Thursday, October 12, 2006
Forty-two new members came out for the October 12 inaugural meeting of the Cleveland chapter of the InDesign® user group. Our group included a member from Buffalo. If he drove back home that night, he was on his way to a record-breaking early October snowfall. Please email us and let us know how your trip went.
Mari Hulick, the chair of Communication Design at The Cleveland Institute of Art (CIA) (and previous member of the NYC InDesign user group), welcomed all to the Future Center (a design meeting and exhibition center at CIA) and to the InDesign community.
Mari introduced April Clark (an Adobe Certified Expert in InDesign) of Nuance Consulting. April will be assisting Mari with the meetings and community.
Noha Edell from Adobe gave the main presentation, a full hour of information on and discussion about InDesign and the productivity tools of the Bridge® and InCopy®. Noha started off showing new members the user group website, and then gave a brief history of InDesign.
She then introduced the full Bridge — a program that took the benefits of the "Browse" command and put it on steroids. (Note: the full Bridge is available only when users purchase the entire Creative Suite. Standalone programs come with a leaner version of the Bridge, still a great production tool). The presentation highlighted features such as:
1. "Full project" save functions
2. Collections
3. Sorting and views
4. Color management through the full Bridge
5. Adobe Stock Photos®
Noha gave a brief overview of an InDesign project and responded to questions from the audience. Many in attendance were using InDesign, and had questions about productivity tools such as transparencies, character and object styles, and Version Cue®. Tips and tricks were covered throughout the overviews.
At 7:55 pm we stopped for our raffle and distribution of evaluation forms. Our first raffle consisted of InDesign CS2, Adobe GoLive® CS2, and the InDesign Total Training DVD. Also, at this first meeting, those who turned in evaluation forms were eligible for a drawing to win our most hi-tech of prizes: an Adobe pen and notebook and an Adobe water bottle.
Our next meeting will be in January (the date will be set soon). A number of requests for more frequent meetings came up, and we will try bi-monthly meetings through the spring. Look for meetings in January, March, and May. Topics will include (but are not limited to) Version Cue, InCopy, and detailed information about type and typographic tools. As always, tips and tricks will be an important part of each meeting.
A few comments:
"This was so extremely helpful, and I don't know what else to say other than I can not wait for the next meeting!"
"Excellent information!"
"Venue: Awesome."
"Inspiring. I will use Bridge now and maybe even Version Cue!"
"So friendly and informative. Excellent meeting."
"Noha is Great! Not enough time, though."
"The meeting was very worthwhile and valuable to me. The venue is great, the topics are very pertinent, and Noha is a fount of expertise and information."
