Xara Trainers

[alilister]

Nostaw, you make a very valid point. Xara is not my company and this is none of my business, but certification is often needed by clients so that they can meet their own quality standards. It might also be a boon to marketing as it forces the product to be taken seriously (would also be an income stream?). If there is not sufficient demand for formally taught training courses (or, paradoxically if there is too much demand), then perhaps an elearning course could be put together, that leads to different levels of certification? There are already so many excellent materials, it would probably not be too daunting to assemble them into courseware.

Any large company standardising on Xara might have to certify their internal trainers to teach it.

Food for thought.

School run. Off we go...

[Albacore]

You go to a college where graphic design is taught although they use Illy as the main stay of the course they don't actually teach how to use Illy. I have been to many degree colleges where they use Corel, Illustrator and even one used Xara as the vector drawing programme what is taught is the process not the discipline of the programme.

I live in Scotland and yes I know there are companies offering qualifications in Adobe products but going for interviews I have never been asked for a certificate in Illy. What they really want to see is your portfolio firstly on the net which may get you an interview and then a presentation using hard copies of your work. If you get past that one they then give you actual work to do like a company logo along with stationary and they set a time limit. During this interview they then talk about the way you did the work in a technical area.

[bcire68]

In a similar vein, about a year ago I suggested to the kind folks a Xara that they should hold a Xara Conference and invite users from all over to attend workshops and presentations with guest artists and Xara Management. I suggested that the should do this in conjunction with the Magix folks to get some crossover users show up.

If I remember correctly, Kate M. was interested in the idea but suggested the logistics (and getting management approval) may be difficult.

Attending a conference is something that I would still be interested in.

Eric

[highfrontier]

It's a great idea, but would agree with Albacore..
From where I stand (albeit product design industry) I've seen very little requirement for certified professionals beyond their fundamental qualifications like degrees, MA's etc.. One area that is traditionally big on certification is CAD training, though this is more pushed by the training companies than appreciated by the hiring companies. A qualification has very little bearing on the things that really matter in this game, creativity, productivity etc. These are shown, as Albacore says, in a run through of someone's portfolio, and a live test.

What could be a good, and fun way to achieve something similar is to build a community of practice, much like we have at present, though expanding on the rankings principle (currently based on # of posts), adding things like # of tutorials posted, tutorials completed etc. adding up to a belt system.
Of course this would instantly swell Egg and GWP heads, as they would instantly become 15th dan black belts , but for the enthusiast there would be more satisfaction through community involvement and recognition, and for the professional, some evidence for their CV's of what they've learnt, but more importantly how they've learnt and contributed and taught others (ie teamwork and leadership)..

[alilister]

A UK Xara conference would be fun!

I don't think I have explained myself very well.... I am talking about software training, not design training. Our company often has to train people in how to operate software of all kinds. In teaching a police radio interface, we don't teach anyone to be a policeman - although we often give out technical tips that would make a police officer's lot easier. If we teach Word, we are not teaching someone to be a writer. But we might teach a writer how to make documents that are easier to negotiate or which meet guidelines for publication.

So, in the same way, in looking for a course on Xara, I am not looking for a graphic design or desk top publishing course. That's different. I am just a designer looking for training in this new tool - Xara.

I am coming from very long use of Fireworks and Photoshop and being a very busy person I would have found it useful to attend a short training course to find out where everything is. I keep going round in circles, vainly looking for tools in all the wrong places. I know it won't always be like this.

Let me give you an example of something a trainer could have told me. I discovered today that the pasteboard will accept graphics other than the tiled background. Yummy I thought. I hauled the zero points up a bit to make room. But I can't tell whether I should have been doing that, as useful as it would be. The appended graphic would not display properly in the Preview, even though I could see it on the page, and I ended up with two sets of all the layers, all with identical names. I was doing it for a very good reason: I am a usability freak and like to tuck my logos top left out of the way of the web page design. It isn't a big deal to include them in the page, which would require matching the tiling of both pasteboard and page background to give the same effect, but it would have been easier to stick them on the pasteboard over the tiled pasteboard background. After about half an hour of experimentation, all I had managed to achieve was two crashes. The manual hasn't reached me yet. Perhaps it will have a section on "abusing the pasteboard"!

A trainer would have been able to say to me, "Ah. You need to be doing X,Y, Z first". Or "It's not designed for that. That's cruelty to software!" That kind of thing...

I have so loved watching all the tutorials, (thanks to all who go to such trouble in making them) and I have Gary's wonderful new book, but it has been time consuming making the switch. I take the manual to bed with me every night - LOL - but always fall asleep in the exciting bits!

There are many great artists and designers using Xara. Not all great artists are good trainers (although many Xara peeps appear to be!) which is why it would be good to be able to look at a list of certified Xara trainers and pick someone. Then you know not only that the person understands the program, and the training points, but Xara also approves of how they communicate this.

Ali

[Josè Campoy.]

I can make a lot of lessons covering all the tools, features and everything in Xara Designer. Actually i was thinking in make a category called LEARN inside graphic recipes, here you will have lessons with exercise files and examples, form open a file to prepare a work for press. But this take time and this can take over 3 months.

A certification will be grate, even if people don´t know Xara, because most use Illustrator or corel.

Hope Xara hear us and make a certification test like adobe or autodesk.