| June 2009 |
| In This Issue |
Local News
District 9 uses guerrilla style Flash marketing |
International News
Productivity is the new killer feature for creative professionals |
Product Feature
Creative Suite 4 Design Premium can save you time and money |
Featured Book
Adobe Creative Suite 4 Design Premium Classroom in a Book |
Designer and Developer Feature
Right on target: Designing for your audience
Adobe Creative Suite 4 Printing Guide
Online Seminars
Training Partners
Designer and Developer Resources
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Local News
District 9 uses guerrilla style Flash marketing - Click for more |
In District 9, a film directed by ex-South African Neil Blomkamp, A crippled alien ship becomes stranded in South Africa, leading to its extraterrestrial occupants becoming unwanted refugees.
Blomkamp, a special-effects wunderkind who specializes in photorealistic CGI, was originally attached to direct the now-stalled Halo film. With a small budget and the knowledge that they're appealing to a geeky audience, Blomkamp and District 9 producer Peter Jackson (The Lord of the Rings series) are now employing a surge of guerrilla style flash based marketing for the film. In addition to flash mobs and viral videos, a string of alternate-reality games and sites tie in to the movie's plot. With a small budget and a little Flash they have created a online following for a movie that almost nobody knew about. Check out their media rich website at the District 9 website. |
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International News
Productivity is the new killer feature for creative professionals- Click for more |
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New features and efficiency improvements of Adobe® Creative Suite® 4 software provide significantly increased productivity over previous releases and significantly improved integration among different media types and delivery methods. Adobe Creative Suite 4 is the first mature integration of Adobe software such as Adobe Photoshop® with Macromedia technologies like Flash® Professional, Dreamweaver®, and Fireworks®. Increased productivity of Adobe Creative Suite 4 can provide an ROI of several thousand dollars per workstation per year. |
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Product Feature
Creative Suite 4 Design Premium can save you time and money - Click for more |
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Adobe® Creative Suite® 4 Design Premium software is the ultimate toolkit for today's designer. Express yourself in exciting new ways and deliver rich creative experiences across print, web, and mobile media. Creative Suite 4 also delivers dramatic productivity improvements: Adjust images in half the time with the new Adjustments panel in Adobe Photoshop® CS4 Extended. Find and fix production errors twice as fast with Live Preflight in Adobe InDesign® CS4. Take advantage of simplified workflows that will save you time every day. |
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Featured Book
Adobe Creative Suite 4 Design Premium Classroom in a Book- Click for more |
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This thorough, self-paced guide to Adobe Creative Suite 4 is ideal for users who want to learn the key features of Adobe's stellar collection of professional design tools. Readers are first given a brief program overview of the Design Suite that highlights common features and includes a section on cross-media workflows. Then readers will get up to speed with each software application using step-by-step, project-based lessons, with the lessons in each chapter building upon the reader's growing knowledge of the programs. Projects include designing a logo and creating basic assets, creating a brochure, prototyping a basic Website, creating interactive Flash and PDF documents, communicating through mobile devices, and submitting work for collaborative reviews. Review questions at the end of each chapter wrap up each lesson to help reinforce the skills learned in each chapter. |
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| Designer & Developer Feature |
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Right on target: Designing for your audience - Click for more
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Luanne Seymour, a Senior Instructional Designer at Adobe, shares her insight on an essential component of successful design—understanding your target audience.While working as a graphic designer at Adobe in 1988, I had a big argument about a book design with the person who was then in charge of Adobe’s technical publications group. Academically, she was more qualified than me to spout opinions about instructional design. She had a Ph.D. in Documentation from Carnegie Mellon. I only had a BFA in Graphic Design from California College of Arts and Crafts. However, I was a typical member of the target audience for the book in question. |
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Adobe Creative Suite 4 Printing Guide - Click for more
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This guide serves as both a detailed technical reference for handling Creative Suite 4 files from your customers, and as a training tool for your staff. Among other topics, this guide introduces you to forensic tools, such as the Overprint Preview option in Adobe Illustrator®, Adobe InDesign®, and Adobe Acrobat® 9 Professional, as well as the Output Preview function in Acrobat, all of which are invaluable in highlighting potential problems. The earlier you can pinpoint problems in a job, the less expensive and complicated they are to rectify. |
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| Online Seminars |
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Adobe Captivate and Connect Pro
June 10 - 12 August, 2009
CS4: Shortcut to Brilliant eSeminar Series for Designers
June 23, 2009
CS4: Shortcut to Brilliant eSeminar Series for Web Professionals
June 24, 2009
CS4: Shortcut to Brilliant eSeminar Series for Professional Photographers
On Demand
CS4: Shortcut to Brilliant eSeminar Series for Video Professionals
June 18, 2009 |
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| Training Partners |
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Digicape - Cape Town
Contact Angie
084 029 9950
www.digicape.co.za
Concept Interactive - Cape Town
Contact Elethea
elethea@conceptinteractive.net
www.conceptinteractive.net
Friends of Design - Cape Town
Web Design, DTP (Desktop Publishing), and Motion graphics courses
www.friendsofdesign.net
Multimedia Centre - Cape Town
InDesign, Captivate, Photoshop, Illustrator, Robohelp, After Effects, Flash
Neil Stromin
021 790 3684
nstromin@multimediacentre.co.za
www.multimediacentre.co.za
The TrainingRoom at Apple Centre Project 3 - Cape Town
Workshops and courses offering a wide range of creative pro applications, from print design to mobile authoring These are held every Thursday evening and Saturday morning.
www.thetrainingroom.co.za
Terasys Solutions - JHB
Design, Web, Film, Photo.
082 885 2712
www.terasys.co.za
Morning Star Design - JHB
Adobe Authorised Training Center
Rehana Rajah
011 782 4297
msd@netactive.co.za
www.imsd.co.za
Billy Einkamerer's Adobe courses (not official Adobe courses) - JHB
Adobe products used include Dreamweaver CS3, Fireworks CS3 and Photoshop CS3.
billy@assemble.co.za
www.assemble.co.za
WalkerDigital
Adobe Authorised Training Centre
Photoshop, InDesign, Illustrator, Acrobat, Captivate Dreamweaver, Flash, After Effects, Premier.
Stephen Walker
stephen@walkerdigital.co.za
http://www.walkerdigital.co.za |
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| Designer & Developer Resources and useful links |
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Dax Data's home page
Adobe's home page
Designer and Developer Resources
Adobe Design Centre
Adobe Developer Resources
Adobe Labs
Adobe TV
Adobe Exchange - easy-to-install extensions, time-saving functions, code and more.
Safari Books Online - e-reference library for designers and developers
Online Forums and Third Party Blogs
Adobe Online Forums
Design Center editor community blogs
Community site for all things MX
ColdFusion Developers Journal
SimplicIT Lab - South African Flash Resource |
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