School Projects...

[hseiken]

This is for school project final in one of my classes where we must put together a self promotional givaway piece of 8 pages or more. I'm using my the moniker I've been using for music lately as my 'artist name' I guess.

Here's the front cover.

Start to finish (including logo and icon designs/artwork), approximately 6 hours.

Criticism welcome. One thing I've noticed is I'll probably have to up the overall document saturation as the front cover completely loses the coolness of it's greys in print preview on my monitor at least.

I've noticed that creating presentations for cumulative projects is common, so for this reason, you see the WINTER 2014, as I think whether required or not, I'll likely put together new updates quarterly. We'll see, though...

[gwpriester]

Terrific! What school and what is your major subject?

[hseiken]

I'm attending Art Institute in San Diego. They want us to use Adobe products, but I use Xara and just convert the format over before turning it in. I prefer NOT to have my workspace cluttered with endless menu diving and tabbed toolboxes stacked 20 high. My major is Graphic and Web Design (BS) with emphasis on Graphic Design, though the more I look into it, all of the stuff I want to get good at seems to be in industrial design, but my campus doesn't offer it and I can't really move to a school that does, so whatevs.

I'm fine, it just means to learn the stuff I really want to (lots of sketching and ideation and 3d dimensional conceptualization, plus markers and presentation/pitch techniques, draw cars and crazy vehicles and contraptions) in my off time.

[gwpriester]

How about Art Center in Pasadena? (my Alma Mater) They have one of the best industrial design departments in the world. http://network.artcenter.edu/

[pauland]

They want us to use Adobe products, but I use Xara and just convert the format over before turning it in.

Continue using Xara, but make sure you know your way around the Adobe tools.

One day you'll arrive at a design studio and you don't want to be the only person there unable to use Adobe software.

Xara may be the fastest and easiest, but you won't have the choice of using it in a Design Studio situation.

Your tutors aren't just interested in the end-product, they expect you to become proficient with Adobe software.

Good luck.

[hseiken]

They want us to use Adobe products, but I use Xara and just convert the format over before turning it in.

Continue using Xara, but make sure you know your way around the Adobe tools.

One day you'll arrive at a design studio and you don't want to be the only person there unable to use Adobe software.

Xara may be the fastest and easiest, but you won't have the choice of using it in a Design Studio situation.

Your tutors aren't just interested in the end-product, they expect you to become proficient with Adobe software.

Good luck.

I'm all too familiar with Adobe garbage. I was playing around with graphics software long before going to school for it. I think at a point you arrive at a situation where the tool is only a workflow choice as the principles are all the same in every program, it's just a matter of knowing where the feature you need is. I came to the same conclusion with music software and hardware. I think mostly what annoys me most about people that use Adobe products is their generally complete blindness to the fact that other tools exist out there, despite what adobe pushes on the industry.

So to put it another way, I use Adobe stuff because I have to, not because I want to and I when I can avoid it now, I do.

A funny story as well...people use to think I used GIMP and InkScape because either a.) I couldn't afford Adobe's tools and/or b.) I was just a software snob, but in actuality, I had used pirated versions only in home settings and after dealing with hastles of updates and things, I started searching around for other stuff that was free and comparable and ended up settling down on GIMP and InkScape, finding both programs being near 1:1 functionality, despite Adobe coming with lots of extras that make it's package look like it's more feature rich than it is. I had heard of Xara a long time ago, but I still had that Adobe mentality to some degree that they were at the very least the kings of commercial software for a reason related to it's features and user interface. Obviously that was a mistake to assume that.

Part of the reason, and maybe this isn't the place to bring it up (if a mod deems it, I can cut this section out and start a new post where it's relevant) is that even now, Xara does a lot to talk about how fast it is, but it doesn't really do a lot to show why it's just ridiculously powerful in a way that entices Adobe Zombies that believe higher cost = higher value. Even now, the demos it shows with the gradients in realtime are now incorporated by Adobe. I think if they really wanted to push this, they would at the very least do a side by side comparison of xara's features and accessibility and speed right next to illustrator as that, IMO, is their main competitor. For instance...XARA on right half of video, Illustrator or PHotoshop (depending on the feature being demonstrated, which RIGHT THERE should be emphasized to customers, that there's not program jumping at all...when I explained that to a friend of mine, he was immediately impressed by that feature alone, but it's not piped much on the xara press materials) on the right and they would both have the exact same vector image open and we could watch xara pull all the pieces of the complex demo image apart quickly and show adobe struggling. Another demo could be showing the difference in speed with the bleend tool in xara vs. illustrator, go so far as to show that even accessing blend in adobe is a PITA, much less controlling it in realtime and adding hundreds of steps without slowing down the visual editing.
There's literally dozens of these direct comparisons you could make in the advertising materials and even the demo videos. Even the good ol fashion Coke vs. Pepsi test where the audience can witness Adobe users try out Xara for the first time with a proctor on hand to assist with finding tools. I mean, when I first started using it, it didn't hit me until about half way through the picture that Xara was just more productive of a tool.

Those are just some of my thoughts. No one I know has even heard of Xara so I am kinda glad because I can gush about the program when they ask, but the fact that Xara's virtually unknown in the states is quite a tragedy.

[pauland]

I wouldn't be gushing too much about Xara when meeting new people in the design industry. Great as it is, in a design pipeline it has limitations and the more you gush about Xara (and criticise Adobe), the more it will look as though you are questioning their judgement for using Adobe products.

[hseiken]

I wouldn't be gushing too much about Xara when meeting new people in the design industry. Great as it is, in a design pipeline it has limitations and the more you gush about Xara (and criticise Adobe), the more it will look as though you are questioning their judgement for using Adobe products.

I'm more of a fan of innovation and creativity and Adobe is strange in that they make 'creative products' but seem to possess none themselves. I'm not one to claim that Xara can cover all the bases perfectly or anything of that sort and like any good software, some people won't vibe with it no matter what I'm understanding of that.

I'm a bit of a computer geek, so knowing what's going on under the hood of programs is part of the reason for my spark. I did notice Adobe has Freehand MX and it looks kinda like Xara. Has anyone looked at it?

[pauland]

A lot of Adobe's toolset has come through company acquisition. Freehand is an old program that was created by a company called Macromedia. Adobe took over Macromedia when Adobe's transition from print to digital media was struggling.

I don't think freehand is feeling much Adobe love right now.

[gray]

What a great looking project, hseiken.