Our ongoing look at Adobe Creative Suite 3 continues with a peek at Device Central. This application, bundled with most CS3 products like Dreamweaver and Photoshop, is used to test designs for cell phones and other mobile devices.

The program contains a variety of “skins” for popular cell phones – just load in an HTML page, Flash movie, wallpaper image, or other content piece and choose a device to see how it looks and works. Or, start from scratch in Device Central, checking out the specifications of phones you wish to design for. A few clicks and you’ll know what screen size, color profile, Flash Player version, and other specs to plan for. (more…)

I just got back from attending the HOW design conference in Atlanta, GA and I’m excited to report back on what it was all about. Many designers consider conferences indispensable opportunities to network, get inspired, recharged and invigorated with new ideas. The HOW conference is one of the largest of its kind, drawing over 3,000 designers from all over the country. It costs a pretty penny: about a thousand bucks for the conference itself, plus the cost of airfare and hotel. But if you can swing it (or get your employer to send you), there is much to be gained. I went down with Scott Chappell and Anjula Duggal to drink in the action. There’s so much to cover from the conference, so get ready for an epic post.

Gazing up at speaker Chip Kidd

The first morning at HOW felt like we were back at the start of a college semester: a sea of colorfully-clad designers making their way to the registration lines and pouring into the opening events. Though staged in massive hotel ballrooms, attendance at some sessions was so high that there were still several of us sitting on the floor, heightening the sense of college nostalgia. The first session we attended was a witty walk through the work process of famed book designer Chip Kidd, who is known for churning out almost one book cover a week in his post at Knopf publishing house. He shared some hilarious stories and visuals of designing everything from comic book treatments to a Paul Simon CD cover, letting all the characters from his life inform his designs.

The design for Paul Simon’s album made Kidd’s young pal Jet a star

Bookended by the conceit of a crossword puzzle clue that has to be viewed in an unexpected way in order to be solved, Kidd’s session showed us how to approach and solve design problems in ways that make the familiar feel new. Kidd’s session set the tone for the highlights of the conference: entertaining visuals with threads that tied the whole presentation together, whether the focus was on artwork, studio management, portfolio building, or creative inspiration. The only problem was that there were so many tempting sessions happening in the same timeslots, it was painful to choose which to attend. (more…)

Submit designed letterhead and identity systems produced on Strathmore Pure Cotton, Strathmore Writing and Strathmore Script papers.

Prizes range from $150 to $500

DETAILS
(800)THE-MILL

DESIGN 21: Social Design Network encourages design students and professionals to address social concerns and create smart solutions through design. In partnership with UNESCO, the Network seeks to explore, share and discuss aspects of “social design” – design that responds specifically to social, humanitarian and environmental needs to improve the quality of life of all communities and how we inhabit our planet. The first three challenges of this ongoing contest series explore themes relating to the Environment, Children and Emergency:

Themes:
Heated Issues - Prize: $5000
Childs Play - Prize: $5000
Shelter Me - Prize: $5000

Deadline: June 17, 2007

DETAILS

If you’re in San Francisco, you may have noticed more nerds than usual wandering around. This is due to the Apple Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC), where hardware and software developers go every year to learn from the folks at Apple through a series of sessions and tech labs. Usually, Apple makes a product announcement to kick off the WWDC.

Yesterday, Apple showed off lots of snazzy features of its upcoming version of OS X (labeled ‘Leopard’) showing up in October. But they also brought out something you can use right now: a public beta of Safari 3.0. (more…)

View the full-sized version and click the links to watch some fun ads.

History tells us that advertising originated in a pre-competitive state, seeking simply to inform about a product: what it is, what it does, what it costs, where you get it. That was a long, long time ago. Ever since supply has exceeded demand, products have been using branding and advertising to create desire and set themselves apart from the pack. I came of age in the days of cheeky chefs replacing customers’ ordinary coffee with Folger’s Crystals, and big-haired models purring “Don’t hate me because I’m beautiful.” Advertising was about practical jokes and the promise of attaining transformation via a product.

These days, advertising bears little relationship to product information, and sometimes nearly eschews branding altogether in favor of pure entertainment. When I want to get information about a product that feels complete, reliable, intuitively ordered and clear, I go to Wikipedia. When I want to get subjected to a bunch of marketing blather within a tightly commercially-contrived order I go to the product’s corporate Web site. And increasingly, when I want to be entertained, I watch commercials.

Funny to describe watching commercials as a voluntary pastime, but the only commercials people ever sit through nowadays are the ones we watch by choice. It’s knocking the costly 30-second TV spot model on its ear, and making way for some inventive ways to engage with viewers through alternative media and a focus on entertainment. A surprising player in this movement is… (more…)

Scott Kelby is one of the top names in Photoshop, educating millions of users about everyone’s favorite digital imaging app. He’s the president of the National Association of Photoshop Professionals (NAPP), editor-in-chief of Layers magazine, author of dozens of books about Photoshop, and a nominee for the 2007 Photoshop Hall of Fame. We’re getting his take on the latest version of Photoshop, the Photoshop phenomenon, and more…

Q: I think many of us follow this timeline when we upgrade to the latest version of Photoshop: Get psyched for the new features, order the program the second it’s available, install it the second it arrives, and instantly fall back into the same old tools and workflow we’ve used for years. What’s a new feature of Photoshop CS3 that everyone should try right now and make part of their daily toolset?

Scott: If you’re a photographer, without a doubt it would be the new Camera Raw 4.1 in Photoshop CS3. It adds new features and tools that take raw editing to a whole new level, and honestly, it’s worth the entire upgrade price all by itself. (more…)

Are you a freelancer who ships boxes of printed collateral to clients? An indie e-commerce site owner? A designer or printer sending overnight proofs? If so, the latest US Postal Service pricing changes may have thrown you for a loop. Not only are prices higher for many services, but new size regulations are also in effect.

Many business owners use stamps.com to process and print postage, or services available on the usps.com website. The drawback is that these services are wholly or partially unavailable to Mac users. Why should Windows users get all the convenience of printing their own postage and having their packages picked up at their doors? Mac users, head straight to Endicia for Mac. (more…)

Last weekend at the Orange County Museum of Art, a friendly and well-meaning volunteer docent inquired whether I was writing a school report, and proceeded to introduce some of the pieces on display in the current ‘Imaging + Imagining California’ exhibit. Alighting on a piece by John McCracken called Dream (Chartreuse Green), 1988-92—a leaning, gleaming, fiberglass plank—she gamely explained that even though it might not look like it, it was, in fact, art.

What struck me about the exchange, other than the delightful thought that I might look like an undergrad, was her perceived necessity to prove the importance of a Minimalist art object to someone she thought was a student of art. She wasn’t far off base: her concern echoed the theme of many discussions I had with my Illustration students in the Media, Art and Design program at the University of Westminster in London. Even after nearly half a century’s worth of art movements and theory that have proven the staying power of conceptual work, these budding designers were skeptical about the value of work that needed to be seen in the context of history to be fully understood. This skepticism was part of an overall reluctance (only at first, of course; they were smart kids) to see history and theory as an important component of their work as designers.

But what’s the possibility of producing meaningful design work without understanding art and design history? Pretty much none. (more…)

If you’re new to Web design, or a veteran who grew up on font tags and tables, you may need some practice with your cascading style sheets (CSS) skills. CSS has long been known to give Web designers more creativity and flexibility over their pages, allowing for precision typography and layout. But it can admittedly be hard to open your mind to all of the possibilities.

CSS Zen Garden is a site that aims to inspire designers to take their CSS skills higher, and is a fantastic educational tool.

The CSS Zen Garden home page

Start out by clicking on the design titles in the right side of the CSS Zen Garden home page (Icicle Outback by Timo Virtanen and Elegance in Simplicity by Mani Sherlar are a couple of my favorites). Notice that each design is a completely different look… but the HTML code and written content is not. Various designers create their own external CSS files that completely alter the appearance of the CSS Zen Garden home page. (more…)