While I’ve worked with InDesign for quite a few years now, it seems that I still learn something new every week. There are so many things Adobe programs can do and I run across a new function every now and then. Here are a few little tricks you may find useful.

• If you are working on a document that is super long and page heavy you can opt to view the document in multiple windows. This comes in handy if you are trying to fit copy in a certain amount of pages, you can delete copy at the beginning of the InDesign file and see how it effects the last page at the same time. Simply go to Windows > Arrange > New Window.

• InDesign also has a feature that lets the designer add the colors from another file to the swatches panel in your current file.  What if you don’t want ALL the colors from that file? InDesign has got you covered. In the Swatches panel > choose New Color Swatch > Color Mode > Other Library > Select the file with the color you would like to use > Choose which color you would like to add.

• Trying to figure out the best font for your design can become time consuming. You can try out different fonts on existing text by Selecting the text you want to use > Place your cursor in the font/character panel > Scroll through the different fonts using the up and down arrows.

• Tables can become mind-boggling at points, especially when trying to go from selecting cells to type. To easily do this, Click the type tool in the cell > Hit the escape key (Now the cell is selected) > Hit escape again (Now the text is selected). You can continue to go back and forth between the two selections with the escape key.

I’m a big fan of great packaging. More than once, I have bought something just because I enjoyed the way it was packaged.

Recently, I ran across a fabulous packaging design from Lee Jeans. Pushing their eco-friendly initiative, their “Never Wasted” campaign features a shopping bag that can be repurposed into many different items. These items include a game board and game board pieces, dice, masks, boxes, and a pencil holder, among others.

This packaging has all the key elements of a nice design: Fun, Functional, and eco-Friendly. If anything, this design has made me want to go buy a pair of Lee Jeans just so I can get the bag.  And apparently, I’m not the only one. Lee Jeans stated “A surge in interest from patrons forced us to produce 1000 times more bags than the initial production of 3,000 bags.”

With the increasing popularity in digital music downloads, album cover art has become less important to music buyers. When you think about some of your favorite album art, they are more than likely from the 60’s, 70’s or maybe even the 80’s. This is the time when you actually had to walk into the store, pick up the album, run your hands over the cardboard jacket and marvel in the art that represented the music. These were items for a collection.

Nowadays, you press a button in iTunes and a song is downloaded onto your computer, completely bypassing the step to look at the artwork created for the album. You might not ever look at this piece of art that has been designed specifically for the music.

I have decided to present some of my favorite album covers that have been released in recent years that you may have overlooked.

Foo Fighters – In Your Honor Design by Kevin Reagan

Josh Ritter – The Animal Years Design by Jason Holley

Menoma – Friend and Foe Design by Craig Thompson

The Used – Lies for the Liars Design by Alex Pardee

Underoath – Define the Great Line

Keane – Under the Iron Sea Design by Sanna Annukka

Gungor – Beautiful Things Design by Ben Dirzino

Zac Brown Band – You Get What You Give

These are just my personal taste/opinion. If you have one you’d like to share, I’d love to see your favorites!

With more than 425,000 apps available for download in the iTunes app store, how does one know which are the gems and which are the duds? It’s so irritating when you have thumbed through all the apps available, finally made a decision on which one to purchase, waited for the download, opened the app and realized it was a dud; a complete waste of time, possibly money, and memory space.

This is why it has come to my attention that not only do we need the App Stores’ “TOP 25” category, but we also need a “Worst” category. I have taken it upon myself to go ahead and get this list started with six of the worst apps that have ever made it into Apple’s App Store.

#6  iTan
Users can select how many minutes they would like to “tan” and then hit Start. The screen simulates tanning bulbs and cautions users not to look directly into the light and to use appropriate UV protection. “Whether at work, on the bus or train, you can top up your tan and keep that healthy glow.” Really??  Reviews of this app have actually commented if it really works.

#5  Hold On!
Possibly the most useless app on the list, this app has a button in the center of the screen that you simply see how long you can hold it for.  Still holding?

#4  Hang Time
This app requires users to throw their iPhone in the air and calculates the hang time of the phone using the accelerometer (pending you have actually caught it coming back down). If anyone is paying 99¢ to throw their phone in the air, they need to get their head checked.

#3 I Am Rich
Simply put, this app costs $999.99 to display a glowing red dot on the screen and a pop-up message that declares you are rich. That. Is. All.  The official description read “It’s a work of art with no hidden function at all.” Apple removed this app a little while back after eight users bought it, discovering they were not only rich, but stupid.

#2 Birth Buddy
You can now give birth via your iPhone. Birth Buddy is an app used to help pregnant woman track times between labor contractions. This app just strikes me as weird. Because the first thing I am going to do when going into labor pull out my iPhone.

#1 Baby Shaker
The Baby Shaker app has received national attention when iPhoners protested the app and Apple eventually yanked it out of their store. Baby Shaker displays a drawing of a baby crying on the screen. The only way you can get it to stop crying is to shake the baby, changing the image from a crying baby to a calm one.

“Now, Baby Shaker gives you a charming drawing of a baby sure to make those with a less than iron will fawn. True to life, it begins to annoy you immediately. See how long you can endure his or her adorable cries before you just have to find a way to quiet the baby down!

The day has come, my friends, when it has become possible to convert an InDesign file into a Microsoft Word file format while maintaining the original file’s layout.

Recosoft, a software company, recently released an application called ID2Office that works as a plug-in for InDesign. This application allows text, paragraph styles, graphics, tables and many other aspects of the InDesign file to be given their coordinating properties in the Microsoft Word file. This plug-in is not only limited to Microsoft Word, it works with Powerpoint as well.

I’m not trying to say that Microsoft Word and Powerpoint are great design tools. In my opinion, they’re not.  Actually, you should never design anything in Word (there, I said it). So why would this application be useful? What if you have a client that would like to have a newsletter you created in InDesign to be editable by them in Microsoft Word? This would be the perfect application to use.

Obviously, this isn’t the ideal situation for any designer, but when push comes to shove, this handy, dandy plug-in will do the trick (for $199 per year).

What are the “IT” colors for the Spring and Summer of 2011? Rose, Marigold, Teal, Lime? If you guessed any of those, you are wrong. It’s actually Pantone 18-2120.

Pantone is all the rage! The new color for 2011,  Pantone 18-2120, is sort of a Honeysuckle hue. The Pantone marketing department has done a fantastic job of expanding their products into vertical industries outside of just plain old printing.

The Dessy Group offers Pantone bridesmaids dresses, for example. The dresses come in many different Pantone colors that make it easy to coordinate the your precise wedding day colors among all of your vendors.  So the next time someone asks the bride-to-be what her wedding colors are, how about this come back? “Pantone 15-4825 with an accent of Pantone 15-4502.”

You can also find Pantone products like folding chairs, bikes, cupcakes, magnets, iPhone cases and, my personal favorite, the Pantone Hotel in Brussels. The hotel is a basic white foundation with Pantone colors that pop in contrast. There’s nothing more relaxing than swimming in a pool of Pantone 15-5519 (which was the 2010 Pantone Color of the Year, BTW) or basking in the sunny rays of Pantone 12-0643.

Whether you’re a trying to flaunt your romantic style with Pantone 12-1206 or rock out in your favorite Goth swag like Pantone 419, there’s a different color for everyone, every occasion, and every item.

As many of you may remember, last November The Beatles announced their music would be available for download on iTunes. Hooray, right? No!

Forget The Beatles! Where’s Garth? As many of my fellow co-workers know, I am an avid Garth Brooks fan. A few months ago I decided to upgrade my worn out “Double Live,” “No Fences” and “Fresh Horses” compact discs for electronic versions. I need to have Garth with me at all times. I needed a more versatile format.

That’s when the tragedy happened. While searching on iTunes for my favorite artist, I realized that Garth Brooks is not available on iTunes.  Say what!? Yes, yes, I know it’s hard to fathom, but it’s true! The only thing that appeared in the search results were karaoke versions and covers of his most popular songs.

How could this happen? After devoting some time to Google to figure out this absurdity I came to an answer. Garth, along with a few other artists, believe iTunes should offer more variable pricing and allow album-only downloads. At the moment, iTunes makes artists sell their albums via two ways: 1.) through individual track purchases or
2) buying the entire album at one set price.
Garth doesn’t want his albums to be broken down into individual tracks for purchase.

Apparently, Garth isn’t the only artist holding out on iTunes for this reason. In 2007, Jay-Z took his album, “American Gangster” off of the popular music-downloading site because the site refused to make it an album-only purchase.  Jay Z said “As movies are not sold scene by scene, this collection will not be sold as individual singles.”

I get it, I really do! But what do I do when my CD’s have too many scratches on them that I can’t replay “Friends in Low Places” 100 times on my way to work? Or what if I want to listen to them on my iPod? I guess for now I’ll be stuck buying the CD’s again at my local music shop.

Other artists that have not jumped on the iTunes bandwagon:
AC/DC
Def Leppard
Black Sabbath
Bob Seger

Move over wedding planners, Google is my new go-to-guy!  The popular search engine has recently launched a new wedding planning site (www.google.com/weddings) in perfect timing for this year’s engagement season.  So, of course, the Bride-to-Be in me had to check it out.

The new site offers engaged couples many tools to help organize and plan a fantastic wedding day. One of the best features includes Google Docs that are customized to wedding day needs. You can basically find any spreadsheet you might need to plan your special day: to-do lists, address books, guests lists, budget planner, seating chart, the list goes on.

Google Weddings also provides couples with their own wedding website through a partnership with Picnik. They’ve created photo memorabilia and used Picasa to share pictures online. With the unique sharing feature you can even send out Save the Dates and Announcements.

With all these features at your fingertips, it’s hard not to say “I do” to Google Weddings.

At the beginning of the year, the popular coffee chain Starbucks unleashed an updated logo to the world. The new logo isn’t a complete rebrand as Gap unsuccessfully attempted in late 2010, but it has undergone some major changes.

The logo previously featured an abstract lady (known by Starbucks fans as the Siren) encompassed by a green circle that contained the words “Starbucks Coffee.” The new branded mark has taken away all copy and leaves only the green Siren.

The former logo had been around since 1992 and this is the fourth change in the logo since Starbuck’s beginnings in 1971. However, all of the previous marks included the words “Starbucks Coffee” as a circular type treatment around an illustration.

Does the removal of any mention of Starbucks change the likelihood of recognition of the logo? One reason the coffee company decided to remove the type is because of a larger transition into reaching out to other countries where English isn’t the first language. In addition, they are diversifying – coffee will not be their only product.

Also under consideration was the fact that many of the local Starbucks stores will be completely un-branded.  For example, a location in Seattle is now called 15th Avenue Coffee and Tea and doesn’t contain any Starbucks branding. The company says they are doing this to other locations so the stores sound like more of a local hangout spot, rather than a hoity-toity coffee shop. Thus increasing the foot traffic to the stores.

I had to stop when I heard this. A Starbucks without branding? A different name? It sounds a little deceptive to me. As a person that tries to buy locally, I could potentially be giving my money to Starbucks and not even know it.

I’m very interested to see how this plays out in the future. Will the Siren alone hold up as the strong mark the previous logo was? And will the non-branded coffee shops increase foot traffic and sales? Or is it not the branding but perhaps the eight dollar frappe that continues to keep some consumers away?

Have you ever been driving down the road, listening to the radio and a song comes on that takes you way back to a fond memory? I bet you have. Sound is a very powerful sense and many companies have caught on to this idea, creating strong audio branding.

One company that has created one of the top sound logos in the world is Intel.  Their Intel Inside jingle has become a recognizable audio piece to many consumers. Intel has even been able to string out the jingle through different mediums: voices and instruments.

McDonald’s is another brand that has successfully created a brand sound with their “I’m Lovin’ It” jingle.  And, State Farm’s even used their “Like a Good Neighbor, State Farm is There” jingle with actors singing it to summon their insurance agent.

It’s obvious that sound has a very powerful effect on a brand, but 83% of all advertising focuses on the sense of SIGHT. That leaves only 17% of advertising to use hearing as a point of branding. Intel, McDonalds and State Farm have all caught on to this audio trend. Will “Sound Logo” become more of a household term in the near future?