Rika's Senior Photos

One of my coworker's daughter is graduating from Orange County School of the Arts and she asked me if I could take her senior photos. We ended up in Laguna Beach where we found a beautiful small cove to do a dry run in casual attire. These are a few samples of the photos taken that day. I was pleasantly surprised by the balmy weather, its the beginning of November and you can still find people bathing in the sun. After the shoot I spent the rest of the day at the swimming pool floating about, what more can you say about living in Southern California?

Designing for the Mobile Consumer

With the increasing use of mobile devices designers have to alter their traditional thinking of designing on static surfaces and account for designing in flexible spaces. Since the release of Adobe Creative Suite 6, designers have had the opportunity to discover the new features available for making this a more efficient process.

InDesign has been updated to include a new tool called liquid layout. The liquid layout feature automatically adjusts text and images into vertical and horizontal spaces allowing designers to quickly view the aesthetic of a mobile design in one simple click of the mouse.

The biggest change to Illustrator and Photoshop are that the programs now run on a 64-bit platform, meaning increased performance. A few other things to note about Photoshop are the new cropping options available to users, making changes to images much more flexible. And to top it all off, the addition of the content awareness fill tool (a feature introduced in CS4 but now with more capabilities) can do things that will amaze you.

I've personality never been a fan of using Photoshop to manipulate images extensively, but the content awareness fill tool is a tool to be desired.

I attended a WAG U workshop with presenter Andrew Keith Strauss (a certified Adobe trainer) to learn about these tools. Watching the demonstrations for the updates in CS6 just boggles my mind for the new possibilities that lie ahead in graphic design.

Amanda

I took these shots of Amanda in downtown Redlands at the old Santa Fe train station. Historic areas are one of my favorite places to explore!

How to Be a Creative Thinker

1. Learn something new every day. Creativity happens when you make the effort to learn or try something new.
2. Make a list. Jot down all your ideas whether it’s good or bad. Make this a habit and it can help lead you to bigger and better ideas.
3. Keep an open mind and evolve as the world evolves to keep your work interesting.
4. Say no to what doesn't work. As much as you want something to work sometimes it’s better to cut it out. Do this to help preserve your creativity.
5. Share your ideas with others. Talking about your ideas with someone else and bouncing thoughts back and forth can lead to a better solution or make the original idea even better.
6. Last but not least, my favorite tip is to let your mind run wild. Don't let anything hold you back from being creative!