was bashed by the rival Quark with its QuarkXPress suite, which had a lot more features and popularity at the time. By 1998, Adobe was struggling to survive in the market and at some point Quark made an offer to acquire them and define their position as absolute rulers of the professional DTP market.

The good news is that Adobe refused the offer. They’d been working on a project codenamed K2, which was released in 1999 as InDesign 1.0. With some great marketing decisions, InDesign became in 2002 the first Mac OS-X native DTP software, gaining momentum and becoming more and more popular. When we got to the third version, it was included in Adobe’s Creative Suite, along with a few other killer apps such as Illustrator and Photoshop.

One of the reasons InDesign became the number one option for the professional segment was the wide range of options and innovations. Each release brought a bunch of new concepts, like the introduction of Unicode support, OpenType fonts that used advanced typography, the advanced transparency features, cross-platform scripting. Soon enough they left their competitors behind and built a strong user community that helped them refine their product even more.

Indesign Cc workspace

Technicality

It would take me a whole book to write about all the features that InDesign has, so I’m going to stick to the most important ones.

First and foremost, Indesign uses a Frame Box Approach, meaning that every element that you work with can be easily rearranged and controlled. This feature gives you a lot of flexibility and allows you to do last minute editing without having to worry that everything will be turned upside down.

The workspace offers a ton of options and can easily be customised according to your needs. The WYSIWYG approach makes it very easy to create different styles that you know will look good once the printing process starts.

Indesign is a multi-purpose tool. Although it has all you need to create high-quality print content, you can easily export your work for digital devices as well. Be it online magazines, e-books or interactive PDFs, with some clicks you can get things done, which means you will spare dozens of hours of extra work.

You can insert video, audio or animations in your documents, creating interactive storybooks and engaging dynamic content for tablets or smartphones. It also supports XML, style sheets and other useful technologies, meaning that you can export your work for other online uses.

When it comes to professional use, InDesign doesn’t have many competitors, bringing us to the next foggy chapter.

A Creative Cloud

Corporate Greed?

After reaching the top of the mountain, Adobe’s Administration Council had an idea. They decided to change their business strategy and switch to a service/subscription model. This huge change sparked a huge controversy back in 2011 when the Creative Cloud was first announced.

The problem with such an approach is that it strips the user of the minimal amount of rights over the product. As a subscription-based service, users pay a monthly or annual fee instead of owning a physical product that can be sold on to others or donated to charity.
Despite strong reactions from the user base and community, the company has held on to their plan, stopped releases for Creative Suite (and have for over two years) focussed on Creative Cloud products.

Conclusion

In the end, Adobe Indesign remains the most powerful desktop publishing software available to both professionals and beginners. We’ve delivered training in Indesign for the last ten years to help people along the path towards success, fame and discovering new skills and abilities. You can find out more about our Indesign courses here.

 

photo credit: 3D Cloud Computing (license)