Adobe Live 2007 - London

• June 5th, 2007
• Posted by Stewart
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This week I was lucky enough to attend the Adobe Live 2007: London Conference on Tuesday the 5th of June. Here’s my round-up of the exhibitions, the presentations and the brand new Creative Suite 3 products from Adobe.

The venue

The Adobe Live 2007 conference was on show 5-6 June @ Business Design Centre, London. It was easy to get to and had some of Adobe’s Partner’s stalls such as Samsung, Wacom, Future Publishing and more there doing their bit to try and get you interested in their products.

What was on show

The exhibits, as you would expect, focus on the new changes in the CS3 products and how they can help us designers do our job more efficiently. There was hands-on training sessions using Mac’s and PC’s on all the main Adobe products, “What’s New” presentations to get you up to speed on the latest changes and Keynote speakers offering advice and insights into the latest design trends.

What’s new in Creative Suite 3

For me, the best thing about CS3 is the fact that most of the popular design products such as PhotoShop, Dreamweaver and Fireworks are now part of the same package. Adobe haven’t just bought Macromedia and bundled the packages together on one DVD, they have really listened to how we use their products.

The new CS3 really is a integrated suite that allows you to have a creative workflow through the applications and they all understand each others formats which makes it easier to switch from application to application.

Featured exhibitions

Creative Suite 3 Web Premium

This presentation about the new CS3 Web Premium package, aimed at the Web Design and Development professional, demonstrated how all the applications co-operate with each other and how the entire suite of applications work together to make it easier for you to see your design through to to the coding and layout. Finally the products understand each other. You won’t see your Illustrator files break when you import them into Flash, and you can change files in PhotoShop and see them update in Fireworks!

Going Nowhere to Get Everything

The exhibition for me that really provoked the most thought for me was the presentation by Rob Lawrence, Creative Director from Avenue A/Razorfish on on-line shopping. This was of particular interest for me as I work for a retail company and wanted to get some new ideas and creative perspective.

Rob had some interested points and examples of using design to create an engaging on-line shopping experience. Instead of using the usual plain lists of products, why not present the products interactively? Why not give the users something to explore?

Some of the points Rob brought up I think I could take away and play with to see if it’s somehow something we could use within our business. My only concern was that usability and accessibility was really an after thought with Rob’s suggestions whereas I feel it really has an important role to play within on-line shopping.