Extensis Hosts Expert Font Panels and Seminars at Macworld Conference & Expo 2007

Extensis, a division of Celartem Inc., today announced that it will host a series of expert font panels and presentations at this year’s Macworld Expo in San Francisco. Extensis will present daily sessions that highlight font management specialists and industry authorities in the Extensis booth (#826) on the Macworld Conference & Expo show floor. On […]

New Andromeda ChartMaker Added to UtilityBelt 3.0

Andromeda Software, Inc. today announced the release of the new multi-platform, Adobe InDesign CS2 compatible plug in: ChartMaker. ChartMaker is the latest plug-in to be included into Andromeda’s UtilityBelt, which is comprised of the Andromeda plug-ins: Configurable Toolbar (CTBar) and TypeEffects and now, ChartMaker. UtilityBelt is available as a digital download product from the Andromeda […]

StockLayouts Publishes First Design Book

The Design Box Brochure Design Cards is a handy, first-of-a-kind card deck of 50 professionally-designed brochure layouts. It provides hundreds of ideas for designing marketing pieces for a diverse variety of business types. Beautifully presented in a slide-out box, these at-a-glance cards can be used to help dial in client preferences, or as a design […]

"Made with FontFont" Explores the Typographic Revolution that Changed the Face of Design

FSI FontShop International announced the publication of “Made with FontFont: Type for Independent Minds,” a new book commemorating the fifteen-year anniversary of the groundbreaking digital type foundry. Edited by FSI co-founder Erik Spiekermann and Dutch writer-designer Jan Middendorp, the colorful compendium showcases the award-winning collection of fonts created by “designers for designers.” Spiekermann, along with […]

Review: Alien Skin Blow Up

Does this sound familiar? You used a high-quality, 10-megapixel SLR to shoot a series of products for an 8-1/2″ x 11″ catalog. Months later, the client calls and wants to make a 6′ trade show graphic from one of the images. Here’s another scenario: The brochure you’ve been hired to design is coming along smoothly. […]

Automated Forms with Acrobat 8 and InDesign

One of the hottest new features in Acrobat 8 Professional is its Run Form Field Recognition (RFFR) feature. Almost everyone needs to work with forms sometimes, and often we’d like to create a “live” PDF form which can be filled out and submitted with a web browser or emailed. Forms have been part of Acrobat […]

Podcast 040

• Top five things every new InDesign user should know
• Best online resources for InDesign information and help

How to Become an InDesign ACE

In their list of New Year’s resolutions for 2007, I know a lot of InDesign users include “Get certified in Adobe InDesign,” because I’ve received a rash of e-mails from them in the past couple weeks … “How do I do it?”

It’s actually pretty easy to become an InDesign ACE (Adobe Certified Expert). You just take the official InDesign CS2 Exam — a closed-book, multiple-choice test with about 70 or 80 questions — at any nearby independent testing center that offers it (more on how to find these centers and register for the test appears below). The test costs $150 USD. Many employers will reimburse you for this, or if you’re a freelancer, it’s probably tax-deductible.

"Out with the Old" — Survey Reveals Creative Industry's Most Overused Lingo

Creative professionals who tout "outside-the-box" or "synergistic" thinking and promise to deliver "the big idea" to increase "ROI" may want to rethink their personal messaging in 2007. While these terms might have resonated with audiences in the past, they were listed among the most annoying industry buzzwords by advertising and marketing executives in a recent […]