Survival guide to Adobe Max And Is It Really a Creativity Conference? | FREE – PDF Overview with links to resources (Short)

Whether you're heading to Adobe Max for the first time this year or are a veteran and want to reminisce and share your thoughts with me, this blog post is the place to be. I'll share below all the highlights, tips, tricks, and ups and downs that I experienced at Adobe's yearly creativity conference over the years.

This blog post is going to be a long read ( 20 min) with lots of visuals and two videos. I summarize my survival tips at the bottom of the post. At the end of the post, I also break down my thoughts on Adobe Max for fashion and textile designers. Just in case you were wondering if it's for you and should you go?

Alternatively, grab a summary and links to resources. This summary breaks down the sessions and makes it easier to understand what you can sign up for. Click the image below and request the password for the resource vault! Ready. Set. Go!

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The Community Pavilion

To me, Adobe Max has two inspiring events happening simultaneously. One is very obvious, and that would be the sessions that are outlined in their catalog when you register. Those are broken down in many different ways, and I will speak about a couple of those further below. The second one that might not seem so apparent for newbies is the playground pavilion. The pavilion is where sponsors and other vendors showcase and sell their wares. Also, this is also where Adobe and said vendors create a lot of either educational sessions for their products, where you can meet and chat with authors, artists, podcasters, and even make connections with design teams at bigger companies like Adidas. The vendor-sponsored welcome reception is a great evening to walk around and see the entire place on the first night and see what you want to come back for on the following two days. The pavilion is also a place where you can create things. Here I have screen printed tees and postcards, created a mosaic type mini painting as part of a mural against bullying, have heat seat images onto metal via a process that I can't remember the name of right now, and many other fun things.

The pavilion is also a place to recharge your batteries, your devices and your body. Last year they had a oxygen bar with flavored oxygen that you could inhale through your nose. I am sharing a pics somewhere below of that. Kind of yucky at first but felt like a boost of some sort (coffee like?).

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top new adobe creative tools for fashion designers

i am still at adobemax 2013 today, but here is a quick roundup on the top 4 creative tools that i am exited about for the apparel industry in regards to adobe programs and now hardware. please let me know what you think and share with me what you would like to see improved or what is your fav new feature? Continue reading “top new adobe creative tools for fashion designers”

Sweepstakes! What would you change in Illustrator or Photoshop? Fashion designers opinions wanted?

Update! I closed the blog entries at this time. Thank you for reading.

Fashion designers! What are the most troubling issues that you have had or are having with Adobe Illustrator or Adobe Photoshop? What would you add inside of either software to fix it? Get an answer from the creators of Illustrator and Photoshop the “Adobe Team”**.

Continue reading “Sweepstakes! What would you change in Illustrator or Photoshop? Fashion designers opinions wanted?”

Appliques cut with the cricut and designed with the pen tool

Being a night owl I often times find myself watching those long late night commercials. And I can’t believe that I found  2 of my favorite things to do right now on TV during those infomercials . One of them being Zumba® but that would make for a whole new blog. And the second one is the Cricut®

In case you do not know what the Cricut® is: It’s a printer like machine (instead of ink it has a blade) that uses cartridges that hold fonts and images that can be cut out of paper for the scrap-booking community and amazingly it also cuts fabric.

When I first saw it, I did a little research online and found a video on youtube showing a lady cutting a cute little cupcake out of fabric and sewing it onto a baby’s onesie. I liked the idea so much and got extremely excited about being able to do this myself. The only thing that was bothering me was the fact that the Cricut® prides itself in being a computer-less product, meaning no need to know any software and no connection to computer required. The Cricut® offers cartridges of which 1-2 are included with the machine and then you have to buy other ones separately. I however envisioned something entirely different. I wanted to draw my own designs inside of Illustrator and then make the Cricut® cut it out of fabric for me.

So I did a little more research and found that Provocraft® (maker of Cricut®) came out with a product that is called Cricut DesignStudio ® software. That sounded really exciting until I found out that this product only allows you to use images from the cartridges. I guess it’s a step up for anyone not interested in using a real design software, as I assume that before this software one was only able to cut images from one cartridge at a time?

Anyways, after I did some more research I found a website that sells a down-loadable software called “SurecutsalotTM“<<< love the name>>> and tested it out.

Well… after deciding which Cricut® to buy (because they come in different sizes) and finding coupons and some Heat N Bond to stiffen the fabric. And  it works! Ha! Here is short tutorial on what I did (see pics above)

First I found my inspiration, which happened to be a towel holder with these cute little elephants. Then I took a picture of them and traced them in Illustrator, then I saved them as a SVG. file. Then opened my elephants (one at a time) in surecutsalot.. hooked my computer per usb up to the cricut and pressed cut.

Voila… i had my first computer generated appliques. Which will be used for a baby blanket for my friend daughter.

There are some important hints and tips for prepping the fabrics and how to apply it to the actual cutting mat of the Cricut® and which blade setting and so on and since that is all information that I forget as soon as I do it, I am glad that there is a huge community of Cricut® users that share their tips online on the Cricut® message board.

Here is the link to the youtube video that inspired me.

Here is the link to the Cricut message board

Here is the link to the “SurecutsalotTM” software

And you can download my little elephants as Ai files right here. They are on separate Layers.

Choosing a web browser that makes your creative life easier

I am regularly surrounded by a great many computers, whether it is during classes at the community college where I teach or during lab sessions at conferences that I go to. I started noticing that there is a difference between which web browsers computer geeks like myself are using and what many Fashion Designers are using.

The most important reasons to use a good web-browser are: * Speed * Customization * Organization * Security

As Fashion Designers are more concerned about what fabric, colors and trims to use rather than what web browser to use, I thought it is a good idea to make them aware of some other choices that are available to them. Many Fashion Designers are using the web browser that comes pre- installed on their laptop or computer, meaning that if they have a MAC they are using Safari to surf the web and PC users use Internet Explorer.

Two more choices to consider are google chrome and my preferred choice which is called Firefox. I started using Firefox about 3 years ago and noticed that the load time for web pages sped up dramatically and it allows me to smoothly hop around  the Internet without stalling. You can install any of the 2 additional options for free right here:

* Firefox

* Chrome

I also like Firefox’s fun feature called persona, which let’s me customize the look of my web browser according to my taste. Currently there are over 35000 personas I am currently using glitzyglitter.

You can install any persona here

In addition to being able to speed up the load time of pages and customizing my browser I  started using Xmarks, which is a plug in to any of the 4 web browsers that allows me to efficiently bookmark sites on my computer and them access these bookmarks from any computer around the world. I can access the bookmarks right inside my web browser and additionally these bookmarks are saved through my free account on Xmarks website and I never have to worry about loosing them. Which unfortunately happened to me once, when an old laptop with many bookmarks died and could not be recovered. Now I create new bookmarks daily, capturing websites that inspire teach and entertain me, without worrying about loosing them.

You can install Xmarks right here.