CreativeTechs Tips

Here is a tip for creative teams who are experiencing a lot of "unexpectedly quit" crashes when opening files from a network server in Adobe Creative Suite 2 applications.

It appears, under certain conditions, the new "Use Adobe Dialog" option introduced in CS2 can prevent crashes in InDesign and Illustrator while accessing documents over a network.

Creative Suite 2 adds a new Adobe dialog box.

Among the many features introduced in Adobe Creative Suite 2, is a seemingly innocuous replacement to the standard Mac OS X open dialog box.

To access Adobe's new dialog, click on the "Use Adobe Dialog" button in the lower left of any Open, Save, or Place dialog box in Illustrator CS2, InDesign CS2, or Photoshop CS2.

Tip: You don't need to be using Version Cue, but you must have the Enable Version Cue preference turned on in your Creative Suite applications in order to use this Adobe Dialog box. This checkbox can be found in the File Handling preferences for InDesign, Illustrator, and Photoshop.

Recent Troubleshooting: Adobe Dialog saves the day.

One of our clients, a Seattle-area creative team, was experiencing mysterious InDesign and Illustrator crashes when files were accessed over the network from the main server. However some designers who were using the Adobe Dialog box had never even seen the crash once.

Switching everyone over to Adobe's new dialog box for opening and placing network files eliminated the crashing problems for the whole team.

After further research, it turns out similar crashes can be reproduced in at least two different conditions:

Situation One: Networks with extremely complex and heavy traffic.

Situation Two: Computers with multiple listings for individual servers in Mac OS X's hidden "/Volumes" directory.

In each instance, attempting to access files on a remote server with the default OS dialog causes InDesign or Illustrator to crash. Using the Adobe Dialog allows the network files to be opened and placed without a crash.

Why does the Adobe dialog box make a difference?

It appears Adobe's dialog utilizes different file-handling procedures than the standard Mac OS X dialog box -- which side-steps problems that causes crashes when importing or opening files under poor network conditions.

Tip: This work around can get a team back to work. However any underlying network issues should still be addressed.

This tip would be more satisfying if we fully understood why Adobe's new dialog box made a difference. We have confirmed this behavior in several environments, and we've talked at length with at least one other consultant who has experienced this behavior.

If this tip helps you, please leave a comment below! If you can add details on why the Adobe dialog box makes a difference, we would appreciate your input at tips@creativetechs.com.

Source: This tip uncovered and reasearched by CreativeTechs' newest consultant Jordan Bojar. The details of this problem were both confirmed and expanded upon by our friend David Ball of Random Consulting, whose detective work to reproduce our results was enormously helpful in verifying the cause of these crashes.

Posted by Craig Swanson at 06:55 PM | Permalink | Comments (5) | TrackBacks (0)

Here is a tip that came up during the hour of Q&A after last week's "Blog Your Portfolio" talk at Seattle's School of Visual Concepts: "What are some of the best tools out there for keeping track of my studios's online buzz?"

Here's an easy tool we like: SocialMeter.com

Type in the URL of your website, blog, or client's website. SocialMeter queries eight of the more popular social bookmarking sites to see how many links are pointing to your site.

The resulting SocialMeter score gives you a general idea of how much online buzz your site has attracted. Click on any individual item in the results section to go to a list of all the links pointing to your site from that social network.

Tip: The score can vary depending on how you type in a web address. For example, the scores for "creativetechs.com" and "www.creativetechs.com" are slightly different. This difference is based on what addresses people use when they link to your website.

SocialMeter is a quick visual way to determine how much (or little) impact your site is making through various word-of-mouse networking sites.

Source: This tool has come up recently during consulting conversations with Seattle-area design firms and ad agencies. Including Kendall Ross, DNA Brand Mechanics and Coolstone Design Works.

Posted by Craig Swanson at 03:50 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Thanks to everybody who came out to SVC last Tuesday for our free "Blog your Portfolio" talk. Every seat in the house was taken, and we ended up staying almost a hour after the presentation answering questions and talk with people.

As promised, here is a PDF of the slides from our talk:

Blog Your Portfolio - 09/18/06

Note: These notes may be useful for people who attended the talk, however they are probably not detailed enough to convey the topic to people who were not able attend.

Posted by Craig Swanson at 03:36 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Ever find yourself spending way too much time hunting through menus for an option you know is there somewhere? You know what it's called but you just can't find it.

Here is one of those fun hidden tricks that works in Adobe InDesign CS/CS2. Hold down the right set of keys and click on any menu:

Mac: Option-Command-Shift
Windows: ALT-CTRL-Shift

Ta-da, the commands are displayed in alphabetical order! Enjoy.

Source: This tip comes from a weekly InDesign tip email from Barrycon Productions who is hosting The InDesign Conference: Master Class in Seattle, November 6-8. The original tip was provided by author and podcaster Terry White.

Posted by Craig Swanson at 09:54 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Most blogs today offer news feeds using a technology called RSS. These feeds provide an easy way to stay updated whenever new articles (or tips) have been posted to your favorite blog.

We've created an animation showing how this process works in the latest version of Apple's Sarafi web browser. The rest of this tip includes more detailed step-by-step instructions.

Step 1: Click on Safari's RSS Feed Icon.

If you are reading this tips blog using the Tiger version of Apple's Safari web browser you may notice a small blue RSS icon on the right of the address bar. Click on that icon and Safari switches over to a special feed reader. Recent headlines and articles are listed in a simplified layout.

Tip: Most blogs will include an RSS or "News Feed" link somewhere on the main page. You can also click on this icon if the icon is missing from Safari's address bar.

Step 2: Bookmark the RSS Feed.

Drag the feed's address to Safari's bookmark bar to subscribe. Safari will ask you to type a name for your bookmark. Keep the name short to take up less room.

Tip: You can also bookmark the page by choosing Add Bookmarks from the Bookmarks menu.

Step 3: Safari shows when there are new postings.

Safari will add a number to the right of the bookmark every time new articles or tips are posted. So you'll always know when there is something new you might be interested in. Clicking on that link will take you to Safari's news reader where the newest article should be at the top of the list.

Posted by Craig Swanson at 12:01 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

"How do you find time to read all those blogs?"

That's a pretty common question. We do spend a lot of time scouring the web for new tips -- but that is only a small part of our job. One trick we use to streamline our perpetual hunt is organizing RSS feeds into different bookmark folders in Safari. Think of this as creating your own personal clipping service.

Safari shows the total number of new posts in each bookmark folder. That means you don't have to visit a blog until you know something new has been posted.

Setting up Safari's Bookmark Folders.

If you've read our tip on Subscribing to RSS news feeds in Safari, organizing those feeds into bookmark folders should be an easy next step.

Click on the little bookmark icon on the left of Safari's bookmark bar. This brings up Safari's bookmark list where you can create folders in the Bookmark Bar section.

Viewing Collections of RSS Feeds.

One nice results of organizing related feeds into separate folders is Safari's ability to show all the results together in one list. Choose View All RSS Articles from one of your folders pop-down menus. You'll be presented with a long list of all the recent postings from all these related blogs.

Posted by Craig Swanson at 11:09 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Stumped for just that right phrase? Type in a term and watch as an interactive word map blossoms with meanings and branches to related words. Drag words around and play with them visually to engage a different part of your brain. Great for naming and branding projects.

Enough talk. Copywriter want link now: Visual Thesaurus.

Tip: You can try it out for free, but the Visual Thesaurus is a subscription-based service. It costs $19.95 a year for the web version, or $39.95 for the desktop version on CD.

Source: We discovered this beauty on the swissmiss blog which was pointed out to us by the Design Llama blog. (By the way, the actual link that got us interested in swissmiss originally was this coolest sofa we've ever seen! Wouldn't this be fun in the CreativeTechs tech room?)

Posted by Craig Swanson at 01:00 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Every graphic designer who earns part of their living designing websites should be required to read at least chapter 14 of Dave Taylor's book Growing Your Business with Google.

Tip: Copywriters who want to learn to craft search engine-friendly copy should read this book too.

Craig's note: That's my own copy shown at right. I read it on vacation in early 2006 while we were planning our own CreativeIQ blog. I thought I knew a fair bit about web design. The dozens of post-it notes and highlighted sections are a testimony to how much I was missing about designing sites that work well with search engines.

While supporting Seattle-area design studios, we'll often find ourselves talking with studio owners who are frustrated or confused with why their website don't rank well with online searches. Or worse, when sites they've designed for their clients are largely invisible to searching customers.

This book will help clear up the confusion. But don't start reading at chapter one. Here are the chapters we think designers will find most valuable:

Chapter 14: Secrets of the Online Marketing Masters. This is the chapter every designer should read. Dave talks about the philosophy and specifics of how to design a search engine-friendly web site.

Chapter 15: Content, Content, Content. Most people don't realize how frequently you update your website effects how often Google will visit your site. So if you don't update the content regularly, Google learns to ignore your website for longer periods of time. This chapter also discusses the payoff of incorporating a Blog into your studio's site.

Chapter 16: Becoming a More Popular Site. When and how to submit your site to various search engines. How to request inbound links for your site. Plus thoughts on creating your own mini-stores.

Chapter 18: Advertising Your Business with Google AdWords. For some people this chapter is the one that opened their eyes on how to use Google's AdWords marketing program. Dave explains in simple terms how the AdWords program works and how to use it to attract business for your studio, or for your clients.

Friendly and easy to read, this book focuses on the left-brain side of crafting findable, search engine-friendly web sites. Making those sites attractive and appealing remains up to you.

If you are anything like us, you'll eventually end up reading the whole book. That said, the first Post-it notes don't show up in our own copy until page 111.

Tip: If you own a Seattle-area creative studio, sign up for next week's FREE workshop Blog Your Portfolio at the School of Visual Concepts. Tuesday, September 19, 2006 from 6:30 p.m. to 8:00 p.m. CreativeTechs' Craig Swanson and SVC's Larry Asher will talk about how to help create a studio website that is easy to update, and more likely to attract search-engine traffic.

Source: We originally ran across Dave Taylor's articles on the Ask Dave Taylor website while searching for something on Google. This is the only Idiot's or Dummy's branded book currently on our bookshelf.

Posted by Craig Swanson at 12:22 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

This week we reviewed (and highly recommended) the book Growing Your Business with Google by author Dave Taylor. If you like to watch video instead of read, we've added a link below to Dave's presentation on business blogging at a recent summit in Florida

From the video's synopsis:

Blogging guru Dave Taylor will take you on a controversial and entertaining tour of blog technologies, explain which are considered "critical" by the blogging community, and talk about the pros and cons of each. Then he'll tell you what really works and why. Should you moderate comments? Should you allow trackbacks? Should you timestamp your entries? Do you need to even use the word "blog" to have a weblog? All this, and more, will be addressed in this session.

Of course if you own a design studio in the Seattle area and want to attent a workshop with a slightly less famous presenter, sign up for Craig Swanson's FREE workshop Blog Your Portfolio at the School of Visual Concepts. Tuesday, September 19, 2006 from 6:30 p.m. to 8:00 p.m.

Posted by Craig Swanson at 09:51 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

If you do a lot of Photoshop image manipulation on large, high-resolution images, you may eventually run into the 2GB limit for saving Photoshop files. This is especially true if you like to work with a lot of layers.

Someday while saving a huge Photoshop file you may find yourself presented with the following dialog box: "Could not save as [Your Filename] because the document exceeds the 2.00G limit for saving Photoshop files."

On that day you'll be glad you know about the Large Document Format (PSB) that Adobe added to Photoshop CS and CS2.

Adobe's new Large Document Format (PSB) adds support for Photoshop documents larger than 2GB. The documents you save this way can't be opened in earlier versions of Photoshop -- they can only be opened in Photoshop CS or Photoshop CS2.

Before you can use the Large Document Format option, you'll have to open Photoshop's file handling preferences and turn the feature on.

Mac: Photoshop > Preferences > File Handling
Windows: Edit > Preferences > File Handling

Once the option is activated in preferences, the Large Document Format becomes an option in your standard Photoshop save dialog box.

Large Document Format also adds support for savings images greater than 30,000 pixels in width or height -- something the original Photoshop format did not permit. The new PSB format now supports images up to 300,000 pixels in width or height.

Tip: Is 300,000 pixels enough? An image that height, printed at 300 dpi image, would be taller than the Seattle Space Needle! We won't be outgrowing that limitation for at least a couple more years. [Note: There is a math correction under comments]

Source: This tip inspired by huge, layered, image files in Doug Landreth's fine art collection. Last week one of Doug's pieces was awarded the Photoshop Guru "Best in Show" award at the Las Vegas Photoshop World conference. (We should also mention, the advertising, corporate, and catalog photography side of Doug's life can be found at Landreth Studios in Seattle.)

Posted by Craig Swanson at 12:52 AM | Permalink | Comments (4)

Who is viewing your website? How do they find it? And what do they look at while they are there? Those are three important questions every creative team should know. Not only for their own website, but for their clients as well.

Google Analytics is a great tool for uncovering the answers to those questions. Colorful charts and graphs make traffic information accessible to visually-oriented types who might feel lost in a sea of raw data. Even better, it's free.

We've been using Google Analytics to keep track of the traffic for our own website since November 2005. A quick weekly (or daily) check of our web traffic statistics provides feedback for how our site is doing, and helps keep our outreach efforts on track.

How to start using Google Analytics.

Assuming you know how to add and upload a small snippet of code to your website, you can have Google Analytics installed in about 15 minutes. After that it takes about a day for traffic data to start showing up in your reports.

Step 1 - Create a Google Analytics account. Visit the Google Analytics Sign Up page and create a new account. You'll be asked for your email address, and Google will send you a confirmation email. Confirm that email to start your account.

Step 2 - Begin the Sign Up Wizard. Once you have an account, use your new name and password to log in at the main Google Analytics page. You should see a "Sign Up" button that will walk you through a step-by-step wizard to setup your new account. You'll tell Google your website's URL and your contact information.

Step 3 - Add a tracking code to your pages. At the end of the sign up wizard Google will give you a snippet of code:

Copy and paste the code segment into the HTML of your website's pages. If you use an outside vendors for your website coding, give this code to them. Once the modified pages are uploaded, Google starts tracking your website's traffic!

Mac Users: For full access to Google Analytic's user interface, use Firefox instead of Safari.

Tip: If you own a Seattle-area creative studio, sign up for the free class Blog Your Portfolio at the School of Visual Concepts. Tuesday, September 19, 2006 from 6:30 p.m. to 8:00 p.m. It turns out adding a blog to your site might be one of the best strategies to increase your own web traffic!

Source: We discovered Google Analytics first on Seth Godin's BLOG, and we wrote about it back in QuickTips #70. Since then we track our own web traffic on an almost compulsive basis!

Posted by Craig Swanson at 07:16 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

Should you find yourself designing projects in Adobe Illustrator that use a rotated axis, you can make your life easier using Illustrator's Constrain Angle option.

The Constrain Angle option is nothing new (it was introduced back in Illustrator 7), but it comes in handy when modifying our letter-folding templates from a recent tip.

Once you change Illustrator's default angle, everything you draw is created along the new axes. As an example, in our rendition of a classic Josef Muller-Brockmann poster, using a constrained angle of 60 degrees greatly simplifies drawing and editing.

To change Illustrator's default x and y axis angle, open Illustrator's general preferences.

Mac: Illustrator > Preferences > General

Windows: Edit > Preferences > General

Specify an angle in the Constrain Angle text box. A positive angle rotates the axes counterclockwise; a negative angle rotates the axes clockwise.

Tip: A quick way to see the results of your new angle: choose View > Show Grid.

Source: This tip inspired by the Letterfu templates covered in another creative tip this week. Those templates are much easier to edit when you set Illustrator's Constrain Angle to 45 degrees.

Posted by Craig Swanson at 04:31 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Longtime readers of this tips newsletter may notice we collect clever folding templates. So when we stumbled on the Letterfu website, we knew it would eventually show up as a creative tip. (Past paper folding tips include pocketMod guides, or our collection of paper Mac templates.)

Basically you print a Letterfu design on a sheet of paper, write your letter on the back, fold it up, stamp it, and send it. The letter becomes its own envelope. It holds itself closed, secured by the stamp - so it doesn't even need any glue. You use the entire sheet of paper, so there's no cutting.

There are two designs on the Letterfu website, however we've created editable Illustrator templates you can download and customize to your heart's content. We've also created an additional template for the back page if you have a duplexing printer.

Letterfu Basic (PDF)
Letterfu 2Sided (PDF)

Letterfu Template (zipped Illustrator 9 file)
Letterfu Back Template (zipped Illustrator 9 file)

When you edit the Letterfu template in Adobe Illustrator, you'll find that most of your work need to be produced at a 45 degree angle. We're working on a related tip to help make that easier.

Source: We first discovered Letterfu on the Lifehacker blog. However this tip is largely inspired by an ongoing debate with Buffini & Company coach Scott Marquette on the art of handwritten personal notes in today's digital world. The original Letterfu template was designed using a florentine fold found on a large repository of folding letter designs at ghh.com.

Posted by Craig Swanson at 02:30 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)