Adobe is on ‘Edge’

A few months back I wrote an article on Adobe Wallaby; a piece of software created to convert Flash files into HTML5, CSS3 and JavaScript. Since then Adobe has created another entry in the Adobe Labs: Edge. From the preview i found on YouTube (see below) it seems that Edge is heading in the direction of overtaking Flash as the premier animation tool for web developers. Of course, only time well tell, but in the meantime I thought it would be a good idea to further explain Edge and introduce it to the readers of DBMEi.

First displayed at Adobe MAX 2010, Adobe Edge targets designers and developers looking for an adept method to raise web standards like HTML to help generate content that provides smooth motion and transitions. THe need for a lightweight, pro-grade tool that is a complimentary addition to Adobe’s current line up of web tools including Adobe Flash Pro CS5.5, Dreamweaver CS5.5, and Adobe Flash Builder 4.5 software.

Perhaps even more significantly, Adobe has announced that because of rapid changes in HTML5, they are initiating an open development policy with Edge. Because of this Adobe Labs will release the software earlier than is usual in the common process of the software development process. Since user feedback is returned to watchful developers before beta begins, that feedback will actually help to shape the final product. To ice that cake, Adobe announced they will also provide a zero-cost download that web designers can download to begin to explore and provide that vital feedback.

Check out this Preview of Adobe Edge:

Adobe Enhancements

Adobe has leapt through several notable milestones over the last year. These include elements such as:

– Contributions to jQuery
– Enhanced HTML5 output for Creative Suite 5.5
– Submitting code to webkit

Adobe Edge Features

The preview of Adobe Edge will work natively with HTML to allow designers to implement motion into existing HTML documents. With no alterations in the integrity of CSS layouts, creating visually enhanced content entirely from scratch becomes possible. Edge uses traditional drawing tools that can produce many HTML elements that are styled with CSS3.

Standard supported web graphics assets include:

– PNG
– GIF
– SVG
– JPG
– EPS

These can easily be styled using CSS3. A design stage uses WebKit to enable the design manipulation of the content with incredibly clarity. A ‘new’ timeline element – borrowed from Flash –  supplies new perspectives and options in animation productivity. Motion can be applied smoothly to elements of the HTML with ease and accuracy.

Edge content can be used on common browsers including:

– Blackberry Playbook
– Android
– iOS
– Hp webOS
– Safari
– Chrome
– IE9
– Firefox

Could this new tool further help animated content find its way to new devices such as the IPad? I guess we’re going to have to wait to find out! In the meantime visit Adobe Labs to download a FREE copy of Edge!

Sources:

Adobe Labs

IT Pro: Adobe Previews Flash Alternative Edge

MK Multimedia: Adobe Edge Preview

PC World: Adobe Edge: What You Need to Know 

Attack of the Killer Logos

Whether you realize it or not, you are being bombarded by hundreds of logos everyday. Wake up in the morning, sit down for breakfast and reach for a box of cereal…BAM…logos cover the box. Brush your teeth…BAM…there’s a logo on the tube of toothpaste. Searching through your closet for the perfect outfit…BAM…more logos all over every article of clothing that’s in there. Finally you’re in your car and driving to work and everywhere you look there’s a logo; from the emblems on cars to the signage on the storefronts you pass by on the highway. You can’t escape it. They are everywhere. And they are all yearning for your attention.

But why have a logo in the first place? What makes one logo better than another? What should YOUR logo look like? A logo is a symbol or other small design adopted by an organization to identify its products, services, style etc… In short, a logo is considered the mark that will define your business.

Logo Design for the Modern Business

If you consider some of the world’s most popular brands, few of them have logo depictions of what they are actually about. The Coca Cola logo does not show a bottle of Coca Cola. BP’s logo does not show an individual pumping gas. The Lexus logo does not display a car and driver. The truth is, that a modern logo will not display everything that a company sells. A modern logo is far more about the image the company wants to portray to it’s customers.

A business’s logo should embody the culture of the company. Often, the culture of a company has little or nothing to do with what it sells. So while Coca Cola’s swirly typographic logo without showing a glass of liquid, or a person consuming one, it does give the feeling of history and fun. This is a perfect example of the culture of their business without displaying the literal products that they produce.

Stop Thinking so Literally

Try to remember that what your logo does not say, can be just as important as what it does. When considering a new logo, or even an update on your worn out old icon, try to consider the qualities and culture of your company instead of what you literally sell. This will provide you with a cleaner and attractive logo that will have longevity. Make sure your logo shouts self-assurance, and breathes professionalism.

Common Mistakes in Logo Design

There are a few common mistakes made when considering your logo design.

Amateur Design

Maybe you didn’t have the time to consult a professional and thought that your minimal graphics skills would be enough to scratch up a quick logo. Wrong. Logo designers and other graphic artist usually know all of the tips and tricks that those who design some of the world’s greatest logos know. The money you are losing because of an amateur design will outshine the money saved in creating your own logo.

Relying on Trends

Trends are just that. Designs, clothes, and architecture have historically been expounded upon because many others have found them to be appealing. However, trends change, sometimes on a daily basis. Don’t create your logo based on current trends in logo design. Those trends, just like the others, will soon be outdated, and there you will be with an outdated logo that is no longer relevant.

Contains Stock Art

Your logo should always be original and unique with a licensing agreement exclusive to you. Chances are that if you are using a stock art image, someone else is using it as well. There goes unique.

Too Complex

Complex designs will lose detail when they are reduced to smaller sizes. The more detail, the more difficult the design can be for the brain to process. A logo should work whether it is the size of a postage stamp or a billboard. And a logo should work in black and white as well as it does in color.

The best option, of course, is to have a professional design company produce your new or improve your outdated logo. Professional graphic designers are educated to understand what makes a logo great, memorable, and the best representation of your businesses culture and goals.

 

Sources:

How to Not Design a Logo

What Your Logo Says About Your Business?

Your Business Card Logo

Your Logo’s Job in Your Business

Issuu for Your Publication Issues

You’ll hear a lot of people – especially web designers, talk about how “print is dead”. The influx of mobile devices like smartphones and tablets, may indeed mark the beginning of the end for the print community…but by no means is traditional print advertising ‘dead’. Many companies still rely on print advertising in magazines, newspapers; and at the same time, these various publications are trying to find a way to translate their product to the digital realm. Enter Issuu.com.

There are so many available publishing formats on the net, many free, many costly. Because of the many available sites, there are also many available formats for publication uploads and downloads. This can make business difficult for publishers who want to see their hard-earned accomplishments displayed in their finest surroundings via custom cover designs, book descriptions, and more.

The Danish start-up known as Issuu now offers publishing platforms that can turn any uploaded document into a gorgeous online publication. Their numbers support that this is a format that many online publishers have been seeking. They also support Time-Magazines bid when it placed Issuu in the Top 50 Best Websites of 2009. With over 3.4 billionglobal impressions monthly on a global scale, the service shot to the top in its industry early on.

User Ease

Getting signed up is as easy as entering your email address and a favored password. Users can also take advantage of its Facebook integration sign up. Once the account is confirmed via email, users can quickly add contacts via their Gmail, Yahoo, Plaxo, or Windows Live Hotmail accounts.

Once logged in there are plenty of options to help customize your Issuu profile, settings and more. Getting started is as easy as selecting the upload feature, browsing your local folders for the publication file, and entering key descriptions of the publication. Next users can choose their publishing and sharing options, and then it is on to the upload process. From there users simply customize their publication cover and other options, and publish away.

Once your profile is complete and you have uploaded your publication, Issuu automatically lays the digital publication out into a magazine format complete with a fake ‘reflection’ from the gloss of a magazine cover. Viewers have the ability to view their publication as is, or switch to full screen mode. This is where Issuu really shines. It blows up the magazine to full screen viewing and even has a mock page turning animation that gives the viewer the sense of flipping through a printed publication. All the usual social media buttons are included and give the user the ability to share the digital publication through social media outlets like facebook and twitter, email to a client list or embed the digital booklet into their own site.

New Reseller Feature

The responsibility of an Issuu Reseller is to help your clients get the best out of their printed publications. Resllers may be anyone from government and marketing agencies to freelancers. Resellers can create and manage as many accounts as they need. One master account can control all of the individual, or client, accounts. The master account also handles and manages all payments.

Resellers can customize their client’s publications to fit their identity, or current cover, site, or business color scheme or theme. Advanced API’s gives the reseller immense flexibility and functionality in their customization processes. As resellers add clients and publications to their accounts, they can begin to build up discounted rates that can go as high as 85%.

It seems like Issuu may have gotten it right where many other publication services have failed. Issuu supports an incredibly wide variety of document extensions and does a great job at providing necessary formatting automatically, as well as allowing manual options for detailed perfection.

Sources:

You Publish @ Issuu

Issuu Adds New Features to Catch Up with Scribd.

Issuu Reseller, Humble E-Publisher

Issuu Crunchbase Profile

Will Wallaby Help Bring Flash to the Ipad?

 

Adobe Wallaby

In Spite of a trimmer device, and better AI, the iPad remains nonplussed by flash. To the rescue is Wallaby, a spanking new tool from Adobe Labs. This tool intends to help the iPad and its iOS, finally manage the previously taboo multimedia format.

Wallaby, a free cross-platform desktop application will revolutionize the transformation of Adobe Flash files into HTML. While it’s first preview was at the MAX 2010 Developer Conference nearly a year ago, its recent launch at FITC Amsterdam helps to peak out the months of the developers excitement on the project.

How It Works

Wallaby helps developers to transform FLA files into the necessary HTML5, SVG, CSS3, and jQuery JavaScript. Because it converts the FLA into standard HTML, the files are suitable for Dreamweaver.

Adobe supports that their overall focus is to continue to provide whatever tools are needed to produce their own creative content onto any device.

Adobe’s Senior Product Manager for Flash Pro, Tom Barclay, when asked for comment, shared that Adobe developers are looking forward to the feedback from their users about the coding they have chosen to generate with Wallaby. He also stated that Flash is highly likely to be the best long term solution for technologies that require an elevated level of interactivity. Admittedly, he also shared that HTML itself is just as vital to other elements such as banner ads or even integration with iPhone and iPads.

Features

As if drag-and-drop didn’t make this a great choice for many, Wallaby also supports batch processing as well as offering diagnostic reporting. This gives coders and developers the option to script their own conversions or even to just drag-and-drop any folders in FLA format into an app.

While this still remains in an experimental version, the software also handles content such as text, vector graphics, keyframes and more.

One hurdle Adobe is still working on is the interactivity of the files once they have been processed with Wallaby. The test file converted beautifully, looked clean and crisp, and the animation ran beautifully, although the click-throughs I had created in the test banner ad no longer worked. Upon doing a little research I found that Wallaby doesn’t not currently support interactivity. Therefore, Wallaby is a great resource for converting animation that has been laid out in Flash but it still has a ways to go.

Future?

Currently, Adobe Labs only target browsers that are webkit-based such as Google Chrome and Safari. Their hopes are to get feedback on their code to free Wallaby for good and subsequently delve into the future of Flash Professional.

 

 Sources:

Mac Rumors

iPad 2 Gets Flash

Adobe’s Wallaby brings Flash to iOS days before iPad 2 release

Why Does A Company Need A Logo?

When you mention business branding many may believe that means to be the logo itself. Although the logo is only a small piece of the larger marketing puzzle, it is in fact a very vital one. A logo is a symbol that will provide consumers with hopefully instant brand recognition. At least that is the goal for any business logo.

For a large business, their most cherished goal for their brand logo is for it to be recognized even without, or before the words are in viewable range. For business giants, a lofty goal is to provide a logo with no words and still have it instantly recognized. Think about the Nike logo. The ‘Swoosh’, (as it is now known) can be merely described as simple, fluid and fast. These words depict the Nike logo that has successfully grown to be one of the most influential insignia throughout the world. At this point, Nike no longer has to accompany their mark with the company name. Anybody who spots the swoosh knows exactly what company it is; and after years of reinforcing the mark with successful advertising campaigns, the viewer associates everything Nike stands for with one simple graphic mark.

What Message Should Your Logo Convey?
The absolute goal of your company’s logo is to convey the goals, values, and message behind your company. A logo should provide a clear message with a strong association towards your brand. A great logo will display professionalism and the opportunity for growth regardless of the size of the company presently. Keep your logo up-to-date but also make sure to market-test your efforts with logo options if your business is in its earlier stages.
A confident and effective logo will use its design to communicate a message that will attract a target audience, the audience you desire. The logo will create recognition for your brand while helping to differentiate you from your competitors. If your logo does not fulfill this mission, you may want to consider an update or an overhaul to help re-position your company’s slot on the map.

Traditional Logos vs Logotype
Logos come in two forms. The traditional icon or logo, and logotypes. When we think of a logo, most think of a symbol. However, many highly successfully branded businesses have relied solely on a logotype.
A logotype, better understood as a ‘word mark’, is a method of typesetting a word or phrase. One very commonly known logotype is the scripted Coca-Cola brand logo.

From the designers prospective, it is infinitely more work to create the icon form of logo. Since an icon logo design still has to consider the type in addition to the symbol, it is a larger or more time-consuming project for your web designer.

Which of these types of logos will be suit your needs?
If you are pressed for time, consider that full logo icons will take a bit more time for the pro designer to create.
Can your business be summed up with just a plain icon? Or will it require text to convey the full message.
Are you featuring unique opportunities or benefits? Since service-based businesses may be difficult to sum up with a plain logo, you may either need some text, or a significantly overriding theme.
Are you avoiding clichés? Every housekeeping company can slap a broom and mop bucket on their logo, but will yours stand out to help indentify your brand if you use them too?

Three Great Logo Elements to Keep in Mind
1. Your logo should add meaning. If the logo symbol cannot convey the overall meaning alone, be sure that the text compliments and includes deeper understanding of the finished product.

2. Word marks. Your word marks or included text should assist in making your name more memorable. If the name of your business is difficult to convey in a picture, make sure your type or font does the job for it.

3. Adding your URL. If you plan to add your URL to your logo. Try to add it as a subordinate, or tagline addition. It should never overpower the meaning and message that the logo itself coveys alone.

References : 

Role of Your Logo in Branding Strategy

Why Logos Matter to Business Branding (Or Not that Much)

3 Ideas to Help Brand Your Blog

Brand Your Site with Your Company Logo

Help Brand Your Business – The Logo

Starbucks Drops their Text Band

famouslogos.org