Description:
A good advertisement for Adobe software, Design Invitational serves as an inspiring look at how some of the greats do what they do so well. The background of the book: In June 2001, Adobe gathered seven top illustrators and graphic designers to exchange ideas, look over new software, and receive a challenge. Along with some sweet hardware (including a G4 PowerBook and a Fujifilm digital camera), each was assigned a project (poster, Web site, QuickTime movie), to be executed using specific Adobe applications. For example, Louis Fishauf, an illustrator who makes colorful, whirligig-style compositions, was chosen to work with transparencies in Illustrator, an application at which he was already an expert. Michael Mabry, who mixes his own hand-drawn lettering into his pieces, was more than happy to work in InDesign to make the fluid layouts in his poster. And Ian Kovalik of hillmancurtis.com, a pro with Macromedia's Flash, instead used Adobe's LiveMotion for his Web animation. Although the book shows off features in Illustrator, InDesign, Photoshop, LiveMotion, and After Effects, it's less about the tools than the thought processes behind using those tools. Step-by-step sidebars show, for example, how to execute a perfect rainbow gradient or make a painterly eye (from the magical hand of photorealist illustrator Michael Elins), but this is not really a how-to manual for Adobe software--that is, unless you count the very important lesson of "how to think and work creatively." The book also includes a gallery of each artist's work (beautifully reproduced), and lots of images of the works in progress. The CD contains samples of work by those artists working in motion design, as well as QuickTime interviews with each of the seven. Author Deke McClelland was a good choice to act as narrator. His convivial writing is fun to read and his expertise with graphics software means that readers are shown the essential screenshots of palette entries or menu commands. (Be sure to check out his page of acknowledgements at the back, where he offers a "gift" to each person he thanks, like, "To Christine Yarrow, who initiated the project, a trunk filled with pecans, cans of fruit cocktail, and elaborately rendered snow globes.") --Angelynn Grant
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