Sometimes when I sit down to write one of these editor’s letters, it takes a while before I can settle on a theme for describing the content in the new issue. The cursor blinks at me, and I blink back at it while I wait for something to pop into my head. Occasionally, a snack or a dog walk is required to get my synapses firing correctly and produce the nugget that I need: a bit of pop culture, some personal history, or something I’ve seen in the news.

This month, it was a song lyric. When I thought about the four articles that make up the issue, I started hearing Bob Marley’s “No Woman, No Cry” inside my head. Specifically, the lyric, “In this great future, you can’t forget your past.” Thank you, Bob, that is exactly what I meant to say.

Here’s why. This issue is focused on vital trends and cutting-edge tools, while also being firmly grounded in fundamental production tasks and classical design techniques that will never go out of style. This balance is important. You have to remember where you came from, or you might get lost on your way to the future.

Fittingly, the two forward-focused articles are by first-time CreativePro Magazine authors, Lisa Siefert and Stephy Hogan.

In our feature story, Lisa calls the play-by-play in the heavyweight design bout pitting Canva versus Adobe Express. These two programs are duking it out to determine who will dominate the future of content creation. Lisa looks at their specific strengths and weaknesses to help you determine which is the right choice for any job.

Stephy’s article on accessibility tips for presentation design shows how making a few good choices with regard to structure, navigation, and text formatting can make a presentation accessible to a much wider audience. And I think we’d all agree that a world where all designers make their work accessible to everyone is a great future indeed.

The other two articles in this issue are by longtime Creative Pro vets, Pariah Burke and Nigel French. Collectively, Nigel and Pariah have written well over 100 articles for CreativePro, spanning back 20 years. We all had fewer gray hairs back then, but the topics they are covering here are ageless.

If you do any professional print work, Pariah’s article on preflighting in InDesign and Adobe Acrobat is must-read stuff. He details everything you need to know to get your files set up correctly before you send them to the printer.

Nigel continues his series on how to be a better designer with part four, designing on a grid. He explains the practical benefits layout grids offer in InDesign and Illustrator, and how mindfully breaking the grid can be a powerful design technique.

Enjoy! And remember: Everything’s gonna be alright.