Author: vdebolt

This is another piece of the Macromedia Education Curriculum from Thomson Course Technology. Digital Design: Concepts and Technical Guide: Foundations of Web Design is a student text, providing the activity guides for the projects outlined in the Digital Design Curriculum Guide: Foundations of Web Design. This text focuses on Fireworks MX 2004, Dreamweaver MX 2004 and Flash MX 2004.

This is a one year course. In addition to this student guide, there is a binder for the instructor with extra projects, resources on CD, and a review pack data CD. It could be taught at the college level in an overview course, but it is really aimed at high school students.

Based on the work I have done in Texas preparing a curriculum for teachers who were seeking technology certification in the public schools to teach the classes this book was written to serve, I can tell you that almost everything a Texas teacher is required by state law to include in the course is provided here. The list of teachers contributing to the project seems to be Washington based, so I’m assuming that other states require approximately the same curriculum.

The book covers foundation concepts such as copyright law, storyboarding, and scanning. It provides interesting projects in Fireworks, Dreamweaver and Flash and combines the three in projects. Instructions are brief, basic and to the point. Illustrations and screen shots are black and white. It would be very helpful if the teacher had experience using all three of these software applications so as to be able to fill in the gaps and answer the inevitable questions that the book doesn’t cover. Some information may be available in the teacher’s materials, but I only received review copies of the student’s book, so I’m just guessing that adequate background and additional information is provided to the instructor.

Macromedia Studio MX 2004 Step-By-Step is from Macromedia Education and Thomson Course Technology. It contains material and projects for all the Studio MX 2004 applications: Flash, Dreamweaver, Fireworks and Freehand. It is the official Macromedia education curriculum, edited by Kirsti Aho.

The book is in 8 1/2 by 11 format and uses four-color illustration. Instructor resources are on a CD with data files for the projects used in the lessons, exams for each lesson, lecture notes for each lesson, lesson plans, transparency masters, PowerPoint presentations and some other goodies.

The material focuses on using all four of the Studio MX 2004 tools in a coordinated and integrated manner to achieve specific project goals. It would be a very useful book if you were training people in using the entire Studio MX 2004 suite of products. The courses are designed to take 40 hours of instruction. The approach to each application could be described as just the basics or just the essentials. The crucial details for setting up each application and getting started with the essentials are included. An in-depth look at each application is not available here, but there is plenty of detail to get a user started and producing in a short time.

This book would not be an adequate solution to full semester courses concentrating on one application such as Flash or Dreamweaver, but would be perfect to train people who were looking for the essentials and needed to quickly learn to use all four programs together efficiently.

For business training or corporate training seminars, this would be a good curriculum.

Photoshop Secrets of the Pros: 20 Top Artists and Designers Face Off by Mark Clarkson is inspirational material for those already familiar with Photoshop. It reads like a novel and is as much about people who use Photoshop as it is about Photoshop.

The book is an outgrowth of the sport of Photoshop Tennis. What is Photoshop tennis, you say? Well, it seems a couple of folks started sending each other their Photoshop files to be worked with and then returned. After a few rounds of this, the image was very different, the back and forth emailing of the document was dubbed tennis and a sport was born for graphic designers. Clarkson got 20 graphic design pros to face off for 10 sets of Photoshop tennis and this book is a record of what happened.

In addition to showing how each image changed throughout the 10 lobs of each tennis match, we are also given insights into how each designer did a particular blend or mask or stroke to achieve the effects we see illustrated in the images. The designers explained where images used in the art works were obtained. Often the source was rather surprising: a shape drawn on a frosty window pane, the battery panel of a child’s toy, runny ink on a wet sheet of paper, even stock photos.

I can imagine this book being very popular with students in Digital Imaging II classes or at the end of the semester of Digital Imaging I, when most of the Photoshop techniques used in the book have been explored to some degree. If you are looking for inspiring examples of digital art this is a good resource.

After thoughts:
The day after I finished reading this book I went to a traveling art exhibit from the Museum of Modern Art showing in Houston, Texas now. It consists of 200 pieces of painting and sculpture in an exhibit called “Heroic Century.” The display included works by Dali, Van Gogh, Picasso, Miro, Pollock, Mondrian, Leger, Chagall, Boccioni and others. Not being a graphic artist myself, I had never before pondered the connection between what modern graphic artists create with Photoshop and the ground-breaking work artists like Picasso, Miro and Pollock did with color, texture and shape early in the 20th Century. The connection really hit me standing in front of those canvases with the images from the Photoshop tennis matches in the book still fresh in my mind. And I couldn’t help but wonder what someone like Jackson Pollock or Joan Miro would have done with Photoshop!