Back in November, Adobe asked me if I'd be interested in recording a bunch of video tutorials on InDesign CS3. Well, not Adobe itself; but a nice woman who *worked* for Adobe asked me.

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If you're deeply into the field of digital design for print, web, mobile devices, or anything in-between, you should be visiting the Adobe Labs site regularly:

Adobe Labs
http://labs.adobe.com/

What's the Adobe Labs page about? Why, click the About page, dear: "Adobe Labs provides you with the opportunity to experience and evaluate new and emerging innovations, technologies, and products from Adobe."

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Fellow tip-ophiles, my apologies for not sending out a DesignGeek in November. I plead greed. There were so many new projects I wanted to do all at once that DesignGeek took a back seat.

I'm thrilled to say that one of these is a new web portal and podcast that David Blatner and I are doing. It's called InDesign Secrets:
http://www.indesignsecrets.com

For now, the web site is mainly serving as a home for the podcast. As of this writing we've got the premiere episode published — twenty minutes of David and I trading InDesign tips and techniques and having lots of fun playing radio dj's. Take a listen! more >

I just came back from the first-ever Creative Suite Conference, five straight days of non-stop information, tips and techniques about every program in the Adobe Creative Suite:
http://www.thecreativesuiteconference.com

My head is about to explode from information overload. In a good way.

Of course, the fact that it was held in Las Vegas — Caesar's Palace, specifically — didn't help my synapses. Unlike most of the other speakers and attendees who were able to control themselves in a mature, professional manner, picture me getting off the plane with lucky 7's instead of eyeballs … I was like, "Vegas! Five days! Oh, mama!"

I hit the tables for a couple short visits every day — after lunch, during session breaks, on the way back from dinner — it was a novel experience having a full-blown casino just an escalator ride away from sessions on Version Cue and Photoshop Smart Objects.more >

You don't need to know how to use Flash, nor even own it, to create slick .swf art for your web site complete with plug-in detection code. Just create your artwork in Illustrator, then go to File > Export and choose "Macromedia Flash (SWF)" from the Format drop-down menu.

The resulting Macromedia Flash (SWF) Options dialog box offers a ton of goodies, and the following tips are all found here.

To create a static piece of vector web art, choose Export As: AI file to SWF file. Since virtually everyone has the Flash plug-in already installed in their browser, they can see its fine, clean lines without problems.more >