You've arrived at Chicago's top source for cross-media publication design, online marketing consulting, and certified Adobe InDesign, InCopy, Photoshop, Illustrator, and Acrobat training — welcome!
There's quite a bit of useful content here, which I've organized into four simple categories. Be sure to visit Cross-Media Design to see our portfolio of print, web site, online marketing, and PDF CD-ROM projects. The Training and Support section details our applied training in InDesign, InCopy, Acrobat, Photoshop, Dreamweaver, Flash, Illustrator, OS X and more. Software resource pages and our DesignGeek e-zine live in DesignGeek Central. Finally, you can learn all about me and Seneca in HerGeekness.
Tips, news, resources, and more:
• Follow me (Anne-Marie/HerGeekness) on Twitter!
• Keep up with Seneca events and webinars on Facebook
• Read my posts on InDesignSecrets.com and InCopySecrets.com
What's Happening at Seneca these days . . .
>> Acrobat 9 Pro Tips and Tricks, my latest video tutorial series for Lynda.com, is now available on their site. (Note: 85% of the content applies to Acrobat 8, too.) This title so much fun to record, because it was essentially a "brain dump." My producer asked me, "What are your very favorite Acrobat tips and techniques, ones that hardly anyone knows?" The free-form aspect appealed to me. I threw everything in there, from beginner-level tips for modifying the toolbars to uber-geeky ones that involve creating an .htaccess file for your web server (it forces a PDF to download instead of opening in the browser window). And two great ones for making Acro 9's PDF Portfolios more backwards compatible!
>> I'm getting back to writing my e-zine, DesignGeek. In February I was actually able to get back to sending out TWO issues in a month! In one of them, I wrote up a little story about the cool site that lets you turn any picture into an Obama-esque poster. I took this from my webcam:
>> My new Lynda.com title, New Features in InDesign CS4, contains over forty lessons (each 5 to 10 minutes long) covering every new feature in InDesign CS4, in depth. (For example, it took me five videos to completely cover the Conditional Text feature.) Many undocumented tips and workarounds are included in each lesson. InCopy CS4 and InDesign CS4 Workflow Essentials is another title I recently recorded at Lynda.com Weighing in at over eighty videos; It's an introduction to InCopy and a comprehensive, in-depth guide to successfully integrating them into your production workflow. If you're already using the InCopy workflow, check out one of the free videos, "What's new in InCopy CS4" that I included in the title just for you. You can see a few of the videos for free on-line; but to see the rest of the videos and to download the sample files I use, you'll need to join up (for as little as $25 for a one-month subscription).
>> Not surprisingly, we're doing a lot of online training for clients. In this economy, travel budgets are incredibly restricted. But companies are being forced to do more with less staff, so of course, they need to ramp up people's skills. That's why a lot of out-of-town clients are opting for our "virtual classroom" instead of flying me or one of my trainers out there for a few days. It's convenient, flexible, and affordable; whether it's a one-on-one tutorial or doing a 2-day class for forty people at once. Email our training coordinator, Sherri Austin, to find out more or even try it out for yourself!
>> Want to get the lowdown of how InCopy really works with InDesign?
Adobe hired me to write their InCopy CS3 whitepaper (a 16-page PDF) that describes the InCopy CS3/InDesign CS3 workflow, the paper they make available to prospective customers on their main InCopy product page. (A CS4 version is in the works.) It includes lots of screenshots of an actual publication going through the steps in the workflow so you and your colleagues can get a good sense if it'll work in your situation. (If your editors give you Word files to flow into the layout, and then mark-up paper proofs with their changes, it's definitely worth considering.) Download the 5MB PDF directly from my InCopySecrets.com blog: The Collaborative Editorial Workflow Using Adobe InCopy CS3 and InDesign CS3.
>> Miscellaneous designgeek-y projects: Researching how to assess employee design software knowledge for a large retail client -- online marketing for a plug-in developer; project managing a couple web site redesigns; lots of out-of-town training; trying to steal random hours to update the Software Resources pages on this site (finally updated most of the body of the Photoshop Resources page); and moving most of my design studio's computers to the Mac/Intel platform.
