As a graphic designer, I rely heavily on Adobe Creative Suite. I started using InDesign CS2 as a member of the editorial staff at a publishing company and moved into using InDesign, Illustrator, Photoshop and Dreamweaver when my agency upgraded to CS3 last year.
Now, Adobe has released Creative Suite 4. Since I’m currently job hunting, I need to keep my graphic design skills updated; but I don’t want to throw away hundreds of dollars on an upgrade just yet. So I recently downloaded a few software elements for Adobe CS4: InDesign, Photoshop, Illustrator, and Dreamweaver. In order to make the most of the trial versions from Adobe.com, I’ve decided to quicky learn my way around these programs by creating one design each day.
What an amazing graphic design challenge it’s going to be! I’m on Day 3 right now, and already the CS4 Trial Challenge has given me opportunity to create both hits and misses. Most important, I’m learning a lot about the look and feel of CS4 as well as about the new features.
Adobe offers free online tutorial videos for all the CS4 software trials I downloaded. Unfortunately, some of the new features aren’t very relevant to the graphic design I do; also, these videos are no You Suck at Photoshop in terms of watchability and helping the user maintain an interest in the subject–or a pulse–while viewing them.
Some may call my method “doing it the hard way,” but I prefer to learn graphic design software by doing, which generally involves some frustration, swearing at the software, looking things up online, and getting a “lightbulb moment” of information that then becomes easier to remember and implement in the future.
So here’s an open call to other designers: Who wants to join me in my CS4 Trial Challenge? Thirty days, 30 designs… what could be more mentally and creatively stimulating? Plus, we can share tips and tricks we learn along the way.
CS4 Trial Challenge: Day 1
Design Project: New Year ECard
For my first design project, I wanted to do something small, quick, and sharable. Since I’m living in Japan right now, and the New Year here is a very big deal as far as holidays go, I decided to make a New Year ecard with a Japanese twist. I incorporated a traditional seasonal decoration, origami paper patterns, and washi paper textures to make this design, which I then posted and emailed to my friends and family. Feel free to take a look at my New Year ECard, and forwarding it to others is ok, too!
On this first project, I was focused on getting my bearings within the slightly different look and feel of CS4. It seems to me that the workspace itself is less cluttered, allowing the graphic designer to be more connected to the project with less distraction. Several features are located in less obtrusive places, but the user interface is no less intuitive.
CS4 Trial Challenge: Day 2
Design Project: Self Portrait
My second project was a long overdue self-portrait of sorts. A friend had recently unearthed an old photo of me at a Pride event in 2006. The colors were interesting, so I decided to do a psychedelic rainbow type of design. I pulled in photos of West Hollywood’s main drag, Santa Monica Boulevard, and added layer after layer of gradients, textures, and effects. The overall result was interesting (not my best work, and maybe even NSFW, in other words), but I also learned something!
Photoshop CS4 has a brand new tool for adjusting vibrance. In CS2 and CS3, you could only manipulate the saturation. Now, in addition to choosing the saturation, you can also control an image’s vibrance, which is basically just the saturation of non-primary colors. Often, just a small adjustment makes a big difference without giving an image that screwy, amateurish look that so often results when eager beavers jump on the saturation.
The vibrance adjustment is especially important for photoediting, and photographers have had access to similar functions in Lightroom and other photo-specific software. Here’s a tutorial video showing vibrance being used to tweak a portrait, and here’s a good article on using negative vibrance.
CS4 Trial Challenge: Day 3
Design Project: Album Art and Liner Notes
For this day of my graphic design self-challenge, I decided to use my band, Hard Candy, as inspiration. Although none of are songs are completely “in the can” as far as recording goes, I wanted to fiddle around with some album art ideas. This would also be a perfect time to break the seal on my trial version of InDesign CS4!
I decided to use a Tiffany blue background; old-drugstore-style slab serif typefaces (Acknowledgement, Cairo, and Latinia, all free from DaFont.com); a Starlight Mint illustration theme; and a distressed, secondhand bargain-bin finish. I did the drawing and mock ups in Photoshop, and I set the text and compiled the layers in InDesign. The album art looks pretty good on a CD case!
Overall, I was super happy with the results. And once again, I learned something new. InDesign has wonderfully handy Smart Guides now that automatically pop up to inform you of the alignment of your objects. It’s also great for placing images without constantly resizing frames and images. Check out this tutorial video from Layers magazine.
Altogether, in the first three days of using Adobe CS4, I’ve gotten used to the new interface and learned about vibrance adjustment layers in Photoshop and Smart Guides in InDesign. I also have two designs that worked really well and that will likely look good in my portfolio with a little tweaking.
Leave a comment or send me a message if you would like to join me in my 30 Day, 30 Designs CS4 Trial Design Challenge!
