CreativePro Week Conference Speaker Spotlight: Chris Converse, Designer and Coder

Welcome to our Speaker Spotlight series, designed to highlight some of our CreativePro Week 2017 Conference speakers, which will be in Atlanta, Georgia, May 22–26. We’ve assembled a dream team roster of Photoshop, InDesign, and Illustrator gurus, and thought you’d like to get to know what makes them tick, why they’re passionate about what they do, and what you can expect to learn from them at the conference. (Our previous Speaker Spotlight was on Von Glitschka.)

The subject of this Speaker Spotlight is Chris Converse.

Chris is a partner, designer and developer at Codify Design Studio. A Lynda.com, Udemy, and How Design University Author, Husband, multilinguist of many foreign and complex languages including PHP, HTML, CSS, JavaScript, jQuery and AngularJS, Chocolate and Bourbon lover (but not mixed together), Designer and Developer.

Chris has a passion for and a commitment to conceiving, creating, and delivering the best possible user experience, regardless of the medium.

The Chris Converse File

Born in Jacksonville Florida, Chris now resides in Pennsylvania. He has no pets, a beautiful 24 year old daughter who also happens to be a graphic designer, is known to all his high school friends as “Sneakers”and absolutely despises any type of squash, eggplant, coconut, mushrooms, and honey. He has a metal plate in his neck that he claims helps him spot squirrels really fast. (Feel free to ask him about it next time you have the honor of being in his company, I didn’t even know where to begin with that one.)

Say hello to Chris Converse

Awesome photo snapped by John Cornicello

He loves animation and interactive design. He likes creating it; figuring out how to script it; how to create the graphics at the right sizes; and with the right transparency. Lately, he has gotten into creating textures and effects with particle systems in After Effects. Check out the two examples of cinemagraphs Chris recently created from two renowned photographers (with their permission, of course).

Whale at Surface:
https://www.instagram.com/p/BEb-I2qg5YD/

Super Geek League:
https://www.instagram.com/p/BEb92g8g5XT

First Job: My first job out of college was at NBC Studios in Helena Montana. I ran the TV cameras and learned how to add local station bumpers on nationally syndicated tv commercials, and run the master switchboard for Helena TV viewers.

First computer: Apple Centris 610

Favorite movie:  The Princess Bride: “I think he’s using the same wind we are using”

How many cellphones have you dropped/broken: Dropped 2, broken 0

Tell the truth, ever worn sandals with socks? Almost everyday in 2000-2003, to work in a center-city Philly agency.

Favorite Photoshop feature: My favorite Photoshop feature is layers. In school, we had photoshop 2, and to create a gradient, we have to do it with channels… and if you messed up, you had to re-open a backup of your file (if you remembered to make a back-up!)

Favorite moment from a previous CPN conference: Pretty much most of the things Russell Viers said.

The title of one of your sessions at CreativePro Week is It’s Not Just for Video — After Effects for Print and Web. Who should attend? Anyone who uses Photoshop should come to my session. The design capabilities of After Effects are amazing. And, if you have Creative Cloud, you already have access to this amazing design app.

Are there any sessions (other than your own) that you are excited for at CProWeek? I always love seeing new illustration techniques in Photoshop from Bert Monroy.


An After Effects Tip from Chris

Just like Photoshop, the After Effects canvas is bitmap-based, and can be set up to generate hi-resolution, print-ready graphics in the same manner as Photoshop… and what’s more, After Effects can generate native layered Photoshop documents, that can, in turn, be imported into Illustrator, InDesign… or anywhere Photoshop files are accepted!


Where can you find Chris on the Web

Website: https://chrisconverse.com/
Social Profiles: Tw: @chrisconverse
Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/chrisconverse
Instagram: ChrisConverseDesign

What past conference attendees have to say about the hybrid designer

Chris Converse’s session was great. Exactly what I needed to know. Not to mention, he had a great sense of humor and thus made the session entertaining and informative. ~ 2015 InDesign Conference Attendee

Register today for the CreativePro Week 2017 Conference! Four conferences back-to-back: The PS/AI: The Conference for Photoshop and Illustrator Users, The InDesign Conference, PePcon: The Print and ePublishing Conference, and the Creative Developers Summit.

Don’t miss out on these great conferences and a great early bird deal: Get $100 off any multi-day registration now through March 31st.

We’ll see you in beautiful Atlanta, May 22–26, 2017.

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