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The cursing has already started. You’ve installed CS4, but most of your studio’s active projects are still in InDesign CS3. Now each time you double-click on an InDesign CS3 document in the Mac Finder, it opens up in InDesign CS4.
InDesignProxy is a free utility that fixes this annoyance by working as a ’stand-in’ for InDesign. Drag any INDD file onto the InDesignProxy application, and it automatically opens your file in the correct version of InDesign.
[Update: Kris Coppieters has provided us a link to InDesignProxy 1.0.5 which allows you to set the Finder to open all INDD files this way automatically. We'll be updating our tip later today to reflect the new version.] Read the Full Tip »
As the economy tightens, we’ve seen a lot of design firms expressing a stronger interest in how to improve their studio’s online marketing efforts. Of particular interest, we hear a lot of designers asking how to help their web site (or their client sites) rank better in Google search results.
If that’s of interest to you, start with the source. Google has published a free 22-page PDF guide that lists some of the best practices you should use to improve your site’s search results:
Search engine optimization (SEO) is often about making small changes to parts of your website. Individually, those changes might not seem like much, but when combined, they can have a significant impact on your site’s search results. Read the Full Tip »
Our email tip subscribers will notice the look of our email newsletter changed a lot this week. We’re trying out a new 2-column format, as well as testing a switch over to MailChimp for our email delivery service.
This is the 228th straight week of publishing our weekly tips newsletter, and this is the first time we’ve tested significant changes in our template.
Please bear with us while we work out some of the details. I’d love to hear your feedback and questions in the comments on this post.
As we head into the shortened Thanksgiving week, we’d like to offer our traditional holiday papercraft project. This delectable roast turkey was found on a Japanese site. We’ve bundled the templates into a single easy-to-download PDF:
Over the last six months we’ve been poking at a new version of the CreativeTechs website. This weekend we finally threw the switch. This is a work in progress, and we’ll be cleaning up details and fixing missing links over the coming week. Please give us a visit:
The new tips blog now supports comments. You can now respond to tips that catch your interest, ask questions, or give us an occasional vote of confidence. We invite you to please say hello.
Most InDesign production artists have a routine they repeat dozens of times a day: Place a graphic into an image frame, and quickly type a keyboard command to fit the graphic to the frame size. It becomes an instinctive keystroke.
Command-Option-Shift-E fits the graphic proportionally. Command-Option-Shift-C fills the frame with your graphic.
But, no matter how fast your fingers are, there is a quicker way: InDesign’s frame fitting options. Select an image frame, and choose Object > Fitting > Frame Fitting Options. You can preset how you want your graphics to fit when they are placed into that frame. Perfect for catalogs and magazines where large numbers of images are used in existing layout templates. Add this setting to an Object Style and you’ve really got a timesaving technique!
TextExpander 2.5 ($30) isn’t for everyone, but if you find yourself typing on the computer on a daily basis, text substitutions can save you a lot of time. TextExpander automatically expands abbreviated text snippets into predefined words or phrases. It can also run scripts based on what you type. As an example, whenever I type “ctadd” on my Mac, TextExpander automatically replaces that abbreviation with the full CreativeTechs mailing address.
Watch some video tutorials to see TextExpander in action, and read a great review at Lifehacker to get a sense of the time-saving possibilities.
Source: This tip inspired by my recent visit to Forget Computers, a Mac IT support company in Chicago, whose team uses TextExpander every day. This write-up also inspired by a tip in the November 2008 issue of Design Tools Monthly.
We get frequent questions from designers wanting to use HTML email for client projects or their own marketing. Here is our comparison of the four prominent email delivery services on the market today.
Implemented properly, email newsletters are a powerful marketing tool. Financially, they are one of the most cost-effective ways you can keep in front of clients and prospects. We’re seeing more creative studios using email as a core part of their own marketing effort. And we’re seeing a lot of design projects with studios creating email marketing templates for their clients.
Flash skills are increasingly in demand, and there is a shortage of good Flash designers on the market today. Yet, despite the business opportunities, many print designers find the leap to interactive Flash design intimidating.
If that sounds familar, here is a great series of tutorials detailing how to create a simple Flash-based shooter game from scratch. The series was developed by Kongregate.com and includes free downloadable Flash source files for the game “Shoot” shown above. The tutorials walk novices through the fundamentals of using Flash as a game building tool, and explores the elements needed to pull together a simple, interactive shooter game.
While building a simple arcade game might appear a bit frivolous, the Flash skills you’ll pick up along the way are serious business.
As the economy tightens, we’ve seen a lot of design firms expressing a stronger interest in how to improve their studio’s online marketing efforts. Of particular interest, we hear a lot of designers asking how to help their web site (or their client sites) rank better in Google search results.
Our email tip subscribers will notice the look of our email newsletter changed a lot this week. We’re trying out a new 2-column format, as well as testing a switch over to 
As we head into the shortened Thanksgiving week, we’d like to offer our traditional holiday papercraft project. This delectable roast turkey was found on a Japanese site. We’ve bundled the templates into a single easy-to-download PDF:
How do I type the copyright symbol? Or the Apple icon? Or that little cloverleaf on the command key? For the quick answer, bookmark this webpage:
