Professional Design Techniques with Adobe Creative Suite 3

List Price: $50.00 Discount Price: $29.56

Customer Reviews:

Excellent book...great concept! [Posted on 2008-02-13]
This book is a nice blend of design principles and software tips...and well-written to boot. This book is not a tutorial on how to use InDesign. Instead, it provides first-rate guidance on how to use the Creative Suite components together, with advice on which tool is best for which job. Also, it is a rare opportunity to "peek inside the head" of a talented designer and see what processes he goes through to arrive at the end result. Overall, an excellent book. I'll be recommending this to people in my InDesign, Illustrator, Photoshop and Acrobat training seminars.

Good starting point [Posted on 2008-03-18]
Scott Citron's book offers in a nutshell a lot of information on very different graphic projects. It offers most of the basic information you need to make graphic projects work.

You call yourself a Pro? [Posted on 2008-03-30]
Pah!...Encouraging people to learn but the concept of helping reader to truly understand the method on 'how those truly happens' is a 0. Scott has been living in his own world long enough for not to understand how to help readers truly understand what his instruction are. People buy professional book to get professional result with professional guidance. But this, is filled with POOR method of explanation on how to achieve those result. Professional advice: If you're a beginner, you will never understand the book. If you're a pro, you will get MAD / ANGRY because the book really blow your heads off, as if you're a total beginner and do not know how to do things in those programs. Congratulations Adobe!..for bringing in this Mr.Scott to produce a book on your behalf and waste a lot of innocent people money! Don't get me wrong; Scott design is indeed POWERFUL but if you're hoping to get the best, professional result just like what the book front cover promises, then it fails to deliver. Professionals always want to move fast (because there's already a LOT of job to be done) and don't ever suggest me buying the visual Quick Pro. Although Visual Quick Pro is good but I'm searching for great design to get the job done, not the how to's. Excitement comes when reading Scott story but it is the end when it comes to the instruction...Sorry Scott, it is the truth. I'm not happy, and so are you. Make the instruction easy to follow and cut off unneeded story. Focus on the instruction part very, very seriously (because that what the reader want) and this book will be one of the best in Adobe collection. But for now, I will stay with my 1 star.

Defining Product [Posted on 2008-05-16]
From Adobe Press, this soft cover format book defines it's self in one of those areas between a great design magazine and a handy educational tool. The book itself breaks chapters out by project work rather than product. This is more inline with what I require as a digital based graphics designer. I am not about to use an illustrator project book, but rather one that targets a project like what I am involved with to use as a resource.
The chapters are the ubiquitous "Getting Started" (great info on what and how Bridge should be used, as well as info on preferences and organization.

This is actually more important a chapter than at first glance. I am supprised by the amount of designers now in CS3 who still hang on to old habits (die hard) with bad or non existing preferences and layouts tailored to themselves. Bridge too is so important to great workflow, yet not enough designers out there are taking advantage of it.

THe remaining chapters in the book are broken out by projects on typography, corp identity, newsletters and forms, magazines, books, annual reports and interactive PDF. The book closes off with a chapter on workflow that covers a CD label. This I would say is a miss. CD - um yeah that format that no one buys. Why is it not something more interesting such as a DVD jacket and label for a movie or better yet, an actual game on the market. THough it shows good workflow, the example is dated and not relevant and makes the chapter a bit of let down.

Another point missed out in this book is the inclusion of digital media. Is it an aim for the book to be knowingly exclusive of any form of non print media other than an interactive pdf? The book does feel, though using the latest CS3 project, that it is from a pre web period when there was the promise of interactive CD's and an interactive PDF world. This is a shame as a professional designer who thinks that all outside of print is irrelevant is, in theselves in danger of being irrelevant.

Overall the book reads well, has great examples and excellent tips scattered throughout. The examples are for the most part relevant only to print based designers, so one can look at this as more of an upgrade read through to garner more from CS3 than from any hands on learning in a start to finish setting.

A pleasure to read and absorb [Posted on 2008-05-19]
Scott's handling of design and the Adobe Creative Suite is demonstrated page after page throughout this book. It is a welcome pleasure to read a computer book that was designed as well as it was written.

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