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In mid November I took a trip to San Francisco for the Adobe MAX conference. I left a few days early so that I could attend ADIM (Art Directors Invitational Master class), a pre-conference event hosted by Russell Brown an adobe tips & tricks master! ADIM is basically an annual outlet for graphic designers to break away from their daily grind, to network, to dress up in crazy outfits, and to create a fun theme based project that uses the latest and greatest techniques and technologies being used in the field.

This year’s project, based on the theme Jurassic Safari, was to create a lenticular poster using Photoshop CS4’s impressive new 3-d tools. When it was time to show off what we had created it was clear that some of the ADIM veterans had been working on their projects long before the conference had even began. Maybe next year I’ll come more prepared because the creator of the best project won a copy of the Adobe Master Suite collection! The Adobe MAX conference kicked off with an over the top keynote session introducing new Adobe products and new technologies. The session was set up more like a concert than a conference with an exciting light and screen display and an impressive DJ. The keynote also featured guest appearances by Bud Albers, the CTO of Disney Interactive and the first lady of California, Maria Shriver, who declared that she thought she was at a Star Trek convention, which for a good number of the software geeks in attendance was most likely a compliment.

The next few days at MAX were filled with plenty of sessions showing off the new features found in CS4. A few of my favorite new CS4 features: Photoshop’s content aware scaling tool; Illustrator’s use of multiple art boards and blob brush tool; and Flash’s object based animation and bones tool.

One of my favorite sessions was a presentation by Simone Legno, the uber talented creator of the popular brand Tokidoki, who talked about his career path and the inspiration behind a few of his many awesome characters. It was especially cool to hear Simone explain his thought process behind the creation of my favorite Tokidoki character, Sandy. Sandy, as Simon explains, is a naïve and vulnerable little girl who protects herself from a scary world by wearing a cactus suit. Sandy is one of the many endearing characters in Tokidoki’s collection. Simone Legno’s illustrations have made their mark on today’s popular culture, and his amazing success story is such an inspiration to a young designer like me.

Overall the Adobe MAX and ADIM conferences were a great experience, I learned more than my brain could possibly absorb, made some talented new friends, and came home with almost 15 pounds of swag!