The image above is an example of what I was talking about in this post from earlier this week.

All four of the placeholder images in the border areas of the mock-up are the same image, placed into Photoshop as Smart Objects instead of pixels. Placing them in this fashion allows me to resize them without losing resolution as long as I don’t try to make the image bigger then the original placed file.

By playing around with the crop of each image, I can imply a final page design with placeholder images in place without having to spend hours hunting for 4 separate images to fill all four empty placeholders. Efficiency-wise, the cost in time to track down images 2, 3 and 4 is not worth the gain. Faking four images by experimenting with the crop of my placeholder images gives the same effect at a fraction of the time.

As you can see, even with a fairly simple image like the one I have used, several different, well-composed crops are available. A more complex image will give you even more options.

Remember: if you’re aware of what I’m doing here, it’s obvious. The goal, however, is to present a mock-up to a client so that he or she can take in the entire design and not get hung up on irrelevant issues that have nothing to do with the design. Placeholders just show where images will go. Their content in the mock-up stage doesn’t matter as long as it doesn’t distract the client from the rest of the design.

I waste so much time hunting through our Photo archive here at Notre Dame trying to find placeholder images to plug into Mock-Ups for site designs.

Where content images are called for in designs, the best way to present the Mock-up is with simulated content images in place. Showing a Mock-up with FPO boxes (neutral toned spaces that outline where a picture would go) makes the entire site appear unresolved. I’m always hesitant to do this. I don’t want clients to look at a Mock-up and make a general decision on the strength of the entire concept because the lack of example content images makes the Mock-up look unresolved.

At the same time, you don’t want to spend hours looking for images that “fit” either. Clients latch on to odd things in design review meetings. Almost as bad as “it doesn’t look finished” is “these images don’t make sense for our content.” (Note: Repeatedly screaming “THEY’RE JUST PLACEHOLDERS!!!” while banging your fists on the table and sobbing is not the way to handle this).

So here’s a suggestion

Spend the time to find 1 really good image that fits the page’s content and place that image into your Photoshop file as a Smart Object.

Smart Object functionality will allow you to resize this image to your heart’s content, which means you can make it smaller AND larger without sacrificing resolution.

Now position this image in all of your placeholder spaces but resize it to emphasize different areas of the image. Make one really small, zoom way in with another, rotate one slightly, etcetera. A really complex image will have a lot of different areas of contrast in it that you can use to focus attention in the image.

This solves a bunch of different issues. It makes your Mock-up look “finished,” but at the same time it’s clearly communicated that content images will come later, and it doesn’t rely on over repetition of the same treatment of the same image which is another thing that can distract a client’s focus from the over all concept.

I was asked to teach a weekly, one credit CS3 tutorial class last semester for the Department of Art, Art History and Design here at Notre Dame. It’s not a design class. It’s more like a lab component of the Graphic Design courses, the intention of which is to help my students work more efficiently in Photoshop, InDesign and Illustrator.

It was the first time I’d ever taken on such a task and, as I’ve noticed with other brand new things that I’ve attempted, I learned a lot simply by doing it. This semester I am teaching the course again with whole-sale changes based on what worked and what didn’t. Here are three things I learned:

1. Retention is directly correlated to practical application of the concept.

You like that? I was trying to sound pretentious. I digress…

I found that it didn’t really matter how clearly I explained, or how in-depth was my explanation of a concept in any of the applications if it didn’t immediately relate back to what my students where actually producing at that point in time. In hindsight, I should have seen this coming because I am the same way. I soak up CS3 tricks if I can use them immediately. Things like (for example) color-correction, which I never have any need to do, I am far less proficient or interested in learning about.

Resulting Changes: I changed the entire structure of the class. Last semester the class was a sequential introduction to Illustrator, Photoshop and InDesign in that order and based on the concepts that I felt where the most foundational. This time around I am working much closer with the professor and grad students that are teaching the Graphic Design 1 class of which my tutorial is a co-requisite. I will be teaching generally the same concepts as last semester, but this time around I will be doing it based on the GD1 projects that my students are working on in their other class.

Hopefully this will help them not only learn that something is possible in a CS3 app (comprehension), they’ll also get an immediate practical use for it so they can hold on to the concept down the road (retention).

2. It’s better to watch a demo, interact with the professor and try to understand then it is to take copious notes.

At least that’s the way I learn. Consider for a moment how complicated it is to explain to someone without any visual aids whatsoever something as relatively basic as…say…duplicating a Photoshop layer. It’s just easier to show someone how it’s done. If they’re put in a position where you’re showing them and they feel they have to take copious notes, they’re almost guaranteed to miss something. Perhaps in a more abstract subject, you can get away with this, but CS3 processes are so necessarily sequential, that if you don’t write down every single step exactly, you won’t be able to replicate the effect later from your notes alone.

Basically, I was putting a pretty steep burden on the students in the class who don’t absorb information the same way I do. I was forcing them into distraction by taking notes, which was making it harder for them to retain the information I was presenting.

Resulting Changes: Immediately after the mid-semester break, I started writing up 4-5 page documents the night before each class that explained all of the major concepts that I would be teaching the next day. I’m not really big into printing out stacks of paper, most of which will be generally ignored and therefor wasted. What I ended up doing was burning a PDF of the document out of InDesign and releasing it on Concourse, our academic file sharing application. Students could grab the document if they wanted to and print it out if they felt it necessary. Simply knowing that the document was available meant they could concentrate less on trying desperately to record what I was teaching them, and more on just absorbing it.

New for this semester: Long time readers of ATCO (both of you) might remember that at launch, this blog had a “Lessons” tab in the global navigation. My intention was always to post each class’s content as a separate page under that Global Nav item, but I never found time to do it. This semester I will be bringing that nav item back and posting under it more regularly, because it will allow me to update the content in the PDF after the class has ended with any spontaneous concepts or questions that are raised during the class period.

3. No one uses Twitter. Everyone uses Facebook.

I found this really hard to believe considering that basically everyone that I know tweets and tweets regularly, but out of my whole class, not one of them used Twitter. Facebook, on the other hand, is used by everyone.

Resulting Changes: I gave out my twitter username again this semester as part of my contact information. We’ll see if this Twitter thing catches on. A Facebook group for the class seems like an intelligent idea though.

A Very Key Term Before we Begin

Quıcĸsıɩⅴεʀ is a free application from Blacktree software that is available here. At it’s very basic level, it’s a launcher that allows you to open applications with intuitive keystrokes (and by intuitive…i mean “typing P-H-O-T-O…etc until Photoshop is selected and then hitting Enter to activate it”).

QS has become such an essential part of my computer use that I, frankly, struggle when I’m forced to use a Mac that doesn’t have it installed, so I strongly recommend it to any mac users who haven’t tried it out.

I am in no way connected to Blacktree, I don’t create or support any development plug-ins for Quıcĸsıɩⅴεʀ. The following tutorial merely explains how this Designer figured out how to use available plug-ins to extend QS’s functionality to my iTunes library.

We begin.

This post (attempts) to explain how I use Quıcĸsıɩⅴεʀ (QS) to control what songs I want to play in iTunes on the fly, without switching applications and without interrupting my workflow.

Why I do this

I use QS to do this because I feel like I’m more productive with music playing and I know that I’m more productive when I don’t switch between applications. Cmd+Tab from Photoshop to iTunes to select a song usually results in a stop at Gmail, maybe a glance at Twitterrific, RSS feeds, iChat, and before I know it…20 minutes have passed (or more). QS makes song selection an intuitive part of my work flow so I can listen to what I want without breaking stride. Best of all, downloading, installing and setting this up is extremely easy. Even a designer can do it. (Insert obnoxious developer laughter here).

Party Shuffle is your Boyfriend, Girlfriend, Best Friend…Party Shuffle is Where I Want You to Touch.

I feel like Party Shuffle is poorly named. “Music Stream” would be more appropriate, if it didn’t imply an internet broadcast. Perhaps “Bottomless Playlist?”

At any rate, It allows you to set a continuous run of music that’s drawn either from your library, or from specific playlists. I have Party Shuffle set up to draw tunes from a Smart Playlist that I edit to filter out everything i don’t want to randomly listen too “Artist is not Dane Cook” for example. (I have nothing but love for Dane Cook, just not when I’m designing a website).

I listen to music in Party Shuffle. All of my playlists, or any of my tracks, or group of tracks can be easily moved into party shuffle by selecting all the tracks, Ctrl+clicking on one of them and selecting “Add to Party Shuffle” or “Play Next in Part Shuffle.” You can see the beauty of this: Playlist functionality…Never-ending flow of music. When we add Quıcĸsıɩⅴεʀ into the mix we’ll be able to use both of these commands on the fly while working in other applications.

The Process: 4 Easy Steps to Seamless Tunes

• Install Quıcĸsıɩⅴεʀ (ignore if already installed)
• Install the iTunes Module
• Create a Trigger
• Make it part of your Workflow

Step 1: Install Quıcĸsıɩⅴεʀ (ignore if already installed)

• Go here.
• Click on the Quıcĸsıɩⅴεʀ tab and click “download.”
• Once it downloads, open the Quıcĸsıɩⅴεʀ drive in Finder and drag the QS application to your applications folder. Double click to activate it and run through the setup process.
• If you wish…under QS preferences click the “Start at Login” check box and the “show icon in menu bar” checkbox. (QS defaults as a dock icon. I hate dock icons.) You can access the QS preference by either clicking the menu bar icon and selecting “preferences” or by summoning QS with Ctrl+space and clicking on the arrow in the upper right corner of the application window.

Step 2: Install the iTunes Module

• Open Quıcĸsıɩⅴεʀ preferences by clicking on the menu bar icon or by summoning QS and clicking on the down arrow
• Click on plug-ins in the upper right of the preferences window
• Click on “Recommended Plug-ins” It should look like this:

• Scroll down to “iTunes Module” and click the check box. The plug-in should automatically install and QS will relaunch. To make sure all is well open the preferences page again, go to “installed plug-ins” and make sure the iTunes is there. All good? Cool. Almost done…just have to set up one more thing.

Step 3: Creating a Trigger

If we just use QS as normal (Ctrl+Space and then typing what we’re looking for), we’ll search the whole hard drive including all applications and files. To jump right to iTunes, we need to create a specific trigger that will bypass everything but the iTunes library. Here’s how to set this up:

• Once again, go to the QS preferences
• Click on “Triggers.” iTunes should be one of the choices in the left-hand menu. Click on it.
• On the right is a list of all of the potential commands that QS can be set up to activate with a keystroke of your choice. (”Keyboard Shortcuts” to us Adobephiles, QS calls them “Triggers.”).
• Scroll down to “Search iTunes” in the list of commands and click the check box next to it.
• You’re going to need a key combination to call up this command, so click on the word “none” in the right hand column. A drawer should slide out to the left of the QS window. Everything should look like this:

• Click in the Hot Keys field and select a key command combination that will be quick and easy to remember. I use Creative Suite all the live long day, so I set my key combination up as “Cmd+Shift+X.” If this has over-written any mission critical key commands, it hasn’t affected me yet, but feel free to use whatever you wish here.
• Close out QS
• That’s it. Really.

Step 4: Make it part of your workflow

Now, whenever you hit your Trigger, no matter what you’re doing anywhere on your Mac, not only will you summon Quıcĸsıɩⅴεʀ, you’ll be searching ONLY your iTunes library. Here’s how it works: 

• You’re listening to music in Party Shuffle while working in another application and you get the sudden urge to listen to Mysterious Ways
• Hit your Trigger (Cmd+Shift+X if you’re like me)
• Start typing “Mysterious Ways”
• When the song comes up in the window hit Tab to move into the Actions field
• Select “Play Next in Party Shuffle”
• Hit Enter
• Go back to work. Mysterious Ways will automatically be queued up next in Party Shuffle and will start playing as soon as the current song is finished.

Trust me, that process took way longer to read then it will take to execute. Especially when it becomes second nature.

Notes

• You’ll probably want to make “Play Next in Party Shuffle” the default action once a song or album is selected. To do this, hit your Trigger, type a song title, tab over to the actions field and press the down arrow key to show the list of possible actions to perform. Ctrl+click on “Play Next in Party Shuffle” and select “Make Default.” (Naturally, you can make any of the commands listed your default).
• When QS is activated it’s constantly running in the background scanning and rescanning and cataloging your hard drive looking for changes to files and applications. As such, it has to “learn” where tracks are as they are added to your iTunes library, so it probably won’t catch the new Mylie Cyrus single you just bought from Amazon that you’re hoping no one will know you own. It usually takes 15-20 minutes for the newest tracks to be noted and selectable. Patience, in this regard, is a virtue.
• You can add whole albums to Party Shuffle with this process also. It’s done in exactly the same way: by typing the name of the album in the selection field once QS has been summoned with your Trigger keys. Additionally, you can use the right arrow key to drill down into the selected album in the selector window and tell QS to play specific tracks from it. This comes in really handy if you know you want to listen to a particular track on Ten by Pearl Jam, but you’re blanking on the title for whatever reason.

Conclusion

Thanks for reading. If you decide to try this out, find it helpful, have questions, want to scream at me for totally confusing the crap out of you…please leave a comment and let me know.

-oAk-

I hit on a bit of a work-around using OS X’s incredible Time Machine application today. AgencyND operates off a central server where our job files are stored and backed up. We try not to work locally. Time Machine, as you are probably aware, only archives files on the Macintosh Hard Drive, so while it does a great job backing up my iTunes library and whatever files I have laying around the desktop, it does very little in the way of serving as a quick back up application for my all-important work documents. 

Today it occurred to me that if, instead of packaging InDesign jobs directly to the server, I wrote the package folder to the desktop first and then dragged it into the appropriate folder on the server using the finder, I’d leave behind an exact copy of the Package folder on the desktop for Time Machine to grab and back up. The trick is to only work from the server files, never the desktop files and to make sure to delete the files off the desktop fairly frequently (like every night before leaving the office, for example).

Now I get the best of both worlds: a central, back up server that diligently archives my most valuable files, AND Time Machine which is there to catch me on the rare but devastating occasions when deleted file emergencies develop.