This Month in Articles, May 2016
You may have seen than I’ll be climbing Mt. Rainier next month. It’s a crazy thing for someone like me (who spends almost all my time in front of a keyboard) to attempt. Note that I did not say I was doing to get to the top; I’ll try my best, but no promises! However, I do promise one thing… that this list of articles has all kinds of good stuff that InDesign users will be find interesting:
- Mastering typography is one thing… mastering the combination of type and color is quite another!
- Dr. Scripto (David Morgan) is at it again, with a bunch of new free scripts (but as always, if the scripts save you money, consider clicking the Donate button on his site!)
- Someone sent you an InDesign file, but they use a later version than you own? ixsaveback appears to be a free service that will convert the INDD file to an IDML that you can open.
- Confused about the difference between the Knockout Group and Isolate Blending features in InDesign’s Effects panel?
- This is a terrific video of a talk given by PugPig founder Jonny Kaldor about 5 trends in mobile publishing.
- I love print. And one of the coolest parts about print is the ink, which most people don’t think much about. Watch this video and you’ll never think about print in the same way again.
- Watch out: Adobe has reduced the length of its Creative Cloud trial from 30 to 7 days.
- Erica explains some of the ins and outs of using scripts in InDesign
- Adobe finally fixed the biggest problem with CC Libraries collaboration: You can now make “read-only” shared libraries so you can update the assets but your team can’t mess them up)
- InDesign beginners: Here are a couple of short movies from Claudia McCue on how to create a flyer from scratch (and then publish it).
- Are you really into fonts and typography? Here are two great conferences you should check out: Typographics (June 17–18 in New York), and TypeCon (August 24–28 in Seattle).
- I love finding alternate glyphs/characters in a font. It’s like hidden treasure!
- I don’t agree with everything David Hicks says in this piece about the future of app/mobile publishing (and how it relates to InDesign), but you should at least consider his excellent points.
- You have to read this fun piece about InDesignSecrets contributing author Keith Gilbert
- I think it’s important for InDesign users to learn about other forms of publishing, including what Adobe is doing with Spark. Here’s a simple (and slightly ironic) example of a Spark page created by my friend Jeff Carlson.
Enjoy!
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Great links David, as always. Here’s an interesting video (just a video, not a Spark page) of a working Gutenberg Press I came across this week:
https://digg.com/video/how-guttenberg-printing-press-works
Looking through Dr Scripto there and found one I needed today, InDesign to Raster PDF. Basically the same way I was doing it, except mine was manual and painstaking and this is faster because it’s automated!
Thanks Dr Scripto!
On another note – I always felt that 30 days for a trial of Adobe CC was not enough. And I voiced this on the Adobe forums many times.
I can’t believe they have reduced the amount of days to 7! How can anyone possibly test all the apps for their needs in 7 days.
Back when 30 days wasn’t enough I was waiting for external resources to report back on what I had created was good enough. After 4 weeks of back and forth (when I would open the software fora few hours each week) the trial ended and I was no closer to knowing if the software was what was needed to accomplish the task.
I always thought 2 months free trial should be offered to first time users.
7 day trial is not enough, nobody can understand all the software in this time. Are Lynda.com doing 7 day crash courses in all the apps now?
I hope you are going up Ranier with some experienced climbers and well-equipped. As an expert climber I can tell you that you can die up there quite easily even if you aren’t attempting the summit. So many die up there each year that the Seattle Mountaineers now act as police and check folks out before you’re allowed to go.
If you are inexperienced and want a great challenge that is doable (even for the inexperienced) try MT. Elanor in the Olympics. Birds land on your hand there and the mountain goats come right up to you looking for a snack. (Try Triscit crackers…they love them!) The views are spectacular overlooking the Hood Canal all the way to Seattle. It’s a wonderful place to commune with mother nature–not near as rugged as the Cascades.
Take care
Antonio: thank you for your concern and advice! I am definitely climbing with a group and experienced guides, so I think I’ll be fine (as long as Rainier doesn’t choose this moment to erupt).
Just as I believe novice InDesign users need guides and trainers, I signed up right away with a guide service. I’m told they know all the best keyboard shortcuts. ;-)