A Creative Mind

We're all creative.

It doesn't matter what job we do, but we all manage to be creative in one way or anothereither in our job or just as a hobby. You don't have to be a graphic designer or an artist to be creative, either. Lawyers put together graphic presentations to demonstrate a part of a case in court. Doctors use diagrams to describe medical procedures to patients. Business professionals create snazzy charts and graphs to demonstrate future growth of their company. Parents create scrapbooks for their kids about their trip to Disney World, and grandparents distribute cute photos of all the kids to the family.

It wasn't that many years ago that professional layouts for books and magazines could be set only on special expensive typesetting machines and then mechanically put together using X-ACTO blades and wax or rubber cement. Photo retouching was a costly expense that required the use of an airbrush, and printing your final art required a lengthy task of creating film color separations manually.

These days, the process is quite different. Pages for magazines are now completely laid out on a computer, incorporating high-end typography. Photographs can be combined or adjusted to just about anything, and digital presses can take files directly from the screen to the printed page. Additionally, the emergence of the Internet brings a new level of publishing and creativity to the forefront.

Technology plays a large part in the way people are creative. There are digital cameras, scanners, computers, digital printers, pressure-sensitive graphics tablets, and more. These technologies open the door to allow people to explore new ways of expressing their creativity. We all have a creative mind inside of us, and these itemsalong with the software that takes the most advantage of themcan help us to not only express those ideas, but do it faster and more efficiently, and maybe even have some fun in the process.

The catch, of course, is learning to how to use the technology available to you to express your creativity. Think of design software as a set of tools you can use. Just as an artist may have paintbrushes, pastels, pencils, erasers, scissors, glue, or glitter (my favorite messy creative item), the Adobe Creative Suite serves as the tools to express your creativity on your computer. As a creative individual, you'll find that this knowledge gives you an edge over the competition.

Throughout this book, you'll learn what these tools are, when you should use them (and when you shouldn't), and how to use them.