CreativePro Conference Speaker Spotlight: Mark Heaps, the Client Whisperer

CreativePro Staff

The first ever CreativePro Conference, an exuberant, 4-day live version of our web site, is coming this summer to Minneapolis, and registration is open now! This “Essential Event for Photoshop and Illustrator Users” is hosted by CreativePro.com’s publishers, the Creative Publishing Network (CPN.co), who also host InDesignSecrets.com and two other conferences, PePcon: The Print + ePublishing Conference, and The InDesign Conference.

One of the best things about any of CPN.co’s shows, especially the new CreativePro Conference,  is the amazing group of speakers. These folks really know their stuff, and they know how to present it so you get it—and can use it right away. They also happen to be a bunch of really interesting people when they’re away from their computers. So we decided to put together a new series of posts here at CreativePro called Speaker Spotlight. Each post will highlight one of our CreativePro Conference speakers and help you 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.

The subject of our first Speaker Spotlight is Mark Heaps.

Mark snapped his first picture at the age of four. Then he picked up a guitar, a skateboard, and a can of spray paint, and kickflipped his way into the world of art. Today, he’s a professional photographer, an Adobe Certified Professional, an Adobe Community Professional, the Executive Director of Houndstooth Studio and known by many as “The Client Whisperer.”

He’s a sucker for good tattoos, indie rock, and ketchup, but loathes bad manners or being rude, in general.

Mark currently snaps pictures in Austin, where he lives with his wife, daughter, son, two dogs, and a pantry full of ketchup.

He’s a contributing author to many publishers and websites, including PSDTuts, AdobePress, and Peachpit. He has also lectured for Adobe’s “Ask A Pro” series of webinars.

The Mark Heaps File

Both Mark’s parents grew up in England and his father ran a shipyard. From birth, Mark has traveled the world. While abroad a youngster, he struggled to communicate and quickly realized that visual communication transcended all. He learned that he could read a city (or a culture) by the way it presented itself visually. The story of each city unfolded itself to Mark through it’s architecture, it’s art, it’s advertising, and media.

Along with his fascination with the visual storytelling of cities, he also found passions for comic books, skateboard art, and album covers. In that mode of thinking (and being someone who wanted to express his true self), Mark picked up a camera and began capturing what he saw.

First job: A bar-back in several pubs in England. First “real job” was at a print house at 15 in North England called Prontaprint.

First computer: Spectrum 48k Z+, but my first real graphic system was an Amiga with Deluxe Paint III

Geek or Nerd? They are all my people but I’m probably more of a geek than nerd.

Cellphones he has you dropped/broken? Only two…so far.

Pick only one software: Unfair question!!! Does Creative Cloud count? OK: Photoshop and Illustrator.

At 6AM he is usually: Up getting ready to take my kids to school.

Daily Inspiration: My kids. On a daily basis I get to see the world through their fresh eyes, their naive questions, and the beautiful sense of transparency that we tend to lose as adults.

Where you can find him: As you may have guessed already, the best place to catch up with Mark is to attend the CreativePro Conference 2016 in Minneapolis, where he’ll be presenting sessions like How-to: Recreating Popular Design Trends. Or you might even find him sneaking into Chris Converse’s After Effects session, or trying to meet the one and only Von Glitschka.

At the show, make sure to check the schedule and find out when The Client Whisperer will be at the speaker’s table and pick his brain in person! Mark’s favorite thing is helping people find the right solutions—the ones that save time and stress, and bring back to the simple joy of creating. 

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A Photoshop Tip from Mark

Our Speaker Spotlights will include a tip or technique that the presenter is planning on including in their session, a “sneak peek” for our readers. Since the CreativePro Conference is still a few months away, though, Mark is just getting started on his content. Instead, here’s a selection from his “Recreating Popular Design Trends” session handout at last year’s The Photoshop Conference (the progenitor of the CreativePro Conference).

Grainy/Retro Posters

If you’re trying to create the look of an older, lithographed poster from the 1920’s or 30’s, use the Dissolve blend mode on soft shading to create “Grainy Shading.”

This blend mode is specifically effected by the percentage of visible pixel data in relation to transparent information. You can test with a red circle that’s been Gaussian Blurred and had the Dissolve blend mode applied in the Layers panel. As you reduce the opacity of the layer, the effect becomes more subtle.

This is often called Stippling, Grain, or Noise.

Here is an illustration that has some loose shading applied to it. Each piece of shading is a solid black pixel that has a reduced opacity on each layer. When using a soft brush it looks like an airbrush shading effect. But after changing all those shading layers to a Dissolve Blend Mode you get a more stylized grainy effect for shading the illustration

After applying the shading, it’s easy to start adding additional looks to build on the shaded appearance. This might be a color overlay, or a pattern overlay, or both like the sample shows here.

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Where you can find Mark on the Web

Website: https://www.markheaps.com/

Social Profiles: Twitter: @lifebypixels 

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/mheaps

Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/markheaps

Flickr: https://www.flickr.com/photos/markheaps 

What past conference attendees have to say about the Client Whisperer

“THE. BEST. Mark is marvelously entertaining, and his tips included things I had no idea I could do. Probably the most fun session I attended, and by far my favorite speaker just to listen to.” ~ PePcon 2015 attendee

“I went to Mark’s session and learned some amazing new tricks and techniques for Illustrator and Photoshop. I love when that happens!” ~ The Photoshop Conference 2015 attendee