Yes, we have design

Adobe CS4 Launch Broadcast

Vivian — Tue, 23 Sep 2008 17:25:18 +0000

Just finished watching the broadcast of new adobe suite. As when CS3 came out, I was really dazzled by the newest features. Simple or advanced resources, all that was presented showed a new level of software maturity and finally a 100% integration between adobe solution and the macromedia ones.

Some things grabbed my attention (and my heart):

Premiere’s Speech Search
now one can search dialogues inside footages. and i am still impressed with the accuracy.
Fireworks prototypes to PDF
reaaly interesting feature that allows you to build navigation prototypes and export right to PDF with all security and support to comments PDF allows us
And finally, inDesign and Flash integration
as a big fan of these softwares and heavy user of both I was so amused by the new and powerful integration between them. Not to mention every and each new feature they presented (as inDesign’s live guides)

But for that…. check out the great video InDesign and InCopy CS4 feature tour @ http://tv.adobe.com/ !

Delicious Tagclouds

Vivian — Fri, 15 Aug 2008 22:27:29 +0000

Gift of the day: someone told me about an amazing site that creates beautiful tagclouds. It’s kind of a tagcloud randomic generator that you can set some attributes.
I’m such a LOVER (capitals) of tagclouds, couldn’t help making my own. They have a choice for you to use your del.icio.us tags, and my final result was this one:

Who wants to have a portfolio?

Vivian — Wed, 13 Aug 2008 17:28:43 +0000

Each and every creative professional, I think. However, I always had this problem in building a portfolio of my own, and discovered among friends and coworkers that I’m not alone.

The major problem is not regarding to content but to platform. When you decide to design and create a showcase of your work, any designer or other creative wants it to be good. No, we want it to be the best thing ever done on earth.

What happens then it’s that anything we do seems capable of achieving such objective. We find a lot of things that “could be better” till reaching that point we just decide giving up. Or if you finally created a beautiful portfolio website, soon you’ll see yourself struggling to keep it up to date. Have you designed it in a flash, animated platform ? Add then some HOURS a week to adding new works and all.

That’s why I’ve been giving up portfolio after portfolio. Well, I didn’t care a lot, but it comes a time the lack of an online portfolio starts to speak against you. So I decided to look for a pre-made solution. Tons of people are using the power of collaborative and social networks to showcase their works. The idea of using a blog like wordpress or photo sharing solutions like flickr were not that attractive to me. I felt tied to platforms that we’re not meant to host a portfolio and because of that didn’t allow me to display my works as they should.

Stubborn as I am, I kept looking for the pre-made solution of my dreams. And then I found the Behance Network! Intended to be a mix of social network and creative portfolios host, it was exactly what I was looking for.

Now let me go back there and try to upload and organize all my work for these last 4 or 5 years. I’ll be back soon to tell you the final result.

XML Line break in Flash

Vivian — Tue, 17 Jun 2008 13:16:14 +0000

I was a lot worried with this issue last week. I was loading an XML file into a flash to build a multilingual site but some long texts didn’t render line breaking as I wanted. \n or \r or
did not work too and i was getting really mad at it !

Thanks to google i’ve found the solutions to mine and your problems hopefully. The way out of this turmoil was using a character entity reference: to render a line break.

It worked perfectly ! Awesome, LOL.

Countdown 3, 2, 1… MIX08

Vivian — Tue, 04 Mar 2008 04:10:21 +0000

This is gonna be a quick, short post. I’m really busy packing and gathering documents and flight tickets, and all this stuff i don’t like to do but it’s necessary. I’m so anxious about what’s going to start tomorrow. It seems like i’m preparing myself to it for months and i’m quite scared now. It’s childishly i know, but it’s how i feel: a scared child going to the light city of adults.

Part of it it’s because i’m going on my own. No one to help if i need, or to assure i’m not going to eat my meals alone. And what bothers me it’s not that i’m alone: i do like it.

In fact, i’m a loner. So i enjoy so much being by myself that i have this difficulty in getting along with other people. And well, i really want to get along this time. It’s big, it’s professional, it’s my job. And yes, it’s gonna be fun too. However, i’m a little afraid of having to go through this way of mine in being too independent and finding a comfortable path to mix with other guys !

Wish me luck !

The Hub – Improv Everywhere

Vivian — Thu, 28 Feb 2008 04:03:38 +0000

define: the hub
it’s a place where i gather awesome links about everything, trying to focus in design, technology and experience as a whole. and short reviews: see it with your own eyes.

featuring: improv everywhere

why it’s here: i found improv everywhere almost by a mistake. however, in five little seconds i bookmarked them in my heart. They make scenes… scenes that play with technology, with our way of living, with our minds. Imagine connecting hundreds of people by a mp3 that tells them what to do: they did it. i think this kind of initiative is a lot what we need today, ’cause it makes us think about changes we’re seeing everyday and don’t have the time to really look at it.

areas of notice: Mobile Desktop made me fall in love with them.

awesomeness: 9 of 10

Where is my font? Feat. inDesign

Vivian — Wed, 27 Feb 2008 17:55:37 +0000

Actually this post doesn’t have any to do with mix08 or webdesign. It’s about an issue that was eating my liver in inDesign.

Yes, i mess up with graphic things too.

Problem is that when i updated my work PC to win Vista, my inDesign went crazy with my Arial Narrow. And Arial Narrow is our default font to format my company’s articles.

Houston, we have a problem!

I’ve tried dozens of times to delete and reinstall my Arial Narrow font family, but all i could get in my inDesign was a regular arial narrow as a style of “arial”. Narrow black, narrow italic and narrow black italic just disappear in my font list. As any designer, I was going deeply mad.

Anyway, i decided (should’ve done it earlier) to do some research. And Google led me to a known inDesign/Vista/Office2007 issue. What happens is Microsoft changed Arial Narrow’s behavior, messing it up in inDesign.

Fortunately there was a solution. I’m posting it here, but found it in Adobeforums.com . As it made my day A LOT happier, perhaps it can make yours too !

Step 1: Log into any computer running Windows XP, locate and copy the 4 Arial Narrow files:
- ARIALN.TTF – 132 KB
- ARIALNB.TTF – 136 KB
- ARIALNBI.TTF – 136 KB
- ARIALNI.TTF – 139 KB
Be careful… there is some bigger Arial Narrow files (about 170KB) and they WILL NOT WORK.

Step 2: Copy the files to the following folder: C:Program FilesCommon FilesAdobeFonts

voilà ! now you have your “Happily Ever After” Arial Narrow Family together again

Next steps

Vivian — Wed, 27 Feb 2008 05:58:29 +0000

Well, about my previous post, YES! I got my iTouch to work with Pockettweets.com. I was very excited about it ’cause i’ve tried other apps to connect my iTouch with twitter and they didn’t work. Thanks i found a solution *LOL* it means i’ll be maniac at mix08 microblogging each and every thought of mine.

Besides that, now i face a split path. To the right there’s my need to play a bit with Blend2 and XAML, write some, design some more… i really wanted to be more fluent about the subject as a whole. However i still have some installation issues on my PC. Even after i installed the .NET Framework 3 somehow Blend2 ignores it…. wish i had windows vista now !

To the left, I still have to plan which sessions i’m going to attend in mix08… There is at least 3 per time slot !! Gotta think about it, but where is time when you need it ?!?!

Setting up my twitter

Vivian — Tue, 26 Feb 2008 02:31:51 +0000

Twitter is far the best thing i met in 2007. It’s my friend, my co-worker, my space to tell a lot in few bytes.

I would REALLY love to be with twitter in this mix08 since, by now, i’ll be there alone. That’s why i’m excited to test http://pockettweets.com/ . As the site tell us, it’s an twitter app for iPhone. The question is, will it work in my iTouch ?? lol

Can’t wait for tomorrow when i’ll solve this doubt.

Warm up season

Vivian — Sun, 24 Feb 2008 14:20:17 +0000

As i am very excited about being at mix08 conference, i’ll try to get as ready as i can imagine to it. One thing i want so much to do is updating my Internet stuff. By internet stuff you should understand, blogs, twitter, msn nicks and everything i’m able to.

That’s why i’m creating this new blog, a bit more ‘business’ oriented, focused in my design and new technologies experiences and in english so much more people can read it.

As though i’m a blog enthusiast, i assume most blogs fade away even before they start, and i’m not immune to it. However… let’s try !