Creatives

Adobe Creative Suite 4 Training

2008-09-17T10:02:00.004+01:00

Adobe will announce the official wordlwide launch of Adobe Creative Suite 4 (CS4) on 23rd September. Until then all details are top secret - but we'll let you know all the details of Creative Suite 4 as soon as we are allowed.... watch this space.

Mekon Creatives are also planning a range of CS4 seminars to show off Adobe Creative Suite 4. If you are interested in these CS4 seminars, please complete the form here and tell us where you'd like the Creative Suite 4 seminar to take place.

A full range of Adobe Creative Suite 4 training courses will be available soon.

Hyperinflation: the ultimate anti-forgery device

2008-08-26T10:04:00.004+01:00

Our friend Conrad Taylor makes an interesting point on his new blog The Conradiator about the problems of hyperinflation in Zimbabwe and the ironic power now wielded by designers and design software. In Conrad's own words:

Mind you, it is odd to think of there being such panic about installing sophisticated security features on billion-dollar banknotes that can hardly buy a biscuit, and will be worthless in weeks. What forger would waste their time copying that?

It is equally odd to think that the ability of a government to pay its troops may rest in the hands of a few graphic designers and press operators.

It is early days for the Conradiator, but he's building up a loyal following on Google Reader and the like - and with insightful, pithy posts like the above, it is not surprising. Keep it up Conrad!

Introducing QuarkXPress 8

2008-08-12T14:13:00.003+01:00

Mekon Creatives were given a sneek peek at version 8 of QuarkXPress which is ready to ship. It boasts an improved typographic engine with precise control of hanging characters.

The most significant visual change that greets the user is the interface which was in need of a face lift. Quark aimed to maintain the familiarity of the interface so that users would still feel comfortable but the tools would be more accessible. The new ‘tiny’ toolbox and the context-based approach to layout tasks, makes the product more intuitive. The Pfeiffer Report discusses this in more detail.

Graphically the Bezier pen offers users more control and although it is no Mont Blanc it offers the user the option to define precise paths within QuarkXPress. If artwork exists in Adobe Illustrator the option to import Illustrator files now exists.

It is evident from the industry that publishing is no longer just about the printed page. This change was evident as far back as version 5 of Quark with the introduction of the web facility. This concept has been embraced and extended in QuarkXpress 8. Quark reaches out to the web users with Quark Interactive Designer which provides a basic functionality to design across media as well as a novelty factor of having an on screen activity centre. This aims to keep you within the product without the need to stray into another application.

The multi-language support hints at the international aspect of publishing and is long overdue. The concept of having to purchase passport is also a thing of the past.

Additional shortcuts have been added so there is a commonality between products made by different vendors - a refreshing concept for the user.

If you focus on what QuarkXPress 8 has rather than what it hasn’t got you will be pleasantly surprised.

Our QuarkXPress 8 Upgrade Course has already been developed, and is open for bookings!

Google is now indexing Adobe Flash sites

2008-07-03T13:09:00.003+01:00

Good news or bad news... you be the judge. Many sites carry this story including Search Tools Blog. Those of you who have attended our SEO course will know that using Adobe Flash is a definate no-no if you want your site to be found, indexed and rewarded by high ranking on SERPs. Not any more apparently. Our advice still remains the same: only use flash where it really adds value, and be careful of over doing it. We're still waiting to see if this will have any knock on effect for accessibility and usability issues for Flash-tastic website.

Is InDesign the MS Word?

2008-06-26T11:33:00.002+01:00

The Fenixworkshop Blog carries a piece that voices something we’ve seen so much of lately both through our recruitment and training clients, that just seems to be growing…

“In the last year or two many office support staffers are being required to learn InDesign, as budgets tighten and companies no longer want to outsource work to freelance designers. Employees with little or no design training are being required to navigate the complexities of typography and information architecture and create publications that look professionally designed.” Full post here

However, we’ve seen this not just with InDesign/QuarkXPress, but the whole range of creative applications. Adobe has long used the word “ubiquity” to describe the prevalence of Adobe Acrobat – but I’d say we’re pretty damn close to applying “ubiquity” to the print/web product-set as a whole.

I’d disagree that “companies no longer want to outsource work to freelance designers” but would say that companies are now using junior staff to tweak/edit/adjust the work done by designers. Whether this is the office admin or marketing exec tweaking web copy or nudging a graphic on a brochure, the creative tools once only to be found on the Mac in the corner of the design dept, are now well and truly established elsewhere.

But we all know the dangers of asking a non-designer to design something, but the lines are starting to blur as with so many traditional job roles and titles: tech authors becoming copywriters; copywriters becoming graphic designers; or print designer becoming web designer etc

InDesign is the new Microsoft Word – Carol’s going to love that!

Courses in July (and a few in June!)

2008-06-19T11:08:00.003+01:00

I thought you might be interested in the following courses from Mekon Creatives coming up between now and June:

Don’t forget….

If you have any recruitment vacancies why not give our unique recruitment service a try. We work on a fixed fee basis and also include FREE training for your chosen candidate. Contact our recruitment team today! 020 8722 8400.

June Courses

24 June
Adobe Photoshop Advanced Training Course – For Print

25 June
Writing for the Web

July Courses

1-2 July
Adobe Dreamweaver Introduction Course

3 July
Web Accessibility Training Course

9 July
Search Engine Optimisation Training Course

10-11 July
Adobe Dreamweaver Training Course – Building Web Databases

11 July
QuarkXPress Editorial Training Course

14-16 July
Cascading style Sheets (CSS) Advanced Training Course

17-18 July
Adobe Illustrator Introduction Training Course

21-22 July
Adobe Flash Introduction Training Course

23 July
QuarkXPress Advanced Training Course

24-25 July
Adobe InDesign Introduction Training Course

28-29 July
QuarkXpress Introduction Training Course

28 July
QuarkXpress to Adobe InDesign Migration Training Course

29-30 July
Adobe Flash ActionScript Training Course

30-31 July
Adobe Photoshop Introduction Training Course

Wacom Tablets

Our free Wacom tablet offer has now ended… but don’t worry! We are offering everyone the opportunity to get any Wacom tablet at a 15% discount off the RRP, when purchased in conjunction with one of our training courses.

For more information on any of the above please call us on 020 8722 8400, or visit our website.

Don`t miss an exclusive David Carson Seminar

2008-06-02T17:07:00.003+01:00

Our friends at Quark have asked us to let as many of you as possible know about this special event...

David Carson needs no introduction. Described as "the most famous graphic designer on the planet", his first book, The End of Print, is the top-selling graphic design book of all time.

Don’t miss this exclusive opportunity to attend a one-off David Carson Seminar in London, where he will give a sneak preview of his forthcoming book. Carson remains a hands-on designer, and through a combination of words, images, and live design, the audience will get a glimpse into the mind and ethos of one of the truly great graphic designers of the past century and see why his work continues to inspire a new generation of designers.

Tickets cost £25, and there is a special concession ticket price for students of £15. Demand for tickets at this seminar is expected to be high – reserve your place at the seminar today.

When: 18th June 2008

Start: 6:00 p.m.

Duration: Approximately 2 hours

Where?: Riverside Studios, Crisp Road, London W6 9RL

How to get there: Riverside is easily accessible, being close to both main road routes into London and London TransportRiverside is easily accessible, being close to both main road routes into London and London Transport

Chinwag's Digital Pulse

2008-05-23T14:04:00.002+01:00

Digital Pulse is a confidence and opinion tracker for the digital media industries produced by our friends at Chinwag.

This week they've released March's results, plus their first quarterly analysis of what it all means... Here's a few choice stats and factoids.

In general, the digital industries wear credit crunch concerns lightly: 72% of respondents are positive or very positive about current market conditions with an index of 145.7
Across all areas of new media, elevated salary expectations are rife. Of respondents, 62% thought their salary didn’t reflect their true worth, with greatest dissatisfaction amongst client-side and online publishing professionals
The agency sector boasts the highest confidence - with web agencies and advertising / marketing agencies giving a 77% positive response to the present climate
Online publishing is least confident and most negative, with 36% giving a negative response to current conditions
Confidence in the future is falling - respondents have less confidence with conditions in six months time, with the index falling by 8% to 133.6

The full details and the magic index number can be found here.

We'd be interested in your opinions in the comments below.

Helping you choose the right creative application

2008-05-20T16:06:00.003+01:00

This article originally appeared in the May issue of info+, the newsletter of the ISTC, and is reproduced here by kind permission of the ISTC.

Helping you choose the right creative application

By Kathryn Valdal Fourie, MISTC

Changes in communication trends and the job market are pushing a growing number of technical authors to become more involved in page layout and design, reports Ed Wills director of operations at Mekon Creatives. This means that more technical writers and designers are taking creative application courses to remain competitive in the work place.

“In today’s world of communications, copywriters, technical writers and even traditional print designers need to design for the online experience.” The web experience is growing even richer from a media perspective; it is becoming increasingly standard to have print options, documents for download, online video and online presentations with audio scripts. “This is why 60% of the students now taking our web courses come from traditional print media backgrounds. Many of these previously print-only designers are taking Adobe Dreamweaver and Flash courses to move into web design, as well as to gain web skills such as writing for the web and Search Engine Optimisation (SEO),” reports Ed.

Designers and writers often know that they need to gain more software skills and become more adept in the programs they use every day. Yet, they are constantly bombarded by course and software advertisements, which can make choosing the right course difficult.

Mekon gives us the low-down on some of the key creative application packages in the market to help you choose the most appropriate one for your needs. These are:

Adobe InDesign: application for page layout and design
Adobe FrameMaker: powerful application for authoring longer documents, including manuals and technical documents
Adobe Illustrator: a vector-based drawing application, useful for a broad range of projects, such as creating logos, clothes design and cartography
Adobe Photoshop: a graphics editing application for commercial bitmap and image manipulation, graphical layout and web image manipulation
QuarkXPress: application for page layout and design

So if you are interested in getting into layout, which application would be the better choice – Adobe InDesign or QuarkXPress which are direct competitors? Mekon Creatives tells us a bit about the two applications’ history and strengths to help you make the right decision.

QuarkXPress has been around for 21 years, whereas Adobe InDesign has only been on the market for about nine. “In the past, Adobe PageMaker competed with QuarkXPress, and Quark was the market leader,” explains Carol Edwards, creative print design application specialist and Adobe Certified Expert and Instructor at Mekon Creatives. But since “Adobe bundled InDesign with Photoshop, Illustrator and Acrobat in its Creative Suite, InDesign has become a strong player – the application is now running neck and neck with QuarkXPress in terms of training requirements,” she says.

“While QuarkXPress is more expensive to purchase than InDesign, InDesign comes in a variety of suites, ranging from the all encompassing Master Collection, which integrates the ex Macromedia products and covers all design disciplines including print and web design, motion graphics and video editing to the Design Standard and Design Premium Suites. Overall, the various suites cost more but contain more applications,” explains Carol. For this reason, Adobe’s Creative Suites appeal to a broad range of designers, including independent ones.

“QuarkXPress is still an industry standard with a strong loyal user base and can work very well with products such as Photoshop and Illustrator, but we are experiencing a high demand for InDesign training courses from QuarkXPress users,” comments Ed. This is partly due to the job market demanding designers versed in both packages. “Ten years ago, job ads asked for QuarkXPress, but now they are asking for both: Quark and InDesign.”

So if you are looking to add a new application to your repertoire of skills, how long will it really take you to master an application? If you are a newbie to an application, taking the plunge and getting started with it can be daunting. But Carol says that it is possible to “absorb the key features of an application within as little as one to three days. In a short course, we impart enough skills so that users can feel confident with the interface and familiar enough with the main features to produce any type of document.”

“Even users who have been working with an application regularly often learn short cuts, tips and tricks on training days which enable them to become more efficient at their jobs. The best way to learn the features of an application is to refer to sample projects in the training,” explains Carol. “Using clients own projects during the course makes the learning experience more relevant, which aids the transfer of skills.”

Most students leave a couple of weeks between an introductory, intermediate and advanced course. This gives them enough time to practice the tips and skills they learnt in the training course. “But how long you need between courses depends on how often you will be using the application. If you use it in your job everyday then you might feel ready to move to a higher level more quickly. If you don’t use the application daily at work, we recommend that you do practical exercises at home. You can then expect that achieving proficiency will take a little longer,” she adds.

So learning a new application will take some effort, but will adding a new creative package to your CV really give you the edge in the job market? “We have found that companies are looking for writers and designers with a mix of cross-media skills and this is often hard to find. Businesses want to staff up with trained people but are often concerned about the risk of staff churn. This coupled with high recruitment agency fees of around 25% can make some companies hesitant to hire, especially when it is in the agency’s best interest, but not the client’s, to negotiate a higher salary for a candidate,” explains Ed.

“Traditionally, our business has focused on creative application training courses, and we have consistently been approached by businesses wanting to train up their new recruits in various applications,” he says. To address the concerns of industry, Mekon Creatives started a new recruitment arm 10 months ago. “We put prospective employers into contact with designers who have a strong portfolio of work and then put them through three Mekon Creatives courses. We work on a fixed-fee approach as opposed to traditional recruitment agencies who charge a percentage of successful candidates’ salary, and the training element is included in this fee. We believe this puts us firmly on the client’s side and produces a fantastic return on the recruitment budget investment.”

It’s not only the employers who benefit. Successful Mekon Creatives trained candidates who stay with the client company for more than 24 months get a 10% discount on Mekon Creatives courses for life. “This is a win-win situation for both the companies who approach us and the designers enhancing their skill sets through our courses. The bottom line is that competitive businesses are always looking for experienced staff with the skills to match, so if you enhance your skills you have got a much stronger chance of getting the job you want."

Wacom Tablets

2008-05-16T08:45:00.003+01:00

Paul Taylor writes in today's FT about using drawing tablets together with Photoshop CS3 to make improvements and modifications to your photos whether you are a pro preparing a covershot of a celeb or an amateur tweaking your pics for Facebook. Just a reminder that we can give you a free Wacom tablet to anyone booking and paying up to 3 weeks in advance for the following courses from Mekon Creatives:

Adobe Illustrator Training Courses
Adobe Photoshop Training Courses
Adobe Flash Training Courses

The following courses are happening in May and June:

21-22 May
Adobe Flash Introduction Course

28-29 May / 23-24 June
Adobe Photoshop Introduction Course

28-29 May / 26-27 June
QuarkXPress Introduction Course

30 May
Adobe InDesign Advanced /Tips & Tricks Course

4 June
Adobe Photoshop Intermediate Course

5-6 June
Adobe Flash ActionScript Course

10 June
QuarkXPress Advanced Course

12-13 June
Adobe InDesign Introduction Course

16-17 June
Adobe Illustrator Introduction Course

18 June
Adobe Illustrator Advanced Course

25 June
Writing for the Web Course

Brand Tags: Adobe

2008-05-13T14:23:00.002+01:00

Brand tags is a simple brand perception game where you are shown a logo of a well known brand and then add your one-word or phrase response to that logo. A complete waste of time, but kinda amusing result for Adobe. Whatever your response, you know where to come for Adobe Training.

GoLive Has Gone

2008-04-29T09:02:00.003+01:00

According to recent news, Adobe has ended development and sales of Adobe GoLive to focus on Adobe Dreamweaver, given it's prominent position within Adobe Creative Suite. Mekon Creatives will no longer offer public GoLive training courses, but to encourage people cross-grading to Adobe Dreamweaver, we will offer £50 off our Adobe Dreamweaver training course for a limited time only for previous Adobe GoLive users. Just mention this blog post at the time of booking.

Adobe and Quark Training Course in April & May

2008-04-10T15:03:00.002+01:00

I thought you might be interested in the following courses from Mekon Creatives coming up in April and May:

14 April
Adobe Acrobat Introduction Course

17-18 April / 28-29 May
Adobe Photoshop Introduction Course

17-18 April / 8-9 May
Adobe InDesign Introduction Course

23 April
QuarkXPress Advanced Course

24 April
Adobe Acrobat Intermediate Course

24-25 April / 28-29 May
QuarkXPress Introduction Course

28 April
Adobe Photoshop Intermediate Course

30 April
QuarkXPress Editorial Course

1-2 May
Adobe Illustrator Introduction Course

7 May
Adobe Illustrator Advanced Course

19-20 May
Adobe Dreamweaver Introduction Course

21-22 May
Adobe Flash Introduction Course

30 May
Adobe InDesign Tips & Tricks Course

30 May
Adobe InDesign Advanced Course

For more information on the above courses, please visit our website or call us on 020 8722 8400.

Quark Dynamic Publishing Solution

2008-03-19T16:59:00.002Z

On Thursday last week Quark held a short but very interesting product launch seminar to give a few important clients and press a glimpse of Quark’s Dynamic Publishing Solution. Mekon Creatives were also very privileged to be invited.

For those of us who have been involved with technical publications for several years, the concept of dynamic publishing is not new. Our parent company Mekon for one has developed dynamic publishing solutions for many years using SGML, XML, or a SQL database combined with tools such as E3, XyEnterprise XPP, Antenna House XSL Formatter and Quadralay Web Works to name but a few. Such solutions lend themselves very well to technical publication workflows, where content can be re-used for multiple products and document types, feeding through to several output or delivery formats.

In the past two years Mekon has carried out many Content Strategy Audits at high tech and manufacturing companies. In all these companies the results of the audit showed the potential for re-use in marketing publications, and it is already well understood that marketing departments need to produce many different output formats. This is where the problem starts. Marketing have different design driven challenges than technical communications and hence use products like Adobe InDesign and QuarkXpress to produce the ever changing marketing communications information. They are not about to swap these traditional design tools for content driven tools such as Adobe FrameMaker, JustSystems XMetaL or PTC Arbortext Editor.

So all this lead up is to prepare you for what we believe is a fantastic step forward for marketing departments and their need to integrate with the wider tech comms content-driven workflows. Simply put, what has been missing is an XML content interface to allow marketing department to continue using their favoured layout tools and reap the benefit of this current XML revolution.

Quark Dynamic Publishing solution has the potential to be this missing link.

Ray Schiavone, Quark CEO, delivered the brief which indicates the importance they place on this product. Interestingly the demonstration showed In.Vision Express Author producing valid XML content, managed in an open source CMS, automatically publishing the content through predefined QuarkXpress templates to produce PDF and HTML output. Their plan is to add other output types, in particular mobile devices. We also heard that they are working on DITA support which is clearly where the market is going these days

Watch this space

Don't use Adobe Photoshop Lightroom update 1.4

2008-03-19T11:29:00.003Z

A couple of issues with the latest update for Adobe Photoshop Lightroom led the Adobe Lightroom blog to warn updaters to revert back to update 1.3.1: "The Lightroom 1.4 update for Mac and Windows has been temporarily removed from the Adobe.com web site. Those Lightroom users who have installed Lightroom 1.4 should uninstall the update and install Lightroom 1.3.1 until a further update can be provided."

Authorised Adobe Training courses in March

2008-03-07T09:43:00.002Z

Here's a selection of our authorised Adobe training courses coming up in March:

10-11 March
Adobe Flash Actionscript training course

17-18 March
Adobe Dreamweaver Introduction training course

19-20 March
Adobe Photoshop Introduction training course

19 March
Writing for the web training course

26-27 March
Adobe InDesign Introduction training course

26-27 March
Adobe Flash Introduction training course

28 March
Adobe Illustrator Advanced training course

31 March
Adobe Photoshop Intermediate training course

31 March
Adobe Photoshop Advanced training course – for web

For more information about any of the above courses please visit our website or call 020 8722 8400 .

Don’t forget our value-add recruitment services: fixed fee of just £4000 per placement and free attendance on up to three of our public courses for your chosen candidate. Give us a try – you’ll be surprised at the return on your recruitment budget.

Win a copy of QuarkXPress 7, Quark Interactive Designer and Quark XPert Tools Pro

2008-02-04T11:29:00.000Z

Win a copy of QuarkXPress 7, Quark Interactive Designer and Quark XPert Tools Pro

Mekon Creatives, the Quark Authorised Training Partner will be exhibiting at the Publish Expo on stand B47 downstairs in the Creative section. Leave your contact details with a member of the Mekon Creatives team to win a copy of QuarkXPress 7, Quark Interactive Designer and Quark XPert Tools Pro. We have one to give away each day of the event.

Mekon Creatives focuses on supporting anyone who uses creative applications to get their job done. We do this through offering authorised Adobe and Quark training courses, value-add recruitment and professional coaching services.

***Show Special Offer***

Place any vacancy with our recruitment team at the event and qualify for the special rate of just £3,500.00 per placement – which includes FREE attendance at up to 3 of our public courses for the candidate you choose, as well as ongoing discounts for future training. And remember, you only pay once we place the candidate with you.

For more information please visit us at Stand B47 downstairs at the Publishing Expo, or contact us on 020 8722 8400 or visit our website www.mekon-creatives.com.

December update

2007-12-11T14:43:00.000Z

With just a handful of working days until Christmas, here’s a list of special offers for you and an update on courses we have running in December.

December Courses

17 December

Quark to InDesign migration course

17-18 December

Adobe Flash Actionscript Introduction Course

19 December

Cross Media Publishing with Adobe CS3

***Free 3 hour seminar***

Developed for print designers who need to increase their knowledge and understanding of web tools (such as Dreamweaver, Flash and Device Central) within the design workflow, and creating content for cross media(eg mobile).

We will be running a morning and an afternoon session. Spaces are limited, so please let us know as soon as possible if you would like to attend.

19-21 December

Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) Advanced Course

January Courses – start the new year with some new skills!

10-11 January

Adobe InDesign Introduction Course

14-15 January

Adobe Illustrator Introduction Course

16 January

Adobe Photoshop Advanced (for Print) Course

17-18 January

Adobe Dreamweaver Introduction Course

Special offers for Flash, Illustrator or Photoshop courses

Book any public Flash, Illustrator or Photoshop course and get a Wacom Bamboo Fun A5 tablet worth around £130.00. (This offer supersedes our usual offer of a Bamboo Fun A6 worth £70.00 for booking 3 weeks in advance.)

Special offers for InDesign, Dreamweaver or QuarkXpress courses

Book any public InDesign, Dreamweaver or QuarkXpress course and get a 15% discount.

For the 2 offers above, courses must be booked before 21^st December 2007 and course must be taken before 31^st March 2008.

Nottingham Training Centre now open

Adobe have now finished the authorisation process for our training room in Nottingham. Scheduled courses will start soon. Please let us know if you’d like to attend our courses in Nottingham.

For more details on any of the above, please visit our website or simply call us on 020 8722 8400.

Flash on the Beach

2007-10-31T14:38:00.000Z

We'll be at the Flash on the Beach event this year (4-7 November) in Brighton. Will you?

InDesign & InCopy Update

2007-10-10T09:15:00.000+01:00

The Adobe Blog 'Notes from NMR' carries a story about the InDesign & InCopy Public Update. Full details available on the site.

I'm an artist, not a copywriter!

2007-09-28T09:26:00.000+01:00

Shaun Crowley at Planet Quark writes an interesting article about how savy designers are also turning their hands to copywriting. This is something we've been interested in for some time, and part of the reason we developed our range of skills courses for designers, especially courses such as SEO and Writing for the Web. In particular freelancers who take these courses tell us they give them a new lease of life - not to mention revenue streams.

If you like MS paint, you'll love this

2007-09-27T11:50:00.000+01:00

The guys at Freeloveforum came up with this... and no we don't do training for MS Paint