Stephen Gates, Vice President and Creative Director for Global Brand Design at Starwood Hotels & Resorts will be joining us at Adobe MAX this year to share design and development secrets behind building Starwood’s mobile roadmap. Prior to MAX, he sat down with our Adobe Edge Inspect team to discuss how the tool has been helping his team come up with new ways to best show off their nine hotel brands. They’ve managed to accelerate their production and gain buy-in from a dispersed global team of designers, developers, strategists and stakeholders. Pretty impressive, right? Learn more about their success and get to know Stephen in our Adobe Edge Inspect Team Blog Q&A.

Want to hear more from Stephen Gates? Attend Adobe MAX and hear him talk about the “Secrets to Creating a Successful Mobile Roadmap, Apps, and Mobile Websites.” Don’t forget to enter promo code MXSM13 when you register to receive $300 off.

We’re making Adobe MAX (May 4-8) bigger and better this year. For those who are wondering, “What’s MAX?” – it is THE conference for creative pros. It’s an opportunity for designers, developers, video professionals, photographers, and more to come together to learn about the latest technologies, techniques, and strategies for delivering your best creative work – not to mention the idea exchange and networking opportunities that exist. And it doesn’t stop there.

We have an agenda packed full of amazing speakers, tracks, sneak peeks (yes – you don’t want to miss this!) and more. Choose from over 300 sessions and labs taught by industry leaders and Adobe experts to maximize your creative experience, and even customize your MAX agenda by mixing and matching sessions from all five MAX tracks:

• Design and Creativity
• Web Experiences
• Digital Publishing
• Gaming
• Video

If that’s not enticing enough, we’re throwing a cherry (or two) on top to get you to L.A. Register today using this special promo code: MXSM13, to receive $300 off AND get your hands on a free 1-year Creative Cloud membership.

Be sure to follow Adobe MAX on Facebook and Twitter as we’ll be announcing keynote speakers and other exciting information soon.  We hope to see you there!

Fast Co.Design’s recent piece, “9 Ideas That Changed the Face of Graphic Design,” summarizes the outlet’s favorite ideas that made graphic design what it is today. Inspired by the book, 100 Ideas That Changed Graphic Design, authored by Steven Heller and Véronique Vienne, below is Fast Co.Design’s shortlist.

Body Type

Pictograms

Pointing Fingers

Decorative Logo Types

Metaphoric Lettering

Texts as Images

Supreme Geometry

Dust Jackets

White Space

Here’s a look at some of the inspirational images depicting the 9 ideas above.

What do you think? Any you’d add to this list?

The 2012 Presidential Election has now concluded and all the campaigning can finally be put to rest. Since we’re four years away from the next wave of campaign art, we wanted to reflect on some pieces that caught our eye during this year’s U.S. Presidential Election. So take it in, savor it, and use it for inspiration – we’ll be looking forward to your designs come 2016!

Infographic: How Both Presidential Candidates Grossly Outspent Their Predecessors

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We’d like to introduce you to Adrian Franks (@afranks3) – a creative who celebrates friends, historic figures and admired current icons by creating silhouette sketches using the creative trio of Adobe Touch Apps, Creative Cloud, and Creative Suite! We stumbled upon one of Adrian’s impressive sketches on the Adobe Ideas Facebook Page and reached out to learn more about him and his work as we knew that Adrian would have a great story to share.

Get to know Adrian – find out where he likes to create, his ideal travel destination and how Adobe’s products have helped streamline his digital workflow in the full Q&A below. Also, visit both our Twitter and Facebook channels to see his work on display.

[Show as slideshow]

Adobe: When were you first introduced to Adobe Touch Apps?

Adrian Franks: I started using Adobe Touch Apps when I first discovered Adobe Ideas in January 2011.

What was the very first creation you made with Touch Apps and Creative Cloud?
My creative endeavors with Touch Apps is a line of silhouette drawings called FEARLESS that highlights various people that I admire whether they are close friends, historic figures, or current pop culture icons. Currently, I use Creative Cloud to store my vector-based silhouette and download them to my Mac for further design work in CS6.

Where’s your favorite location to create?
My favorite place is at my studio, which is broken down into 2 places. One, being my physical studio in Red Hook, Brooklyn, the other is out in the world on the go. Whether I am on my bike, riding the train, the bus, or random coffee shops, I consider that as part of my studio. It helps influence my work.

How has the integration from Touch Apps through to the Creative Cloud features changed your creative workflow?
Creative Cloud has allowed me to produce my ideas faster because I have fewer steps to take. I love the fact that once I am done creating in Ideas it auto saves, syncs to the Cloud where I can download the file back to my computer to further manipulate in Photoshop or Illustrator. Once done, I can post to social or send to a printer. All of this has streamlined the process into a digital workflow. I love it!

Which pairing of the Touch Apps and the applications within Creative Cloud (i.e., CS6), are most instrumental to your creative process and why?
I love the combo of Ideas + Photoshop + Illustrator for creating illustrations and designs. I also love Proto + Photoshop + Illustrator for web design and UX projects.

How much of a difference has direct touch input made to your creations?
The Touch Apps give me the freedom to create and concept like I used to before the computer. It replicates the functions of pen and paper, but maintains ease of use on digital.  Touch is the present and future creative.

If you had the opportunity to travel to anywhere in the world with your Touch Apps, where would it be and why?
Africa, especially South Africa. Design there has been in a boom for a couple of years now. Events such as the World Cup and its rich political history have caused a shift in how the world perceives South Africa and its people. With that said, things such as creativity, design, art, and photography have pushed the thinking of South Africans. I would like to be a part of that, I would need to be mobile and believe Adobe’s Touch Apps and CS6 would allow me to do that.

Can’t get enough of Adrian’s work? Visit his Creative Works website to check out more of his work. If you have great work to share, send your creations our way for chance to be featured in an upcoming Creative Spotlight. Reach out to us on Facebook, Twitter or in comments here.

Monday (Sept. 24) was quite a day for web designers and developers and Creative Cloud members! We kicked off the first leg of the Create the Web Tour in San Francisco, where we shared a number of updates and announcements. If you weren’t there for the action or able to tune in to the live stream, no worries! We’ve recapped all of the news for you:

Dreamweaver Updates – Exclusively for Creative Cloud members

Creative Cloud Dreamweaver users will be excited to hear that we’ve introduced six new features for easier authoring of HTML5-based websites, new support for compositions from Adobe Edge Animate, more robust FTP transfers, and more. Check out this video for a quick run-through:

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I’m excited to show you new features and enhanced features in version 1.5 of Adobe Proto. V1.0 was just porting Android version to iOS native version and this time we could implement new feature sets based on user’s feedback.

Mainly, we focused on easy to share files, copy & paste workflow. Here is the new feature sets.

 Sharing zipped file easily

“Email” interactive wireframe (html.zip) as attachment

You can now email your interactive wireframe directly from Proto. Just attach html.zip file onto email and send it to your co-worker or client. The attachment is a zipped file and easily uncompressed and ready to use in Dreamweaver or any other HTML/CSS editor.

“Share” interactive wireframe via Dropbox and other Apps

If you have Dropbox application installed on your iPad, you can share your interactive wireframe zipped file right away.

Copy & Paste improvements

Copy & Paste objects to different pages

We added a clipboard icon in editor. Now you can copy & paste your object form one page to another from the clipboard menu, top navigation or context menu.

Paste and Pin objects across selected pages (i.e. share objects across pages)

Not only can you paste objects to a different page, we added a new function “Paste and Pin.”

Pin across pages

Select object and from context menu, you can set to paste the current object across all the pages.  Once you did this, the object will show up to all the pages and whatever you modify this object will reflect change across all pages.

Global Menu (By default, Menu bar objects are pinned across all pages)

When you create menu and create multiple pages, the menu will automatically carry over all the pages.  When you edit text inside menu, edit links to pages, the change will reflect across all the pages. There is another improvement for code generation for the global menu. Proto generate common.css that is used for all the pages.

“Bring Forward” “Move Backward” Z-order change via Context Menu

You can manage z-index order for overlapped objects from context menu.

Lock and Unlock object for editing

You can lock & unlock object. This helps you to avoid mistakenly moving object while editing another object closed by.

Show current page name while previewing a project in the App

At preview mode, you can see current page name in title bar right next to project name.

Rename project name in the action bar (title) of the editor

You can rename project name in organizer mode. You can now edit project name while in editor mode. Simply tap project name on top left corner to edit current working project.

Show undo/redo count

As same as Adobe Ideas, you can see the number of undo/redo count when you perform undo/redo

Other Enhancements

Objects should snap to both CSS Column and Design Grid

Now, it’s much easily and precisely snap object onto grid.

Better Code Generation

Code generated is now ordered according to the appearance in the page and so is now more structured hierarchically V1.0 generated divs based on the order of the object modification. V1.5 generates divs based on top to bottom order in the screen.

All pinned objects generate a separate common CSS file (common.css)

Since pinned objects are used in multiple pages, having separate common CSS make you easy to manage code.

We hope those new feature sets and enhancement feature sets will help you boost up your creative workflow.

For our Adobe Muse and Adobe Edge users, we have some exciting updates to share – and if you’re a Creative Cloud member, consider it good news times two with the applications available to all Cloud users!

Adobe Edge Animate, Preview 7 

First up, Adobe Edge – a next generation tool for creating content with motion and interactivity for the web, using web standards like HTML5, CSS3 and JavaScript – is now Adobe Edge Animate with the release of Preview 7. We’re thrilled to announce that the latest preview of Adobe Edge is now available in the Creative Cloud.

Edge Animate Preview 7 is a major update, with significant new features like resizable layouts, which can adapt to different screen sizes, rulers and guides, shadow effects, timeline and keyframe improvements, enhanced text features, and much more. Watch Preview 7 in action below, and for more about this release and for a complete list of features, visit the Adobe Edge Blog.

You can also check out Edge Animate in action over at the Edge Showcase.

Adobe Muse Updates 

Today, Adobe Muse announces new features and updates available to Adobe Muse subscribers and Creative Cloud members, including availability in Japanese, and new built-in support for contact forms.

Find out how to easily add, configure, and style contact forms into website designs without having to embed HTML code from third-party online form providers in the video below.

This is just the beginning of a longer-term effort to bring more extensive content management capabilities to Adobe Muse users through tighter integration with the Adobe hosting solution, Adobe Business Catalyst. Get the complete list of other great Adobe Muse features and enhancements, including the ability to add HTML5 animations created with Adobe Edge Animate here and in this post, What’s New in Adobe Muse 2.0, by Evangelist Terry White.

Typography is one of the most important design elements in a website; it sets the tone and can make or break the whole design.  When choosing a font, there are hundreds of databases at your fingertips online. You can opt for a popular, reliable choice such as Helvetica, Rockwell or Future. Or you can scour the web for a new, unknown typeface. But have you ever considered creating your own?

Hand drawn fonts have the possibility of being richly specific and profoundly beautiful. This style allows for complete customization to fit the style and parameters of your web design. Here are just a few of great examples of hand lettering on the web.

G’nosh

Whitmans New York

Kolonein

Give Beyond Me

Brand New Conference

Amazee Labs

War Child

Full Frontal JavaScript Conference

Have you seen any great examples of hand-lettering in web design? Share with us in the comments below!

For more on web fonts, check out Typekit by Adobe – a part of the Creative Cloud membership.

Adobe Proto and Adobe Collage have been available for Android, and we’re excited to share that they’re now available on iOS!  You can now create interactive wireframes and prototypes of websites and mobile apps using Proto or capture inspirational images, drawings, or other content with Collage –all on your iPad.